The Nickerson city park had nice grass to camp on last night but their covered pavilion was a dirty disaster, as were their bathrooms. We didn’t want to touch anything and didn’t want the dog scavenging all the trash and food bits on the ground so we chose to tent camp on the grass rather than sleeping under the pavilion roof. (According to the city park employee who can to “clean” the next morning, local kids just trash it, steal the toilet paper, break the paper dispensers and toilet seats, and throw trash everywhere; however, watching him “clean” the bathrooms by hosing them down and not picking up any of the trash that washes into the floor drain, I wonder if only the kids are to blame.) So, was that a good choice? A NASTY thunderstorm with huge lightning/raindrops and big wind moved through last night after we went to bed (with 0% chance of rain showing on our phone weather apps, both iPhone and android). Thank god there was no 1” hail as the emergency 2 a.m. weather alert said may happen. The tent bent sideways right on top of us in the up to 60 mph gusts and of course the fabric got soaked, but it did NOT leak at all and did not break or fly away!! So…thanks Big Agnes tents! We were prepared inside the tent during the storm to make a run for the pavilion shelter if need be - we had put our GoreTex on and were prepared to grab the helmets from our bikes to prevent head injury from any big hail. But we ended up not feeling like we ever had to get out because the tent provided adequate shelter in the hail-less storm. Next time we will keep the helmets inside, or strapped to, the tent though so they’re within reach if we need them. We never considered the possibility of huge, damaging hail, honestly. The big storm moved fast and passed in ~ 30 minutes and we then slept fine after that. We had a leisurely sleep-in until 746 a.m. (we knew we’d have to dry the tent and we also had a shortish ride day in favorable weather planned so we didn’t have to wake early like we normally do) when we woke to someone outside the tent saying “good morning, I’m putting a healthy breakfast in the table for you. Have a good day!” Wait, WHAT?! Some random dude had brought us a homemade salad and some ranch dressing in plastic containers, two cups of applesauce, a bottle of sweet tea, and a can of Dr. Pepper. And a metal spoon and fork. We never saw or talked to him as he walked away as fast as he had appeared. The kindness here in KS is amazing. (You’ll always be our favorite, though, Deanna at Cake Batter Batter!!) The direct morning sun dried our tent/rainfly/groundcover out pretty quickly so we were making decent time packing up when I decided to check my phone messages. I about exploded when I saw a FedEx update stating that my replacement bike tires, instead of arriving today (Friday) at our next destination of Great Bend, were now delayed until MONDAY!! If that happens, instead of one night in Great Bend, it’s now 3-4 nights there. We cannot afford, in time OR money, to stay that long there. I was crushed, pissed, and stressed and I immediately called Fed Ex to see what was happening and if there was anything that could be done to expedite delivery to its originally planned day or at least the next day. I could tolerate a one day delay but three? It’s not just that I have to get these awful Walmart tires off my bike, it’s that if we don’t stay the 3 days until they arrive, how will I ever get these tires? The Holiday Inn Express we mailed them to isn’t going to mail them forward for me, most likely. So I called and of course couldn’t get through their phone tree to an actual person, couldn’t get any information. There was an option to change the shipping address, though, which would be ok as I could have the tires redirected to another location further up the route, so I pressed it. Yeah, no. “Sorry, only the shipper can change the delivery address. Please contact the shipper directly.” Well, the tire company does not have a customer service number to call and I can’t rely on doing it via email if I can reach them so that option won’t work. Ultimately, somehow in the phone tree it got confused by my delayed responses to the voice commands and suddenly I was connected to a representative. Steve. With a really strong foreign accent I could barely understand. But he was helpful, set up a case, assured me he could get my package there by tomorrow for only a 1-day delay and just like that was gone, having hung up on me as I was asking a question. But, cool. The tires will arrive tomorrow. Ok, we’ll ride to Great Bend today, camp tonight at the church, pick up the tires when they get delivered tomorrow and if it’s early enough, hit the road and if not, take one rest day in Great Bend. So we leave the park and hit the convenience store for a coffee and some snacks for today’s ride. And in the 10 minutes it took to get packed and to the convenience store, I had a missed call from Fed Ex. A different representative. Whom I could this time not understand at all. But “Stephanie’s” message did sound very apologetic, which didn’t seem good. I called back. Got a 3rd representative. Another person with a very English name and an accent I could hardly understand. This person was helpful, assured me they would work to get me more info, then came back on the line and said they couldn’t. But hoped it would get there tomorrow. So we hit the road to Great Bend, hoping. And the ride pretty much SUCKED!!!! The first 10 miles were on a super trafficky road. The next 28 miles were on a quiet country road through a wildlife preserve so that’s awesome, right? Not so much. The pavement was so cracked from baking in the hot sun for years that we were bounced and jarred all over the