Day 27, Abilene, KS, 69 miles Half Way Home

Today I reached another milestone. I passed the half-way "in miles" mark. That put a big smile on my face. Gary, a retired accountant has been gathering data and doing calculations for days. He's determined that, as a group, we've:

• ridden 70,400 miles
• made 2,100,000 pedal strokes
• spend 4,500 hours riding,
• climbed 61,000 feet
• expended 4,900,000 Calories
• had 117 flats
• worn out 17 tires
• and 30% of the riders were hit by the stomach virus

A few miles out of McPherson, we made a left, rode through Canton, and the world exploded from the tans and browns of the last few days into an Ozian brust of emerald- just like the movie when it turns from black and white to color. Grass ran up to the shoulder of the road. There were groups of trees, small forest of trees on rolling hills that reminded me of rural PA. Best of all, we had a tail wind that blew us all the way into Abilene.

Abilene is the boyhood home and now site of the Eisenhower Center. Next to his crypt is engraved this section of his speech, "A Chance for Peace."

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children.
Dwight Eisenhower

Technical problems are screwing up the font, but you get the idea