Kansas Cyclist - Kansas Bicycle Guide and Reference

You don’t see too many bicycle tourists on the Trans-America Bicycle Route this early in the year. Even if a cyclist can make it through the cold, there’s always the possibility of cold rain, ice, and snow to contend with, and that’s before even thinking about the Rockies, where mountain passes are often blocked by snow well into April or even May.

But as I was passing through Pittsburg, Kansas over the weekend, I stopped in to talk with the folks at Tailwind Cyclists, and there I met Andrew Powell, who’s pushing the envelope a little bit.

Andrew started in Yorktown, Virginia in early February, just in time for some of the largest snowstorms in decades:

Charlottesville, Virginia.

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Preparing to cross the Mississippi River from Illinois to Missouri.

Andrew in Pittsburg, Kansas.

By the way, in many of Andrew’s photos you’ll notice his mascot, Grommit (of Wallace and Grommit fame). Andrew says that Grommit has been very popular with the kids along the route.

And helping kids is one of the main reasons Andrew is doing this trip. He’s raising money for Great Ormond Street Charity, which enables Great Ormond Street Hospital to provide world-class care for its young patients and their families, and to pioneer new treatments and cures for childhood illness. The hospital is located in Andrew’s home town of London, England.

You can follow Andrew’s progress, and donate to his cause, by visiting http://www.justgiving.co.uk/Andrew-Powell.

You can also contact Andrew via Facebook, or via his event page on Facebook.

Andrew’s doing this trip self-supported, sleeping in campgrounds and city parks along the way. He’ll be passing through Kansas this week, so if you see him along our highways, stop and say hello and offer him a little hospitality.

Good luck on your journeys, Andrew! Hope Kansas treats you well.

Biking Across Kansas, the annual week-long supported tour across the Sunflower State, has announced their 2010 route:

The tour leaves Syracuse, near the Colorado border, on Saturday, June 5th, and arrives in Leavenworth, on the Missouri river, on June 12th.

The route covers about 478 miles, with overnights in Goodland, Colby, Hill City, Osborne, Minneapolis, Herington, Osage City, and Eudora.

Learn more at the Biking Across Kansas web site.

Wheels for Wells is a ride across America this summer to raise money for clean drinking water for thousands of people in sub-Sahara Africa.

Unsafe water and a lack of sanitation cause 80% of sickness and disease in Africa. Every 15 seconds, a child dies from diseases in dirty water. The statistics are both alarming and concerning, and also what motivate us to make a change in the world. The reality is, the disease and sickness that result from a lack of clean water are totally preventable. That’s why Wheels for Wells is committed to bringing clean and safe drinking water to developing nations in Africa.

The Wheels for Wells ride is a cross-country bicycle tour, starting in Dana Point, California on June 27th, and ending in Ocean City, New Jersey on August 7th.

Here’s the route map:

The ride is split up into six weeks:

• Week 1: June 27 to July 2, 592 miles from Dana Point, CA to Cameron, AZ
• Week 2: July 3 to July 9, 487 miles from Cameron, AZ to Walsenburg, CO
• Week 3: July 10 to July 16, 485 miles, from Walsenburg, CO to Emporia, KS
• Week 4: July 17 to July 23, 476 miles, from Emporia, KS to Mt. Vernon, IL
• Week 5: July 24 to July 30, 529 miles, from Mt. Vernon, IL to Martin’s Ferry, WV
• Week 6: July 31 to August 7, 421 miles, from Martin’s Ferry, WV to Ocean City, NJ

Wheels for Wells is actively seeking riders for the tour. There are slots for 10 riders for the full route, and 15 riders for each week of the ride.

If you’re looking for a well-supported bike tour for this summer, and would like to take a trip that would not only be fun and challenging, but can help to make an important difference in people’s lives, please check out wheelsforwells.org. Rider slots are still available.

The Santa Fe Trail Bicycle Trek rolled out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on September 13th, heading northeast along roughly the same route as the old Santa Fe Trail.

The riders rode through New Mexico and Colorado, and entered Kansas on September 20th. For the next week or so, they’ll make their way through the Sunflower State, overnighting in Lakin, Dodge City, Larned, Sterling, Hillsboro, Council Grove, and Baldwin City before exiting the state on the 28th on their way to Independence, Missouri, and ultimately to New Franklin, Missouri where the trail begins (or, in the case of the cyclists, ends).

