Day 46: Houston, MN to Elroy, WI

I woke up in the new bandshell built by the Lions Club of Houston, Minnesota. The city park in this tiny hamlet (pop. 1,000) is better than you’ll find in many towns of 50,000. It has a walk-in campground for people riding the Root River Trail. It has a nature center that specializes in owls. It has bathrooms that are new and sparkling clean, with the cleaning done by volunteers. It has the bandshell, which meant that I didn’t have to set up my tent. Best of all, it is surrounded by a protected wetland packed with birds that call and chatter at high volume as soon as the sun comes up. It was a real find.

We left about 8:30am and cycled east on a county road next to the Root River. Fog was hanging in the valley and on top of the corn, but overhead the sky was blue. We went past the Mound Valley State Wildlife Area (more chattering birds) and noticed that the landscape was flattening out, the marshes getting bigger. We were getting close to the Mississippi River. At the intersection with Route 16, we saw a puzzling display. A female mannequin was ironing, and a girl mannequin was hanging onto her leg. An American flag on a bent pole was planted nearby. On the other side of the display was a sign that read “See George at Kwik Fill Hokah.”

“Maybe George is looking for a wife,” said Jim.

“She’d better be patriotic,” I said.

We crossed the Mississippi on U.S. 16 at La Crescent, dodging traffic and broken pavement and tire-eating garbage. There were several miles of marshes and industrial sites before the actual bridge and shipping channel, which was lined with houseboats and barges. Then we were in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. All props to the cheese-heads: we saw our first party even before we got off the bridge. Lining a street next to the river were seven or eight marching bands tuning up. A big parade was about to start, and it was going right along our route! It was awfully nice of them to go to all this trouble, but how did they know we were coming?

We rode through the waiting Oktoberfest kick-off parade and then rode down the street in front of all the people who were waiting to see the marching bands. We saw men wearing leiderhosen and women in milkmaid dresses. We saw beauty queens primping and climbing onto thrones on gussied-up flatbed trucks. We waved, and some of them waved back. “We have to keep moving, or we will be here all weekend,” I told Jim. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stop and chat and have a beer at ten in the morning, and I knew that if he did he might wake up thirty years later wondering what happened. We were missing a giant blow-out, but duty called. We rode on to a pretty riverside park and a giant statue of Hiawatha. Then the bike paths began.

Wisconsin turned out to be paradise for bicycle riders. LaCrosse’s Three Rivers Trail immediately took us out of city traffic and through linear parks all the way to the outskirts of town. We turned east on the LaCrosse River State Trail and rode it for 22 miles, then finished the day by riding the length of the 32-mile Elroy-Sparta State Trail. It was an 80-mile day that felt like a vacation. The LaCrosse Trail is strung between an active rail line and Interstate 90, and we were entertained by scary Amtrak trains and freights barreling past on the other side of the ditch. It was hot, and our water bottles were nearing empty when we pulled into Sparta.

Sparta advertises itself as the Bicycling Capital of America because back in 1967, the abandoned railbed from Elroy to Sparta became the first “rail-trail” for hikers and cyclists. There are now thousands of miles of rail-trails in America. Governments pay for their development because this is a cheap way to preserve transportation corridors while pumping tourist dollars into rural areas. But the whole idea started here, and we watched a charming promotional movie made by locals in the late 1960s that featured two children lumbering along on single-speed bikes that looked like small tractors. Great oaks from tiny acorns grow.

Sparta’s tourism center lured us into the town because of the “Deke Slayton Memorial Space and Bicycle Museum.” I grew up in Florida in the 1960s and the late Deke Slayton, an A-list astronaut, was one of my big heroes. It turns out that he was a Sparta native. Jim took my picture posing with a life-sized sculpture of Deke, and then I went upstairs. I asked the woman at the gift shop, “Did Deke Slayton like bicycles?”

“Not especially,” she said.

“So what is the connection between bicycles and space travel?” I asked, hopefully. “Is there some connection?”

She seemed puzzled by the question. “Just that they’re both here in Sparta,” she said.

Sparta is kind of eccentric, and the weirdest thing about it is the larger than life sized sculpture of “Ben Bikin” in the city park. Ben is a fictional 1900s character with a handlebar mustache. He is astride an old “boneshaker” big-wheeled bike. He is perhaps 25 feet tall. There is a hidden motion detector in the base of his statue, and when you approach he will suddenly shout “Hi! Welcome to Sparta!” and then tell you how great everything is here. It was startling, cheesy, and funny. It was the kind of moment you live for.

The Elroy-Sparta line was the main rail route between St. Paul and Chicago in the early part of the 20th century. The nearby highway was also an old tourist route for automobiles, and the locals have carefully preserved a lot of the architecture and signs from 80 years ago. Western Wisconsin’s hills are glacial, meaning they are short but steep, so the line is distinguished by three tunnels so long that they require headlamps. Jim and I were as excited as children by the prospect of riding through these tunnels, which lived up to their spooky billing. Riding through them was an experience of total darkness on either side, the sound of dripping water, and a pinpoint of light in the far distance. We weren’t supposed to ride through them, but of course we did. We even made movies of each other riding through them. That is why we wear helmets. We’re idiots.

By the end of the third tunnel we were exhausted, and Jim had a slow leak in his front tire. My wife Tania had flown out for the weekend, cashing in the rest of her frequent flyer miles, and she had found a motel for us that was clean and comfy and quiet. Seeing her at the end of a day like this made it all feel just about perfect.

Jim and Sara stayed at a campground; Tania and I went into Elroy, a charming village that city people have not discovered yet. We found a diner along main street that was serving dinner. It was Friday, everyone was having the fish fry, and the place was packed. Then we went back to the room and watched Barack Obama debate John McCain. That doesn’t sound very romantic, I know, but we made it work.

Day 47: Elroy to Green Lake, WI

Tania and I met Sara and Jim at a coffee shop on Elroy’s main street. We set off around 9:30 am on Saturday, September 27. We were on county roads and were headed to Green Lake, where we had been told there was a “harvest festival” and a parade scheduled for 4pm. We had about 80 miles to go, but it remained warm and sunny, and there was a slight tailwind. This and the parade deadline kept us pumping along at top speed all day. We averaged more than 15 miles an hour and did the mileage in a bit over 5 hours in the saddle, with 90 minutes of rest. It was our fastest ride ever.

Wisconsin’s county roads are all paved, so there are dozens of low-traffic ways to get from one small town to another. We cycled through hills and dales that looked like the glaciers had missed them, pausing briefly when a bird or a snake or a notable barn caught someone’s attention. We spent several hours pedaling in a pleasant but uneventful way, until out of nowhere a handsome art deco stone-and-steel sign for the Oxford Federal Correctional Institute came up on our left. We stopped to admire the careful landscaping and big close-cropped lawn around the sign. Then we noticed two little girls who had come out of a house trailer across the street. They sat cross-legged on the lawn and faced us, while a man who looked like their father stood behind them on the stoop.

