Buisness Card Letter

Grandma, Pete, John
This is the house of a family we stayed at in KY where my leader was attacked by a dog- wonderful artist. My legs are tired even in the Kansas plains.
Love, Paul

Fort Larned

Allan, Annie, Clara
Today I took a Wonderful and Insightful tour of one of the best preserved forts in the midwest; Fort Larned. Zach, the tour guide showed me all around and I was actually feeling comraderie with the soldiers: poor sleeping conditions, untrained cooks, and no ladies to keep me company (about 400 men and 40 ladies). In other news, we had a great tailwind today (averaged 30mph over 14 miles)

Love, Paul

6-18-10 (from Mom

6-18-10 Kathleen

I spoke to Paul this evening. He is in Scott City, KS [pop 5,000], about 60 miles from Colorado state line, right on Rt 96. He sounds good – nearing the half way point in days and almost in miles. They have biked about 2000 miles of 4300. They are staying in a local city park, not a regular camping ground. They can’t always find a camping ground in small towns. Ideally, if there is a pool in the park, they can shower right there but they need to arrive before 8 pm [when the pool closes]. He is roughing it more than I realized.

In some of the towns, the teenagers hang out in the local parks without much else to do, driving their cars, revving the engines. As we were talking, locals were driving loudly nearby. All this creates an environment tough for the bikers to sleep in – wishing they could go to sleep around 9 pm and get an early start. Evidently, there is less wind in the early am – important to consider in KS. Paul is one of the late starters in the AM. Today he didn’t get on the road until 11, arriving 3.5 hours later than his biking group at 5:30 while they had arrived around 2 pm. I can understand why everyone else is getting an early start – today was high of 92 but forecast for next two days is high of 100.

Group leader continues to heal from his injury. Several people had asked me where he got his car from. When he was first injured in KY, his wife, back in Colorado, came out to help him, bringing a family car. She is a trained nurse. She flew back to CO but he is looking forward to seeing her and home when in CO. The group is expecting to spend an extra day in Breckenridge, CO. He hopes to then be able to bike full time with the group. The plan is for his wife to drive along side the group for a couple of days just to make sure he is able to manage biking full time. He is already doing some short biking right now.

Paul did watch the NBA finals last night – seeing the Lakers win. He was interested to hear that both Allan and Tom watched the world cup US game today at work.

His bike is holding up well after the extensive repairs. He plans to get it serviced more frequently.

Milk shake results: Paul was having a taste test of best chocolate milk shakes in US along the bike route. Small town milk shake quality is only so, so – on a par with Dairy Queen. He is enjoying Braum’s ice cream in KS – high ratings. Best ice cream so far was in Marion, KY[pop 3,000, city named for Frances Marion, revolutionary war hero]. Paul is burning off the calories daily so is enjoying being able to have milkshakes.