The ride of their lives
By DIANE GASPER-O'BRIEN
It's not unusual to find a lot more people in town in Smith Center during the fall, especially on Friday nights.
Residents from miles around have become infatuated with the Redmen high school football team that has won a state-record 54 games in a row since 2004.
But this is June. And except for the fascination of looking at all the trophies in the school, the hoards of people who converged on Smith Center High School last week -- in the middle of the week, mind you -- had an athletic activity of another kind on their minds.
The high school was one of the overnight stops for participants in the 34th annual Biking Across Kansas event.
And residents from all throughout Kansas and more than 30 other states were treated to small-town hospitality all along the 470-mile route.
At about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, the sound of tent poles clanging, the swish of nylon tent material and the clacking of cleats filled the air surrounding the area outside Smith Center High School.
The aroma of sunscreen outdoors gave way to that of some good home cookin' inside the school as bicyclists prepared for the fifth leg of the nine-day trip from the Colorado border on the western edge of Kansas to the eastern border of the state.
The trip, which has taken place every year since 1975, ended Saturday at Atchison, which overlooks the Missouri River.
From the starting point at the Colorado border 14 miles west of St. Francis, cyclists traveled through or by towns all along U.S. Highway 36 with overnight stops at Atwood and Norton. From Smith Center, they turned south on Kansas Highway 14 down to U.S. 24 east to Downs, Cawker City, Glen Elder and Beloit.
"They really put on a show for us last night," 13-year-old Katarina Rorstrom from Hays said of Tuesday evening's entertainment of local music and comedy acts in Smith Center.
Then at the end, the cyclists were surprised with free ice cream.
"They talked like they really had such a good time," said Colleen Kirkendall, director of the Smith Center Chamber of Commerce. "They said they want to make us a stop every year."
In addition to entertainment at some of the towns, there were home cooked meals and all sorts of nature stops along the way.
"There were a thousand extra people in town Smith Center night," Gary Schultz said with a smile Tuesday morning. "And they weren't even here to watch a football game."
Schultz, who lives in Overland Park, is a retired coach from northwest Kansas who knows a lot about how important athletics are to area residents.
Schultz, who proudly proclaims he ran for legendary track coach Alex Francis at Fort Hays State University back in the early 1960s, was on BAK with his son, Brad Schultz from Lenexa.
Cranston Cederlind is an obstetrician who also lives in the Kansas City area but still enjoys cycling the rural roads of Kansas, along with camping out and the camaraderie among the cyclists.
And they are well aware of how Smith Center has put Kansas on the football map. The Redmen even were featured in a Sports Illustrated article recently, and it hangs in the school hallways.
"We knew about it even before we came here," said Shannon Cederlind, 28, one of Cederlind's daughters along on the trip. "We saw it in (the magazine)."
"So we went downtown and bought (Smith Center) T-shirts," she said.
"We really wanted one that says 54 and 0, though," added her younger sister, Amy Cederlind, 27.
At Cawker City, where virtually every bicyclist dismounted to see the World's Largest Ball of Twine, they learned how the town got its name -- because a man by the name of Cawker won a poker game in 1870.
While Linda Clover, caretaker of the ball of twine, helped the visitors wind twine around the ball, Jon Ewert from Kremmling, Colo., entertained the crowd with his banjo.
"I'm riding support for my wife; she's never done one of these (rides) before," explained Ewert, a fisheries biologist in a small town of 2,000 nestled in the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Colorado. "But we're thinking about doing it together next year. It's a lot of fun."
From Beloit, the group traveled back north to U.S. 36, stayed overnight in Washington, Sabetha and Horton before making the final 34-mile trip to Atchison on Saturday.
The Rorstroms, Cinderlinds and Ewerts were three of many families that were taking their vacation together on the road.
And there also were families of one as well.
Daniel Donahue from Plains in southwest Kansas, riding on his own, celebrated his 78th birthday Wednesday.
Donahue, on his eighth BAK, chuckled while talking about some of the younger riders who backtrack along the way so they can get in 100 miles each day. The daily routes on the 2008 BAK ranged from 42 to 71 miles.
"They have a lot of endurance," he said. "More than me for sure. I just want to get there."
That's the beauty of BAK. Cyclists can travel at their own rate, which works well even now that all 850 riders are on the same route.
BAK had three routes for several years, from 1989 to 2003, but returned to the one-route format four years ago.
"At the time, we were the only state in the nation that did three routes," said Charlie Summers, taking part in his 31st BAK, including the seventh as the event's director. "Some people didn't like it when we went back to one because they liked being able to choose their route. But overall, I think they like it now.
"I know," he said, "the towns sure do."