Day 16 Abilene to Topeka

Up at5:55 for 6 am breakfast. Jason had to eat last nights pizza left overs. Hence we partook little of the breakfast. Load and leave at 7. We were one of the later riders to leave. There was lots of navigation to get out of town and there was one turn into 1st street which we passed by- only adding 0.2 miles. This was because the street names started from the centre of town and we were told to take the second first street (only in America) and this was named ist street on one side and something else the other side. Which we quickly found once we u turned 0.1 miles past it. On wards and upwards. The weather was nice and temps and wind was expected to get up. The wind was a cross wind peaking at 30 mph, temps were expecting to hit the 90's. We rode with a guy named Darryl for a while but he was struggling on the rolling hills and fell y the way side. e caught and passed a couple of bunches by the first SAG.

The city? of White.

There was plenty of green grass an crops as we rolled over gentle hills and some slightly longer ones. We even passed some buffalo. To our chagrin they were just standing and not roaming. Lasse from Norway apparently missed a turn which added 10 miles to his tip. e explained at lunch that he had no bothered to turn hi cue sheet over but just kept the sun of his left shoulder.

The ride to lunch from the first SAG involved more rolling hills and some good headwind stretches. It finished with a decent hill climb and a small descent into lunch. As we were sitting at lunch we noticed other cyclists arrive at the stop sign where they needed to turn right to lunch. Although we effectively would be turning left to continue the trip after lunch. Luckily hose few that went straight through quickly turned around. Of course Lasse was one of these to our great amusement.
Everyone was really happy to arrive at lunch because of the headwind and "rolling" trip.

We left lunch and hit a cross tailwind as the road twisted and tuned. It was also rolling but descending so made a great run.

w e stopped to get a picture of the bike "art" only to be greeted by two dogs barking and running out to the road. We think maybe the dogs got the owners so the farmer mounted their bikes.

Jim the mechanic had stopped the other van along this stretch at a turn so we took the chance to refill water bottles. I drank 11 bottles today.

We arrived at 1:53 ish travel time was 5:59 for 109 miles.