Jim fell into a conversation with the man, as he always does, and the girls lobbed questions at us simultaneously without waiting for the men to stop talking. Jim wanted to know about the prison. The man wanted to know about our route and what we’d seen. The girls wanted to know whether we always wore our helmets and whether either of us had been hit by a car yet. I told them yes and no, and that they should always wear their helmets too. Jim said entertaining things to the man, and in return he found out that it was a minimum security prison “for crooked judges and Congressmen.” This might be why we saw several European sports cars turning into the gate, and also why I heard a sound from behind the hedge that sounded an awful lot like people playing tennis.

“They got it real nice in there,” said the man. “They got sports and a swimming pool. On Memorial Day they even had a live band. They got it better than we do out here.”

Riding as hard as we were did not give us much time to stop and check things out, but I did hear and see evidence that Wisconsin is the undisputed alcohol and cholesterol capital of the country. “You have no idea,” said the woman who served us breakfast. “If you want to know, go down to the Sportsman’s Bar tomorrow, get an Old Style and some deep-fried cheese curds, and stay until kickoff. You’ll see some stuff, for sure.” I had to take her word for it, which pained me greatly. But I did see that every little hamlet had a beat-up plastic sign for Grain Belt or Old Style or Blatz or Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer hanging in front of an equally beat-up building, and there were usually lots of beat-up cars parked out in front. We also rode past two American Legion Brat Fry fundraisers. That’s bratwurst for the noviates, or mildly spicy German sausage on a roll. It tastes way too good for your own good. We ate a lot of brats on the ride. They were cheap, easy to cook, and very tasty. When I got back home, I found to my horror that my total cholesterol number had actually increased.

It might sound improbable that a milkshake is the best thing to order for lunch while you’re on a long ride, but we had been told this by several athletes and we were happy to believe it. In fact, I became convinced that this was the real reason Jim rode across the country. Tipped off by Tania, who was buzzing around us all day in an electric blue rental car, we stopped in Westfield and got two excellent shakes at a candy store that also sold wooden replicas of guns and swords for the kids to play with. These were the kind of things that get kids shot by cops in the Bronx, but in Wisconsin they’re just cute. Lawn signs for John McCain outnumbered Obama signs in this town by about three to one.

A milkshake hits a touring cyclist’s system like a tank of high-octane fuel. It and the tailwind and the 4pm parade deadline juiced our legs and we screamed through the last 20 miles of the trip in an hour. The nice motel room Tania had picked out might have had something to do with it, too.

Green Lake is an affluent resort town that still retains its Wisconsin party flavor. We got to town just as the parade was starting. It was a sublime and wonderful spectacle, and totally free of irony. A tractor pulled small children who were piloting hollowed-out barrels that had been painted to look like airplanes. A delighted boy rode a real camel that announced the first contingent of Fez-topped Shriners on tiny motorcycles. A float for John McCain floated by and everyone ignored it. Tania got her picture taken with a walking ice cream cone advertising Culvers’ famous “butter burgers.” The young woman inside the cone explained that these are, indeed, buttered hamburgers (see cholesterol comment above). There were also lots of fire trucks with flashing lights and dump trucks that blasted their air horns, scaring everybody. But the highlight of the parade, for me at least, was the second contingent of Shriners, who sped around in circles inside tiny cars.

What a mystery Shriners are. Why do they wear hats from Morocco? They have so many different symbols on their hats. What do they all mean? And who got the idea of stuffing these huge men into go-carts? After I made the blog post, Diane Ihle answered these questions by writing, “What’s the mystery? Men never grow up!”

Tania and I retired to the Bay View Motel after the parade. It was also a find. It seemed to be built in the early 1960s and it retained the original Swedish blond wood paneling, pink and green tiled bathroom, and oversized shower. It also had a lawn next to the lake, where Jim and Sara joined us for happy hour. We went to a jammed restaurant and made to bed by 10 pm, which was about an hour too late for us old folks.

Day 48: Green Lake to Manitowoc

We set off for Manitowoc on Sunday around 10:00 am after saying goodbye to Tania, who had to get back to Ithaca. We had another 80 miles to go before our destination. Manitowoc is about 90 miles north of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. It is where you board the S.S. Badger, the ferryboat we used to get to the next state while avoiding Chicago’s sprawl.
The weather had turned overnight, so we set off under gray skies, a north wind, and temperatures struggling to hit 60 degrees. We pushed to reach 13 miles an hour against crosswinds and headwinds, and had a lot less fun. The first 20 miles were on busy highways with bad pavement and no shoulder. Then Jim, whose route planning skills never fail to amaze me, found a bike path that would take us through Fond Du Lac. This got us off the roads for several hours. He couldn’t get rid of the wind, however.
The traffic thinned out north of Fond Du Lac, and the last 50 miles of the ride was an uneventful slog through county roads that would have been beautiful had we not been cold and exhausted. I only collected a few things to report. First, this was Amish country. Several times we met or rode past black horse-drawn carts heading home from church, or to
Sunday supper. Hands waved back to us from behind tinted glass, and then they were gone. Second, in the tiny hamlet of St. Anna we rode past the Scrubs Tavern. The parking lot was full of cars, so many of them that it seemed everybody from miles around had to have been there. A roar came from inside the bar. The Packers were playing.

We rode east to the Manitowoc County line through big dairy farms that smelled like poop. One farmer made a joke about it (see photos). We crossed Interstate 43 and suddenly there was Lake Michigan, and it was impossible not to think that it looked exactly like the sea. We turned north on the lakeshore and started on the last leg to Manitowoc. We almost made it, but in the overcast the light started fading around 6pm and Jim called Sara for relief. The truck showed up about ten miles south of our destination. We drove to the home of Bill Yust’s brother-in-law Michael Retzinger, his wife Amy Tiesol, and their daughter Ceci. Michael and Amy made us more than welcome, and nothing could have kept me awake after 10pm. It had been six hard days in a row. Tomorrow is a day for rest and adventure, including a four-hour ferry ride across the lake.

We rode across the Mississippi River into LaCrosse, Wisconsin on Friday. September 26 and for the rest of the day we were on dedicated bicycle trails. We started with the Three Rivers Trail through the city, then rode on the LaCrosse River Trail to Sparta (parallel to State Route 21) , then on the Sparta-Elroy Trail to Elroy (parallel to route 71). On Saturday we continued east in the vicinity of State Routes 82 and 23 to Green Lake. Most of this day we were on county roads that ran parallel to the state highway. On Sunday we continued picking our way through county roads, staying near 23 until it reached U.S. Highway 151 at Fond du Lac (Lake Winnebago). We continued on 151 to the shore of Lake Michigan, and stayed in Manitowoc at the home of Michael Retzinger, his wife Amy Tiesol, and their daughter Ceci.

