July 26 Day 56 Foster City, Michigan 73 miles 6:20 riding

Our friends Larry and Lisa from the Green Bay area have been planning to join us for a day or two of riding. They were held up waiting for the arrival of a baby granddaughter (44 hours of labor for the poor mother). We finally got together at a cafe outside Nelma. They alternated with each other, cycling with us and driving their car. Larry parked ahead of us at one point and pedaled back to meet us. Dogs intercepted him and chased him back to the car! Fortunately, the dogs were distracted by the time the rest of arrived.

Larry and Lisa had to leave us at Alpha, home of the "humongous fungus". We pedaled on to Crystal Falls. Terrific lunch at O'Malley's. We had blithely assumed that we would take a motel room at Sagola, a few miles further on. A thunderstorm caught up with us at Crystal Falls, leading us to call ahead for a reservation. It turned out that there is some sort of fireman's competition at Amazon and there are no motel rooms to be had short of a B&B 37 miles away, including ten miles of road construction. It was a long day.

It turned out to be a blessing. The Mill Town Inn is a two-room B&B over a teeny restaurant known for its Swedish pancakes. There are seven sisters who seems to share the work. The farmers start gathering for coffee about 5:30 in the morning. Amazing pie!

July 25 Day 55 Nelma (Alvin) Wisconsin 51 miles 4:24 riding

Lovely green road with trees practically overarching. We heard loons calling their strange call as we passed White Birch Lake. We crept down to the shore and spotted a pair. Most of the lakes have a blanket of water lillies. That may be a hassle for some people, but it's pretty for us.

The proprietor of Santa's Motel has a fluffy white Santa-beard and a Santa-profile. He and his wife were loafing in chairs in front of the motel when we arrived. We sat down and helped them loaf. The wife directed Michele to the blueberry patch. Michele collected a bowlful of berries for our breakfast.

July 24 Day 54 Boulder Junction, Wisconsin 64 miles
Good riding, though the scenery has seemed monotonous for days. We had several miles of road under construction - the bikes were covered with mud.
Motels in Boulder Junction seemed expensive. There's no campground. A sign caught my eye: "Guest House". This turned out to be what I would call an "in-law unit", kind of an apartment attached to a house. An eighty-year-old couple rents it out. Bedroom for us, sofa for Roy. Without making reference to any specific event, I have been surprised over the trip at how often paying cash can result in a favorable rate and no registration card.
We went over to the lake at twilight to look for loons. No loons, but we startled a red fox.

July 23 Day 53 Glidden Wisconsin 58 miles 5:05 riding

We encountered an organized tour (a stark contrast with ours). Twelve riders going from Anacortes, Washington, to Bar Harbor, Maine. It's a very diverse group. Tim is the leader. He's an RN. Linda is a Scot from near Edinburgh. Richard is a retired electrician from San Francisco. Bruce directs a theater company in Charlotte, North Carolina. Eid (that's phonetic, probably misspelled) is Dutch, retired from Shell. Janet is a retired teacher who grows olives and keeps some farm animals near Chico, California. Clyde is from New Zealand. John is from Maine. He rides to raise money for the Lung Association. Ann and Dave are the youngest, in their late twenties. Eid and Clyde are two of the three oldest. They smoke everyone else, averaging seventeen or eighteen miles per hour (I think our best day, wind-assisted, was a hair over thirteen)! Janet will have her 70th birthday next week. This is her eighth coast-to-coast ride, her first with a group! All the rest were solos.

The group members rotate cooking, clean-up, and purchasing responsibilities daily. I have to admire this group because they have stuck together. I have heard (though I have no certain knowledge that this is true) that forty percent of the members of a long tour will drop out, generally over personality conflicts. They all impressed me as very nice people.

We camped together at the city park in Glidden. The school board was meeting, so they held the gym open for us to take showers. If you choose to believe the scale at the gym, I have lost about fourteen pounds so far. Sausages for dinner.

Running into this group was important for Michele. For one thing, it was new conversation. Every detail of our lives, things we would never tell our therapists, has been trotted out for discussion just for conversation, to the point of exhaustion. We finish each others' anecdotes from memory. Finally, a fresh audience. More importantly, there were women. We saw one woman bicycling to New Jersey with her boyfriend a month ago. Yesterday, there was a woman going the other way with her family. Apart from that, no women, leaving Michele ample time to wonder, "What is wrong with me that I am out here when no other women do this?" Suddenly, three women to provide validation, to listen to her complaints about men, to talk women-talk with. Hooray!

