lunch we made in the parking lot after buying most of the makings at the market: corn, potatoes, whole wheat bread (with Claire home made hummus) cole slaw and tomatoes. Everything from the market was so fresh it was probably picked that morning It reminded me of my Mother’s summer lunches.
After a 47 mile ride, only one section of a square with a tailwind. We decided we had earned a stop at a the Cardinal Drug soda fountain when we got back to Chanute. I got a big one, and it was a whopper. We had been disappointed earlier in the day when we discovered Erie, a small town where Claire had expected to find a new-to-us old fashioned soda fountain, had been torn down, a new building built and the fountain was now just a non-working display at the new high school. This is happening more and more often. The machinery, the marble tables, the back bars, still exist, but no longer have a purpose, and soon there will be no one alive who knows how to make a real soda or Green River. However, in Chanute, the two young girls waiting on us made excellent sodas (cherry for me, strawberry for Claire) at Cardinal Drugs, using the proper wrist action and a perfect balance of fruit, soda and whipped cream. Oh my. Nothing like it on a hot humid day. We had been there on a soda-fountain themed tour of Kansas several years, and we were happy to find this one unchanged.
In Greensburg, Kansas the city park, pool and ball fields, has several grass sites, with electricity. We enjoyed watching young baseball hopefuls practice, until darkness, thunder and lightning sent them home. They pay attention to the skies here: Greensburg was destroyed by a tornado a year after we had visited on a Zippy (our world traveling tandem) on a short soda fountain tour in 2006, another story, coming to this site soon!
I am beginning to dismantle Zippy, world touring tandem, in preparation for our next self supported tour, this time South America. Before each tour, I completely dismantle Zippy for three reasons: to find our which parts need replacing so I can order them and fix the worn parts, catch any impending failures of frame, rims or drive-train, and to re-familiarize myself with every part. Since many of the places we tour are hundreds of miles from a proper bike shop, I have to be able to fix pretty much anything. Anyone who owns a tandem will tell you tandems need more attention than single bikes; I might have to rebuild the hub somewhere in the high Andes, or the middle of the Amazon basin, while being munched on by ants and mosquitoes and critters we’ve never seen before.