Monday the 29th was a rest day. We boarded the S.S. Badger car ferry in the afternoon and crossed Lake Michigan to Ludington, a five-hour trip. On Tuesday the 30th we began riding east through Michigan on county roads in the vicinity of U.S. Highway 10. Near Luther we picked up the Adventure Cycling Association’s “Lake Erie Connector” route. This kept us on blue highways that are near U.S. Route 10. We slept in the woods on Tuesday and in Midland on Wednesday. On Thursday we continued through Bay City and then zig-zagged southeast on state and county roads, staying in Caro. Friday, October 3 was the only 100-mile day of the trip: we passed through Brown City, Capac, and Memphis, and then picked up a bike trail along the St. Croix River at St. Clair that took us to a state park south of Marine City. We started through Ontario on on Saturday, October 4, after taking a ferry across the St. Claire River.

We left the campground at 8:30 am after an unpleasant, interrupted night. The campground was near a truck route and a highway intersection, so we heard air brakes and diesel throttles all night long. There were even dogs barking in the background. It was 25 miles on a state highway to Preston, where we would pick up the Root Valley Bike Trail, and I was hardly awake when we started. Within a mile, though, the familiar rhythm of pedaling had driven enough oxygenated blood to my brain to lift the clouds.

Jim and I had been having a small dispute about who was the better bowler. He said he was pretty good, and had even come close to bowling a perfect game once. I said it was impossible to beat me. We were both thinking this over when we rode into Preston, a small town where we planned to pick up the Root Valley Bike Trail. On one side of the highway was a large fiberglass trout. As I photographed it, I noticed that on the other side was a small bowling alley. Game on. We tried to settle it right then and there, but it was too early in the morning and they couldn’t open the lanes.

The Root River is a shallow, clear stream with a silt bottom. Its valley has carved small, pretty limestone bluffs that offer some elevation change, which is a big deal in Minnesota. The trail is over 40 miles long and is paved throughout, with handsome bridges every so often and occasional stops in small towns that range from completely tarted up to recently rebuilt. It was our first day of cycling through

deciduous woods, after weeks of ranchland and cultivated fields, and the weather was beautiful. The woods looked similar to the Finger Lakes, and it was surprising to see how fast the leaves had turned. It was warm and sunny, and we reveled in the smell and crunch of dry leaves under our tires. It was especially fine to have no cars in sight. It felt like a day off.
We met lots of attractive retired couples riding tandem recumbent bicycles they had rented in Lanesboro. The bikes took up almost the whole eight-foot strip of pavement. Jim and I zipped past them like bike-path pirates, pumping away. Golden light was reflected through the leaves. It felt like we were crashing a commercial for erectile disfunction pills. As I crept up on the unsuspecting 60-ish couples, I had this thought: when the moment arrives, will you be ready?

We stopped for lunch in Lanesboro. The counter man told us that in 1980 you could have bought the entire town for $25,000. Today it has been completely resuscitated, thanks to the bike path and the discretionary spending of southern Minnesota’s retirees. I found a German deli and had an excellent braunschweiger sandwich with onions, mayo, and homemade mustard on German rye, along with coleslaw and homemade root beer. Back on the road, we scattered a pack of blue-shirted retirees who were happily chugging away on mountain bikes. Their shirts identified them as the “health angels.” One of the guys almost rode into us before he veered to the side. “Sorry,” said an older woman. “I didn’t yell at him.”

“Only in Minnesota would people actually wear shirts like that,” said Jim.

After an hour, we stopped in Peterson so that Jim could get a milkshake at Judy’s Café. I didn’t need anything, so I hung out near the front door and read the items posted there. I saw this poem and photo:
“On the 6th of March in two thousand seven,
The table of knowledge met,
With Bertram, Percy, Allen and Joe,
The big problems were no sweat,
Of course we met at Judy’s café,
A super good place to eat,
We had coffee, cookies, a short stack and eggs,
The food here just can’t be beat.”

The photo of the Table of Knowledge was perfect. If you looked up “small town diner” in the dictionary, this photo would probably be next to the definition.

Jim and I needed to settle our dispute, so after another picturesque half-hour of riding we pulled into the gleaming new Nordic Lanes in Rushford to bowl one game. I went first, and neither of us did well. I got a spare in the fifth and nine on my first roll in the sixth, and it looked as if my boast would come true. At the end of six frames, I had a whopping 62 to Jim’s 41. But Jim came roaring back with a strike in the seventh, and in the eighth frame I fell apart with a gutter ball and just one pin on my second roll. In the ninth and tenth frames I put the ball solidly in the pocket, and each time all the pins went down but one, which wobbled but stood. Some days you just don’t get the breaks. Final score: Jim 116, Brad 99. Until we meet again, Kersting.

Jim Kitchens, the owner of Nordic Lanes, explained that the building was new because the entire town of Rushford was submerged in August 2007. The area received 17 inches of rain over a weekend, and a usually tiny side creek flooded the town. About 370 buildings were damaged; many were completely destroyed. The town has been more or less completely rebuilt, thanks to a state flood relief bill. Jim Kitchens got a new bowling alley and restaurant, and he says that when al is said and done he will need to pay the state about $50,000. “It’s a different place, but business is back to where it was before the flood,” he said. We congratulated him, gathered up our things, and pushed on.

We saw an eastern hog-nosed snake sunning itself on the asphalt. When it sensed us, it raised its head up like a cobra; very impressive. A few miles down the road, Jim said, “Hey, isn’t that the bowling alley guy?” It was. “This is going to sound crazy,” he said, “but I think one of you took my wallet.” It was my mistake. Jim Kitchen’s wallet and mine were exact look-alikes, and I had put both of them in my bike bag. I melted into a grease spot with embarrassment and was preparing to get yelled at or punched, but he was Minnesota Nice about it to the core. “I could tell you guys weren’t thieves,” he said. “Have a good ride.”

We rode into Houston and camped at a municipally owned nature nenter at the eastern terminus of the trail. It had a huge, spiffy bathroom with a shower like you’d find at the Hilton. It was unbelievable but true that the whole center was supported by donations from riders and volunteers in Houston, which has fewer than 1,000 residents. Sometimes Minnesotans are just too good to be believed. I slept in a large new bandshell that the Lions Club had just completed. There was a marsh nearby, and the rhythmic chants of frogs and cicadas quickly put me in a deep sleep. Tomorrow we cross the Mississippi.

I always used to say that if you’re bored, it is your own fault. It means that you aren’t looking hard enough because something interesting is always there. On Tuesday and Wednesday, September 23 and 24, Minnesota’s county roads tested this truism. Each day was a trek of more than 70 miles through flat fields of corn and soybeans, punctuated by well-kept farmhouses. Sometimes 10 or 12 miles would go by before I noticed something (anything) different. On Tuesday we did meet three interesting men, though, and we did beat the rain.

We started off from Jackson around 9am, expecting to get wet. It was humid with a strong wind from the south, and the forecast called for thunderstorms. Minnesota’s Transportation Department publishes bicycle maps that show traffic counts and shoulder widths for state and county roads; we used these to chart a course parallel to and just south of Interstate 90. We would happily have charted a less direct route for scenery or some other notable thing, but we just couldn’t find anything (except for a “Liver and Onion Feed” coming up at the Eagles Lodge, but we couldn’t stay). So we hit the flat road, leaned into the wind, and burned up the morning.

