Day 13 of the bike ride across America is now complete. We got the hell out of Dodge (I’ve always wanted to say that and really mean it) at around 7:00 AM, and completed an 86-mile ride to Great Bend, KS. Terrain was mostly flat, but we fought a moderate headwind the entire way. The only way to effectively battle a headwind on a bike is using a paceline, and nine of us worked together pretty much the entire way to chew up the mileage. My average speed was 17.4 mph, and would have been much lower working solo. We stopped for our first food break at Kinsley, KS, which bills itself as exactly halfway between New York and San Francisco. Funny, I’ve never heard those two towns boast of being equidistant from Kinsley. Oh well. We had lunch at Larned, KS. Shortly after that, we made a slight detour to visit Pawnee Rocks, which was a rise of land with a prominent rock formation known as a landmark on the Santa Fe Trail. We enlisted Robert from Dallas, who just happened to be there with his family and offered to take our picture, to take photos of our group with nine different cameras. I know he was thrilled to make that offer. In another dozen miles, we rolled into Grand Bend, and made a beeline to the Braum’s Ice Cream/Dairy store for a round of milkshakes. The girls behind the counter were enthralled to hear we were biking across the country, and one of them was mesmerized by UK Bob when he ordered—she had never heard anyone speak with a British accent. After a quick trip to the Wal-Mart Supercenter (home to at least half the subjects on the website People of Wa-lmart) to pick up a few sundries, back at the tony Highland Hotel of Grand Bend awaiting dinner plans. Tomorrow we go back over 100 miles (129 to be exact) to travel to Abilene, KS.