“Let’s get the heck outta Dodge” was the obvious phrase of the morning. Little did we know this was easier said than done…what a brutal day on the bike! Grabbed some crew chief breakfast…said our goodbyes to Snow, who was leaving us for a couple days to patch up apparent issues with his fiancé (yikes)…then hit the road. I was rockin the front group with Geren, Snyder, and Britton, and man we were moving.Despite a devilish headwind we were cruising at about 20 mph most of the day. Took some sweet “children of the corn” pics on the side of the road…but the truly memorable part of the day was passing through Greensburg…which had just been recently hit hard by a tornado. Our paceline fell silent as we rolled through….there was little left of the small town…most activity was around some FEMA tents set up to provide aid. The image that struck my most was what had been a gas station was now simply the metal barriers that sit next to the pumps…the rest had been completely wiped out. Just unreal.
Finally we rolled into the decent-sized town of Pratt and lodged up at a local school. Dined on some crew chief lunch and had some downtime before dinner…I rolled with Wes to Wal-Mart to discover that they couldn’t print my pictures…what a bust!Our dinner visit was awesome…and quite unique. A local archery club had us out to their range for some steaks and some bow shootin. Got to take some shots at fake-animal targets with a long bow and didn’t do half bad! Bob was showin me the ropes and telling me about their setup here in Pratt…pretty much like a small fraternity of older guys who come out to the lodge to shoot or just hang out on a pretty regular basis. Nice group of folks!
Got back pretty early to lodging so a good group of us decided to go have a drink at a local bar. Not sure if they appreciated our crew at the bar but everyone was cordial….had a few pitchers (which hit ya a lot harder after being out on the road so long like this!) and joked around before heading back to catch some sleep.
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