Monday 19th July 2004
 Leoti
City Park to Eads, Econolodge, Colorado. 80 miles on the transAm route (plus
a few miles looking for swimming pools, food, etc!). Got going early from
the City Park. Got to Tribune, where we bought food for mid morning snack.
Their was a librry at Tribune, as witnessed in my last entry, and there
I typed up my log. We then headed out towards Colorado, passing a timezone
just a little before Tribune had prepared us for changes! Guy had a puncture
in a very bleak and empty, and hot, and dry, bit of Kansas, just before
we got to Colorado. Two cyclists turned up - Franz has a Web
Page!. We were all being eaten by sand flies at this point - so the
conversation was pretty efficient - good places to stay, experiences on
route. They took a picture of us, with Guy mending his tyre. Eventually
we got into Colorado and reached Sheridan Lake, which has to be one of the
most out of the way places we have yet been to! There is a lake, but the
town (hamlet more like!) isn't by it sadly, and all we could find was a
garage with a heap of saturated fat to offer to travellers. Guy found the
saturated fat level a bit severe and didn't eat much. I managed a bit better
and got through an ice cream, a packet of crisps, a heap of peanuts and
some other 'goodies'. Fortunately, we don't eat like this very often. Shade
was found by sitting round the side of the garage. There's few trees and
little shade around here. We reached Eads quite early (before 6pm) but it
was very shut. The library was shut, the swimming pool looked like it had
never opened, the store had just closed, and there was an air of shutness
about the whole place. Eads, Colorado, was even more of a ghost town than
some of the places in Western Kansas. Does the swimming pool ever open?
Since no times were posted up, we have no way of knowing! The water was
a lovely, if unreachable, blue, though. Stayed in the motel because we couldn't
find a park that looked reasonable. We did find a liquor store, and asked
for real ale, or European style beer. This did not succeed, so we drank
a bit of fizzy stuff instead. Went to the Econolodge Motel, which was comfortable,
but not much 'econo' about it ($50 for the two of us). Can't be doing that
very often...
The picture shows a typical scene looking across the road between Leoti
City and Eads - it's was taken just before the border with Colorado, and
at the place where Guy had a puncture. I've kindly decided not to put
the pictures of Guy, wearily mending his puncture, on the web. We also
have a short clip of video footage of Guy cycling along the road near
Tribune. It's available for 56K
(280K) or you can have a similarly sized and equally grainy ogg. It's a bit grainy, but at least you get a 360 degree view of
the landscape, and see Guy pedalling away. It has a voiceover by Steve.
It seems to work nicely in RealPlayer. Quicktime plays it nicely too -
but the default sound setting is usually too low, so turn the sound up
on your Quicktime player, otherwise all you hear is a lot of squeaks....
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