The first interesting man was Larry Vogel, who owns the bike shop in Fairmont. Larry doesn’t advertise, he isn’t on the Internet, and he doesn’t want to be photographed. His shop is the only one in the 200 or so miles between Sioux Falls and Albert Lea. He plays horns in a group called the Tarnished Brass, and used to teach school. His shop is a chaotic combination of 20th Century bicycles of all types, metal toys, model railroad cars, tiny buildings for model railroad layouts, band equipment, sheet music, and a few bikes and other things for sale. The bikes are clearly not the main items. Larry did have the replacement safety flag Jim needed, though, and he gave us excellent route advice.

Larry is heading off to Wyoming next week to ride the Wind River Range, and he and Jim had a pleasant chat the way two Midwestern men do: with not much eye contact, watching their own shoes, and being helpful while also practicing one-upmanship. By the way, Larry has some top-of-the-line Trek road bikes ($2,000 to $4,000 or so retail) that he’s selling for ridiculously deep discounts just to get rid of them. If you want one, he would be worth a call.

The second interesting fellow was in Blue Earth, and you also know him. The town keeps an 80-foot statue of the Jolly Green Giant next to Interstate 90, conveniently (for us) located next to the Dairy Queen. Jim climbed between the Giant’s legs and tried to grab his niblets, but he couldn’t reach high enough. I honestly don’t think the Giant has any, anyway.

The third interesting man was Paul More. Paul is the father of the young man who offered tea to Jim and Paul Kersting during a rainstorm outside of Yellowstone Park (for the complete story, see Jim’s post for Day 21). The tea-bringing Good Samaritan had said that his father owned an agricultural implement store in Blue Earth. We happened to ride by and Paul was outside, using an enormous wrench to bust a nut on a combine. He seemed pleased to hear that his son had made a kind and thoughtful gesture. We shared observations on what a small world it is. Then I heard thunder and we got back on the road.

We had ten miles to go and rain was building to the south and west. Scattered drops started to fall. They were big ones. I thought it was going to be another day of slogging through the last 45 minutes and arriving soaked. We pushed harder and managed to stay just on the fuzzy line where rain was imminent or maybe starting but not heavy. As we turned onto the gravel road that lead to Piehls County Campground, six miles south of Wells, a cold downdraft hit us and I was sure we were going to get it. We screamed into the campground and put our bikes under the camper, which Sara the Blessed had already set up. Within ten minutes, it was raining cats and dogs.

What intense pleasure and gratitude I felt, sitting in the dry camper with the rain pounding on the roof, knowing that my bike and shoes were dry and would be dry in the morning. Piehls had no wireless internet access, but the campground manager showed up later, refused to charge us when she learned we were riding for charity, and then offered to let me use her computer. The landscape may be boring, but the people in Minnesota are pretty great. The rain ended and there was a gorgeous sunset. As night fell, we watched a flock of turkeys calmly pecking at the edge of the cornfield next to the camper.

Day 44: Wells to Spring Lake, MN

We started early and had ridden perhaps 40 miles before Jim let out a whoop and circled back. “I found more money!”, he said. Looking closer, he found that it was only a spent, rolled up lottery ticket. That was about the most interesting thing that happened before noon. We rolled right through Albert Lea with only the briefest of bathroom breaks, and continued until we reached Austin, which as everyone knows is the home of Spam.

The Spam Museum is next to the Hormel Corporation’s headquarters. It’s free, and no expense has been spared. A wall of more than 3,000 cans of Spam encircling a spinning globe dominates the entrance. The Hormel people are well aware of their brand’s kitschy image and the many jokes that surround it, and the museum is a weird attempt to share in that self-deprecating humor while also shoveling vast quantities of corporate propaganda. I learned that Spam became a global product thanks to a massive procurement contract from the Defense Department during World War II, and I saw decades of print and television ads the company created to pound Spam into all of our heads. Spam has its own website now and yes, Hormel says, they are aware of the irony in this. The one true moment of genius in the museum is Monty Python’s sketch about ordering spam in the Green Midget Diner. This shows on demand in a scale model of the diner itself. Otherwise, the museum was kind of slick and creepy.

We spent an hour at the museum and another hour finding a milkshake, then rode off for another 30 miles through the cornfields. Wind turbines in cornfields are not surprising to us at this point, but this afternoon we saw hundreds of them. The fields were crowded with them, mile upon mile. Why? We saw an office for Horizon Wind Energy in Grand Meadow and stopped to ask. “This area has a lot of wind,” said Kevin Clark, a manager there. “It also has good access to transmission lines, and it is near Rochester and Minneapolis-St. Paul, which are reliable customers. You really need all three things to put up a lot of wind turbines.”

Horizon owns 61 turbines south of Highway 16 between Austin and Spring Lake. Two other companies also have large wind farms nearby. Wells said that Horizon’s turbines could power maybe 100,000 homes when they were running at peak capacity, but that they’d average enough power to supply about 35,000 homes.

The turbines are 400 feet high from the base to the tip of the blade. That is quite an intrusion in some landscapes, but out in Minnesota, where there isn’t anything else to see except corn, I think they’re beutiful. They look like good news.

We rode a few more miles to a campground outside of the small town of Spring Lake, about 30 miles south of Rochester.  It wasn’t much of a campground, but we didn’t have much choice, either.

Sunday and Monday were rest days. Jim and Sara stayed at the home of Dave and Joan Hargan in Jim’s hometown of Jackson, MN. Brad and Tania joined them at the Hargan home on Sunday for dinner but stayed at an inn on Lake Okoboji, about 20 miles south, until Tania’s flight left on Monday. Brad went to Jackson on Monday and got a top-quality massage from Coni Hutchings. He then floated over to the Hargan home, where he and Jim met with friends on Monday night to talk about the ride (lots of questions about bears) and old times (Jim’s). The Hargans were generous, funny, and kind to three weary travelers, and we are much obliged. On Tuesday morning the 23rd we headed east on Minnesota Route 16, which was once U.S. Highway 16 but is now a quiet state highway that parallels Interstate 90.

We rode into Iowa on a county road just north of State Route 9 on Friday, September 19. We were within a few miles of Route 9 on Saturday as we rode into Spirit Lake. Jim turned north on Sunday to get to Jackson, Minnesota, riding along US Highway 71. Brad followed a day later. We were riding through platted townships, so we used quiet county roads parallel to the state highways as much as possible. We blocked out the route on the major roads and then used the state’s official bicycling map to make specific decisions.  It’s a great map.

