Riding a motorcycle through the prairie straights is not quite the piece of cake everyone was thinking. We're going through cross winds of up to 80 kms and the drafts of the semi's are different in the wide open spaces. It's just like boating at home. These ginormous trucks make an air wake just like boats in the water so i've got to battle through the air displaced on the sides (there are alot of ripples) and then punch through the big bow wave. It can be pretty intense with the combo of the cross/head winds. These winds have been so strong that our fuel range is half of normal.
We've been so tired at the end of these days - I didn't expect that. The wind mixed with this intense heat has been draining. The person inside the television machine says it was 37 for a good chunk of the day. When we rode through the Sahara we only had a day or 2 that were this hot. It tires me out to the point where I get a little drowsy on the bike and we have to pit for a refresher.
You may ask, "how hot was it?" - it was so hot that the thingie that holds my camera onto the helmet melted off. This thing was stuck to my helmet with industrial adhesive. It's been tested to some ridiculous amount of weight and 2 days in this scorching heat has diminished its power so badly that it can't hold a 300 gram camera. This my friends is an extreme condition.
This heat isn't the only comparison to the desert. All the wheat fields are fully grown and ready for harvest and there is a lot of dry grass around so you see a great deal of yellow in the landscape and there are these little groves of trees in the middle of a vast field. They plant the trees with the house so you have this little oasis in the midst of a field that stretches from horizon to horizon.
These trees make all the difference - without them it would feel like a baren landscape but instead you get the sense that there are people around, people that connect the west to the east.
-- Sent from my Palm Prē
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