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The town of Chanute was named after Octave Chanute, who advised the Wright brothers and provided pub...
The town of Chanute was named after Octave Chanute, who advised the Wright brothers and provided publicity for them. This is a giant mobile and its propellers are going wild in the wind.

I've had enough of fighting the wind. Today's route has been virtually flat but has felt like an uphill struggle all the way. I had been hoping to make it to Eureka today, 60 miles away. However, I had decided not to check whether either of the hotels there had a room until I reached Chanute, just in case I didn't want to go any further. I don't think I can carry on in this wind so I'm going to stay here tonight. I got a little bit worried when, out of the four hotels in Chanute, the first didn't answer the phone and the next two said they were full but the fourth had a vacancy. It's less than £20 as well. Some of the hotels in Pittsburg were unavailable for last night and apparently they are all full tonight because of some agricultural show so perhaps I had better be careful to ensure that I do have somewhere to go each day from now on. I had been told that hotels in America rarely got full.

The wind is still going to be at it tomorrow and apparently there could be some thunderstorms in the afternoon. My only option for tomorrow night then is Eureka, where I had hoped to be tonight. I've now reserved a room there. The research that I did prior to coming on this trip showed that if there was one place where I was likely to get a tailwind, it was here so I had hoped to cover come good distances here in order that I could have shorter days in the mountains where I was expecting the going to be hard work, and in the desert where I won't want to be outside for too long each day. It doesn't look like I'm going to make much progress here though. Still, if the Rockies really are easier than the Ozarks, I should be able to travel further there each day than I have planned. I'm beginning to think that gradient has very little effect on how easy it is to ride: Kansas is almost as flat as you can get and yet I'm getting nowhere.


UTC Time: 19:25, Wednesday 18 July 2007
Local Time: 14:25, Wednesday 18 July 2007
Estimate of longitude: 95° 27' 9.98" W = -95.452773°
Estimate of latitude: 37° 40' 54.13" N = 37.681704°
Possible error on position estimate: 20 metres