Monday, September 22 was a rest day in Jackson, Jim’s home town. On Tuesday we rode a mile north of Jackson, crossed Interstate 90, and picked up State Route 16. This was once a Federal highway that went from Detroit to Yellowstone, but in Minnesota and Michigan the US government switched its spending to the interstate. The road is still there, however, and we followed it most of the way across the state. On Tuesday night we stayed at a county-owned campground in Wells. On Wednesday we were at a private RV park outside of Spring Lake. On Thursday we reached the Root River Rail Trail, which gave us a 40-mile break from traffic and a wonderful campsite at a public nature center in Houston. On Friday we continued east and crossed the Mississippi River to LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

We had breakfast on Friday the 19th at the home of Jeff Tanner, the newly hired assistant city manager of Freeman, South Dakota. Sara had met him on the phone the day before, and he wanted to learn about the ride. We did the best we could to pack six weeks of stories into the hour we had together, and in return we met an interesting guy in an unusually progressive small town. Freeman has a clock tower that chimes every 15 minutes until 11pm, when it thoughtfully stops. The central business district is getting a facelift. As we left, volunteers were gathering in the city park to build a playground. Jeff is starting his career in public administration here, working on a Ph.D at night, shuttling back and forth to Denver to see his girlfriend, and riding his bike whenever he can fit it in. Jim and I coveted his youthful energy. He had good tips on county roads we could use instead of the state highway, too.

The south wind was still there but it wasn’t as fierce. We turned onto route 44 with a 70-mile ride before us. Flat and straight; corn, soybeans, corn. Jim coped in his usual way, by hunting for roadside treasures. The day before, he had found a heavy pair of pliers painted DOT orange. Today he started off by bagging a plastic tractor grille (he didn’t keep it). We rode for an hour and came into Parker, the seat of Turner County, which has a beautiful 1902 Courthouse and also beautiful donuts on display just down the street. We gorged on peanut logs and fritters at Herding’s Bakery and decided that we would add a pastry survey of the Upper Midwest to our work list. Five miles down the road I started having second thoughts about this plan. Eating donuts before a workout is probably similar to getting drunk before going to work at a convenience store. It seems like a good idea until your stomach gets back to your brain.

The county road we found was so quiet that we could ride down the middle of the asphalt for long stretches with no hands on the handebars. We stopped to inspect abandoned schoolhouses and farms once or twice. Mostly we kept going until we reached the City of Tea, SD. Really. The story is that the locals had a hard time coming up with a name when they applied for a post office at the turn of the century. They were German immigrants who saw afternoon tea as a necessity. Now there is a teapot collection in City Hall and the annual Teapot Days festival features fair food, fireworks, a mock bank robbery, and mud volleyball. We met up with Sara at a donut shop. The iced tea was strong and home-brewed.

Tea is a few exits south of Sioux Falls on Interstate 29, and we clipped the southeast edge of the metro’s sprawl as we continued east. The traffic difference is noticeable when you get to outer suburbs. City drivers don’t pay attention as well as rural drivers do, or maybe they’re just meaner. They are more likely to pull out in front of you, or to pass you at highway speed without moving over. We rode past the construction site for Harrisburg High School, which is clearly planning to be engulfed by the housing tracts that loom just over the northwest horizon. “I’m not ready for this,” said Jim. “Let’s get back to the country.”

Tania’s flight landed in Sioux Falls around noon. She expertly commandeered a rental car, made cell phone contact, and caught up with us at the Iowa border. There was no sign on the county road welcoming us, but we knew it was Iowa because we rode across the Big Sioux River. The soil had gotten darker. There was more moisture, too — enough that we saw frogs and turtles for the first time. The corn was thicker and taller. After 20 miles, another flat tire, and a milkshake at a convenience store in Larchwood, we stopped for the night at the first real Iowa town, Rock Rapids.

We took rooms at the only motel in town (which was clean and a steal at $55) and went into recovery mode. Tania had brought anti-puncture liners from Cayuga Ski & Cyclery. I put them inside my tires while she sat nearby with Jim and Sara, drinking wine and amusing herself at my expense. Then we went for a walk downtown to the only local restaurant we could find. What a find it was.

The B&L Vintage Brew And Sugar Shack serves home-cooked meals in an antique store. It is family owned and run, and the woman who waited on us was eager to share her stories of Iowa’s Republican Primary. She told us about how many hands John McCain shook when he came through town in January (one, hers) and who was nicest (Mitt Romney and his wife). Her sister overheard and came out of the kitchen to tell us that Rudy Giuliani had given a speech standing right over there, but that nobody liked him much. The food was great and nobody was in a hurry. It was great to have Tania back on the crew.

Rock Rapids wasn’t a wealthy place, but its Craftsman houses and ornate commercial buildings evoked a much more genteel past. It has been the starting point for the Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) several times. The B&L Café people went on and on about how exciting and fun it was when the riders came through. We resolved to come back (for the umpteenth time), and the café owners said they’d remember us if we did. Stuffed and well-loved by local townsfolk, we waddled off to bed.

Day 40: Rock Rapids to Okoboji, IA

Saturday the 20th was the sixth straight day of rides averaging 70 miles or more, and Jim and I were tired. We were spurred on by the thought of back-to-back rest days on Sunday and Monday, along with Jim’s return to his hometown of Jackson, Minnesota. We also found a county road that would keep us off of State Route 9 for most of the day. We set off early and got off the state road before traffic built up, and soon we were riding the roads of Lyon County again. Every so often we’d see an abandoned farm and outbuildings that seemed to talk, although you had to stop and listen. And after an hour Jim stopped to announce that we’d ridden 2,000 miles. We banged fists and moved on.

We took a long lunch break in Sibley, where the High School football team (the Generals) was preparing for a big homecoming match against the Indians. Tania caught up with us there and excitedly ran into the local variety store, where she found flour-sack dishtowels and postcards that showed an ear of corn big enough to fill a flatbed.

Another unique aspect of riding through Iowa is the smell. Vertical integration is an economist’s term for the business practice of increasing one’s profits by centralizing the production and refining of a finished product. One example is putting a hog farm in the middle of a cornfield. Feed your corn to hogs and you can sell pork instead of corn. We saw a lot of this and the pork in Iowa is delicious, but the farms smell like a truck-stop bathroom that hasn’t been cleaned recently. We wondered where they put the poop.

Ethanol is another example of vertical integration. Many gas stations in Iowa sell something called “E-85” for about a dollar a gallon less than regular gasoline. It’s 85 percent ethanol and made from Iowa corn. And in many of these cornfields, we saw huge wind turbines that were just being installed. The heartland is turning into a new kind of power plant.

Jim struggled to the top of a 50-foot ridge that is near the highest point in the state of Iowa (1,670 feet). After a 30-mile slog through traffic on Route 9, we came into the region local people call the Great Lakes of Iowa. These are three large glacial lakes – Spirit, West Okiboji, and East Okiboji (pronounced Oh-Ka-BOH-Gee) clustered just south of the Minnesota border in Dickinson County. Okiboji is derived from a Dakota Sioux word meaning “place of rest.” Perfect.