This is the 15th year for the Santa Fe Trail Bicycle Trek, which takes place one every two years and attracts riders from all over the world who want to relive a bit of the old west and learn about the history of the trail and its role in western expansion and the opening of “The Great American Desert” to European settlement.

Each rider pays $40 per day, which pays for breakfast and dinner, camp sites and showers, daily ride sheets and maps, and a truck to carry their gear. Each night they camp out, to keep expenses low, and take a day off every fifth or sixth day to rest and explore sites along the trail.

The Trek doesn’t follow the Santa Fe Trail exactly, because the exact route is either lost or on private land, but follows it as closely as possible while keeping to paved public roads. The entirety of the route is approximately 1100 miles, with 17 days of riding and three rest days. They ride an average of 64 miles a day, with the longest day being 85 and the shortest 21.

If you’re interested in doing this tour in 2011, you best sign up quick — they cap the number of riders at 50!

If you’d like to learn more about the Santa Fe Trail Bicycle Trek, visit the tour’s web site. You can also read a ride report from Californian Dick Kniepkamp, who rode the Trek in 2005.

Did a quick Twitter search, and found a number of Biking Across Kansas riders tweeting as they ride across the state. Here’s a live feed:

If I’ve missed any BAK tweeps, please let me know!

(By the way, these are consolidated using the @bak_tweets Twitter account. This is just a temporary account; don’t bother following it, as I probably won’t be posting from there…)

2009-06-14: Since BAK 2009 is complete, the tweets above are no longer live. But they’ll give you a glimpse into the last day of the ride…

Sad news from Biking Across Kansas, the annual cross-state bicycle tour of the Sunflower State. According to a news report from Wichita’s KAKE:

Hamilton County authorities say one of the Bike Across Kansas riders may have suffered a medical condition Friday afternoon.

He collapsed about a mile from the Colorado border.

Emergency crews rushed him to a hospital where authorities say he died a short time later.

The man’s name and age have not been released.

We’ll follow up with more info as it becomes available…

See also: Biking Across Kansas 2009 Preview

Tomorrow, June 6th, is the official start date for Biking Across Kansas, the annual bicycle tour across the Sunflower State.

Today, more than 800 riders are converging on the town of Syracuse, only 17 miles from the Colorado border. People coming from Kansas City began loading their bikes on trucks and boarding buses at 6am this morning for an all-day trip across the state. Getting moving early is good practice for the week, as many days on the road begin at sunrise!

As riders filter into Syracuse today, they’ll sign in, pick up their information packets, and set up their campsites on the school grounds. If they have time, they’ll likely get on their bikes and begin pedaling west for a photo-op at the Colorado state line. Riders who ride to the line and back can make a leisurely start the next morning; riders who don’t make the Friday run will need to do so Saturday morning, turning the 52-mile day into an 86-mile day, a long ride to start a long week!

Here’s a map of the route across the state:

• Friday, June 5: Syracuse, a town of about 1800 people, located near the original route of the Santa Fe Trail, along the Arkansas River.

• Saturday, June 6: Syracuse to Garden City, about 52 miles. Garden City is one of the largest communities in Western Kansas, with a population of about 28,000. It is also home to the Garden City Bicycling Club, which I’m sure will be out in full force to welcome their fellow cyclists. BAK riders can also find comfort and support at The Bike Rack, Garden City’s local bike shop.

• Sunday, June 7: Garden City to Jetmore, about 56 miles. Jetmore is the county seat of Hodgeman County, with a population of about 900 folk. Jetmore is home to the Haun Museum, which provides a glimpse into the daily life of early settlers.

• Monday, June 8: Jetmore to St. John, about 77 miles. St. John boasts about 1300 people, and is known for its beautiful Victorian download square featuring a three-tier fountain.

• Tuesday, June 9: St. John to Halstead, about 78 miles. Halstead has a population of about 1900 people, and bills itself as “The biggest little city in Kansas”. During the day’s ride, the route will take cyclists near Hutchinson, home of Harley’s Bicycles, which is one of the oldest bike shops in the state, serving the area since 1922.

• Wednesday, June 10: Halstead to Eureka, about 84 miles. Eureka, with about 2900 citizens, is known as the “Racing Capital of Kansas,” and is home to the Eureka Downs quarter-horse race track.

• Thursday, June 11: Eureka to Humboldt, about 73 miles. After riding due east for most of the week, Thursday’s route begins a northward jog to Humboldt, a town of about 2000, which was the birthplace of Walter Johnson, a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher known as “The Big Train”, winning 417 games and striking out 3,508 batters in a 21-year career.

