Day 57: Not Even a Rewarding Challenge

Monday, September 17th

I wake up at 6:00am this morning… It burns! IT BURNS!!!!

I wake up at 6:00am this morning and am packed and ready to go by 6:20am… SO I kill time til the sun rises by eating some of this damned canned food I have been lugging around… French Cut Green Beans, and Bush’s Baked Beans… I swear that once this trip is done, I will never eat baked beans again as long as I live… especially not if they are cold. When I finally get started on Hwy 2…. It is 7:20am and the headwind is already stronger than I care for. My plan is to pedal 36 miles to RAY, where I will eat breakfast at 10:30 and then get back on the road and pedal the next 36 miles to Williston by 2pm.

North Dakota is really redeeming itself today; there are some beautiful descents and really picturesque landscapes. I keep taking pictures of them, but they don’t photograph very well… it requires a panoramic view with a lot of detail in order to get the idea. It’s one of those things you just have to witness for yourself. Remember how beautiful the landscapes were in Brokeback Mountain? Well, it’s even better than that. Trust me. Really cool stuff.

I get a really great breakfast in RAY at “Gas N’ All”. I highly recommend their Western Hash browns. When I get back on the road… the headwinds are RIDICULOUS! Not fun, not enjoyable, not exhilarating, not even a rewarding challenge…. Just plain awful… I only had 20 miles to go before I turned south, so I trudged long at 8mph until I hit the South turn. It was pretty excruciating. I’m really wishing I had my rear view mirror because the shoulder was often non-existent. I did a lot of daydreaming today…

The road south went by pretty quickly. I listened to 1 good Dinosaur Jr album, but also one bad Dinosaur Jr album… and by the end of that bad one… voila! I was there. I stopped into a bike shop and grabbed a helmet mirror, so I’m gonna feel much better on the road. I mess around on the internet… and do some research on tomorrow:

Headwinds again… but much lighter. The only problem is that it’s a 90 mile day! What’s interesting is that the headwinds get lighter as the day goes on… so there’s no real urgent need to wake up too early tomorrow. I’m sleeping in until 8am!

OK… Its much later in the day now, and I am kinda angry… I am supposed to get 3 days of tailwinds this week: Wed, Thurs and Fri… but the weather report has since changed and I will now only be getting a tailwind on Wednesday, before it turns back into a headwind… you can bet I’m going to ride like a maniac from sun up to sun down on that day. I’m so unhappy about this development. Montana… I need you to treat me a little nicer than North Dakota did.

I swing over to Anna and Doug’s place. They are a couple on Warmshowers and have agreed to take me in for the evening. They are really neat people, and I feel really comfortable hanging out with them. We talk politics, Montana and a host of other stuff. They seem to be a small bubble of sanity in an insane state. I sleep on their futon in the living room, and sleep like a King!