Coming into the eastern stretches of the route Friday, about 800 riders in the Biking Across Kansas tour encountered more traffic than they’d become accustomed to earlier this week.

“Traffic was, like, this close to you,” said 15-year-old Jack Bruce, demonstrating a four-inch space with his fingers.

Former Lawrence resident Mark Johnson, now of Shawnee, Julie Strohm, of Blue Springs, Mo., and Courtney Johnson, 6, of Shawnee, sport all-American tops as they ride down Massachusetts Street. The three were part of the more than 800 Biking Across Kansas cyclists who rode into Lawrence on Friday.

The crew pushed off from the Colorado border near Sharon Springs a week ago. After camping Friday night on the Lawrence High School grounds, they will conclude their ride today in Leavenworth at the Missouri River.

The bikers on Friday navigated U.S. Highway 24 from St. Marys to Lawrence and quickly realized that the farther east you go in Kansas, the more people you encounter.

“When you get into this side of the state, backroads are even busy,” said John Henry while sipping a beer at Free State Brewery, 636 Mass. Henry has biked across Kansas for a third of the tour’s history; this is his 10th year.

Henry bikes for the physicality of the sport, but reasons for joining the tour are as varied as the ages and backgrounds of its participants. One rider this year is 7; another, 82. Most were families, couples and singles atop bicycles and tandems.

One man pedaled across most of the 489-mile route at 6 mph on the 36-inch wheel of a unicycle. Troy Calkins, Olathe, usually rode solo, three or four miles behind the slowest biker. But pedaling the cycle that’s most-often seen in circuses definitely helped raise awareness for his cause: cancer.

Area media picked up his story, and along the route people approached him to help out.

“Some guy gave me Lance Armstrong’s cancer thing on the trail,” he said. Armstrong, a cancer survivor who has won the Tour de France five times, uses his Lance Armstrong Foundation to raise awareness about the disease.

Several of Calkins’ family members have been stricken with cancer recently, and so he rides to raise money that he will donate to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo.

New Jersey resident Bill Mishler, 61, bikes to stay active during retirement. He has nine other weeklong rides booked this summer. This week was his first time with Biking Across Kansas and his first time seeing Kansas in daylight.

“Forty-one years ago I drove through in the middle of the night,” said Mishler, who lives 10 minutes from New York City. “I never imagined that Kansas was so intensely farm.”

Cyclists head toward Lawrence on U.S. Highway 24 past a stopped train and ditch weed. The 30th Biking Across Kansas concludes today in Leavenworth.

Part of the allure of this “summer camp for adults,” as Henry dubbed it, is the opportunity for an intimate look at the state. Riders often seek tourist stops on the route and interact with locals, Henry said.

And although a night with 800 bikers won’t make a large impact on the Lawrence economy, smaller towns savor the opportunity to cater to this temporary, roving community. The town of Hunter, population 70, served dinner for the crew Tuesday night.

“If you take some of these small towns, this is probably the biggest thing that happens to them all year, besides maybe the county fair,” Henry said.

Before this year, Biking Across Kansas was split into three routes. Organizers wanted to consolidate the routes this year to commemorate the trip’s 30th year.

That many riders on the same road sounded dangerous to Mary Roniger, 10-year BAK veteran from Burdick.

“But it actually wasn’t that bad,” she said.

Greg Tabor of Nevada, Mo., peddles his recumbent across the Massachusetts Street Bridge.