Twenty-five miles into my ride, I pulled over on the side of the road to sit in the shade and to drink some water and eat some snacks. While I was resting, a car pulled up beside me. An old lady was behind the wheel, smiling and motioned for me to come over to her. When I got to her door, she opened it up and got out. "Hi. My name's Connie. I saw you ride by about four miles back when I was standing in the fields watering the trees. I decided that if I could get in my car and catch up to you, I was going to come over and talk to you. So now that I'm here, where are you coming from?"

"Oregon."

"Oh my word!" she exclaimed and quickly fell back into the car, putting her right hand over her forehead as if she were Scarlett O'Hara. "And how far are you going?"

"Connecticut. I'm halfway there."

"Wow! When did you start?"

"June 19th, I've been on the road just over 6 weeks."

"Oh my heaven's." Connie stopped for a minute as if to process everything that had just happened to her. "That's pretty good time, you must be in pretty good shape."

"Getting there, riding seven hours a day has a tendency to get you pretty fit."

"I should say so."

"So do you live on the farm back there?"

"No, I grew up around here though. My husband died seven years ago, so I moved to a house about 15 miles away. We used to live up around Rush Center, several years back my husband and I were driving downtown when we came across a whole pack of bikers. They were from all over, Germany, Holland and a couple of other European countries that I can't quite recall. Absolutely the nicest people. They were camping in the city park, so my husband and I brought them food for the night. They were going across country too. Boy, what an adventure. I used to live on a farm. My grandfather had the farm back where I was watering the trees and when he died, he willed it to my mother and my husband farmed it. When she died, she willed it to me and all of my siblings. There's eleven of us, but now nobody knows what to do with it, so we partake in the government's land conservation program. We planted buffalo grass to preserve the soil, so all I have to do is come by and water the trees every so often and that's when I saw you."

After chatting a little longer with Connie, obviously making her day, I got back on my bike and started riding towards Hutchinson. A few miles later, I came across a single guy riding a tandem bike. "Looks like you lost something along the way."

The westbound rider turned around to look at his empty passenger seat. "Yeah, my wife got heat exhaustion back in the Ozarks, so she rented a car and drove to our friend's house in Colorado. It was too expensive to rent a UHaul, so I'm riding through Kansas to meet her in Pueblo."

"Heat exhaustion in the Ozarks?"

"Yeah, it was brutal. I guess what they say is right, hindsight is 20-20. Before Missouri, we were averaging about 50 miles a day, but when we hit the Ozarks, we would get our 50 miles done before noon, so we'd decide to keep on going. One day we did 85 miles, the next 95, then the next 85 again. After that third day, my wife said she was going to the library to sit in the air conditioning to cool off. A few hours later, I went to find her and she was sitting in the back corner asleep. She was all limp and green and when I woke her up, she said she wasn't feeling too good. I immediately took her to the hospital where they gave her a bunch of IVs. A couple of days later, she still had a headache, so we decided to split up and try it again when I get to Colorado."

"Wow, that doesn't sound too good."

"No, not at all. I talked to her last night and she was still having headaches, but at least she's at our friend's house. Be careful in Missouri. It's much hotter than it is here. The humidity is real bad too, plus there's no wind to cool you down. It is gorgeous however. By far the Ozarks have been the most beautiful part of the trip, or at least on par with Virginia."