Feeding Myself In Kansas

I went shopping for food at a store called Aidi. I have now shopped at enough stores in Kansas to reveal a pattern. The easiest way I can describe the pattern is by saying, "I have been totally spoiled by living in California."

To me, many supermarkets in Kansas are have an atmosphere of resignation and sickness. Everything is jarred, canned, or wrapped in plastic, and most things are either frozen solid or have a suspiciously long shelf-life. There is absolutely no such thing as a fresh vegetable in these Kansas supermarkets. The closest I have found was vacuum-packed unwashed lettuce, and when I read the labeling I discovered that it had been trucked out from Salinas, CA. The only thing that stands a chance of being fresh is the beef, and that depends on where you shop. You will not find the word "organic" used on any label anywhere. I think it's actually a curse-word in this part of the country, like "democrat" or "Colbert".

Today I examined every shelf of the Aidi market twice, in search of something I could eat that wouldn't just widen the nutritional crater that Kansas is digging inside my body. I found a bag of tiny "Ocean Spray" oranges that had been shipped from Chile, coated with wax and sprayed with thiabendazole, and the vacuum-packed lettuce from Salinas. I opened the lettuce in my motel room and carefully washed it in the sink, and that is how I am enjoying my first real salad in two weeks.

Actually, "supermarket" is the wrong word to use for these places. A more accurate description would be something like "junk-food warehouse and butcher's shop". More than half of Aidi's floorspace is taken up with pancreas-destroying sugar snacks and bleached-flour milk-chocolate crap. You could eat a different "food" from this section for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for a hundred days... But by the end of the first month you'd probably be dead. Sure, there are stores like this in California. But in Kansas, in many small towns, this is all you get. When you are planning your meals for the week, for yourself and your kids, this is what you work with.

Walking around here, I tried to imagine what it would be like if I was a local, with limited travel range, trying to improve my eating habits. Would I have the knowledge to categorically dismiss so many of the things in this store as harmful? Would I have the guts to, since it runs counter to the eating habits of my friends and family? The only things we could all agree on would be meat and perhaps a few of the dairy products, and even then we'd have to argue about quantity. Assuming I made enough money to choose where to eat, how would I even be able to locate fresh vegetables? Decent oil? Eggs that didn't come from some tortured wastrel of a factory chicken? These things are just ... not here. At least, as far as I know. Perhaps it just takes some determined searching.

But compare this to where I come from. In Oakland, the supermarkets are loaded with produce. Then, for an appreciable number of residents, it's not of sufficient quality, so they shop at Whole Foods (and moan about the price - I know I have). But that's not enough either, because they also raise a stink about how far their food travels, and who owns and manages the outlet, so they have places like Berkeley Bowl and Rainbow Grocery. But that's not as direct as it could be - so Oakland itself has at least FOUR Farmer's Markets that assemble every week, rain or shine.

Back in Oakland, I live five blocks away from a store that ships gourmet chocolate from Europe and Africa, and I won't buy most of it because I'm not impressed with the flavor. Here in Topeka, if I want dark chocolate, I choose between the large bar that tastes like wax, and the small bar with the oily texture.

Is it really just geography causing this? California gets the fancy weather, so it gets the fancy food? Is it the farm bill? Is it just what people are willing to put up with - a cultural thing?

Some optimistic part of me wasn't expecting it to be true - but as I rove around these cities, I am lost in a sea of people "living and partly living", as T.S. Eliot would put it. Planted behind desks, browsing Facebook. Arguing about high-school football over dinner. Sitting inert in bars. Kicking around in back lots, doing nothing. How much of this is boiling up from their physiology? How much of this is happening because they don't feel right, in a way they can't explain, for a reason that would never occur to them - to most people? Everyone is too busy trying to get any kind of food at all.

Perhaps I'm taking this all to seriously. However, an hour ago I finished all the lettuce in the box - enough for three salads - and my stomach and intestines are feeling better than they have in weeks. My head feels clearer too.

Day 12 – Torpor in Topeka

Since Topeka is a decent-sized city, I found a bike shop and bought a new spare tube. Glad to have that taken care of! I also had them check the loose spoke in the rear wheel, but it was nothing to worry about -- a normal consequence of the tight spokes on the opposite side of the rim.

I had breakfast and went shopping, then browsed around the town for a while. There wasn't much to see so I retreated to the motel room to crop photos and write. A low-key Halloween for me, and that's just fine!

More adventure tomorrow.

Day 13 - Coasting along to Atchison

I thought I wouldn't find a good place to eat and stay until St Joseph, but 60 miles into today's biking, I coasted into Atchison and realized that it filled both requirements admirably.

It was difficult getting out of Topeka. The city sprawl followed me to the north for hours, with chewed up roads, a narrow shoulder, and impatient motorists hemming me in. Since I couldn't concentrate on anything complicated, I listened to two comedy albums by Chris Rock ... and then afterwards wondered why I had done so. His material really didn't age well.

But that got me through the sprawl and onto the more relaxing scenery of highway 4, where I queued up Neal Stephenson's latest novel ReaMde and gazed at the late-Autumn skyline, while Neal plodded through his overlong, obligatory process of making introductions and setting the stage.