July 21 Day 51 Hayward, Minnesota 59 miles 5:13

July 22 Hayward Rest Day

We saw the giant pelican. We saw the giant Indian. We saw the giant ice cream cone. Nothing prepared us for the giant musky! Hayward is the home of the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame. The grounds are strewn with giant replicas of fish. The musky is king in these waters and has the biggest replica. Note the family in his mouth.

We had thunderstorms overnight and in the morning. We've been very lucky on having the rain hit on rest days. Michele and I took a taxi out to the Lac Courtes Oreilles Indian Reservation to see the pow-wow. The drummers and singers performed in the center under cover from the rain. The dancers performed in a circular grassy area surrounding the central area. Spectators, mostly Indians of various tribes, sat under cover surrounding the performance area. It was a colorful event. I must admit that all the music sounded the same to my ear and all the dancing seemed the same.

We fried steaks in butter and boiled ears of corn to serve with butter on a picnic table for dinner. Also broccoli with blue cheese salad dressing.

July 20 Day 50 St. Croix River State Park 48 miles 4:12 riding
For those of you who have been wondering who won the draft horse pull, Dan and Jerry, a pair of Belgians, kicked butt. The crucial element for success is timing. Both horses have to stretch the traces at the same moment to get the sled moving once the sled gets heavy. Dan and Jerry have the concept; the other pairs are still working on it. The process is to load a sled with lengths of railroad rail to some weight, starting at maybe 2500 pounds. A chain at the back of the sled is attached to a skinny pole standing behind the sled. Once the horses pull the sled far enough for the chain to pull over the skinny pole, the horses have completed a trial. The next rial will have more weight. A team that can't pull the sled the necessary distance is disqualified. All the other teams flopped by the time the sled reached 4500 pounds. You could see Dan and Jerry smirking. Their owner called for another 1000 pounds and then another 500 for two more runs just to show what they could do. He said afterwards that they can do 9000 pounds on grass, and easier pull than the dirt. Photos to follow.
Pleasant riding to the St. Croix river. Not much else to say about the scenery. Lunch in the forest. Two cans of Dinty Moore beef stew served on sliced bread for dinner. At night I could see patches of bioluminescent fungus glowing in the dark in the woods.

July 19 Day 49 Mora 38 miles
Flatter terrain. Some headwind. More trees, less cultivation. Michele insists that she sensed a change in the land within an hour after crossing the Red River into Minnesota. For my part, I have trouble finding anything to say about the land because it has all looked about the same to me for several days. I passed much of the morning singing "The Ballad of the Green Berets" as I pedaled. My companions want to cover more miles, more miles! The spacing of the next towns compelled them to acknowledge the benefit of taking a short day and stopping at Mora. Mora is a very attractive town of about 3,000 that capitalizes on links to Swedish heritage. The Kenebec County Fair is on so we'll go watch the draft horse pull this evening. Mora was founded by a gentleman who platted the town, served as city attorney, and treasurer. After he eventually absconded with the town treasury, it was discovered that he had done in his first wife, embezzled funds from the wife's family business, fled to Canada, changed his name. He was eventually discovered in nebraska, where he had done in a second wife.

July 18 Day 48 Morrill MN 56 miles 4:53 riding
Up and down terrain, but not too bad. Farmers report drought - some of the corn is wilted.
The people of Sobieski are plain-spoken. Here's a warning from the feed store restroom: A dog followed us for miles out of Sobieski. When we reached the highway, Michele flagged down a driver and coaxed her into driving the dog back to Sobieski.
We crossed the Mississippi this morning! It feels like we must be in the East now. We pedaled down to a campground and changed into swimsuits. A cool and pleasant change.
We ran into Brad Werda riding west. He's ridden coast to coast three times, including the original Transamerica Ride in 1976, plus the Lewis and Clark Trail route. Now he's doing the Northern Tier over two years.
We met Michael Flaherty in Royalton. Michael is a Canadian performance artist. He is riding from Vancouver to Newfoundland for his current project. He has scheduled one-week periods with art galleries along his route. He conducts free bicycle repairs and art discussion with the repair customers in each gallery.
Discussion of where to go tonight. I'd like to stop at Royalton, but whatever charm it ever had has been obliterated by the highway. What remains is, I'm sorry to say, a blight of seedy auto repair shops and bars. The problem is that the next recognized campground is at least 28 miles farther on, too far. We proceed, trusting in St. Christopher to provide for us.
Morrill is an intersection with a bar, a church (Roy observes that every town has at least one bar and one church), and a baseball diamond. We are invited to sleep on the baseball diamond. The bartender is persuaded to change channel to the Tour de France. A drunk buys Michele and Roy a round. Everything is coming up roses. Lots of stars at night.

