We’ve just entered new lands in Kansas! We crossed the Ness county line around midday and all of a sudden I was riding through the most arid air ever with 30-40mph winds drying up any moisture around my mouth/nose, it’s totally asphyxiating and will take some getting used to but that’s the West from now on. It’s 100 degrees these days, farmers are telling us their fields look like they only should in August not early June!
As awful as I make this sound though we are still riding at 6am every morning and getting our day over before any of this gets to be too bad. We find great ways to avoid the heat by either spending the day at a pool or this afternoon for example in Elaine’s cool home with some tea and great company. She runs a cyclist B&B in a desolate oil town of only 300, she calls it her oasis….and that is exactly what it felt like as I pulled up parched mouthed a few hours ago.
Rather what has me more distraught and in a deep funk these days is the state of food and health in America. None of this is news to me but after more than a month on the road zooming by these nauseating poultry and cattle farms, riding through the fertile but deeply over fertilized bread belt and eating barely comestible frozen/fatty food from diners that read “home cookin’” where 4 in 5 sides are a starch and canned veggies will be as much as I can expect in terms of my legumes and maybe all this downtime at the pool where I am faced with all this saddening blubber around me has finally gotten to my core where I just can’t ignore my feelings any longer.
But what else am I to expect when a Dollar General store, where no fresh products are available, is the closest thing to a supermarket to that town of 152? Now I understand why Walmart is the largest employer in this country. Where else can you get fresh food, a new fishing pole and some new school supplies for your kids in one fuel efficient trip in the middle of nowhere America. For some reason, I held some antiquated hope that farmers and their children at least ate fresh foods, alas that seems more an exception than the rule. I have fully grown cashiers proudly uttering “this is a tangerine right” when they’re holding up a grapefruit. I might have nervously laughed that comment off when the guy said that last week but I just want to cry now. I don’t want to go into some rant about all the ways the medical and agro business is flipped on it’s head in this country but at the moment riding through all this day in and day out and left to reflect upon everything hour upon hour has left me blue….very very blue.
