Start Location: North Kansas City, MO
Ending Location: Hays, KS
Miles Today: 274
Trip Miles: 2402
States Visited: 7
National Parks Visited: 0
Low Temp: 73.2° F
High Temp: 98.6° F
Min Elevation: 274'
Max Elevation: 2402'
Route Map:
NLBM 2022 - Day 09
Before I get into today, I forgot an incident from yesterday. As we
were riding at around 70 MPH I was just getting ready to pass a semi
when the semi suddenly swerved to the left. As he swerved there was a
second semi directly in front of him who had swerved to the right and
was partially off the road. My first though was that the first semi
driver might have fallen asleep or had a medical emergency and I was
watching both trucks to make sure I stayed safe. At that moment we hit
something hard that I never saw but Linda saw it and said it was a
chunk of rubber from a tire. I hit it on the left side and it hit my
foot and Linda's as well. I had on heavy boots so, while I felt it, I
had no damage. Linda had on tennis shoes and got a minor bruise. I was
also worried about the trike but the only thing I found so far was a
loose side cover and a missing rubber grommet for mounting it. I'm glad
that was the only issue - it certainly could have been worse
Okay
on to today. After a short 10 minute ride, we arrived at the museum
about 10 minutes early. I was worried about two issues. The first is
that there is only on street parking with no dedicated lot. As it was
we were able to park almost directly in front of the museum and it's on
a street that seems to have very little traffic. We covered the bike
just on general principles but wouldn't have needed to. The second
issue was that, with all of our gear on the bike, there was no place to
lock up jackets and helmets. Fortunately they have a coat closet in the
lobby just for that purpose so that worked out great.
We
were led to believe that one to two hours would be more than enough
time to view everything. We were there about two hours and probably
read a third of all the signs and plaques. There were several videos as
well as a detailed history and timeline of the Negro Leagues from the
late 1800s until around 1950 when they finally disbanded after their
players began moving to Major League Baseball. I'm not going to go into
detail about the Negro Leagues and their stories and players but it's
an interesting and sad story. There were many incredible athletes in
the Negro Leagues that certainly could have been stars in their own
rights in the Majors. It's sad to see all they had to endure just to
play a game they loved - everything from not being able to find
restaurants that would serve them to not finding hotels. We have
watched several documentaries over the years about the Negro Leagues
and baseball in general and I would encourage anyone who is interested
to follow up on their history.
After our visit we turned
west and started the long slog to get back home. Temperatures hit 98
this afternoon and we were glad that it was a relatively short day on
the road.
