Stage “Six”: TS 23-26, Ulysses- Pratt, KS

As Mike and I waited in the RV in Ulysses for Lonni & Doug, we watched a thunderstorm arrive from the west in front of them. The clouds were fascinatingly beautiful and changing by the minute: purple-gray, and “pimply”. I knew we were going to get some interesting weather on this shift and I was not disappointed.

We got started about 7pm local time. The sky was dark with thick clouds and frequent “heat” lightening in all directions. It had already begun “spitting” on Lonni and Doug. As we headed east further into Kansas, the spitting turned to actual rain with gusty crosswinds of around 20mph. It was warm, though, and I was determined to enjoy the light show!

Soon I needed my rain jacket, so I stopped & put it on. While this was occurring, a local law enforcement officer pulled up behind us, got out and said the weather was going to get “worse” and 2 miles away, there were reports of “quarter-sized” hail. I thought: good thing it’s not hailing here 🙂 Let’s ride. We saw very steady, heavy rain with even stronger winds but no hail that night.

Soon it was time to don my entire “goretex princess” outfit: showercap on helmet, Showers pass jacket, latex exam gloves over the regular ones, goretex pants & goretex socks. My shoes were soggy very quickly in this torrential rain which I could see was coming horizontally in the van’s headlight glow. The road was covered in water; the falling raindrops “bounced” as they hit. I started noticing rather large frogs on the road. Big, fat bullfrogs and more than a few. I giggled as I thought, “OK, this is becoming almost biblical here.”

I was down in my aerobars to get small against the wild wind and realized the hardest part of riding in this was getting out of the van & in IT. Once I was going, I could put myself in “cruise-control” and just go. Mike agreed so we lengthened our pulls to 40-45 minutes and got ‘er done.

Also saw a beautiful (but dead, unfortunately) yellow snake on the road. It was large enough I initially thought it was two of them, mating. Now THAT would have been epic.

By the time we reached Greensburg, the rain had tapered off to a drizzle but the winds kept on giving. Heading into Pratt, the wind backed off as the rising sun pinkened the dissipating storm clouds. They looked like upside down boiling water. As I rode through Pratt looking for the McDonalds which was the Time Station, I felt a strong sense of satisfaction creeping in. We had ridden through the night and through the storm. Yep, this was really RAAM!

Stage “Seven”: TS 28-30, El Dorado- Ft. Scott, KS

This was a hot, humid, rolling stage through what I called the foothills of the Ozarks. As we progressed east, the rollers became more pronounced and I noticed fewer grain silos. We experienced a minor turn mishap just west of Ft. Scott, but quickly realized the error & packed Mike and his bike into the van to get us back on course. By the end of the stage, it was past 7pm local time so we were back in direct-follow mode.

Stage “Eight”: TS 32-35, Camdenton, MO-Mississippi River

This stage crossed the Missouri River three times through hilly green countryside. I recall riding more or less parallel to the river which was on my right for a long stretch. There was a very nice elevated bike path to the left of the road which had fairly heavy bike traffic on it for a weekday. It turned out that there was a local cycling event going on (yay, local Missouri cyclists!)

There were several surprisingly steep little hills east of Jefferson and east of Washington, MO. Due to local flooding, the RAAM route detour had us get into the van in St. Peters, MO and be driven across the mighty Mississippi into Alton, IL where Lonni & Doug got back out on the road. Both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers were very high. The water was up at mid-tree level on the banks. So much water!