July 17 Day 47 Long Prairie MN 67 miles 5:58 riding
Nice cycling today in spite of some headwind. Lakes everywhere here in Otter Tail County.
We crossed the divide between the Hudson Bay watershed and the Mississippi watershed. A drop of rain that falls a few feet north will flow to the Arctic or a few feet south will flow to the Gulf of Mexico.
We stopped at the feed store in Eubank. The priest chatted with us. He knows Father Wieser in Pelican Rapids. He revealed that Father Wieser's preferred personal vehicle is a hearse.
Rose City consists of a bar and a creamery/hardware store. We went into the bar for sodas. On Tuesdays, your second drink is $0.25 if your drivers' license ends in "3" so I scored a coke. (It's hot and humid. My shirt is quickly wet even if I'm just pedaling gently. I drank some milk at breakfast, a Squirt at Eubank, two cokes at Rose City, a bottle of water on my bike, a liter of coke when we first arrived in Long Prairie, two glasses of water at dinner, two large glasses of lemonade at dinner. I could have drunk more.) We went over to the creamery. Ice cream bars and conversation with the proprietor.

July 16 Day 46 Battle Lake 38 miles 3:55 riding
Hills, combined with a serious headwind, derailed the original plan to cycle to Parker Prairie. Not to be outdone by Pelican Rapids' pelican, Battle Lake has Chief Wenoga. Regrettably, we missed the giant otter at Otter Tail Lake. Mitch, one of the other guests at the motel, crafts wooden relief maps of lakes showing the underwater topography of the lakes. He sells them at craft fairs to people who have vacation homes on the lakes around here. He loaned me his computer while he goes to the movies tonight.

July 15 Day 45 Pelican Rapids MN 61 miles 5:24 riding
We stopped at Cormorant for the local art show.
Pelican Rapids is proud of its giant pelican. The town is attractive enough, but pretty much closed for Sunday. We camped in the city campground. Father Stan Wieser came over to chat with us. He's the new priest for the area. He has served all over Minnesota and many places in Latin America. After an hour or so, we discovered that he knows the family of Roy's neighbor, Rene, from his time in Morris, Minnesota! Serious rain all night.

July 14 Day 44 Fargo
Everyone's been waiting for us to wind up at the emergency room. Now we've made that trip, but not the way I expected. More later.
We checked out the tiny farmer's market. Little jars of juneberry and chokecherry jam demanded to be purchased. lrjoppa@aol.com if you want to order some for yourself.
We pedaled across the Red River to Moorhead, Minnesota, to check out the Scandanavian Heritage Center. There are two principal exhibits, each of which is a monument to the danger of having too much time on your hands. One is the Hjemkomest boat. A high school counselor spent time in the hospital recovering from a fall. He got to thinking that it would be fun to build a replica of a Viking boat in some museum in Norway and sail it to Norway. He figured that it would take him two years. Nine years later, he broke open one wall of the former potato warehouse he used as a shipyard to truck the boat to Lake Superior. He lived just long enough to see the boat in the water. His children carried on the project. They recruited a Norwegian ship captain familiar with the way the ancient ships sailed and gathered a volunteer crew. After a storm on Lake Superior, one of the crew abandoned the project, explaining "I have a five-year-old son at home." He wanted to be alive for the kid. A fourteen-foot crack opened in the bottom during a North Atlantic storm. They stuffed burlap into the crack until the leak was down to what they could bail. They made it to Norway. The other exhibit is a 70-foot-tall replica of a twelfth century church in Sweden, board for board, carving for carving. A guy saw another replica elsewhere in the Dakotas and decided, "What the hell. I'm not busy." and built it with his own hands.
We watched Harry Potter in the afternoon. Michele concluded by then that she had a urinary tract infection so we tootled over to the Merit Hospital emergency room, conveniently located across the street from our motel. We highly recommend the Merit Hospital emergency room's courteous and effective staff. Minimal waiting and even less paperwork. Try it the next time you're in Fargo.

