Making my way down the aisle of a grocery store in Kansas, I noticed an older man in overalls staring tiredly at me. I smiled back at him, accustomed at that point to attracting attention. I was halfway through riding my bicycle across the country, and my spandex shorts and noisy bike shoes were a dead give-away. The man eyed the bag of carrots in my arms as I walked by, informing me quietly, "Bikers don't usually eat that". I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d pulled out a kazoo and started playing it.

“What’s that?” I asked, certain I’d heard him wrong.

“Too heavy,” he added, shaking his head dismissively and looking down the empty aisle.

I laughed aloud, asking if he rode a bike too.

“No.” He shifted his weight, and didn’t make eye contact. “Just seen a lot of you folks comin’ through here...”

They did see a lot of us. Thousands of traveling bicyclists follow the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail route every year. Our bikes with fully-loaded saddlebags stood out like sore thumbs in the small farming communities.

As I left the store, I looked down at my carrots. What DO cyclists usually eat? I wondered.