Like the Finger Lakes, Iowa’s glacial lakes have been invaded by out-of-towners with money. And like the Finger Lakes, they boast a fine university, the University of Okoboji.  Except that this one is entirely made-up by local people who maintain the prank to fool tourists and then sell them t-shirts. Jim and Sara found a quiet RV park while Tania and I checked in at the Inn At Okoboji, which is a great old resort and a fine place if you avoid the drunken louts in the wedding party. The lake is beautiful and peaceful and quiet, and we are all exhausted.

On Wednesday, September 17 we left the West and entered the Midwest. I had always wanted to see this transition. It began on Tuesday, when we crossed from the Mountain time zone into Central time. Today we passed the 100th Meridian, the longitudinal line west of which, I had always heard, you cannot grow field crops without irrigation. In reality, this rain line isn’t always exactly on the Meridian. In Nebraska it’s reliably to the west, and in wet years you might get a good corn crop in White River, South Dakota. But I did see the transition today.

We left the free city campsite in White River around 9am. The first thing I noticed was more water, and more animals. There were ponds in the pastures that had been dry before. There was also a lot more birdsong in the early morning; meadowlarks, robins, and other creatures that hadn’t started flying south yet were singing their heads off and making a beautiful racket. We would startle pheasants in the tall grass on the roadside and they’d explode into the sky. This delighted Jim, who pointed his finger at them and yelled “BANG!” Grasshoppers also covered the roadbed. They jumped as we approached, frequently bouncing off our spokes and shins. The landscape was also flatter, with less rising and falling and more straight roads extending to the horizon.

Insurance companies created the rule of the 100th Meridian. They would not write crop insurance policies for farms west of it, which meant that agriculture was much riskier in the west and the land much more likely to be used for grazing. I didn’t see any field crops before today, but as the morning heated up I saw fields of milo, corn, sunflowers, and hay. The balers and combines got bigger. Jim saw the first “no trespassing” sign he had seen in quite a while.

The wind kicked up as the day got warmer. It was a 10 mph crosswind, which is not as good as a tailwind or no wind, but is better than a headwind. A crosswind wears at you with constant noise and grit. The sun and heat added to it. We reached the actual 100th Meridian at route 381, and turned south, riding directly into the wind. That wasn’t good. At the far end of the turn I got a flat tire. Panting and hot, we dragged ourselves into Winner, where Sara joined us for a proper lunch break (sandwiches and milk shakes). We had done 50 miles, and it was 3pm. We had 40 more miles before the campsite.

Another mark of the Midwest is the beginning of platting. On maps you can see that township boundaries west of the Meridian follow river beds, ridges, and who knows what else. East of it everything is carved into neat one-mile squares. Roads run between each of these squares, and many of them have numbered road signs. Out in the middle of a cornfield with no one around, you’ll be at the intersection of 300th Avenue and 271st Street. How long would you have to wait for a bus to come to that corner? And where is Main Street?

Our water bottles were running low at the intersection of state routes 44 and 47. Eleven miles south of that intersection was the town of Gregory, which sounded cool. “With a varied population, comprising a mixed Indian, ranching, and farming group, Gregory has the distinction of being a melting pot for different kinds of people,” says the South Dakota WPA Guide. “Western flavor is mixed with modern, eastern customs. The frontier spirit of the West still dominates, and the people are noted for their liberal tendencies. When they have money, they are willing to spend it; when hard times come, they accept their plight without murmuring.”

Gregory was also the boyhood home of Oscar Micheaux, a writer who is usually cited as the first African-American filmmaker. As a young man in the 1900s, Micheaux successfully homesteaded a farm in Gregory and began writing stories. To get them published, he formed his own publishing company and sold books door-to-door. In 1919 he wrote, directed and produced the silent motion picture “The Homesteader, “starring the pioneering African American actress Evelyn Preer and based on his novel. Micheaux wrote, produced and directed 44 feature-length films between 1919 and 1948. He also wrote seven novels, one of which was a national bestseller. But we didn’t have time to see Gregory. We needed water.

Luckily for us, Ray’s Northstar Saloon was open at the corner. Ray’s was cool and dark, and Ray was friendly. We drank sodas at the bar. “What’s the big bottle for?”, asked Jim.

“It’s a collection for a local woman who wants to go see her grandkids in Egypt,” said Ray.

Jim took out the dollar bill he’d plucked off the road the day before. “This is my lucky dollar,” he said, and he put it in the bottle. Immediately a yellow Labrador Retriever got up off the floor of the bar and put her head in Jim’s lap, looking at him with big brown eyes.

“Olga the Wonder Dog is working you,” said Ray. “Whenever she sees someone get out a bill, she comes over. Give her a dollar and see what happens.”

Jim put another dollar in Olga’s mouth. The dog trotted around the far end of the bar and gave the bill to Ray, who reached up, got a stick of beef jerky out of a jar, and gave it to Olga. “We sell a lot of beef jerky that way,” he said. It was clear to all that karmic balance had been restored.

There was one more sign today that we were leaving the West. We struggled as five o-clock turned into six o’clock to reach our campsite, which was on the west bank of the Missouri River. The last ten miles were beautiful but hilly, as we rode through valleys the Missouri had carved during ice-age floods the likes of which we couldn’t imagine. “We’re like pioneers in reverse,” said Sara. “They knew they were making progress when they crossed the Missouri because they were finally getting to the West. We know it because we’re crossing it headed east.”

We stopped at a spectacular, secluded campsite three miles down a gravel road. It had an expansive view of a completely undeveloped riverbank on the east side, and as night fell a full moon rose over the water. The wind got stronger, too. We had ridden 92 miles, our longest day so far, and we were whipped.

Day 38: Missouri River to Freeman, SD

Psychologists will tell you that the quickest way to drive someone insane is to administer negative stimulus in a random way, so the person never knows when the next jolt is coming. This is what the wind did to us on Thursday the 18th. We started off at 9:30 am. We crossed the river and rode straight east through flat cropland, and the wind was more or less straight from the south. It was maybe a constant 15 mph wind, but as the day wore on it got gusty, and some of the gusts hit (we later learned) 35 mph. “When I saw you ride in here, I shook my head,” said the guy who served Jim his end-of-the-day milkshake. “You guys are really strong. And you’re nuts, too.”

Corn, dry beans, hay, milo, soybeans, sunflowers, more corn. Mile upon mile. “Hey, I saw a gumdrop,” said Jim. “A big green gumdrop lying in the middle of the road.”

“Don’t you dare stop,” I said. “If you stop and eat that, I will call Sara and we’ll drive you to the nearest psych ward.”

After two or three hours we rode into the tidy little town of Platte, which had just celebrated its high school homecoming. We got sticky buns at a café with scripture written on the walls, and listened to locals discussing their Bible study classes. Later we rode past a big school, which looked like a large public school, but was in fact the Dakota Christian Academy. The football team in Platte is called the Black Panthers. We were a long, long way from Oakland.

The wind wore and wore and wore at us, with no shelter possible until at last we saw a Lutheran church and lay down in its shadow. We lay there for five minutes or so in silence. “I guess nobody is going to bring us lemonade,” said Jim. We pushed on.