July 13 Day 43 Fargo 68 miles
Cold morning. We stopped at Erie for a coke at the gas station. We met farmers James and Gene. I was surprised at how anti-war they are. James owns the old bank building, the only remaining original building. He maintains something of a museum in it. When we think back to Binford, to Stanley, to Cooperstown, and Erie, we are struck by how fiercely proud everyone is of their little town. There's something shared and strong in these little towns that we of the big cities have perhaps forgotten.
Lunch at the American Legion hall in Hanford.
Marvelous service at Island park Bicycles in Fargo. New tire, new handlebar tape for me. Michele's shifters repaired. She's had big trouble with them pretty much all along. The shifters balked at shifting gears, especially into low gears when she was desperate to get into a low gear to climb a hill. Michele wants it said that she knows I thought the problem was Michele, not the shifter (there's some truth in that - Michele is impatient with mechanical objects. I figured that part of the problem was that she waited too long to downshift and put too much pressure on the pedals while shifting), but she is vindicated. Something was busted and the cable was sticking as well. So there you are, Michele. New gloves for both of us. The bike shop maintains a map with pins for the home towns for all the cross-country bicyclists. Lots around San Francisco and Seattle, many in the New York-Boston area. Some from Texas (Austin?). It tails off rapidly after that. None at all from most "red states". What's it mean?
First rest day in a long time tomorrow. Our friend Katie Lambden finished second in a women's professional bike race at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a few days ago. She'll compete in the national championships at Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, July 16. Check her out at www.teamtibco.com/blog/ Root for her!
A couple of other notes. Michele and Roy are informally tallying the roadkill differences from state to state. Lots of deer in Oregon. Snakes in Idaho. For some reason three grouse in one day in Montana, never to be seen again. One porcupine. Ground squirrels in North Dakota.
Have you ever noticed those cracks that develop in a road surface after a few years? Often filled with tar until the crack opens some more. You just feel them as a tremor in the steering wheel and maybe a gentle "thwup" sound. For us, they are butt-breaking "Thwap-thawps" as the front wheel and then the rear whell falls in and bounces out, every twelve feet mile after mile, until we are ready to go mad! Just thought you'd like my opinion.

July 12 Day 42 Hope 64 miles
Fast pedaling all day. We made a stop at Binford. The grocery store burned down almost a year ago. The owners didn't consider re-building. The lady who runs a little variety store explained that the loss of the grocery store can kill a little town. It's so inconvenient to have to drive 30 miles to the next town every time you need something that it's just easier to move to the next town. Binford raised money through donations to rebuild the store. There are posters asking for volunteers to help stock the new store ahead of its opening next week. I hope they thrive.
Orville is a realtor in Cooperstown. He started telling us about Cooperstown. When he learned that I was looking for a new tire, he went down the street to the bank to roust out the wife of a guy who does some bicycle repair work from his garage. The two of them went over to the garage to see if there was tire of appropriate size. Orville offered to show us the working model of a farm in their museum. When I admired the handsome brick courthouse, he wanted to show me the Masonic temple.
Camp at the Hope City Park next to the pool. Cold shower at the pool! What would happen if somebody tried to set up camp in an Alameda city park?

July 11 Day 41 Pekin 58 miles
Roy suffered our second flat tire early this morning.

An early lunch at the bar in Warwick. The bartender was a bit unsettling. He wears a cowboy hat and speaks like the characters in "Fargo". One wall is covered with awards the owner's Clydesdale horses have won. The owner has sold a couple of horses to the Budweiser show horse team. There are hundreds of dollar bills taped to the walls, each with some obscure personal note written on it. Somebody will have to explain this practice to me. We talked with a local rancher. He told us that the weather changed in 1993. It started raining. Devil's Lake has since grown from 80,000 acres to 130,000. The farmers are growing more water-intensive crops now than they could before. Nobody knows how long this will last.
We stopped at Ft. Totten. It was a cavalry fort for some years, then an Indian school for half a century where the government tried to "civilize" the Indians. Massachusetts Senator Dawes counted himself a friend of the Indians. He cursed the Indians' lack of greed. "Selfishness is the cornerstone of civilization." Check out the "Indian Xing" sign.
The motel has both camping and rooms. We took a room. Roy "camped" in the gazebo. A storm blew some cold rain for a few minutes, then moved on. The grocery store has folded. Rice-a-roni and leftover sausages in our room. The motel arrangement is, the rooms are open. Pick one and call the number on the wall and the owner will come over. The owner is the farm loan officer at the bank. He told us proudly about how successfully farmers are growing many crops in North Dakota.

