There are umpteen special and unique things you can do traveling long distance on a bike that an auto tourist cannot experience, make you more in tune with the Pony Express than with modern day 70 mph air conditioned off ramp repetitions.

You can also "create a myth" along the way, I know exactly when and how mine started. Back in Kansas, on US 36 I pulled into a Stop and Go to refuel and refill the water bottle. I started talking to a big rig driver, who told me he heard about me on the Red Bike from when I headed west in Missouri.

Apparently I was the "talk of the CB radio" coming through the Ozarks. I told him after I got to Denver, I planned on climbing Pike's Peak smoking a cigar. (Later, in Ada, Oklahoma and someplace in W.Arkansas, two folks said they heard about my bike ride on Trucker's Radio....). After talking to the driver, I seemed to notice how the trucks always gave me a wide clearance passing, I always felt like I was in the "rockin' chair."

I don't know if the "Pike's Peak Myth" was relayed on the CB's, maybe it was more like "Where's Waldo", where was the Red Bike going to turn up next. But coming south out of Denver toward Colorado Springs, I never even SAW the top of the mountain. I tried to take 5 pictures of it as I cruised south, like Pic#1 below, and after I posed the bike in the "ominous cloud" picture, I gave up trying to get a calender shot.



I had been thinking of staying southerly toward Pueblo, but "friendly winds" shot me straight east on State Highway 94 (sign reads "next gas station 97 miles"), lunching in a dried up town called Yoder.

After about 50 miles, in the middle of nowhere, straight as an arrow 94 intersects with nearly straight north/south 71 toward Rocky Ford with shortcuts to La Junta. Halfway down 71 I saw three pronghorn antelope, then another, (a bit bigger than I thought they would be) and right after I took a snapshot, "uh oh..." I noticed a cloud buildup in the distance.

I know for a fact it is dry, a two year drought is ongoing, I crossed some 18 bridges that afternoon, only saw one puddle of water. While the wheat in Nebraska was knee high, the fields down in Oklahoma were only ankle deep, many fields being plowed under. Huge rectangular bales of hay were being trucked in from Mexico.

On the Florida trip I never hit rain. And only the third day, back in Missouri, had I needed to pull into a "House for Sale" with it's open carport to wait out a 10 minute heavy shower. I could handle anything from morning mist to medium rain without a problem.

I had also learned, when choosing a camping spot, to look for something with nearby shelter. One time, in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, shelter was nothing but a row of round bales of hay, but most times I could find an abandoned farm or barn, where I could quickly pull my tarps onto a porch, if necessary. Up till now, I was sleeping under the stars........

But the pronghorned antelopes /"uh oh" moment was mid afternoon, I figured once I got to La Junta and headed east again, I would outrun any storm. After the "prairie dog surf" episode I kept going till the sun was setting, but was seeing no barns or sheds, no nothing...

Finally I saw some rusty trucks, tractors and a medium size box in the weeds, a 25 foot long metal container, sitting on the ground.

Not exactly scenic, beggars can't be choosers late in the evening. But when it got dark I was admiring the huge thunder and lightning clouds passing in the distance to the south. I'm patting myself on the back, thinking I outguessed the weather.

I'm so full of myself, thinking how I would have been miserable if I had went via Pueblo. I even tried to take pix of the lightning, figuring those clouds must be in New Mexico or Texas. A peaceful sleep....what a clever fellow I am.......

The bottom dropped out around 4 a.m.

It started with a big drop waking me up, smack in the forehead.

The bike was under the container already, funny how I didn't notice half the roof was rusted away last evening.....

It is still dark, and first thing I grab is the hooded poncho, then try to stow all my gear under one tarp, use the other to try and fashion a teepee, build up a dam to divert the flow, especially when the wind swirls and whups up the rain from every direction.

For about an hour I just sit there, at first thinking about those cowboy movies, enduring these type storms. But you know the scene in "Apocolypse Now" where Martin Sheen is in the river, only his head is above water? That is about how wet I felt.

Right around dawn it stopped. A mule deer buck is maybe 30 feet away, guarding 3 does about twice as far, he's snorting at me like one of my goats "what the heck are YOU doing here?". Mule deer are A LOT bigger than our white-tails. For ten minutes, while I'm shaking water off my gear, packing up, he's laughing and snorting at me, until I get so fed up I holler and cuss him away.

I arrived in Prowers about 6:45 a.m., 15 minutes before the only store opened. There are a pair of picnic tables in front, and a couple more farmers wander in before the owner arrives.

"The biggest rain in two years", 2 plus inches in a 90 minute bucket.

What the heck, might as well create the new myth. "I am the Rain Man" was my claim, which got me free coffee and two donuts.

When I finally left the store at 7:30 after jawing with the locals, I quickly caught back up with the rear of the storm, took the last picture on the way into Lamar, and when it was evident the cloud was going to keep going east, I made my "go south toward Springfield Colorado/Boise City Oklahoma" decision.

"What a clever guy".....again with the backpatting.

Little did I know, by making my Rain Man Claim, dancing for donuts, it was a "MAJOR JINXING MOMENT", because I was about to enter THE WEATHER VORTEX......

(to be continued south of Springfield)

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