Jim admitted to feeling kind of depressed because his roadside treasure hunt wasn’t going well. He had seen a baseball cap from a dairy that was too dirty to pick up; assorted Bic lighters; and the gumdrop. I saw a beat-up aluminum cooking pot. But that isn’t much for 60 miles. It wouldn’t have been so dull had it not been for the wind. When you’re speeding along with your head up, you can see more. But we had kept our heads down all day bedause we had to focus on not being blown over. The reward came at the end of the ride in Parkston, where we encountered a large, cheerful fiberglass chicken and the milkshake referenced above.

It was a hard day, but the wind is forecast to be lighter tomorrow. The Parkston campground was horrid, and we were in no mood to ride further, so Sara, as usual, had a solution. We drove 30 miles further to Freeman, where a fine municipal campground awaited us. Calling ahead about it, Sara had gotten into a conversation with a town employee who invited us over to breakfast at his house on Friday. And on Friday afternoon, Tania flies into Sioux Falls to visit for the weekend. Things are looking up.

We weren’t cheating, really. The 70 miles we rode from Spearfish to the Crazy Horse Monument were not exactly on the route; they were extra. This is the justification we used to avoid the schlocky billboards, tourist traffic, and sprawl of state highway 44 between the Black Hills and Rapid City. Sara drove us to the east end of the city, where the road is being four-laned through farms to an airport several miles out of town. This move virtually guarantees further sprawl on the Denver model, and it was sad to see. Forty-four became a two-lane road as soon as we were past the airport. We set off at 9:45 am.

Although the mountains were behind us, the road was far from flat. There was a nice stiff tailwind, though, and we cruised at about 20 miles per hour through fenced grassland. After 90 minutes of this, I told Jim that I loved this fast, effortless riding and could go all day. There was a slight pause.

“There is a boredom factor,” he said.

“Then you just have to retreat into your inner life,” I said.

“I tried that,” he said. “After 45 minutes, I was done.”

I tend to go into a trance on long rides. I lose track of time and notice less and less of the countryside until I shake myself out of it. Jim doesn’t do trances. He is a highly observant person, and when the landscape doesn’t change much, his focus shifts to the micro level. I noticed a nice steel dinner fork lying on the side of the road. I wondered whether it was thrown there intentionally (a domestic argument?), dropped off the back of a load (a self-move?), or was the fault of a thoughtless litterbug who threw his empty lunch bag out the window and is going to catch hell from the wife when he gets home. While I was musing in this manner, Jim found a ruby red stone that looked like a game piece, a cell phone with a dead battery, and a pair of size 9 women’s cut-off jeans, freshly washed. He put them all in his bulging bike bag.

The road rose up and down, climbing in and out of swales and gulches. Waving grass lined both sides of the pavement. “The grass was the country, as the water is the sea,” wrote Willa Cather in her novel of the prairie, My Antonia. “The red of the grass made all the great pasture the color of a wine stain . . . and there was so much motion in it; the whole country seems, somehow, to be running.”

Then I saw something so weird even I noticed. It was a green concrete brontosaurus, perhaps 40 feet long, alone in a horse pasture with no sign, no nothing. It took me a moment to realize that this was the famous Creston Dino. Mike Bedeau of the Society for Commercial Archeology, in his 1994 guide to the Black Hills and Badlands, explains that state route 44 was built parallel to a 1907 rail line called the Milwaukee Road. When automobiles started multiplying in the early 1920s, the owners of the Creston Store decided to try some advertising and built the beast by covering an iron framework in concrete. The store fell down a long time ago, but fans of the dinosaur keep it in fresh paint and plaster.

We coasted downhill through a big grove of cottonwoods and crossed the Cheyenne River, then climbed a long way out of the valley. If all you know of South Dakota is driving through on I-90, you might think the state is flat. It is not. They built I-90 up there because that one transect is flat. We kept climbing and coasting all day. After 25 miles we came to one of only two settlements we’d see that day: Scenic, which is named for the scenery of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands and Badlands National Park. Scenic used to be the second-biggest voting precinct in the county, according to Bedeau, but it has withered until all that remains is a solitary, dilapidated gas station and several stores that may or may not ever be open. One of these is the Longhorn Saloon, which dates to 1906. The sign used to read “No Indians Allowed” because a Federal law prohibited serving alcohol to Indians. It was ignored. A message in Lakota on the other side of the sign translates as, “welcome.” Scenic also has its own concrete dinosaur. He is a cute black pterodactyl with a five-foot wingspan in front of a homemade obelisk.

We filled our water bottles and started the last 30 miles through federal land. The Badlands are made of soft sedimentary rock laid down after the dinosaurs became extinct, so the concrete dinos are all the remains you’ll see of those animals. But they are still a world-class fossil site. They are eroded into fantastic shapes by rains in the winter and spring, and whenever pieces of the canyons wash away, bones are exposed from creatures that lived here over the last 70 million years. The jaw of a rhinoceros-like creature was discovered in 1843. The region was first recgnized when a paper describing this creature, a “titanothere,” was published in 1846. Paleontologists have been walking up and down the washes ever since. The talk at the visitor center was about a huge dig for the remains of pig-like animals that had been triggered when hikers noticed bones sticking out of the side of a wash.

We rode through Interior, which had a store, two bars, two churches, a park, and somebody who cared about the place. A sign near the park gave the town itself a voice. “I was born of wagons west,” it read. “The oldest town in the Badlands. I have known drought and winter’s fierce storms. Three times fires have swept my streets. Yet my rodeos were known throughout the west. Jakima Knute, Stroud, Earl Thode. Champions all have ridden my arenas. The great Jim Thorpe has played my fields. The early music of Lawrence Welk has sounded in my nights. This is a land that bred great Indian chiefs and mighty warriors. Now it is a land of neighbors. WELCOME TRAVELER.”

Wow. Indian chiefs, Jim Thorpe, AND Lawrence Welk!  Welk was a North Dakota native who honed his accordion-playing chops in small towns like this one before he hit the big time. We rode a few miles more and stayed the night in a “KOA Kampground,” which was clean and cheesy. By corporate order, within these property all the Cs in the alphabet had been eliminated and replaced by Ks. A full moon lit the night so brightly that you could read by it,

Day 36: Interior to White River, SD
The ride on Tuesday, September 16 took us though the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is known to its residents as the Ogalala Lakota Nation. Within this huge area is the site of the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890, which pretty much ended Sioux resistance to U.S. authority. But not completely.  Eighty years later, it was also the site of a shootout between members of the American Indian Movement and the FBI. I would have liked to spend days here, riding around and investigating several signs of a Lakota renaissance, but we had to do another 70 miles. So once again I was forced to see what I could from the bike seat. Keep pumping, keep drinking, keep moving.

Shortly after we set off, we passed an elaborate roadside memorial cross. I rode right by it. Down the road Jim caught up to me and said,” I’m off to a good start. I found a dollar bill back there in the grass.”

“How far back?”, I asked.

“Right about where the cross was,” he said.

“Maybe it’s an offering,” I said. “You might be stealing from the dead.”

