Roughly 40% of the United States is public land, but that figure is heavily influenced by states like Alaska and Nevada, which are 96% and 88% public, respectively. In addition, their large area gives them even more weight when calculating the national average. Outside of the west, the amount of public land drops significantly. In Nebraska, for example, it’s 2.8%. Most of it is in managed national monuments and state parks; there’s essentially no open range.

Further privatization and loss of public land would be noticed by many, but would benefit few, most of whom would likely be among the already wealthy.

50 years ago, there were three times as many animals on Earth. If it took only 50 years for us to exterminate two-thirds of the worldwide animal population, how long will it take to kill off the remaining one-third? Contrary to what some might believe, most animals aren’t deliberately killed by hunting or poaching; they're killed by the human destruction of their natural habitat. Nearly everyone likes animals, and yet we thoughtlessly live a lifestyle incompatible with their existence. If we aren’t willing to live with a little less, there will be no land, food, or water for anything else, and nearly every wild species will be reduced to near or complete extinction. What a boring world it’ll be without them. But we’ll have big, nice-looking lawns, and the HOA board will be happy.

Camping arrangements get worse as you go farther east. There’s no public land, and nearly all public campgrounds are directly adjacent to an interstate, train tracks, or both. As a result, there’s nowhere it’s both legal and possible to sleep, at least not without paying for a hotel room.

When planning to ride the Pony Express, I’d initially wanted to ride westbound. It seemed more romantic, heading into the west, the same way the pioneers did. In the end, I chose the opposite direction, primarily due to the presumed direction of prevailing winds.

To the best of my knowledge, there’s no good data source where you can find average wind speed and wind velocity (including direction) for a given location/area on a given date/month. Could that data could be scraped from historical records? I should look into it.

For nine of the last ten days, there was headwind, usually a powerful one. Every experience I’d had bike touring in Wyoming and Kansas indicated the wind was always from the west in summer, and instead, it was against me nearly every day. It didn’t seem fair.

When things go wrong, or don’t turn out the way you planned, it’s easy to feel like someone, or at least something, is to blame. I even found myself doing this with the wind, trying to rationalize some explanation as to why the headwind was someone’s fault. It was a completely ridiculous notion, but we can find ourselves doing something similar at any time.

Half of political opinions are essentially the same phenomenon. Get angry about something, blame someone. Done. That’s enough thinking for today.

Bike touring exposes you to an unfortunate truth: most of America isn’t doing well. As you move through the country at a human pace, you realize most of the country looks like this. It’s not where most people live, but it’s what most of our country is like. And you need to get off the interstate to see the real deal; popular travel corridors are kept in better condition; it needs to look good for the tourists.

Small town folks act as if their way of life is under attack, and they’re right. Gone are the days you could get a good job with a high school degree. Support a family on one income. Buy a house in your 20s. Stay at the same company for an entire career, work your way up to management, and retire with a pension. That’s been taken from us, and it feels like it must be someone’s fault. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just the wind.

At one time, these buildings were brand-new and business was good. Then the mine closed, or the plant shut down, or the factory outsourced all the labor. The town eventually collapsed and no one outside of it cared. People are now so desperate for any business, they’re OK with companies and billionaires paying zero taxes, as long as they provide jobs to towns which are starving for them.

A large group of Americans has been left behind, and ignored, for decades. Every time there’s a recession, the small towns are hit hardest, because you can’t simply get another job when the only employer closes shop. When there’s a recovery, all the new jobs are in the cities, which are too expensive, and they require college degrees and professional experience, which most rural people don’t have.

The United States is growing by about 1.5 million people per year, and yet about half its counties are losing population. This is in spite of the fact that the exact same counties are the ones with the lowest cost of living. These parts of our country are doing so poorly, not only is no one moving there, people are paying to leave.

