Day 38 - Another Day Riding Together (July 9th, 2024)

City To City: Ness City - Great Bend

Miles: 65

Miles Total: 2,487

Flats: 9

Video: https://youtu.be/RIGJkpP9DRQ?si=jdCF66nExg2R_Zgy

Us Eating Banana Splits

All six, Mark, Matt, Neil and us ate our breakfasts separately but were ready around the same time, though we didn't coordinate our riding schedules.  We were all going to the same place that night because the next place would've been over one hundred miles.  Neil told us he was fine if we wanted to ride together, and my dad agreed again.  Neil had a stop to make, so we waited, and once Neil was ready, we started off.  We eventually caught up with Mark and Matt, who had stopped at the post office.  But all during the ride, we went slower because everyone agreed that yesterday's ride had been too fast.  During the ride, we saw machines pumping oil out of the ground and a small, yellow plane dipping and gliding in the sky.  

When we did get to Great Bend, the administrator of the biker ministry came and talked to us. She told us some of her bike stories. Her husband, who was a quiet man, also came and asked us how we were and quietly asked us if we needed anything.

Mark, who's about to be sixty-nine, was asked by my dad how Mark kept biking at his age especially with forty pounds of stuff packed into his bags.  Mark replied with two words, "My wife."  Mark went quiet for a moment.

"After every trip I go on, I always want to come back to my wife."  As Mark's talking, emotion starts to build up in his voice, and his perfect love for his wife shines in his moist blue eyes.  "I have the best wife," he says and looks down at the ground, picturing his lovely wife back at home.  Mark stands there with one hand against the tree, but his eyes are still on the ground. For a split second, standing at the tree is the younger Mark, a man in love with a woman he's now married.  The tall, lanky, but strongly built man, thinking about the woman who consumed his thoughts, he quietly stands in the shade. The glimpse vanishes, and instead is the older Mark, still thinking about his wife, still very much in love since the day he married her.

Henry, my dad , and I headed for a coffee shop, got free smoothies because the card reader wasn't working and worked on blogging and videos.

Later that night, we had creamy tomato basil pasta with peppers and sausage.  Then Neil came back with a milkshake, and Mark asked where he got that.  Matt then looked up the restaurant, and started listing the menu aloud.  Once Matt got to banana split, Mark gets all excited and shouts, "Hey, does anyone else want a banana split, 'Cause I do!!"

So, Henry and I went with Matt and Mark to the ice cream store, and got huge banana splits and a milkshake for my dad.  We hurriedly came back and ate them.  Then we all settled down and tried sleeping, but it was hot.