Day 28 -- Abilene, KS to Topeka, KS

Miles: 114.33
Total Miles: 2075.78
Time: 7:25
Average Speed: 15.4 mph
Max Speed: 42.5 mph
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 11
Elevation Gain: 3924 ft
Weather: 20 -25 mph mostly side winds around 95 degrees and high humidity

I would put today up with the most difficult rides of the trip. The whole day consisted of rolling hills, high winds, very hot temperatures, and extremely high humidity. It was absolutely the most sweating I've done on the entire trip thus far. We also had to push really hard today in order to be able to make it to church this evening. We woke up at 5:25, ate breakfast at 6:00, loaded at 6:45, then began what turned out to be a very difficult day. For the first 20 miles the road was relatively flat, but we were heading into a 20 mph head wind... Most of the time the wind isn't strong early, but it was today. We were riding at a solid 12 mph for the longest time before we finally got to turn left and get a side wind... It was worse. At least with a head wind we could draft, but there's nothing we could do about a 20 mph side wind. We rode with that side wind all of the way into the town where our first sag stop was at. About 5 miles out from the sag stop, we did the impossible... We caught up to Phil. People have stayed with Phil, but no one has ever came from behind Phil and passed him... We were so proud of ourselves until we realized that we were exhausted and he wasn't even working hard yet. Anyway, when we got into the town where our sag stop was at, everyone was lined up for a parade on the road that we were on. We obviously knew that it was for us, so we waved in an elegant fashion all the way down the road. Everyone waved back to us and said good morning, so we were feeling great. After we arrived at the sag stop, we found out that it was a 4th of July Parade. We wanted to leave the sag stop quickly so that we would have time to make it back for mass, but Fran wanted to stay and watch the parade. We convinced him to skip the parade and leave early, and it worked out well because the people that stayed for the parade got rained on. Fran was happy that we didn't stay after he found out that they got rained on.

We left the sag stop and rode another 40 miles to the next sag stop. There really wasn't anything to take pictures of until we were about 10 miles out from the sag stop. We took a photo of a valley that we could see through for miles, a picture of a nice little lake, and a picture of Wade in his USA jersey with a large USA engraved in the hill. Anyway, we showed up at the second sag stop and it was very nice. There was a very large selection of food, so we ate well, then we headed out quickly. We stopped a few times along the way to take pictures, but overall we just pushed in the last 30 miles to be sure. One of the pictures we took was a photo of all of the bikes of the riders who tried to pass us... Wade crushed everyone's bike who tried to get by. After that photo we just slowly struggled our way against the wind, heat, and hills to complete our century.

We ended up riding about 109 miles for the day, then after we unloaded luggage and took showers, we immediately went to mass at 4:00. Some people didn't get in until much later, so we did a great job pushing it to get in on time... hopefully it doesn't come back to haunt us tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, we leave Kansas and get into the Ozark Mountains in Missouri.