Day 55: Why not...?

Woke up in Rugby and watched some TV… apparently it was gonna warm up today, so I probably should not have killed so much of the cool morning hours watching VH1… but it was kinda funny for once. I check out of the hotel and soon after… check out of town... So long Rugby: Geographical center of the US!

Today’s ride is OK… kind of uneventful…. Pretty flat… It gets pretty warm in the afternoon. I am racing the clock to get to Minot (pronounced My -Knot), so I could hit up Val’s Cyclery and buy a new rear view mirror. Also… since I got the new chain, my shifting has been all sorts of screwy… so maybe Val or one of her minions might have some insight.

Minot is the third largest city in North Dakota (pop 36K) and you can bet I am excited for a taste of civilization. According to Tyler and Matt in Fargo… The town motto for Minot… is "WHY NOT MINOT?" That motto is just an invitation for clever retorts.

I take a short break in Towner (Cattle Capitol of North Dakota…. Yes…. THAT Towner) and put some of my free “weekend minutes” to good use and call up Greg. Apparently nothing has changed back in Brooklyn since I left almost 2 months ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long).

I play phone tag with Don Andrews (Fargo Tyler’s Uncle) for most of the day. He has agreed to put me up for the evening… and it goes without saying how cool that is. I decide to eat lunch in Granville… but when I stop… the place is an absolute ghost town… it’s straight out of a David Lynch film…. So creepy. I can’t find any sign of life anywhere except for a working coke machine. I buy a coke and get absolutely devoured by mosquitoes… so I get out of there as fast as possible. About 3 miles outside of the “town”…. I sit down in someone’s driveway and drink my coke.

Eventually I make it into Minot at 4:00pm, thinking I have just enough time to swing by the bike shop… but apparently No…. I am 2 hours too late.

WHY NOT close everything at 2:00pm on Saturday in MINOT? WHY NOT make sure everything is also closed on Sunday in MINOT? I’m a little frustrated by this and so retreat to McDonalds up the street. WHY NOT drown my frustration in Chicken McNuggets in MINOT? I realize that I can hit up a bike shop in Williston (2 days from now)… and so everything is cool again.

I call Don and Caroline Andrews and they are heading out to a birthday party, so I need to get over to their house fast, so as not to make them late. I show up, they quickly give me the grand tour, tell me to make myself at home and they head out. I take off my shoes, relax and pull out my maps and proceed to study them for hours. I find a wifi signal and check wind, weather etc… I talk to Matt P who is only 1 day ahead of me… Looks like there’s a chance we might meet back up on the road in Montana at some point, which would be fun.

I muster up the courage to check my bank account and my calendar, and it immediately puts me in a bad mood. It seems I probably don’t have the time or the resources to ride the entire Pacific Tier, which is kind of a depressing revelation. I call up my friend Mike in Pittsburgh, who tends to act as consigliere in these sorts of situations. He’s convinced that I should conserve my resources by skipping ahead on the Northern Tier to the Rocky Mountains, and use those 9 – 10 saved days on the more scenic West Coast, rather than on the plains of Montana… What he says makes sense… So again the question is:

WHY NOT take a train to Glacier Park from MINOT?

I don’t really have a good answer to that, but I feel compelled to finish this leg of the trip before worrying about the next… even if at the expense of the next… I am admittedly a completist... (I have 10 or 12 Yo La Tengo albums on my ipod to attest to that fact) and would hate having to say that I rode “almost” all the way across the country. I stop myself before going too far down the “what if” path… I’m just gonna stick to the plan and see what happens when I am in Seattle.

Eventually the Andrews return from their party and we talk for a few minutes, but I am just way too tired to stay awake. Very nice people; their son lives about 5 minutes from where I grew up in Florida.

So… I gotta say that Minot is actually a cool little town. Can you ignore the fact that it’s in the middle of nowhere and it probably has a 6 month winter?

Probably not.