pace, constantly veering and searching both lanes for the smoothest path, which didn’t really exist. And the, the wildlife preserve? The only wildlife we saw were the thousands of huge, biting flies that were attacking our backs, arms, and legs incessantly for about a 5-7 mile stretch no matter how fast we rode, and worse if we stopped for 5 seconds. It was miserable. And it was getting hotter, into the upper 80’s and humid with no shade. And then, HUDSON CHURCH!!! We spied it and the hose outside and stopped to fill our bottles and soak our hats and bandannas. Well as we were doing so, I spied the big aluminum water tub 30 feet away filled with clean, cool water! If it was hotter, we’d definitely have gotten in to cool our bodies off, but as it was only moderately hot not maximally hot we just soaked our hats, bandannas, shirts, and arm sleeves to make the ride cooler. We left refreshed, happy that the biting flies were mostly gone, and knowing we were only about 20 miles from our destination. We finally turned the 90 degree right turn toward Great Bend for the final 15 miles and while the flies were gone, the traffic was back. And our butts hurt a lot because soaking our shirts had unintentionally gotten our bike chamoises wet which makes for, let’s just say, a more chafing ride. Plus there was a bit of a headwind, so we were slow at the end. It was not one of our finest days. We arrived to Great Bend, hit the bike shop to buy some Chamois butter and get a dinner restaurant recommendation, and the pedaled off toward the church that lets cyclists camp outside. On the way we saw a couple cycling on a tandem and they came up to us and kindly guided us to the church as they were part of the church welcoming committee and had helped establish this camp because this bigger city of Great Bend will not let cyclists camp in their city park like every other Kansas town we've been through will. It had a nice metal pavilion, an electrical box about 100 feet away with four plugs to charge devices, a clean porta potty, and a new well to fill water bottles. Very nice. We were super grateful and thanked them genuinely. When we arrived, there was another cyclist there (Michelle, surgeon from Maine, solo TransAm cyclist, that we'd met earlier in the day before we left the Nickerson convenience) and there was also another older church lady there who was also separately giving us the lay of the land. All these folks were very generous, but there was also a weird vibe we were picking up from all of them that basically felt like we were very privileged to be allowed to camp there, but we were locked out of the church because people couldn't be trusted inside their church. Granted, they did offer to unlock the door for us to go inside to use the bathroom and freshen up a bit, but it was chaperoned and weird to have an old lady standing outside the men's room waiting for me to finish up inside. Like I said, they were generous, but it also felt like they were distrustful to a degree, which is 100% NOT the feeling/vibe we've gotten from every other church we've stayed at over the past 40 days. We gently suggested that other hostels had a code on the door to allow cyclists inside, and to use the kitchen/bathroom and roll their sleeping pads out inside they dry, air-conditioned inside space when too hot or too wet outside, but it was quickly met with a response basically telling us to be happy with what we were provided and how you can't really trust people to be inside the church. We weren't telling them that because we weren't thankful for what we were given, rather because they were just starting this hostel over the last couple of years since the TransAm route changed to come through their town and we figured that maybe they just didn't KNOW how other places did it and that they never would know unless we told them. So there was kind of a weird air after that, us thanking them for what they had done for us which was great, feeling like we had to OVERthank them for having offended them by telling them about our previous hostel experiences, and then awkwardly waiting for them to leave! They just kept talking and talking and talking, really wanting to know all about our trips, but the whole thing felt like they were more interested in feeling good about themselves for having provided us something and asking all their questions, rather than ensuring we had a comfortable experience and were allowed to go about our business of setting up our tent and getting ready for bed before we got eaten by too many mosquitoes. Finally they left and we sweated our way to sleep in our tent on the concrete under the metal shelter roof nursing the itchy mosquito bites we got when politely standing outside in the swarm while the kind church folks talked our ears off. Oh, and regarding the tires, the Fed Ex site still as of this evening, Friday, shows a Monday delivery. And I got another Fed Ex customer service person on the line, similar experience as before, helpful in words but providing no new information. This one promised me a supervisor would call or message me, but none ever did. So we'll try again in the morning. Can you tell I just want to get out of this town? Besides the above, Great Bend just has a rougher feel, and is uglier, than the other towns we've been through in Kansas. Just please, Fed Ex, get us the tires so we can roll on toward the next destination! PS...if you're looking at our stats/metrics, something is off with today's elevation profile. There were no straight vertical climbs and we definitely did NOT have a max grade of 28.6%. It was a relatively flat day, one of the flattest we've had on the entire trip. But the mileage and the time/speed/etc. are all right on.