Twelve miles past the small town of Scott City (Kansas has misleading practice of calling every town over 800 people a city) my rear wheel started to stop absorbing the shocks of the road. I tilted my head backwards and sighed, another flat tire. I had been so lucky up until the bottom part of Wyoming, but since then, my luck had run dry. My rear tire would not hold air. I checked my tire for thorns or a small piece of metal, but couldn't find anything that was causing my punctures. When I pulled over on the side of the road, I went through the ritual again searching the lining of my tire, not really expecting to find anything sticking through my tire, but I needed to ease my conscious. Of course I found nothing. Within minutes, I had the new tube and my tire back on the rim and was once again riding.

Three hundred yards later, the familiar bumping in my back wheel returned. I had flatted again and this time, I was out of new tubes, so I had to break out my patch kit. While I was sitting on the side of the road, a beat up, old, RV with Missouri plates pulled up next to me. An old man wearing a crooked baseball hat and a hawaiian shirt walked out and approached me. "Need any help?"

"Don't think so, just keep getting flats. I think there's something sticking through my back tire causing my tube to puncture, but I can't find it. I ran out of tubes, so I guess I've got to try and patch up some of my old tubes."

"Here, I've got an old pail in the back, let me get it. We can fill it up with water to help you find the hole." So the old man went back into his RV and came out a couple of minutes later with a little, rusty pail and a jug of water. "I also got some water here, what we don't use, you can take to fill up your water bottles. My name's Joe, Joe Brennian. B-R-E-N-N-I-A-N. I'm telling you my name, cause I don't want to you think I'm some kook that's tryin' any wierd stuff. I'm comin' from Colorado Springs. There's a scout troop up there that were doin' an Indian dance, so I went up to watch. I'm travelling alone, so I'm on my own schedule. That's why I can stop and help. I ain't got no schedule now and nowhere to be anytime soon. Just headin' back to Missouri."

"Don't worry, I don't think your a kook. Were they your scouts in Colorado? Are you a scout master?"

"No, just know they're supposed to be pretty good, so I went to watch. I used to run a travel camp for almost 30 years. Camp Venture. I used to take kids all over the country doing crazy things like what you're doin'. We went to Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, and all over the NorthEast. We'd hike, rock climb, mountain climb, canoe, whitewater raft, whatever the kids liked to do, we'd do it. Of course I used to think I was a real tough guy back then, you know drop and give me twenty-kind of tough. Can't do that anymore though. About 9 years ago, I started to slow down. I'm 69 now and feel every year of it. I stopped running the camp when I started to feel my age and when the government wanted me to get it all regulated."

Joe stopped talking for a minute to help me find the bubbles coming up from my punctured tube in his little rusty bucket. "Back when I started the camp in 1965, we'd just take a bunch of kids in a van and start driving. We prided ourselves on the fact that we never once stayed in a hotel. One time when we were goin' through Yellowstone, we got stuck cause there were no campgrounds available and everything was full. I talked to one of the rangers and told him I had a van full of kids that needed a place to stay, so he put us up in one of the worker's cabins for the night. That was the only time we didn't sleep under the stars. It cost us $6, course that was a long time ago. Now I'm sure it'd be round $20 or so."

"At least. Where did the kids come from? Did you advertise?"

"Well, they came from all over, mostly the northeast though. Lots of kids from Pennsylvania and New York. Had a few from Connecticut and New Jersey, but pretty much all over. I used to put an ad in the New York Times every year. From that ad, I'd get all my campers. Never had another job except lead kids all around the country. It was a good time. When my mother died, she left me a little bit of an inheritance, so I decided to buy this camper. In the old days, I'd never use a camper, but as I got older, I got tired of waking up in the middle of the night with rain fallin' in my face. It's not the prettiest camper in the world. Kind of beat up as you can see, but never had any big problems with it. Right now, I gotta replace that rear tail light. Probably when I get back to Missouri I need to take off that red plastic thing and tighten something or clean off some wires. Always something."

I found the hole and patched my tube. The whole time Joe kept telling me about Camp Venture and all of his adventures. "You see it was called 'Camp Venture,' not 'Adventure. While we did a lot of adventures, the whole spirit was to go out in the world and venture. The adventures were just a part of it. I went to college for two years at Penn State, but in 1965 decided I couldn't sit still. I wanted to get out and see the world. I wanted to go do it, not read about it, so I quit school and started the camp. Never did anything else. Didn't make a lot of money, but I sure did love it. The kids were great. Still keep in touch with a lot of 'em."

A half hour later, I had my bike put back together and ready to start riding. Joe asked if I needed anything else, but unless he wanted to give me a ride to the nearest bike shop, which I didn't ask, then there was nothing more he could do. We said our goodbyes and I watched him drive away. I soon followed and 500 yards later, my tire was flat again. I was half tempted to throw my bike to the side of the road and begin a new 'venture' myself, walking to Connecticut. Instead, I patched my tube one more time and tried to ride again.

