There was something out there. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was there. I pulled to a stop and wiped the sweat from my head. I scanned the long, straight, impossible sameness of the open plain surrounding me. In the distance, a farmer kicked a whirl of dust that circled around his boots like a beloved pet. The two were inseparable. The people and the wind. Each was inescapable, and a formidable influence upon the land. This was Kansas – the Lakota word for "people of the south wind."
"Smells like money!" came the voice of co-rider Alex Calvert ahead of me. We had met a day earlier and agreed to ride together along the way. Alex was referring to one of the mammoth dust and urine-vapor clouds spewing from a nearby cattle-feed lot.
The lots, which stretched for nearly two miles and bulged with up to 125,000 head of livestock, emitted an asphyxiating odor that could land a rider on his knees.
"We’re almost there." I gasped, breathing through my mouth, and pushed harder toward the turnoff to Garden City. We pulled into town and up the driveway of a house that a fellow traveler had recommended along the way. I raised my hand and knocked on the door. It was the home of Kansas bike shop owner Randy Bartel and Karen Borgstedt.
"Welcome," they said and invited us in. For the better part of the evening Randy and Karen fed us, showed us around town, tended to our bikes, and entertained us with stories of Kansas, its people and the wind – a wind I would come to describe as the beauty or the beast.
"We have no real hills; the wind is our hill training here," Randy said. The wind hills must have been great, because the two were both state cycling champions.
The topic turned to the people of Kansas. Nearly everyone smiled, waved, or more often than not, stopped and took the time to say hello.
I asked Randy what gives.
"I think its about population density," he said. "Every time you take a step down in the size of a city, it seems like people are more likely to talk to you and wave at you. You have time; there’s not as many people that cross your path."
He paused for minute and finished.
"Here, the heart of the wide-open spaces are reflected in the hearts of people," he said.
The next morning I said my goodbyes, and set off solo, pointing my handlebars south toward Dodge City. A steady, 20-mile-an-hour headwind emerged like the head of a gargoyle, casting me into a spell of slow motion. Slowing to a average speed of 3 miles per hour, I watched my life drip by as slow as molasses.
I struggled against the beast for hours, encrusted in layers of salt and sweat until I stumbled into to small caf
