May 6 -- Great Bend KS to Abilene KS

Well, it's morning again ... at least for me. We were rousted around 9pm for another tornado warning -- remember I said that I might sit in the bathroom ? Well, I never even heard the alarm and was woken up by some guy opening the motel room door and telling me to go to the central safety spot. They are pretty serious about tornado warnings.

Now -- he didn't come back and check, so I could have ignored the warning at that point or gone to sit in the bathroom, but I figured that I'd follow directions this time.

Once we got the "all clear" and went back to our rooms I just slept in my clothes, figuring that we would be woken again at some point, but here it is morning and there were no more warnings.

Having said that, we are still in the middle of a thunderstorm. This line of storms is sitting overhead in a line running from last nights location -- Dodge City -- running northeast through Great Bend and upwards. More correctly I guess, from watching the weather channel, the storms are moving rapidly northeast and new ones are forming on this line.

Will we ride today ? Mike won't let us head out in the middle of a lightning storm. Rain, ok. Lightning, not ok. We need a break in the action to proceed.

Today is a longer ride as well -- 119 miles -- so if we ride, I expect that we'll get wet. It's my fault -- I cleaned my bike last night, but it was due.

One of the potential hazards is hail. Would hail slow us down ? Have you ever seen grapefruit-sized hail ? Apparently they got some of that during the storm night before last. On the weather channel they talk about "quarter-sized", "golf ball-sized", "tennis ball-sized" and "grapefruit-sized" hail. I wonder what comes after grapefruit ??? I wonder what the terminal velocity and the weight of a grapefruit sized hail would do to you ????

I went over to the Wal-Mart last night and saw a car in the parking lot that had been hit by hail -- think of an entire car covered with dents where no dent was more than 2-3 inches from the next dent, and these were not little dings, they were dents ! Imagine someone pulling into the "dent wizzard" with such a car and inquiring about a repair ??? yeah right !!

Oh, one more thing. Great Bend does not have a taxi company or bus service. Nada. So I was not able to go downtown last night for Mass. I tried. Riding my bike downtown was not an option either -- there is nowhere to stow it plus the thunderstorms might have meant that I was moored there for the night. It's hard to believe that a town this size does not have taxis. I guess if it was more of a tourist spot it might -- but everyone coming here has to come by car and obviously the residents all have cars. I think that the next two Saturdays the churches are within a couple of miles of the hotel so as long as we get in from our riding day within an hour of Mass time I can walk.

There's not much more to say at this point -- I may post again if we have to sit around for a while. Loading today is at 6:25 and then breakfast is here in the hotel at 6:30. They will also load at 7:00 for any dawdlers, but on a day like today, as yesterday, everyone is ready for the pre-breakfast load so that if we get the all-clear-to-ride we can be off.

....

We have had breakfast now and are on hold. There was supposed to be early loading at 6:25 but they did not load -- Mike wants to meet with us at 7:30. I'm sure that he is struggling with what to do. It is only raining lightly now, but there are strong storms to the east and north of us -- the direction that we are headed. The question is - will we be able to avoid them ?

Stay tuned !