Day 45-Topeka to Olathe KS

The morning leaving Topeka was crazy, when we left lodging to head over to TARC where our bikes and breakfast were the weather was looking a bit nasty. When were finishing up breakfast the weather was getting worse, it was storming hard, rain, thunder and lightning. Lightning means we can't get on our metal bikes and ride down the road so we had to wait at lodging until it stopped. We were there for an extra hour and 45 minutes waiting for the lightning to go away. This set us back a lot for an already tight rack time to get to Olathe for a police escort and arrival. Once we did get on the road t was a good ride, I was with Evan and Brentley, we had planned this for a couple days because we wanted to conquer this hill today call "The Wall" It is a 18% grade hill that really does look like a wall when you are biking towards it on a flat road. I had been told about it before it it was definitely way over hyped for what it was, it was very steep for sure but it was super short and didn't even tire me out, the biggest challenge was staying upright on the bike. We had planned to go up and coast down just for the fun of it but it was still raining pretty hard so the roads were wet and the pavement was bumpy and broken up so we didn't want to risk it and just kept moving forward. Later on we road through some mud and splattered our jerseys which looked great for the arrival later. Because of the time crunch we only got about 27 miles done before we had to rack to make it to stage up for the police escort.

The arrival was absolutely awesome, police escort was oddly long, a couple miles but the Olathe police motorcycles took us through super smoothly. We arrived at the brand new (opened on July 3rd) Olathe Community Center and were welcomed by a bunch of city council members, kids and staff from Inclusion Connection and other sponsors for our stay here for the next couple days. After a short welcoming speech and pictures in front of a giant American Flag hanging from the ladder of a fire truck we headed inside to meet everyone. They had all us cyclists sitting up front facing the crowd while a city councilmen and mayor welcomed us and told us about Olathe and gave us a proclamation making today Push America Day. Olathe is an amazing community and works very hard to make it accessible to everyone. Olathe has won awards nationally and internationally for it's inclusion and accessibility in the community for people with disabilities. There we got a goodie bag with snacks and candy for us as well as the framed proclamation. At the end they also gave us a run down of everything we have waiting for us while we are in Olathe and it blew my mind. We are staying at the Kansas School for the Deaf in dorm rooms with wifi, flat screens, cable, laundry, as soon as we got to lodging they had free haircuts, massages, and bike maintenance waiting for us, deli sandwiches for lunch, Texas Road house for dinner. Tomorrow we have build your own omelets in lodging provided for us, then a tour of the Garmin International headquarters , then a tour of our main sponsor's home and the man who put together everything for our stay here, Mark Cameron, then a minor league baseball game and tailgate, and lastly on our way out Panera for breakfast before we hit the road. It is absolutely amazing, we are being treated so well here, everyone is unbelievably thankful for everything Mark did to set this up and all the amazing sponsors that are donating time and money to help us all make this journey.

After settling in lodging and getting haircuts, massages and bike maintenance we headed to Texas Road House for dinner. Preston's dad surprised him by showing up in Olathe and actually had a big banner for him and the team as we road into the arrival but he came with us to dinner and decided to help us out and covered any additional food we order outside of what they were giving us, it was great, we got amazing meals. At dinner I sat with Mark Cameron who has helped put this visit together for us since the Trans route started. Years ago he was in an accident and is now quadriplegic. He is such a cool guy, his humor is amazing and he now does motivational speeches to grade school kids as well as medical schools about patient care. He says he is very fortunate to have the support that he has and so he does what he can to help support others.

After Dinner we grabbed bathing suits from lodging and headed back to the community center to hop in the pool. It is the coolest pool I have ever been in, they have a lazy river, two water slides that go outside and back in the building, a regular lap pool with a climbing wall coming out of the deep end and two different cliff jumping ledges to jump off of plus a shallow play pool for kids and awesome water features and of course a hot tub. It was absolutely crazy, we had an awesome time there up until closing.

When we got back a group of us showered and changed and went out to meet Mark who had invited us to grab drinks with him and his friend who was also at dinner. The place was just down the street from lodging so we walked over and it was a small bar and Mark goes there often because it is so close, he said he can get down there in his chair in 13 minutes or in his van in 12. We were the only people in the bar for a while before another guy came in, he asked the bartender who we all were and the guy realized he knew exactly who we were because he was a Pi Kapp at Kansas State. He was hilarious and ended up picking up everyones tab. These random run-ins with people with a connection to people with disabilities or Pi Kapp have been amazing. After a while at the bar it started storming pretty hard outside, rain was coming down side ways and the lights were flickering until eventually they just went out completely and the bartender grabbed some candles and we drank by candle light until we had to get back to lodging, luckily the storm had moved on by that time. We did come back to the power being out in lodging though but having a real bed with sheets and a blanket were a great thing to come back to.