Small towns don’t have soup kitchens, nor homeless shelters, and in many cases, no government housing. This is despite the fact that poverty rates are higher in small towns than in cities where services are provided. Rural people don’t have faith in government programs because as far as they can see, they’ve never helped anyone who needs it. Instead, the local church will run a food bank or a clothing drive. And people wonder why rural folks are strongly religious and don’t trust the government.

For all the talk of helping the less fortunate, the overwhelming majority of government discussion goes to the urban poor. Rarely does anyone talk about the rural, working poor. The people trying to make a career at $11/hour, if they’re lucky, with no safety net. Small towns have to deal with all of the hardship, but get none of the relief, nor even any sympathy.

And then finally, along comes some loudmouth New Yorker who claims he’s going to make America great again by re-opening the mines and plants, and people cheer. In reality, politicians who “support the oil/gas/mining industry” don’t give a rip about workers in small towns; they support the well-dressed executives who “work” in a shiny glass building in Houston. But at least someone’s pretending to care about the rural poor.

Small town people are about the nicest you’ll ever meet in person, but are distrusting, sometimes to the point of hostile, to outsiders and “others.” It’s a problem which an otherwise friendly group of people needs to work on.

In the end, it turns into something like a sports fandom. You root for your local team, no matter what. In that context, the die-hard support makes sense. The flags, the hats, the colors, the chanting. The undying loyalty, even when, or especially when, your team is objectively worse. If you only support the best team, you’re not a real fan.
When someone from your team commits a felony, they were framed, or it’s being blown out of proportion. Our side is the good guys; we’d never do something like that. And when your team loses, it’s never their fault. It was the refs, or the other team cheated, or something else is to blame. Because our team is the best and we were supposed to win.

If we’re talking about football, this is all considered normal behavior. But in politics, the stakes are higher. These issues affect people’s lives. It’s not a game; it matters. Every now and then, we need to take a step back and reconsider which team we should be rooting for.

The combination of no camping and daily headwind made me largely abandon the official route and simply hightail it to St. Joseph and Kansas City, with the goal of finishing up quickly. It didn’t help that the route made frequent unnecessary turns, sometimes dozens of them per day, when it was equally possible to simply pick a road and stick with it. The Pony Express Route was no longer fun, nor historically accurate.

If you're not enjoying a tour, is it smarter to speed up and get it over with, or slow down to make it more enjoyable? It depends on what’s been bothering you. Would slowing down make it easier or simply drag it out?

As the ride continued, it became increasingly difficult to care about historical markers, especially Pony Express station markers.

On a bike tour, you wind up stopping at a lot of gas stations, sometimes to use the bathroom, sometimes to buy a snack, fill a water bottle, or sometimes simply for a shady spot while you stop and put on sunscreen. After a while, you become something of a gas station connoisseur; you’ll mentally critique them, and then later excitedly tell someone about what a nice gas station you visited yesterday.

Nebraska’s liquor laws must be relaxed compared to other states, because the liquor shelves frequently take up as much as half the space in any given gas station/convenience store. I’ve seen liquor sold in convenience stores in other states, but there must have been a limit as to how much, because Nebraska stands out. It’s almost unsettling when you open the door and immediately see rows upon rows of liquor bottles, like you walked into the wrong place.

But why should that be? Alcohol is a product two-thirds of American adults regularly consume. For something most of us routinely use, we put a lot of restrictions on it.

For one reason or another, Nebraskans like to leave their cars idling for several minutes at a time. It’s not uncommon to see someone pull into a gas station, fill up while the car is still running, then go inside, use the bathroom, buy a Coke, strike up a conversation with the cashier, and finally leave 20 minutes later, with the car idling the whole time. No, this isn’t isolated or anecdotal; you see this all the time, at gas stations, grocery stores, post offices, banks, everywhere.

It’s fine if you’re not worried about getting your car stolen, but is it that much effort to rotate your wrist and turn off the car? Would it kill you to make half a second of effort in order to be less wasteful?