Three hundred yards later, my tire was flat again. There was obviously something in my tire that was causing the flats. I couldn't find it, and didn't have the patients to change my tube once again. I looked behind me, hoping to find a bicycle repair truck coming down the road, but saw nothing but a big black cloud forming in the west. When I was loading up on gear before my trip, I contemplated bringing a spare tire. Since I had brand new tires, I felt confident I'd be fine with a bunch of tubes instead. Obviously this was a very poor decision. Hindsight is always 20-20.

Seeing the ominous storm clouds behind me, I started to get nervous that I would be stuck in the middle of nowhere while one of the fabled Kansas thunderstorms blew overhead. Visions of Dorothy and Toto consumed my thoughts as I began to imagine myself riding my bike down the yellow brick road looking for a wizard that possessed a new tire and a spare tube. Knowing I was eleven miles from the nearest town, I began to walk my bike down the highway.

Forty-five minutes later, the storm clouds were almost directly overhead. To the east were crystal clear skies and a town that offered protection, to the west were the darkest clouds I'd seen on the trip. Creating the border between clear skies and dark clouds was a wall of brown dust at least 200 feet high. The wind was beginning to whip and claps of thunder could be heard in the distance. My walking pace was not going to get me to Dighton, so I began to run. Of course I knew I couldn't out run the storm, but I felt better trying. It gave my mind something to concentrate on besides my nerves.

As I ran, a tremendous wind blew at my back. At times, it would swirl and knock me from the side, practically tearing the bike from my hands. The air around me turned brown, I was in the middle of the dust wall. Occasionally a car would come by, but no one would stop and offer me a ride. Why wouldn't anyone stop? The wind howled and everywhere around me was dark. In the distance I noticed a grain elevator and hoped that I could reach it before the lightening began to fly. It probably wouldn't offer much protection, but anything would be better than sitting in the middle of a field during the impending storm. Off to my right, a pair of tumbleweeds blew by me at a speed greater than the cars. The gusts had to have been reaching a velocity of close to 60mph.

Ten minutes later I was almost at the grain elevator when I noticed a house next to the massive structure. Standing in front of the house was a woman waving her arms trying to get my attention. "Got caught in a little bit of weather, did ya?" I just looked at her and smiled, really wanting to give her a big hug and a kiss. "Why don't you put your bike in our shed and come on in and get out of this storm." Within minutes, I was inside of her house, changed out of my biking clothes and watching tv.

The woman's name was Shelley and she lived with her husband, Dan and their 16 year-old son, Philip. While the rain and hail started to fall outside, Shelley offered me leftovers from their Sunday lunch. "I was watching you upstairs from our bedroom window for about 4 miles. Didn't quite know where you were going or what you were going to do, just figured you were going to try and hide by one of the buildings around here to get out of the storm. Unfortunately none of these buildings offer much protection from the rain. Then I saw that red pickup truck drive by, I thought for sure he'd stop, but then he kept on going. That's when I told Dan we've got to have you come into the house. The weather was getting pretty nasty."

"Well, I'm sure glad you saw me. I think I would have gotten pretty wet, not to mention it probably isn't the best thing to be hanging around outside on a metal bike during a thunderstorm."

Shelley laughed. "Nope, it's much safer in here. Just make yourself at home." An hour later, the storm had passed and the sky began to brighten. Dan and I were watching a NASCAR race on tv, when he offered his help to fix my tire. I gladly accepted and we went to the shed to try and patch my tube once again.

"What kind of crops do grow here?" I asked.

"Don't have too big of a farm, just 13 acres. I grow a little corn and a little wheat. Mostly, I'm a hog farmer. I work at a farm about 2 and a half miles down the road. You passed it coming this way."

"How many hogs do you have?"

"About 900 total."

"That must keep you pretty busy."

"Used to, but now we're getting ready to liquidate. The price has dropped to $10 per 100 pounds. Just can't make any money at it anymore, so we're selling everything we got."

"What's a good price?"

"$40 per 100 pounds. Not really sure why the price dropped so much, but it did, so now it's a really tough business to be in. It's a tough year for farmers with the price dropping and the drought and all. Corn prices are down too, can't figure that one out either since the crops will be so bad this year."

After soaking my tube in some water, we found the new hole and put a fresh patch on it. We pumped up the tire, checked the tube again and didn't find a leak. "Looks like we fixed it. Guess it's time to put it back together, huh?" Dan asked.

"Yeah, but I'm not holding my breath. I've fixed my tire about 5 times today and once I put in on, I ride a few hundred yards and my tire goes flat. There's a thorn or something stuck in my tire that I can't find anywhere. It's the most frustrating thing in the world."

"Probably ran over a goat's head somewhere. They're little tiny weeds that have nasty little thorns sticking out of them. Every year I fill up the tires of our ATVs and lawn mowers with green slime. That's that stuff that self-fixes flat tires. I'm surprised you've made it all the way from Colorado to here without getting those thorns stuck in your tires. People around here ride around with solid tires. They're real heavy, but it beats getting flat tires all the time. You probably have 200 more miles to go before you get away from the goatheads."

When I finished putting my tire back on my bike, Dan said "you're welcome to spend the night if you want. We got an extra room and a bed that's available."