Final Day--I Bike (to) Ike

Today was a perfect day for a ride of 65 miles from McPherson to Abilene, KS, the home of President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961)!   It was overcast with the wind out of the Southeast.  For the first 22 miles we headed east, but the wind was negligible enough not to be a factor.  Then after we turned north, the wind picked up and was a nice tail wind.  There were a few sprinkles late morning and some very heavy looking weather to the west, but the thunderstorms that looked like they might blow in, never materialized.

Everything in Abilene centers around Ike, and on entering town I made a stop at the Eisenhower Center.  There was a film about his life which talked about how well respected and caring he was, and of course how competent he was as both a general and as President.  Quite a bit of the time was spent on his leadership of the allied military in WWII and the D-Day invasion.   My father took part in D-Day so seeing film from that day meant a lot t o me.  The discussion of Eisenhower’s ability as a consensus builder and of his general “goodness” presented quite a contrast when viewed in light of someone else who now occupies Ike’s old position.

After stopping at the Eisenhower center, I rode through town to the Holiday Inn Express on the north side.  This is home for two nights  for tour members. If you’ve been following this blog you know that the Capitals march to the Stanley Cup has presented something of a conundrum for me. Abilene unfortunately is a wasteland when it comes to rental cars.  The nearest car rentals are in Salina, 30 miles away.  My hope had been to wait and see what the Caps do tonight so that I’d know whether or not Thursday’s game watch at the Capital One Arena could be the decisional game.    However, due to the logistical challenge of arranging to get to Salina, there’s no way to wait until the morning to decide whether to head back to Maryland or not.  Also, if the Capitals lose tonight so that Thursday night will not be a decisional game, I’d still only get to ride one more day….Wednesday…if I postponed my departure. So I will be heading back tomorrow. 

If you aren’t sure why it’s so important to me to be back to see a Caps Stanley Cup Final game at the arena on the screen, I told part of the story in this earlier post.  But the underlying story is that my wife Dot was an avid Capitals fan since the first year of the team in 1974/75.  She had a Caps jersey with her name on...I got it for her in 1975 during the first year...and she wore it to every Caps game she ever went to.  The one time the Caps were in the Stanley Cup Finals in 1998, we were living in Texas and after 24 years of waiting could not get to any of those games.  When we moved back to Maryland in 2003, Dot said that if the Caps ever made it to the Stanley Cup Finals, she wanted me to promise that we’d go.  Of course I said yes, but she died in 2011 before ever getting to see her Caps go beyond the second round.  Now to honor the promise made to her 15 years ago and in her memory, it is so important to us that we go to the Capital One Arena, even for a Game Watch for the game in LasVegas, and to bring Dot’s Capitals jersey so the promise is fulfilled.   It may sound silly to you as you read this.  And you may not understand why it is so important that I do this.  But it is very important and meaningful.

Here's today's data:
https://www.strava.com/activities/1617480947

https://www.relive.cc/view/1617480947 
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/2752484756

So now that my bike trip has come to an end, here’s the totals for my nine days of riding:

9 rides
686.44 miles (avg 76.3 miles per ride)
25.95 hours on the bike
13.7 miles per hour average
12,220 feet of climbing (1,357 feet per ride)
40.9 mph maximum speed
4 States ridden (NM/TX/OK/KS)  1 flat (while the bike was standing still under a tree at the SAG stop on the first day)

Thanks for following this blog. I hope you’ve all enjoyed following along.  Do I wish I would have continued on for the additional days I had originally planned?  Of course.  But, even more, I wish that I had not had such a lack of faith in the Capitals so that I would have done what I did two years ago—schedule a ride that had no chance of conflicting with the Stanley Cup Finals.  But going back tomorrow is part of keeping a promise made 15 years ago to the lady I was married to for 37 years, and my companion who I have missed terribly for the last seven years. Making good on that promise to her by sitting in the Capital One Arena with my daughter Marci who has taken her mom's place watching the Caps, while holding her jersey will be one of those very meaningful moments in my life (although I'll admit that after 43 years of suffering with the Caps, seeing them in the Stanley Cup Finals in their home arena, will make me happy too!)

Finally, as I head back to the DC Area….Let’s Go Caps!