Day 52: Tailwinds, D-WIND, Meth and McDonalds

I’m getting a jump on things and posting this now despite the fact that there’s about an hour left in the day… Who knows If I’ll be able to find the internet tomorrow… Unless I swing by that McDonalds on my way out of town… Huh… It is on the way….

I wake up with the sun and its somehow even colder than last night… I roll off of my slab of wooden counter space and pack up my stuff. After a quick trip to the restroom, I roll out of town… My plan is to get 20 miles under my belt and then stop for breakfast in Binford. The tailwind is amazing. I listen to 2 Yo La Tengo albums and it’s the absolute perfect soundtrack for the morning. As the sun gets higher in the sky, I am able to shed s few layers of clothing. I roll into Binford and head to the city park to feast on the massive amounts of cereal Matt and Tyler hooked me up with. I drop my helmet on the ground and break my rear view mirror… which I had just picked up in Fargo…. Damn…. I had really grown accustomed to it too. It makes me feel a LOT safer on the road. I eat breakfast and drink lots of Milk…. Which historically I hate…. But hey…. I guess I’m growing as a person.

I run to the grocery store to pick up some KRAZY GLUE and then try to fix my rear view mirror… but it just doesn’t seem to work… oh well… I meet an old man who apparently met MATT P 2 days ago, and offered him a ride (Matt’s Blog confirms this) north. The guy does not offer me the same ride… Though I don’t think I would have taken it either… at least not today…. These tailwinds are making for the greatest day of riding I have ever done. Wow. Can’t even explain how amazing this morning is. It’s the best biking experience I’ve had outside of New York City. Hills are no obstacle, but rather entertaining… everything flies by at a pace so quick, it doesn’t get boring or stale. Nature sure is swell at a constant, effortless 19mph. Occasionally I have to turn and the tailwind becomes a crosswind…. That’s always a letdown. Oh… but before I leave Binford I stop at the Café and sign my name into this log they keep of all the touring cyclists. It’s really fun to see that sorta stuff. Oh… and I break my 4^th pair of headsets…. My nice Bose earbuds…. That one stung… I’m mad at myself for that. I pick up a really, really crappy pair at the grocery store for $1.99 and they just BARELY work

I enter the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation and I run over and kill a snake… maybe this created some bad karma… or maybe not…. But it wasn’t a very fun time. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous…. But at some point while traveling down Hwy 20, I hear the screeching of tires and look behind me just in time to see a truck come round the bend, careen off the highway, flip over a couple of times and crash into a ditch. I race back to the truck to see if they need help, and when I get there… 4 of the sketchiest, meth-scabbed, shadiest people come crawling out of the car windows. “Are you OK? Do you want me to call an ambulance?” I ask…. “No…. We’re fine” a dark haired, pale woman replies. Her fellow passengers look a little banged up, so I ask again if they want me to call an ambulance…. “NO! WE DON”T NEED AN AMBULANCE! WE’RE FINE!!!” the same woman yells at me. Frankly…. I know just enough about meth to be scared of anyone I suspect to be on meth…. So I hightail it outta there. For the next half hour, I see cop cars, patrolmen, reservation police, and ambulances racing past me to the scene of the accident… I am curious, but not willing to fight with headwinds to see what happened.

After about another 45 minutes of riding…. A reservation police truck pulls up behind me and turns on his lights/siren…. I pull over and out steps DONOVAN WIND… He asks me if I saw what happened, and I relay the events as I remember them. He tells me that they fled the scene and they want to know who drove. I never saw who was driving…. But I saw the guy who piled out of the driver’s side window… I am not good at describing people though, so am not all that helpful. D- WIND is really cool though, and he asks me what I use for protection while on the road, and I show him my dog-pepper-spray; he seems amused and asks me if I also carry a gun, which makes me amused…. Then he tells me that this area I’m in has a real meth problem and that I need to be careful… I hightail it out of the reservation ASAP and get to Devils Lake where I am convinced the Meth problem is at least less dangerous. It’s probably nothing, and I’m sure I’m a suburban white kid overreacting to a foreign environment... but the reservation kind of scares me. I’ll admit it…. Poverty scares the hell out of me. Oh yeah…. While talking to D-Wind, I break my crappy replacement headphones

I am sitting in a McDonalds in Devil’s Lake using their WIFI… when I am approached by a large guy with a thick New York accent…. He asks me if I’m Steve…. It takes me a second to piece it together…. Hey! This must be Art Cavallo…. The guy from Couchsurfing I am supposed to stay with tonight. He takes a seat and we talk for a few minutes. Super nice guy. Born and raised in Brooklyn. He has to run, but tells me to swing by his house whenever I am done at McDonalds/Wal-Mart. I hang out in that McDonalds on the internet for hours…. And then swing by Wal-Mart to pick up a couple sets of respectable headphones. I look for cold weather hats… but they have none. I ride over to Art’s house and I am amazed at how much everything has warmed up today… Now if only it would stay this way. I get to meet Art’s wife, whose name escapes me at the moment… I’m really terrible with names. She is German and they met while he was stationed overseas in the Air Force. They are really great people in that way that few people I’ve met are… Besides being very kind and generous… they instantly put you at ease with their laidback demeanor. It’s good to hear a New York accent, and it’s GREAT to be around a fellow Democrat… I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve seen one of those. Oh, and needless to say, it’s great to talk about Brooklyn. The three of us talk for quite a while, and when they go to sleep, I stay up to work on my journals… It’s supposed to rain tomorrow which is a real drag considering it’s also supposed to be in the 40’s all day tomorrow. This could get hairy…. But luckily I should have a place to stay in Rugby… So tomorrow could go either way… All I know is that tonight I am really happy to be here with the Cavallos in Devils Lake, North Dakota.