We’re going to lose the fight against climate change. Not because of politics, nor corporate greed, nor any sinister intent. It’ll be because people will do things like this simply because they can.

The town of Hebron is home to the world's largest porch swing. It seems like you see a lot of "Home of the world's largest _____" in this part of the country. Teeder enjoyed it.

Hebron allowed camping in an unusually good city park, where there was a baseball tournament going on. High school aged, recreational league. It had been a while since I’d watched a ballgame, so I walked over and spent a leisurely afternoon in the stands.

The same night, a violent thunderstorm rolled through. Knowing it was coming, I slept under the pavilion in the camping area. By some miracle, I would finish the entire ride without ever getting rained on while riding.

In the midwest, Mountain Dew is easily the most common soda bottle you see on the side of the road and in trash cans. Is Mountain Dew more popular in the midwest? Or is it more popular among truckers and people on road trips? Or is it simply more popular among people trashy enough to throw their empty bottle out the car window?

Pepsi is comfortably in second place, with everything else far behind. Where I’m from, Coke and Dr. Pepper would probably be in a tie for first, with everything else a distant third. There’s a simple explanation for that: Dr. Pepper is made in Texas, and Coke is simply the most popular nationwide.

Considering Mountain Dew is made by PepsiCo, I began to suspect the Pepsi headquarters is nearby, but it’s in New York. I asked some locals, and they had no answer. A giant Pepsi/Mountain Dew mural in Marysville, KS raised further questions. If Pepsi’s not from here, why does it get so much local support?

Every so often, you'll find yourself in a small town which looks like it’s doing well for itself. The businesses appear to be thriving, or at least getting by, and it’ll have a cute little downtown, somewhere you'd want to visit or spend some time. How did these towns get here, when surrounded by other towns which are in a state of desperation? What's the difference? Do they make different economic decisions? Is it commitment to the education system? Have they figured out a way to promote their local businesses? Or do they simply have a local industry which hasn't yet collapsed, and they'll be the next domino to fall?

While in Nebraska, I never had the local favorite of chili with a cinnamon roll. From what I was told, it’s less something you would get at a restaurant, and more something you’d do at home. I hadn’t realized some people actually put the chili on the cinnamon roll.

On one of my off-route diversions, I was lucky enough to spend 30 miles on a well-maintained rail-trail. The trail goes by at least three different names (under different jurisdictions) and extends about 70 miles from Marysville, KS to Lincoln, NE. It bore a strong resemblance to Missouri's Katy Trail, which is some of the most fun you can have on a bike.

As mentioned in a previous post, this kind of riding is the Holy Grail of biking: a rare combination of easy and memorable. There was even a "Welcome to Kansas" sign at the state border!

Eastern Nebraska and Kansas reminded me of North Texas, where I grew up. No true hills or mountains, but lots of rolling terrain, and greener than you might expect. Creeks and trees everywhere.

Amazingly, some of the hilliest days were at the very end. The ground is never truly flat, and because it’s not a mountain, the roads don’t bother going around; they continue straight on a perfectly square grid. So while the hills aren’t big, they can be steep, and you go straight up them. Repeat for dozens of miles.

Aside from fighting headwind (again), the last few days were remarkably ho-hum. The last day into St. Joseph was less than 50 km (30 miles), and it was easily finished before noon. I contacted my host and took a few pictures outside of the historic Pony Express stables.

While I was taking pictures, an employee walked out.
“Are you coming into the museum?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Then you wanna bring your bike inside. It looks like a nice bike, and I’d hate to see you lose it.”

I looked around. He was right; it didn’t look like a good neighborhood.
“Alright, I just want to finish taking a few pictures first.”
“Sure thing.”

Before I could even finish taking pictures, my host showed up. Her friends, from St. Louis, had just finished riding about half of the Pony Express, starting in Wyoming. She had graciously decided to host me as well. They took me back to the house, where I showered while the group went to lunch.

To be concluded…

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I am a carbon-based life form.