Build Day III and Welcome to the REAL Kansas

So we've finished our build phase with Lawrence Habitat. Our last day was a little bit of a downer as the trusses didn't show up till the very end, but as you can see we did get them all up, which was amazing and required a lot of team work. We had hoped to hang the plywood and tar paper for the roof, but there just wasn't enough time. Instead we ended up doing odds and ends around the site including cleaning up the street, installing blinds, moving a stove, etc.

Above is the house after our 3 days of work, fully trussed up and partially painted. Below is some of our hearty build crew after a hard afternoon of work.

We took also took a group photo at the end of the day to show off our accomplishments:
Today it was time to get back on our bikes, and most of us were happy to be back on the road. I have to say my legs felt wonderful this morning after a three day hiatus from the bike. You always hear that Kansas is flat, which is a total lie, especially when you're riding a bike. We did numerous hills today, both paved and unpaved, but nothing compared to the Rockies which are fast approaching.
Being that we had a 5 am wake up this morning and rode pretty fast in the cool morning weather we hit lunch before 9:30, but the van was delayed so a group of us decided to forge onward and find lunch in St. Mary's around mile 60 instead of 40. Well as we rode on the back roads went suddenly from pavement to gravel, but no worries this has happened before and we figured it would only be a few miles tops. To make a long story short gravel became dirt and then worse dirt before we got a little lost and then found gravel and eventually pavement again. Strange things happen when you ride dirt such as seeing this sign:


Just in case you can't read it in the picture it says "Minimum Maintenance Travel at Own Risk." Not exactly the most uplifting sign to see when you're on a road bike. Gravel also means that you can't chalk the turns for those following you, today at one major turn Eric decided we needed to leave a clear mark and so we created a bit of a make shift arrow for our friends, who for the 2 that actually followed us and didn't reroute onto the smooth tarmac of US 24 was seen and followed.
Overall today we got to see a lot of the real Kansas, rolling open grasslands that border country roads, that don't always go where you think they should. I appreciated the day's adventure and am looking forward to a little more exploring on the back roads of the west.