When I'm done with this trip, I think I've discovered what I'm going to do with my life. I'm going to invent a bike path in Kansas that operates under the same principles as those speed walk things in airports. I'm going to make a high speed conveyer belt that will transport bikers from the border of Colorado to the border of Missouri in approximately two hours. I would start a shuttle service, but that would be cheating. If you're going to pedal across the country, then you need to pedal the whole way, so a shuttle service won't work. But I do think that there wouldn't be a single objection by any cross country biker if there was a bike path conveyer belt that moved them from one side of the state to the other side shortening the trip from one week to two hours.

I would take some of the design ideas from many of the larger airports and install little displays along the way, so that people could have something to look at, even if it is art work by the local third grade class. Perhaps I'd even take a page out of the design book from Chicago's O'Hare and install light displays and play music to occupy the riders. Needless to say I haven't thoroughly thought this idea all the way through, but I believe that I'm on to something.

Around 12:30, I arrived in the town of Chanute. I was getting hungry, so I decided to stop at a chinese restaraunt for the all-you-can-eat buffet. While I was sitting at the table, enjoying my second of what would eventually be four plates of the buffet, a man in purple, polyester shorts, knee-high sweat socks, a white t-shirt and a mesh baseball hat walked into the restaraunt and up to the counter. He looked at the menu posted on the wall behind the cash register and stood there perplexed. When the chinese woman asked him if she could help him, the man said "I need to get some food for my kids in the car. Do you have chicken or something like that?"

The woman was very kind and explained to him what items were on the menu, then walked him over to the buffet to show him the variety of food available there. "We have lemon chicken, sesame chicken, sweet and sour chicken, marinated chicken, and grilled chicken. You can order any one as a meal, or you can order the buffet and we can give you a cardboard box that you can fill up to take with you instead."

The man looked over all of the chicken options on the buffet, then looked back up to study the menu. "Which one of these comes with fries."

"Fries?"

"You know, french fries."

"We don't have french fries. We have rice." She then pointed at the buffet table and said "we have steamed rice and fried rice."

"You ain't got no french fries?"

"No, just rice."

"How about something else fried that my kids could put ketchup on?"

"No ketchup, we have soy sauce. You could put that on your fried rice."