The Southwest Chief

10 October 2008

After leaving Currant Creek valley, cruising past the Royal Gorge, I spent the night camping in Florence. This is the upper Arkansas River valley, and I climbed steadily south, taking the long way, until I descended back toward Pueblo. After Pueblo, it was a long flat 60 mile ride into La Junta. Against a headwind. In Pueblo I called Amtrak to reserve a spot on the Southwest Chief into Kansas City. (I was taking a train because if I got the job, I needed to get to North Carolina sooner than I could ride there. If I didn't get the job, I needed to get to Austin and get things in order. As my aunt put it, I'm only half a free spirit.) After six hours of near-constant pedaling, I made it with eight minutes to spare, and the Amtrak staff were probably the most accomodating I have ever worked with in any realm of transportation.

After a fitful but resting night on the train, I awoke just before sunrise. Fog and steam wafted over the Kansas River in damp and purple hues of morning. The arid eastern Colorado plains had given way to stately oaks and kudzu's aggressive greenness. The city was still quiet as I biked away from the Kansas City, Missouri station to my aunt's home in Kansas, just across the border.

My aunt Elaine and uncle Arne hosted me for the next two days. We alternated making dinner for each other and I recovered from the two previous heavy biking days. We debated the pros and cons of secular society and organized religion and talked politics. These are topics one might normally shy away from. It requires a great deal of mutual respect and individual confidence to discuss them freely, and I appreciated that we could converse easily about sensitive subjects. And we traded stories of bike treks. One of my sister's first memories was of Elaine and Arne biking from New Jersey to Vermont en route to Maine, and they've also trekked in California, North Carolina and Scandinavia. Kindred spirits, as it were, who know the power of experiencing the world on a bicycle. As I join Leah, Lincoln and Peter for a while, I hope to similarly bring up young minds in the way of the bike.

Leaving the security of family, I biked back through Kansas City, had some fantastic barbecue at Jack Stack, and drifted through 18th and Vine. On my way to Liberty, a commuter cycled up behind me and struck up a conversation. Scott biked out of his way for several miles to guide my path and put me on a better route to Liberty. Much appreciated. By sunset I made it out to a campground on the Missouri. This is the land of cicadas and crickets and mosquitoes, of dense green woods with thick underbrush and humid air. If you haven't heard cicadas, it only takes a few to surround you in an overwhelming and undulating vibration, like didgeridoos in stereo. Lulls me to sleep, each wave of sound like a deep breath from the earth.

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