June 9, 1903
(Maxwell to Kerarney, NE)
“I left Maxwell at 7:15 a.m. on June 9, and followed the wagon road for the first eight miles. Then it got so sandy that I took to the railroad. I remained on the tracks for 12 miles, and then tried the road again. After an hour on it, the mud began to be so thick that riding was impossible, and I then returned to the railroad and stuck to it until I reached Lexington, where I had dinner.
When I emerged from the dining room it was raining so hard that it would have been folly to have attempted to ride. My batteries required attention, and by chance I met J.S. Bancroft, who has the most complete bicycle and automobile repairing station that I saw between Cheyenne and Omaha.
Mr. Bancroft stopped when he saw me at work on the batteries and invited me to his store. He is a motor bicycle rider, using a 2 1/2-horsepower Columbia.
** Columbia, a short-lived motorcycle brand 1902–1905 based in Chicago, Illinois)
I lost an afternoon in Lexington, but it stopped raining at 5 p.m., and I went over to the railroad and made a run of 20 miles in an hour and a half to Elm Creek,
where I had supper. I was anxious to make all the mileage I could, so after supper I started again, and by 8:20 p.m. I had ridden 16 miles more and was at Kearney, where I put up for the night. I had a fall and broke my ammeter in this last stretch. I had the same experience with my watch back in Nevada.
A note in my diary, made at Kearney reads: ‘There are some of the greatest pace followers of their size in the world in this region. A bunch tacked on to me back at Ogallala, and for two days I have been unable to shake them. It looks as if they will stay with me all the way into New York. The natives call them gnats. They bite like hornets.’ “
June 10, 1903
(Kearney to Columbus, NE)
“The roads were still impassible going out of Kearney, and I followed the railroad tracks to Grand Island, and even then I had to walk over several short stretches where it was sandy, and every half mile I had to dismount for the crossing of the wagon road, the highway being in such vile condition that its dirt was piled upon the tracks so that I could not ride through it.
I just happened to pass a life-size model of a wagon he refers to
In the 11 miles between Grand Island and Chapman, where I stopped for dinner, I broke six spokes. I rode, with the rear wheel thus weakened, over the ties 10 miles to Central City, where I stopped for repairs.
President Roosevelt just a few weeks before was in Grand Island breaking ground for the new Carnegie Library, so construction would have been happening as he rode by. Today it is a Century 21 real estate office!!!
I left Central City at 4:45,
This was my view leaving Central City, most likely the same dirt road George used, I was told to get off it by railroad workers…seems very little has changed.
and rode 44 miles to Columbus, arriving there at 8:25 p.m.
This made 108 miles for the day and I felt satisfied. On this day again I narrowly escaped being lifted from the roadbed by an engine pilot. It was a fast mail train this time. I was riding along outside the rail, where the space between the rail and edge of the embankment was only six inches, and I could not look around without danger of banging into the rail or slipping over the edge. I did not hear the train until the whistle sounded, when the engine was within 100 feet of me. I just went down that embankment as if I had been pushed.”
Sadly the train depot has long gone and all that remains is a dirt lot
June 11, 1903
(Columbus to Omaha, NE)
“I left Columbus, Nebraska at 7:40 a.m. My start was later than usual, because I had to wait to get gasolene. They do not keep it in the stores there, but a wagon goes around in the morning to the various houses and supplies what they want for the day.
I had to take to the railroad once more from the outset. After going 28 miles over the ties I noticed that the roads looked better, and I rode on them for the rest of the day, stopping at Fremont for dinner and arriving at Omaha at 5:30 p.m.
At Omaha I feel that my self-imposed task was as good as accommodated. The roughest and most trying part of the country has been crossed, and I have traveled more than 2,000 miles of the total distance. I have reached the great waters of the Missouri; the promised land of the East, where I hope to find good roads, lies ahead of me. My anticipations of what lies before me are bright.”
June 12, 1903
(Omaha, NE to Council Bluffs, IA)
“Although it was evening when I reached Omaha, Nebraska, on June 11, I at once hunted up the largest bicycle store and repair shop I could find in the city – that of Louis Flescher, 1622 Capitol Avenue – and began putting my machine in trim for the last 1,600 miles of my trip.
Louis Flescher’s shop is long gone and in its place is America’s favorite institution…the I.R.S.
I found that six new spokes were needed, and, after putting them in and truing up the wheels, I put on a new belt rim to replace the old one, which had been literally chewed up by the rocks along the road.
It looked, in fact, as if it might have been a rail on the manger of a cribbing horse. Also, I put on the second one of the pair of tires that I got at Ogden and soldered up a small leak in the gasoline tank.
Knowing that from that time on I would be able to get almost anything I needed, I decided to remove my carrier, with its extra gasoline tank and tools, and ship them to Chicago. I kept only a pump, a tire repair outfit, a wrench, a spark plug and my lubricating oil. All this was not done at night. It took me until 1:30 o’clock the next day to finish my work, and then I had lunch.
It was three o’clock on June 12 when I left Omaha. The streets of that city are fine, many of them having vitrified brick pavement. It might have been all imagination, or the exhilaration I felt at leaving the deserts and the Rockies behind me, but the bicycle seemed to skim the earth like a swallow as I started for the steel bridge across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The Omaha Express Office is now The Durham Museum, and I arrived too late to go inside!
The carrier and its freight made the load lighter, and the fine pavement had much to do with it, but the difference seemed greater than could be accounted for by these things. At the time it seemed to me as if I was having the finest ride of my lifetime.
Unwitting I cheated the toll collector at the bridge and crossed over into Iowa without paying anything. I was going at a smart pace when I reached the bridge and had gone along on it some distance when I heard a man shouting to me. I learned afterward that he was the toll collector. I glanced back and saw him waving his arm excitedly, but at the time I thought he was expostulating because I was riding between the tracks, so I kept on and, as far as l am aware he did not undertake to pursue me or have me stopped.
At Council Bluffs I made the acquaintance of Mr. Smith, of the Nebraska Cycle Company, who has traveled all over the country. He sent the barometer of my new-born confidence and enthusiasm down.
From what he told me of the roads and the condition in which I would find them at that time, after all the rainy weather, I about made up my mind that I would have to ride on the railroad ties all the way to Chicago.
Perhaps it was the effect of what he said that led me to explore Council Bluffs to a greater extent than I had any other place through which I passed, though, truth to tell, there was not opportunity for exploring in more than a very few, most of my stops west of Omaha having been at places that could be seen at one glance – “tout ensemble,” as the Frenchmen say.
The brick pavement of the Council Bluffs streets is superior to anything I ever saw before and I have seen some fine roads in *Australia and other countries. It is laid with such scientific method and such consummate art that you might think you were riding on a board floor when rolling over it.
*George Wyman was the first American to circumnavigate Australia on a bicycle, that was done before this ride
It had been my design when I started to take the more southerly route from Omaha, by way of Kansas City and St. Louis to Chicago, because I understood that, although the distance Is greater, I would find better riding by so doing. When I came along, however, all that country was under water, one might say, so I decided to follow the route of the Northwestern Railroad past Ames, from which a spur of the road runs south to Des Moines.
For the credit of the country, I hope the southerly route is better than the one I followed. On the whole, Iowa gave me as much vile traveling as any State that I crossed.”
The route so far, San Francisco to Council Bluffs, IA
continued…
rtwPaul 
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