July 10 Day 40 Minnewaukan 59 miles
There was a powerful thunderstorm last night. Spectacular lightning followed by astonishing rain and wind. We heard a report that 2.5 inches fell in 25 minutes. We have seen a number of limbs off trees.
Cool and overcast today. The sky appeared threatening as we approached Esmond, so we stopped at the cafe. I had juneberry pie. Juneberry is described as being like a cross between a blueberry and a chokecherry. It's good. A women's church group occupied a table near us. After a time, we overheard a woman remark, "it's raining." I glanced at the window, but no more. Then the woman exclaimed, "It's snowing!" Well, of course, that forced me to get up and go to the window. Once I started my move, the table erupted in laughter. No snow - they conned the stranger. By the time we went outside, it was, in fact, raining. So we went back inside and had more juneberry pie.
We cooked sausages in our room and served them with sliced tomatoes and onion.

July 9 Day 39 Rugby ND 57 miles
We usually have breakfast before riding, but today we rode fifteen miles to Granville for breakfast (well, yes, we did have a round of leftover donuts before riding, but that hardly counts). Granville celebrated its centennial a week ago. Among the festivities was the pitchfork fondue. You get a drum of oil boiling, you round up a stack of sirloin steaks, you mix up a bowl of mustard butter, you grab a pitchfork out of the barn and you're ready to go.
There's a 1903 bank building, an impressive stone edifice now fallen into substantial disrepair. A daughter of Granville now lives in Montclair. She has purchased the building to restore into a brewery/restaurant in the basement, professional office on the main floor, and an apartment on the second floor. The expected cost is $2 million. This in a town where there is a little-bitty grocery, a couple of bars, a cafe, a cheese factory, a bank, and a new community center. I hope it works out for her; some of the townspeople were pretty clear that they don't expect it to.
To return to the new community center, I should say that the Granville welcome sign adds the name "McGillicuddy City". There's some liquor company promoting a line of schnapps with a story line about a bar in a tiny town that is frozen in winter for about six months of the year. The liquor company offered $100,000 for a town that (a) is frozen six months per year, (b) would change its name to McGillicuddy City, (c) has a bar that would change its name to "The Shady Eye", and (d) has some sort of boarding house. The mother of the bank renovator got a B&B license to meet the last requirement. The Branding Iron Saloon agreed to the name change (though I notice that the sign still says "Branding Iron Saloon"). So now the city has a new community center.
Rugby has a pillar at the highway intersection declaring that the spot is the "Geographical Center of North America". How would anyone prove that wrong? If there is any significance to this at all, it is that we must be roughly halfway in our journey! We added up our miles - we're about 1900 miles along. Whoopee!

July 8 Day 38 Surrey ND 67 miles 5:17
My birthday. We celebrated with a bike ride. We paused outside Minot to consult the map. A couple stopped to advise us. Since I was hoping to buy a replacement rear tire, they called the bike shop (closed on Sunday) and the sporting goods store (no suitable tire) for us. There is no bike shop between Minot and Fargo, about 300 miles away. I'll try to nurse this tire along.
The yellow fields we pass are canola flowers; the blue are flax.
Light rain in the afternoon. It cleared before we reached Surrey. We camped in the city park. No showers or running water. Clean part-a-potty and otherwise pretty well maintained. We begged water from a neighbor. The only commercial activity in Surrey on Sunday afternoon was the gas station/convenience store. The store has a part-time grill service. We hung out at the store for a while in expectation of eating there. The grill soon convinced us to buy a box of pasta, a bottle of spaghetti sauce, and a package of kielbasas. We boiled up the pasta and served it with sauce and sliced sausages. A Hostess-type apple turnover for a birthday cake. What could be finer?

