Thursday, July 4, 2013

Resting in Barnesville MN

I took some time off from riding here in Barnesville Minnesota. After riding from Yellowstone to Missoula and then straight to Fargo basically in one long series of hard rides my body told me it wanted to rest so I took a week off to eat, rest and eat some more. Barnesville is a town of 2500 with one bar, four churches, two gas stations, a Subway and a Dairy Queen with one small grocery store. I am staying at the Lions Club campground just outside of town. The other reason I am resting is because that ride just outside of Jamestown where the road had the expansion joint bumps every ten feet bruised my butt good and there is not much worse than trying to ride with a sore bottom. That problem has already healed itself and my massive eating binge is restoring my body fairly quickly. Yesterday I bought a package of hamburger and some buns and cheese. I sat at the table outside my tent and cooked cheeseburger after cheeseburger until I was full. When I finished my neighbor came over to ask me if I had just eaten 6 hamburgers. I didn't count them as I cooked and ate them but there were only 2 buns out of 8 left in the package so I told her that yes I guess I did just eat 6 cheeseburgers. She was looking kind of stunned as I started to eat a banana while I was talking to her. I can pack in the food but such is life when you burn as many calories as I have been burning up lately. I have been burning between 7 and 10,000 calories a day for weeks and I have not been able to keep up with my food intake so my weight was going down at least a half pound a day. I explained this to her and she told me she was going to take up bike riding in the morning. I know she was joking but I tried to encourage her anyway. The campground I am at has had a few other bikers pass through it while I have been here. They were all fun to talk to. There were some doing 20 miles a day and some trying to do 100 miles a day. All types seem to find their way out on the road. I wish them all luck. I will plan on hitting the road again on Sunday morning heading to southern Wisconsin which should take me about a week to do the 650 miles. Here are a few pics of Barnesville MN...