On the left side of the road stretched miles of 10-inch blue PVC water pipe. The ground next to it had been disturbed, in preparation for its burial. Ten years ago, the two counties that make up this reservation were among the places with the highest proportion of households that did not have indoor plumbing. Maybe that’s changing now. The pipe went on for miles and miles. We later saw a sign saying the project would deliver water all the way from Kyle to Wamblee, and was paid for by the Bureau of Reclamation.

Wamblee looked like it was built and paid for with federal funds. We saw a Head Start office, a Senior Center, a Health Clinic, a Lakota College office, a Food Distribution Site, and lots of neat modular houses scattered about the prairie. We rode by the Crazy Horse School in time to see the kids marching back inside from recess. Public schools in Indian country try to teach Indian culture as well as the three Rs. A newspaper told us that the Crazy Horse Middle School students had recently participated in a ritual killing and skinning of a buffalo. A 15-year-old boy won a drawing and was given the honor of pulling the trigger.

We stopped at the one store in Wanblee for water, and I was struck by how talkative the people in the parking lot were. Out on the highway, there were a lot more smilers and wavers in the cars. Indian country seemed like a friendly place.

“You might say that I saved the dollar bill from oblivion,” Jim said later. “It was not attached to the cross. Even if it did start there, it had blown into the path of the mowers.  It was going to be chopped up into bits. So I think I saved it.”

After noon the temperature got into the 90s, the first time in many weeks that this had happened. We rode on through the grassland, still rising and falling but less than it had yesterday. Jim, who says he would have been a good detective (and I definitely agree), noticed a small sign behind the fence and pulled over. It read, “This famous old Indian trail from Leslie and Cherry Creek thru Midland then S.E. to Rosebud was used by Chief Sitting Bull and Chief Hump traveled from Leslie and Cherry Creek Territory to Rosebud Reservation (and) back.” I looked at the horizon and tried to see Sitting Bull and Hump on horseback, or maybe in a Model T, bumping along through the grass. It probably looked the same then as it does now, except that the road isn’t as easy to see.

Further on, we stopped in front of a store that looked from a distance as if it might be open, but which close up was revealed to be wrecked and abandoned. “Here’s how to make sure that this dollar bill does not do any damage to your karma,” I said. “Next time you’re in a store and there’s a charity bucket next to the cash register, to help the Humane Society of the school chorus or a boy who has leukemia, put the dollar in the bucket. It was given as a tribute, and you’ll be continuing in that spirit. Then you’ll be off the hook.”

“OK,” said Jim. “But I can’t go out of my way to do it. It has to be something I just come across.”

We exited the reservation and rode a few more miles. We pulled into White River, which is a few stores and a school at the intersection of two highways, and where most of the residents seem to be Indians. We found a nice municipal campground where we could stay for free. We were the only people there. The moon rose and dogs barked in the distance, but after riding 75 miles it’s easy to tune them out.

No doubt everyone is wondering what we are riding on and carrying with us during the day. Sara is carrying all the camping gear. But we’re still loaded down.

My bike is a TREK 520 ($1,200), a steel touring bike that weighs approx. 30 lbs. with the three bottle carriers, rear rack, and extra liners in the tires. My tires are currently a mix of brands; Bontrager and Continental Gatorskins ( $40 each). Each tire is fortified by a line of thick plastic tape between tire and tube, so minor pinprick flats don’t happen. I have only had 2 flats in 1,600 miles. I ran over a jagged piece of metal that tore a 2″ gash in one tire….wooosh went that tube. And 2 days later wooosh went $50 for a new tire. The bike and all the gear/water/food/clothing weigh about 50 lbs.

In the rear bag I carry the following: assorted bandages; 2 tubes & tube repair kit, tire levers, spoke wrench, all purpose tool, latex gloves to attempt to keep grease off the hands and clothing, electrical tape to put a temporary “patch” on large holes in the tires, leather gloves to assist in getting the tire back on the rim ( very stiff tires/ weak fingers), a portable but not small air pump that will pump 120 psi ( $40 for those who wonder what good equipment costs) Most pumps stop at 80 psi. I also carry handiwipes, sunscreen, vitamin I (Ibuprofen, for those of you under age 40), a flashing red tail light, a small canister of bag balm, an extra knee brace in case my good knee goes bad, reading glasses, and finally pepper spray for dogs. This is really just a psychological aid, since it is so buried in the pack I could never retrieve it while on the move.

The rear bag can also have any or all of the following: an orange vest, one of three extra pairs of gloves for warmth/ wind/ rain protection, a heavy duty rain jacket and pants ( which cost more than $200), and leg and arm sleeves that can be pulled up or down as needed for warmth. I might pull them up for a cold 30 mph downhill or roll them down for a long uphill. I also carry one of three different caps under my helmet for sun/wind/cold protection, and a neck gaiter for cold. There are lots of clothing choices, and we don’t always guess right, especially this past Saturday when we started out from Spearfish in a cloudless sky and temps in the 70’s and ended up in a north wind driven cold front with low 40’s and rain. This has happened to us before so we should know better.

It never fails that guys will ask us how our butts handle those tiny seats. I observe that cyclists have a variety of approaches. Mine was to throw $125 at the problem. Thanks to Chad at the Geneva Bike Center back home, it was the best money I ever spent. I bought two pair, and my previous ” way too expensive” $75 pair have not been used on this trip. What do you get for that over- the- top price?

You get “Baboon butt” one-piece foam padding that will return to its original density and shape. And leg grippers that work. And the padding does not give you that diaper between your legs look. We hate that.

Warning: the following text could be disturbing to children and certain adults.

Most touring cyclists will use some kind of ” crotch butter/gel/cream” to prevent chafing. I go to my local ag supply store to buy mine. It is also known as udder butter. Mooo.

Shoes have clips on the soles that fix ( trap) the shoe and foot to the pedal for a more effective and efficient pedal stroke. They allow you to not only push down but pull up. It took two falls to earn to unclip them before stopping. My shoes come with red flame socks, thanks to my two grandkids Alison and Emma.

Neoprene over- boots help keep some heat in on cold wet rides, but do not keep water out.

I learned about energy bars from Brad. He prefers “Clif bars” which he calls hippie cookies. I like Luna bars, but they are marketed for women. After a long ride, we get a bit punchy and the same old jokes start flying about our bar choices. On a 70 mile ride I will eat 4-5 bars, each of which has approx. 200 calories, 30 grams of carbs, and 10 grams of protein. I use Gatoraid in my water to add about 200 more grams of carbs during a 5-7 hour ride. My energy level remains high for most of the rides, depending on wind direction. We have had head winds during portions of most every ride for the past several weeks.

I also carry a cell phone, camera, cap, and my “junior ranger” wallet. Not pictured are the maps that we carry and usually refer to. We have not had much insight on elevation changes for some of our roads. We really paid dearly for that yesterday in the Black Hills ( aka Black Mountains).

That is what 20 lbs of “gear” can look like. What have I forgotten?