July 29, 2014 – Newton, KS – population 18,437

Post date: Jul 30, 2014 11:40:54 PM

I’m getting the oil changed again on my car- last oil change, 3500 miles ago on June 26. I’m not sure how that happened, since the guys are only riding 2200 miles this summer and that was near the beginning of the ride, but we’ve had to drive off route many times and drove back and forth to St. Louis, and a trip to the airport, so I guess we did drive that far. I learned the hard way with our previous van after a long road trip. I was watching the next service date more than the miles driven, so our poor van was in desperate need of an oil change by the time I got around to it. On this trip, I am babying my car with regular oil changes and tire rotations. She is holding up well so far, knock on wood.

Speaking of driving off the route- we decided to find a motel instead of staying at the city park in Cassoday, KS (I’m hearing a possible dog name there) (Bad Cassie! Sit Cassie!...) It is pronounced Cassidy. The Kansas Turnpike runs right past Cassoday, so we loaded up and got on the Turnpike and headed toward El Dorado – 20 miles away. We stopped at the first motel we saw and got settled. As we were unloading we noticed the AC unit was making a racket, like metal on metal whining. We were wondering if we would want to listen to that all night. The guys went ahead and took their showers. Then the AC stopped running altogether. We debated if we wanted to try to change rooms or have no AC. Doug wanted to see about a different room, so, since it was his birthday and all, he pursued a different room and one was available next door, so we moved everything over to the new room. This motel appeared to be in the middle of a huge remodel that could take years- a brand new sink and toilet, ancient bathtub/shower, a new refrigerator sitting on a Styrofoam square, probably from the packing box it came in and lots of mismatched furniture.

The last stretch of the route yesterday was tough. There was road work being done, so most of the 20 miles was packed gravel, which is very hard on bikes and bike tires. There was a road crew working and lots of dump trucks waiting to dump their gravel. There was a truck spraying tar over the gravel on one section and then dump trucks following with more gravel.

We ate lunch in Rosalia at The Old Hat. This was a little town off the main road at the start of the gravel section. This town is too small to note the population. Suffice it to say, the post office and fire station were next door and if I looked down the road one way I could see the main road I had turned off of and looking the other direction I could see the 55 mph sign headed out of town. When we went in, a grandma type lady was sitting down watching TV. There was a pool table, too. She took our order and cooked our food. We had ordered salads with our meals and she took a new, wrapped head of lettuce out of the refrigerator to chop up for our salad. We felt like we wanted to go in the kitchen and help! Ordinarily her son is there, but they were at the county fair. Her grandson shows goats. He has 21 goats now. She had a picture hanging up of him in his football uniform and he looked to be about 12- with his own goat business! I got up to use the restroom while we were there. It was a nice little bathroom with signs all over about not putting paper towels in the toilet and don’t lift up the lid to the tank, etc. (They must have a lot of problems with plumbing in these little towns). So I went about my business and went to flush and low and behold, there was no handle at all- just a hole where it used to be. So I had to ask Grandma what I should do. This was another thing her son ordinarily would have helped with, but she was there alone today, so she was going to have to go flush the toilet under the tank lid when she had a free moment. Apparently, someone had flushed too aggressively and broken the handle off. Doug offered to flush it under the tank lid but she said no- I guess they don’t want anyone to break the inside flusher, too. She was really sweet. She offered to fill up our water bottles before we set off again.