In answer to some questions posed in comments, we probably are ahead of schedule in some sense. Since we don't have any particular arrival date in mind, one can't say that we should be at some particular point on this day to make our arrival date. To arrive in Boston at the start of September, we would have to do about 50 miles per day with one rest day per week. We are averaging more than that. When the spacing of the towns has forced us to choose between going 30 miles or 60 miles, we have almost always chosen 60. We intend to slow the ride down some and to take more rest days to explore towns as we get into areas where the towns are less widely spaced. Yes, Michele is still riding her hard leather Brooks saddle while Roy and I are now riding more padded saddles. I was using a gel cover for the saddle as well for a time. If I had it to do over again, I would have lowered the seat height and tried the gel cover on the Brooks saddle.

July 7 Day 37 Stanley ND 33 miles 3:04
After yesterday's route, there was extended discussion of where to go today. With some grumbling, Stanley was accepted by all.
The first clue that Stanley is a special place is the fire hydrants. Every hydrant is painted individually as a human figure. Michele promptly fell into conversation on the street with Bob. Bob, along with his cousin Don, are restoring the First Presbyterian Church in Stanley for use as a performing arts center. The city was on the edge of tearing the lovely but decaying building down to make room for a parking lot. There was substantial skepticism that they could succeed in making anything out of church. With a lot of hard work and donations from the far-flung alumni of the Stanley high school, they have turned the space into a gorgeous hall. You should see the woodwork. Just to add to the challenge, Bob now lives in Seattle and Don in North Carolina. They get back to Stanley as the opportunity allows.

Bob advised us to check out the Dakota Drug soda fountain for a Whirlawhip. Whirlawhip machines take real ice cream and flavorings of your choice to produce something resembling "soft-serve ice cream" in texture, but much richer in flavor. Whirlawhip machines were manufactured from 1937 to 1942. The Dakota Drug pharmacist knew he was onto something when he discovered the Whirlawhip machine. Whenever another pharmacy remodeled and took out its soda fountain, he would buy the Whirlawhip machine. He eventually tracked down the inventor and purchased all the machines he had left in his garage. In short, Dakota Drug has the corner, world-wide, on Whirlawhip!

Bob and Don insisted that we visit Flickertail Village. Flickertail Village is an amazing community do-it-yourself museum of pioneer life. Families have donated entire houses, trucked to the site, furnished as they were in the Twenties or Thirties. There's a dry goods store, a sheriff's office/jail, a doctor's office, a school, a church, a train depot, all about as they would have been if everyone had just walked out. I found it fascinating. No particular hours for the museum - just call the lady who runs it if you want to visit and she'll meet you there. A flickertail, incidentally, is the kind of gopher which inhabits the area.

Don called during our dinner to invite us over for dessert with his family. We had some terrific cake and an excellent evening.

We stayed at the Stanley City free campground (donation requested). The motels were full because there were two weddings and a family reunion in Stanley. In the evening, one wedding party paraded by on their way to the reception. The bride, in white, and the groom stood at the front of a flatbed trailer towed by a pickup truck, with the rest of the party sitting at a couple of picnic tables on the trailer. Stanley is one town I'll never forget.

July 6 Day 36 New Town ND 73 miles 7:33
This was the most grueling day of our ride so far. Up and down every inch. Hot dry wind, either cross or head. The only respite along the way was a cafe and campground at about mile 25 - I missed the sign and Michele and Roy waited until after we were well past to mention it. At mile 56, we begged some cold water when we finally encountered a farm house. At mile 70, a steep, long, butt-kicker hill exposed to the sun the whole way.
We had expected New Town to be cool and green on Lake Sakakawea (New Town is where people moved when the old towns were flooded to create Lake Sakakawea.) Instead, it is hot and dry well above the lake. The motels were full; the campgrounds are a couple of miles outside town across the lake. We did not want to pedal back and forth. Feelings ran high! As some have predicted for years, we wound up in the hands of the police.

New Town happens to be on reservation land for the Three Affiliated Tribes - Mandans, Arikaras, and Hidatsus. Those of you who have read about the Lewis and Clark Expedition will recall that those tribes were crucial to the success, even the survival, of the expediation. Officer Robert Bird Bear of the Three Affiliated Tribes' police proposed that we camp on the grass behind the police station. He observed that nobody but bikers and people sprayed with pepper spray used the station showers. Best bacon cheeseburger of my life at the Better B cafe.

