Riding a Tandem Bike Over the Only Mountain Kansas

I live in Kansas. Most people think that Kansas is flat. They would be mostly correct for, in comparison, Kansas is flatter than other places. If you are one of those millions of people who have traveled across my state never getting off the interstate system, you probably still think it's flat. You can't see anything from the four lanes of an interstate. Except in Kansas because especially in the western part of the state, there isn't tree one to break the wind or line of sight. So you see across the tops of the long rolling hills from the comfort of your climate controlled vehicle as you travel the great American highway system. They are great for getting from one place to another but about as worthwhile for sight seeing as an antenna flag on a jet fighter. If you think that Kansas has no hills or elevation changes, get off the highway. Or you could just ride a bike across it.

One of the many times my Boy Scout and I troop took a bike trip was when we loaded up the bikes into the various vehicles and lugged them to an area just north of I-70 in pretty much the center of Kansas (east to west). Our camp area was to be on the shores of Lake Wilson and we were to ride the bikes from a preset distance away to the campsite as a requirement for the Cycling merit badge (which I'm not sure I actually got because I'm still looking for my merit badge sash).

I'm sure that there are at least one or two of you who may have been in this area and maybe even been to Lake Wilson or the town of the same name. This is the land of transplanted Czechs. Land of the best bierochs I've ever tasted. Some of the same folks may have been to Lucas were the Garden of Eden is. Google it if you want to see something on the bizarre/odd side. It is also most definitely NOT flat.

This area is also not too far from Kansas' only mountain: Mt. Sunflower. Unique name, huh? Okay, so we're not talking towering cliffs of rock or peaks that seem to touch the sky but it is distinctly un-flat. Elevation changes of a hundred feet or more with a grade of forty degrees are not at all uncommon here. Sandstone is the preferred building material here. If you see 120+ year old house here made of wood, the material was laboriously carted in. This is cattle country mostly because there isn't anything else you can do with this terrain.

They let us off a fair ride away from the campsite and left what they considered enough leadership to manage the unruly herd of new to testosterone jockeys known as a Boy Scout Troop to accompany us in. It was at this point that the person who had planned this trip came to the realization of the above truth as to the perceived flatness of Kansas (you see, he was from someplace where they have real hills with trees). The only thing that saved him from a having some rather unsavory things put into his food that night was the fact that he was not a cyclist. Therefore he was right there with the rest of us single speed, Schwinn StingRay riding, poor fools out there dying on the way up the hills that literally could go for a couple miles and hanging on for dear life, burning up the brakes trying not to break the speed of insanity on such a method of conveyance on the way down.

Those who know what a Schwinn StingRay is will be just as dated by this information as myself and know that at the time of this story a ten speed was a very expensive rarity reserved for those who were very serious about riding as a form or either recreation or self-torture. I'm not sure if I was the lucky one in the bunch of guys out speeding up the date of our predestined demise by over taxing our hearts by both exertion and terror because I had that most rare of two wheel transportation devices known as a bicycle built for two: a tandem. We liked to call it Ol' Bess.

It was also a Schwinn (my StingRay was at home in the garage) one speed and equipped with the coolest thing a kid can have on a bike outside of playing cards clothes pinned so it click/buzzes. The device that made so many of the arguments that come of kidhood biking moot. I had a speedometer that went up to 45 miles per hour.

On this outing, my bike-mate was a thankfully active and healthy young man we'll call Chet. Chet was strong, wiry, light, and full of enthusiasm of both the whole camping experience and the newness of riding the tandem with an older scout with lots of experience and a fair amount of in-troop notoriety to boot. I was just glad to have someone who could hold their own in the work for I knew from pedaling the tandem many, many miles that it took more effort than a normal bike because it was a lot heavier.

One of the entrances to Lake Wilson and the one that goes right by the marina is a long steep hill that levels out as it crosses a bridge over one cove of the lake. I knew about this hill for I had been to the lake many times as a child with my grandfather and the rest of the family on fishing trips and get-togethers. I suffered along with the unwitting Chet knowing that this would be the piece de resistance, the ultimate ride, the highpoint of the whole torturous ride. I would finally get to see just how fast Ol' Bess would go.

Reaching the top of the hill and looking down it brought a mixed bag of emotions including excited anticipation and a healthy fear of what can happen to a person's body when bouncing along the pavement at high speed in the event of a cataclysmic wipe-out. Chet was winded as he gazed down at the bridge nearly a mile away and looking frighteningly small and distant. With a Geronimo-like war cry we took off pedaling like mad looking to push Ol' Bess to the limit and bump up against the edge of the envelope of our nerve and Bess' structural integrity.

At this point it is important to remember several things: One is that Ol' Bess is heavy. Weight going downhill means speed. Two is that just because we were Boy Scouts did not mean we had the good sense God gave a squashed grape. Third is that this was a really long and steep hill, the kind that if it were in the mountains would probably have a runaway truck lane on it.

Halfway down I looked at the speedometer and saw that we had already very nearly reached the top speed that it could register. If we went much faster we would be bumping the needle against the peg. This became a source of internal concern for I knew several things about Ol' Bess that Chet didn't. The most important one at the time was the fact that Ol' Bess had not come to us in one piece. My father and I had welded her back together from the two pieces she had arrived in. I was quite confident in the competency of the weld but I wasn't sure if the metal around the weld was strong as I would have liked given the increasingly alarming speed at which Ol' Bess, Chet and myself were rocketing down the hill. It would just not do to have her come apart on us at this time.

Three quarters of the way down we had reached the top speed of the speedometer and yet we were still gathering speed. I know that this is not nearly as fast as the cyclists in the Tour de France reach on the one leg of that most famous of cycling races where they top the mountains and head back down the other side. On that leg, speeds of 80 miles per hour are not rare. I learned on this ride that I have no desire at all to experience speeds like this on a bicycle. I was quite terrified enough going somewhere over 45 on Ol' Bess. Granted, she wasn't a highly tuned instrument specifically designed for the purpose at hand but that had no bearing on the fact that I felt as if we were hurtling downhill to what could only turn out to be a horrendous and disfiguring fate.

We were going so fast at the bottom that as our descent changed from down to level we actually experienced negative "g". This was a feeling I was not at all comfortable with given the suspect reliability of material and engineering of our trusty steed. My fear was not decreased by the secession of acceleration. That merely drove home to me the indisputable fact that I was and still am one prone to moments of supreme stupidity and that for some unfathomable reason I had been allowed to live another day despite my efforts to the contrary.

The bottom of the hill marked the beginning of a bridge that crossed a cove with high walls that came straight down to water and continued down much like a Nordic Fjords (without the snow and ice) appear to be in the pictures that I've seen of them. The color was undoubtedly returning to my face as well as the ability to laugh as we passed a truck pulling a boat as if they were going rather slowly. The look of shock on the older couple's faces will be forever etched into my mind especially given the man's double take at the speedometer on the truck's instrument panel. We shot by them quickly but as our speed bled off, they caught back up and then passed us with a hearty wave and jovial laugh on both of our parts.

I have never forgotten that ride, or the feel of the wind as it struck my face on that summer day. I can still go to visit Ol' Bess and indeed gave two of my three daughters a ride on her not very long ago. I'm not all that sure that I will tell them of that time of youthful daring-do given the fact that the same genetic predisposition to have severe lapses of sanity in things safety that I suffer from may well have been passed on to them. Perhaps some day the tale will be told.