I really do understand that beginnings are very difficult for writers. I just wish that Neal had stuck to the approach he used in Diamond Age; an approach that Terry Pratchett uses to great effect. Sidle up to the stage, talking about the woodwork and the weather, throwing out a few unsorted but shiny factoids to catch the mind's eye. Tell an anecdote about one, and oh look, we've blundered into the path of a major character, and hello, here's another, and that factoid was pretty interesting but something is clearly going on here ... and suddenly the stage is set and the players are ten pages into act one. At no point were you distracted by a huge, blinking sign reading "CHARACTER PROFILE", heralded by the sound of squealing brakes as the narrative jerks to a halt to take on this additional baggage.

Just so with ReaMde I'm afraid. For over two hours I had to wait while Neal halted his own story and lugged another suitcase onto the roof-rack. But then in hour three, he shifted gears and dropped his foot on the gas pedal. Now things are moving along beautifully, and I can't wait to get back on the road tomorrow just to listen to the next chapter.

Well, okay, I can wait. I do need sleep!

Today I made two new friends. One pulled up next to me in a parking lot, and the other chatted with me in Atchison about exercise and adventure.



People are very nice! It encourages me to keep on truckin'.

Also, awesome cloudscapes:



Okay, time to get some sleep. I have to pass through St Joseph tomorrow and then bike due east for 70 more miles. Whohoo!!

Day 14 - Crawling along to Cameron

Today ranks up with the toughest days of cycling I've ever had! But ... I get ahead of myself. Let's begin at the beginning, when the weather was clear: Look, it's me passing into Missouri!



Just after I took this picture, my gloves got blown off the seat of my bike and down onto the floodplain. I'd forgotten to snap them under the cords on my luggage, like I usually do. Then I ate some chocolate! Mmmm.

Only a mile into Missouri, I had to stop and take photos of a mass-migration:



Quite remarkable! Then, I ate some more chocolate. Well, okay, I gobbled several fistfuls of salad greens. But when I got back on the bike I had chocolate. Hey, I'm touring, I can eat whatever I want! Don't judge meeeeee!!

When I set out this morning I was in full rain regalia. Pants, cap, and jacket. The weather report called for rain in the afternoon, ascending to a "100% chance" of rain later in the day. As I turned north into the wind, from highway 273 onto highway 59, raindrops began pattering onto my clothes. Three hours later I had only managed to go 15 miles. The road curved to the northeast, and the wind and rain were buffeting me sideways towards the shoulder. I turned on my headlamp and forged ahead. Neal Stephenson was doing an excellent job entertaining me with his audiobook.

But then I got hungry, so I turned off the road to reconnoiter a bakery. Their selection was limited, and I was hungry for both protein and calories, so I bought a big chunk of sharp cheddar cheese. I meandered through the other sections of the store to see if I missed anything, ... and that's where I met Miss Kitty!



Miss Kitty was abandoned while pregnant with seven kittens, but the owners of the bakery took her in, and found homes for all her children. When I met her, she was industriously devouring a bird that she'd caught a few minutes before. She took a break from eating to get lots of pets.

I stuck around inside the bakery to remove several layers of clothing and install my sweater, and as I was reapplying the layers, Miss Kitty went trotting over to a rug underneath a table and settled down. I think it was her Very Own Spot.

It had been weeks since I petted a kittycat, and I suddenly missed Mira desperately. But I scritched Miss Kitty behind the ears and praised her hunting skills, and the feeling cooled to nostalgia. Nevertheless it will be good to see Mira again when I return to Oakland!

I nommed on my cheese, listened intently to the book, and pushed the bike forward, into the rain. I entered the city of St Joseph, which I did not need to stop in but merely pass through, and the terrain became compressed with hills just as the traffic got dense and sketchy. I fought my way to the eastern edge of the grid, and paused in a fast-food joint to warm up my feet and dry off my hands (my gloves had soaked through), and took stock of the situation. Should I keep going?

The weather report said rain for the rest of the week, so I wouldn't be waiting out the storm if I stopped. Also, if I stopped in St Joseph I would have to contend with riding out in the morning commute traffic the next day. Better to start from a smaller city that can put me directly on a state highway, which is guaranteed to have a shoulder at least. Also, I'd only managed 25 miles, and that was not enough to remain on schedule.

So I pushed on, to the east, and highway 36. The sun set, the sky turned black, and the rain became a downpour. The shoulder of the road sprouted potholes and gravel. Occasionally I would lurch to a stop and stomp my feet down, to avoid slipping in the drifts of mud oozing out onto the pavement. The wind hit me so hard from the north that I had to lean the bike precariously. A few times I tilted so far over that I thought I might lose traction and crash. ... But I never crashed. And of course, throughout this headwind and torrent and nasty terrain, I had to climb hills.

Water pooled on my chest in the wrinkles of my raincoat and soaked through the zipper, making an expanding patch of damp in my sweater below. Luckily, the raincoat was a barrier to the wind, so I didn't lose a lot of body heat despite being wet. That was very helpful. The pants worked perfectly. Same with the gore-tex hat beneath my helmet. I cycled along, obstinately, for six hours out of St Joseph, into this maelstrom, pushing myself, and enjoying the challenge ... just as I was also questioning why I put myself into these insane situations!

Around midnight I hauled my bike into the lobby of the Days Inn, and booked two nights, since I knew I would need to recuperate from this. Then: WHACK! I hit the bed.