Friday Night Lights – Day 28

Date: Friday 3rd September   

Route: Leoti, Kansas – Ness City, Kansas

Distance:    80 miles

Total climb: 1201 ft

Net climb:  -1024 ft

The Hi Plains Motel was the setting for an epic breakfast.  We were the only people to make it to the morning buffet and therefore took full advantage.  Parkes shied away from the hot (for which read lukewarm) food on offer but made up for it by eating an almost inhuman amount of cereal.  We followed breakfast with a few table tennis rallies before heading off to our room to get ready for the ride.

With the wind holding off for the whole of the day we made excellent progress and had our first rest at Scott City after 25 miles, for a quick snack.  After walking the length of a Main Street which seemed to have been ravaged by the recession, we landed upon “Ma and Pa’s doughnuts” and topped up on food and drinks.  Upon leaving the cafe we heard a tornado warning siren.  Everyone seemed to be carrying on with their business so we proceeded on the basis that it was a weekly warning drill.

The ride continued through the flat, crop laden landscape, although we began to notice rather more livestock and in particular thousands of cattle in what appeared to be small pens.  We proceeded to discuss this method of intensive agriculture as well as reflecting on the good old days in the North Yorkshire South Durham Cricket leagues as we rolled into Dighton.  Dighton created an immediately favourable impression by the fact that every business in the town had messages of support and flags out for their local sports team – the Hornets.  We felt it was only right to head into the Hornet’s Nest Cafe for lunch.  It turned out that this was a business owned and run by seven members of one family and was dedicated to the High School sports teams of the town (all of whom are known as the Hornets).  We found out that the Hornets (American) Football team had a game that evening and that it was their first game “back in black” as the Hornets, as for the last three years they had been a joint team with Ness City known as the “Ness City-Dighton Titons”.  Unfortunately, our plan was to make it to Ness City by the end of the day, so we couldn’t stay for the game. 

It was a shame to have to leave Dighton but we needed to make more progress while the wind was in abeyance.  We cycled out past the Hornet’s stadium, built as part of FDR’s New Deal public works programs in the 1930’s, and on towards Ness City.  It was at this point that both Fred and I noticed in our mirrors, a cyclist, wearing an identical yellow jersey to me and the same type of sunglasses.  We both thought that the sun may have finally gotten the better of us and caused us to lose grip on our collective sanity.  It turned out that it was actually a guy called Keith who was a keen cyclist as well as the Head of Animal Health at a feeding station of the type that we had passed earlier in the day.  Keith was good company for the 10 miles that we rode with him and also assured us that the animals were well treated at the cramped feeding stations (although we remained somewhat cynical about this).

Once Keith had headed off we had only 22 miles left to Ness City and we arrived at 5:30 having stopped only once at a pleasant rest stop near Beeler.  We couldn’t prudently cycle any further as there were no places to stay after Ness City for over 50 miles.  Pleased with how quickly we had finished the day’s ride we headed to the only motel listed on our maps – the Derrick Inn.  It was unquestionably the strangest motel I had ever stayed in.  It had clearly been very plush when it had first been built (I would guess in the 1970’s) with an indoor swimming pool and hot tub in its domed courtyard, and a brown dial telephone in the bathroom.  Sadly, its best days were firmly behind it and although it was clean, it had clearly not been redecorated in the last 40 years.  It also appeared to be staffed by a lone Vietnamese man who did not speak a great deal of English, but was very curious to know the cost of a bowl of Vietnamese soup in London.     

We toyed with the idea of a swim/time in the hot tub but both were tepid so we headed out to get some food.  On leaving the motel we noticed that the floodlights were on at the town stadium.  We had ourselves a ballgame.  Five minutes later we were sat in the bleachers, burger in hand, watching the second half of Ness City against Trego in the Kansas High School (American) Football league.  It was great to be at a live game although it did feel alarmingly like we were in an episode of Happy Days.

The game was scrappy and despite the best efforts of the Eagles (and Dalton Gant in particular) the home team lost 28-38.  We popped to a convenience store to pick up a bit more food (the burger had been good but not really enough after our day’s endeavours) and then headed, in solidarity with the home team fans, to a local bar to help drown the town’s sorrows at their boys’ loss.

The bar was lively and run by a great bartender who gave us a run-down of the history of the town and our hotel in particular.  As we suspected it had been built for oil executives when it was thought that the “Ol Bidness” was going to take off in this part of Kansas.  When that bubble burst, so did the motel and not a penny had been spent on it since.  We shot the breeze whilst knocking back a couple of Buds in frosted glasses.  It had been a day of textbook Americana in the heartland of middle America.  

Other musings:

•  The son (and chef) of the family who ran the Hornet’s Nest in Dighton regaled us with amusing stories of when he spent two years in Paris.  It must have been quite a gear shift to head from central Kansas to the French capital.  Still, I’m sure he got used to the lower standards of food and drink eventually

JBS.