Amber Waves of Grain

I left Pratt well rested and fed thanks to my wonderful hosts. They even drove me past their unpaved farm road to the highway with a mini tour of the fish hatchery in the area. Still a light headwind to contend with, plus a bit of highway construction.

Typical Prairie town with diagonal parking on the main street

This one had a funky independent coffee shop

Heading into Wichita, the traffic got heavier. While it was more of the rolling farmlands of wheat and soybeans, it had less of the small town charm of the western part of the state. I stopped at a supermarket to get some food for lunch but after riding out for a few kilometres, I couldn't find a good spot to have a picnic so I just spread my tarp beside a highway ramp.

Technically Kansas' largest city (Since Kansas City is mostly in Missouri) Wichita is home to a lot of aviation industries and the hometown of the Koch brothers. There's big money here but the place doesn't really show it. I got into the western part of town in the late afternoon, where he highway had turned into a freeway lined with big box stores and its vast parking lots. It was a complete change of scenery  a bit disorienting with the heavy traffic. I settled for a motel among the fields of asphalt and left figuring out how to get across the urban sprawl for the next day.

Crops hold up the highway

Pull the door, not the trigger

I went and checked out a few bike shops for a replacement part for my rack that broke in Arizona but no luck. I opted to spend the morning in the centre of town to do some sightseeing and leisurely riding along the Arkansas River. Interesting to note the heavy interpretive focus on Native America here, although it's hard to see its true influence on the daily life of the city.

The Arkansas River

The Keeper of the Plains

As I was riding out of town after a good lunch I heard a snap and a strange grinding noise. My fear had come true — the other post on the rack had broken and was rubbing on my gears. And just my luck, it did not look like I was in a nice part of town. I performed the same quick fix similar to what I did to the other side, but this point I realized I really should address this issue seriously, and possibly just get a new rack. I googled the nearest bike shop and they had quite a poor selection, so I went on towards the next. Along the way I came across an Ace Hardware and went in to see if by chance they had a half-inch steel bar that I could fashion a new bracket with. Rowe, a guy who worked there, asked if I needed help, and after I described my problem to him, he actually offered to cut the bar down to size and drill holes since it was a really slow day! It was a cheap solution that worked like a charm, and the steel will hold up way better than the original aluminium. Rowe was a hero, he wouldn't even accept some extra money I offered for the trouble of doing all that.

Such a simple part made with the wrong material :(

It was getting late in the afternoon after looking after all that so all I did was ride out to the northern fringe of the city to find some cheap accommodation. A short day, but I'm glad I had a nagging problem solved.