• Friday, June 12: Humboldt to Paola, about 85 miles. Continuing east and then north, the route will take riders through Blue Mound and Osawatomie, home to abolitionist John Brown, and on to Paola, with a population of about 5000.

• Saturday, June 13: Paola to Louisburg, about 23 miles. Louisburg, a town of about 2500 people, is located just south of Kansas City, near the Missouri border. I know this route well; there are some good-sized rollers on the road from Paola to Louisburg, a kick-yer-butt finish to near 550 miles of rural Kansas roads!

Each night during the week, BAK organizers hold a riders meeting, discussing the next day’s route and weather, and letting people know about the activities planned in the next town. In addition to the daily meeting, BAK is trying something new this year, using text messages and Twitter to keep riders informed.

Whether you’re riding along with the pack, or just watching from afar as I am this year, you can follow BAK on Twitter and Facebook. You can also watch for updates and images during the week at bak.org, or send a message to a rider using the BAKMail system.

For years, it has seemed strange that Arkansas had no organized cross-state bicycle tour — something similar to Biking Across Kansas, the Oklahoma FreeWheel, or RAGBRAI.

Arkansas would seem to be a good fit for such a tour — it’s largely rural, with lots of low-traffic roads running through scenic and in many places, challenging, terrain. I, for one, would love to do a Bike-Across-Arkansas tour.

Well, it seems I’m not the only one who’s had that dream.

From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette comes news of some folks that got fed up with dreaming about a tour, and just up and did it themselves:

After more than a decade of talking, talking, talking in which one spangle of excitement after another fizzled down to … more talking, six bicycle riders finally “just did it.”

These members of the Arkansas Bicycle Club grew tired of failed attempts to organize a cross-Arkansas tour on the scale of RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa) or the Oklahoma Freewheel. So, by golly, they saddled up April 13 and went on their own little Bicycle Ride Around Arkansas (BRAA) or Bicycle Arkansas (BARK) ride – or whatever people want to call it.

Forget shuttle cars and insurance coverage and 210 parade permits or whatever. They announced their plan on bicycle club chat boards, inviting everyone to come along for all or part of a seven-day, no-sag, no-frills, no-fault bicycle-camping tour. At 9 a.m. on a rain-soaked Monday, Jim Britt, 59; Coreen Frasier, 65; John Linck, 59; and Brad Joseph, 55, launched themselves from the relatively dry porch of River Trail Rentals. Their wheels sliced through rapidly deepening puddles as they left the North Little Rock riverfront and headed north toward Arkansas 107. Two other cyclists joined them on the road. Seven days and 350 miles or so later, only two of them were willing to stay in the saddle all the way to their front doors. But Frasier says they all agree “the mileage was perfect all but the first day … Arkansas is a beautiful place to ride, and we picked a most beautiful and scenic course.”

The article details their route, which started in North Little Rock and overnighted at Greers Ferry Lake, Mountain View, Marshall, Tilly, Lake Nimrod, Hot Springs before ending up back in Little Rock (you can also view their route online).

The riders had to battle some rainy days, and “Boy, we went up some big hills. But we managed to get up the hills,” Linck says. “We only had one flat. Everybody had good equipment. Everybody came physically fit enough to ride those hills. We didn’t have a weak link, which really made it nice.”

Britt says they will try another BRAA or BARK or whatever next spring. No frills, no insurance. Feel free to join them.

Read the full story: 7-day Arkansas bicycle tour often arduous, usually scenic

In honor of their 35th year, Biking Across Kansas, the annual bicycle tour across the state of Kansas, is offering a Biking Across Kansas ‘09 jersey:

This Primal Wear raglan jersey is available in men’s and women’s (sleeved and sleeveless) cuts and features a BAK 35th year “Wheat Harvest” design. Cost is $60 each. Sizes from XXS to XXXL.

Jerseys will not be mailed — they will be distributed during BAK. No refunds on jersey orders. Orders must be placed by 5 pm March 30, 2009. Order now.

Biking Across Kansas, the annual week-long supported tour across the Sunflower State, has announced their 2009 route:

The tour leaves Syracuse, near the Colorado border, on Saturday, June 6th, and arrives in Louisburg, near the Missouri border, on June 13th.

The route covers about 511 miles, with overnights in Syracuse, Garden City, Jetmore, St. John, Halstead, Eureka, Humbolt, and Paola.

Learn more a the Biking Across Kansas web site.