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...
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Ride Day 117
Today I rode from Jamestown ND to Barnesville MN 133 miles with 2000’ of climbing in hot bright sun and strong 25-30mph gusty winds that were cross winds for me almost all day long. The winds were tossing me back and forth in my lane on the interstate. Glad I had a ten foot wide shoulder to ride on cause on a smaller road with little or no shoulder I would have been tossed out into traffic. I just ignored the wind though. If there is nothing to do to change something like the wind blowing why worry about it. I try to only worry about things that I might be able to change. The scenery in North Dakota was the same flat grassland and farm land that has been there for the last couple hundred miles so I did not take many pics. I spent last night at Frontier Fort in Jamestown and finally had a great time in North Dakota. I guess I need to take back some of my bad mouthing of the state because not the whole state is a mess just most of it. I wanted a cold drink so I went to the bar at the campground and ended up having a few beers and a plate of ribs that was the nightly special. I could not sit there seeing them and smelling them without indulging but hey they were only $8.95 for the whole rack with potatoes of choice and cold slaw. They were worth it. I was talking to locals not tourists and they were all complaining about the oil workers and the mess it has made of their state. They did reluctantly admit that they were missing out on the boom because they were too far away and they would like to cash in just like everybody else is trying to do. It was fun chatting with them. They just do not understand my bike riding though. Even after I explained my motives for the ride they still thought it was nuts. Well maybe it is just a bit. When I got to Minnesota I had to leave the freeway. Small country roads it will be for the next 1000 miles or so. I tried to avoid riding directly into the wind by taking a road on my map that turned out to be an 8 mile long gravel road. I think it was still better than riding the five miles straight into the 25-30 mph gusty wind. I made it to my destination which was a small campground in Barnesville that a guy told me he just loved and it was only 15 or 20 minutes down the road. I asked him if he was calculating that in driving time or bike riding time and he told me bike riding time. So I took off looking for his camp. 21 miles later down the road he told me to take, I found the campground. I guess he was thinking driving time not bike time. The people in the campground have all been very friendly and helpful. If I wasn’t so tired I could have a good time since they were offering beers and snacks. I am going to go over and hang for a bit when I am done charging my electronics which is a chore I just hate. Tomorrow I am taking the day off then on Sunday or maybe even on Monday, I work my way down to the Lake Wobegone bike trail and ride that for a day or more. I have given up on the Adventure Cycling route and am winging it on my own. I expect to get lost a lot with the lack of road signs and such but what is life without a bit of adventure. More later…
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Ride Day 116
Today I rode from Bismark to Jamestown North Dakota 100 miles 1700' of climbing. The ride was all on interstate 94 and the first 30 miles out of Bismark just about killed me. There were expansion joints about every ten feet that were anywhere from half an inch to an inch and a half and they pounded my butt into a pulp. I am sure I will be black and blue from it in the morning. I hope I can ride tomorrow to get out of North Dakota. I can barely sit down right now I am so sore. I am going to go find a campsite and take a shower then sit in my tent naked to try to cool my sore butt down and help it heal by morning. I think I finally am on the great plains because most of today was flat with only a few long slow grades up and down. I did have a side wind that was usually just to my back but sometimes just to the front of me. I was able to make good time when it was behind me. Not much to look at again today just a bunch of farm land with corn, wheat and hay types crops with a few herds of cattle or dairy cows here and there. The corn will have to grow fast to be knee high by the fourth of July like it is supposed to be cause it is only a few inches right now. There were a lot of temporary lakes around so they must have been getting a lot of rain around here but today was hot and sunny. I only took a couple of pics all day and they were nothing special.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Ride Days 113-115
Well I haven't had wifi access for a few days so I combined the last three days. I am riding across North Dakota right now. I should say I am racing across this state. After being in Montana for so long with all the nice friendly happy helpful people North Dakota is the pits. The people act more like prison guards and haven't been very nice, friendly, happy, or helpful. The oil boom has gone to their heads. Everyone seems to be focused on cashing in on the boom. Hotels are charging crazy rates and they are all full it seems. The campgrounds are all full also so where are tourists supposed to stay? The state is not treating the tourists that come here very well. My advice is to stay as far away from North Dakota as you are able to. Do not come to this place. I hope to be out of here in two more days and that is too long for me. If I could find a quicker way out of here I would grab it. I have had to struggle to find places to spend the night. Last night I did manage to find a campsite about 7 miles off my route. It was ok with a nice lake, Lake Patterson near Dickinson. I got there after calling around to every place I could find and this was the first place with a space. The night before I ended up camping in a Montana State Park near Glendive. That was a nightmare to find also. Then I read all the stuff at the entrance gate rode almost 5 miles to my campsite and when I arrived found that the only water to be found was back at the entrance gate. I think a sign at the entrance could have been helpful. I ended up just using up all the water that I was carrying so did not ride back to get more. I was too tired to do another ten miles as it was I rode 120 miles already that day. Tonight I still have to find a place in Bismark. I did run into another bike rider today out on I-94. He was riding East on the Lewis and Clark trail to St Lois. We talked for a while as we rode along but then I rode on because I wanted to make sure I made it to at least Bismark. He had just had a flat tire as I was leaving but we were at a rest area so he said he was ok to fix it himself. He got his flat from the bane of bike riders, a big, black, badassed, broken bit of steel belted radial tire. The fine little wires in the tires are perfect for causing flats on bike tires. The shoulders of the freeways are covered with bits and chunks of shredded tires. Yesterday a truck blew a tire about 50 to 100 feet behind me. I was watching the truck in my mirror when the tire blew like a bomb. The truck, a dual wheeled utility truck, veered right toward me. I quickly calculated that it would not be able to hit me because it could not change direction fast enough. I watched it as it almost rolled and then the driver got some control back when he took his foot off the brakes and he slowed down enough to muscle it over to the side of the road in front of me. I went up to the drivers window and he looked terrible. He said, "I almost took you out with me." but I reassured him that he was not going to hit me but that he was lucky he did not roll it. He was in shock from fear I think. All he could do was sit there. So I talked to him for a while until he was able to get out and stand up. He said he had a spare and jack so he could change the tire. I left him on the side of the road and hope he was ok. Other than that the ride has been pretty boring just spinning along up and down over all the roller coaster hills in North Dakota. I have been playing a game to amuse myself as I ride. I pick something way off in the distance and guess what my odometer will be when I get there. I am getting pretty good at it after quite a few tries already. I picked one hilltop to be 5.3 miles away and it was 5.4 which is close. Anything under two miles I can get right on now. I have another 200 miles to get out of this hell hole of a state so I have two more days to keep playing this stupid game. I do enjoy the riding despite all my gripes about North Dakota. The badlands were good to see again. I have always liked harsh environments like that for some reason. My camera just does not do justice to the vistas of the badlands. One of these days I would like to redo this route with a decent camera and try to capture some of the beautiful stuff that I can't with my pocket camera. Other than the badlands I also like the smell of fresh cut fields of alfalfa and hay and even the smells from all the cattle and cows. It takes me back to when I was a kid baling hay on Uncle Ernie's dairy farm. I am having some doubts in my head about why I keep riding and I mull over the pros and cons of it all. It is basically just me challenging myself to complete a series of goals. I have set a minimum weight though. If I go below that weight then I will either stop and rest until I gain some weight or I might just end the ride for now. I can't say right now when that might happen but time will tell. More later.
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