July 5 Day 35 Williston, North Dakota 55 miles

Our flattest day so far.

Until now, the crops have been wheat, alfalfa, hay, or just rangeland for grazing. Today we saw our first corn and our first sugar beets.

We crossed the Missouri again. Central Time Zone.

The reconstructed Fort Union trading post of the Astor fur trading empire was nearby. The guide gave a very interesting description of how the trading process worked. Trade goods came up the Missouri by steamboat. Indians brought in beaver pelts and buffalo skins. The chiefs would meet with the traders in what we would call today a conference room and work out the approximate terms of trade. Once the chiefs reported to the rank and file Indians what they could expect in value from the traders for a skin, the lesser Indians would make their trades through a window. There were some arrangements for keeping feuding groups apart if they arrived at the same time.

July 4 Day 34 Sidney, MT 75 miles 6:10 riding

We were expecting the road to be pretty flat. Instead, it was more of the usual rolling terrain except for the first and last ten miles. I wanted to stop at Lambert to see what's doing there on the Fourth. Michele and Roy didn't want to stop at Lambert because it is a little off the road. "Nothing will be open." was Michele's argument. "I want to go get a beer and a cold shower." added Roy. Okay, we'll skip Lambert. Ten miles later, a lady stopped her car to offer us the benefit of shade at her house a little farther on. Michele asked why there were so many cars going to Sidney. The lady replied that there was nothing doing in Sidney - all the cars were leaving Lambert after the Air Force fly-over and the Lambert music festivity! Probably had a firemen's bar-be-que besides!

There seems to be a Montana state law that every person over the age of eight must be possessed of a load of fireworks on the Fourth. There are sale stands everywhere. In the Bay Area, we feel like felons for setting off a fountain of sparks in the driveway. We're not talking sparklers in Montana. We're talking the sorts of rockets they set off over the Coliseum after a night game - rockets exploding into spheres of colors, cascading gold bursts - all over town. There was an official fireworks show at the edge of town as well. We decided it might not be a good idea to bicycle home in the dark with a bunch of drunk celebrants so we contented ourselves with a stroll around the neighborhood and still had a great show.

I updated a few of my recent postings with photos if you are motivated to see the photos.

July 3 Day 33 Circle, MT 68 miles 5:59

I neglected to mention a few days ago that Dave went off into the bushes at one stop along the highway. He came dancing out quick alertly a few moments later. He had just met a healthy-looking rattlesnake.

More up-and-down terrain. In the twenty miles after our lunch stop, I counted 29 ridgecrests crossed. Some headwind besides.

We stopped at the McCone County Museaum at the edge of Circle. They have an amazing quantity of items of everyday use from pioneer days through WWII. There's a wall of beer bottles with labels from over the years. Lots of military equipment (Back in Jordan, there's a memorial to the sons and daughters of Garfield County, 400 of them out of a small population, who have served). There is a wall devoted to the Montana Sheepherders' Hall of Fame (I am not making this up!). To my surprise, many of the names were of women. The most interesting exhibit for me was a sheepherder's wagon. The enclosed wagon was big enough for a small bed, a cabinet under the bed for staples and supplies, a little woodburning stove to cook on. That was home to many a shepherd, year-round.

July 2 Jordan
Rest day because of the threat of severe thunderstorms and big hail. This afternoon the weather service issued a tornado warning for this county. Real milkshakes at the soda fountain in the drugstore! We watched a spectacular thunderstorm from our motel in the evening. Roy had his camera out in case of a tornado. I think he was a little disappointed not to see mobile homes flying overhead.

Dave Wainwright left us behind today. He has a real job that he needs to get back to. He pedaled to Circle in spite of the weather. We talked later. He crawled into Circle about five in the afternoon after pushing through headwinds all day. He had to take shelter from thunderstorms twice. He hid under a bridge once. The second storm hit just as he was arriving at the Flowing Wells rest area. There's an awning in front of the bathroom to give some protection, but the rain was coming in sideways on the wind so he built some further protection for himself (his mattress pad, maybe?). He expects to reach Williston, North Dakota, a day ahead of us to catch a flight home.

To discourage careless driving and as a public service to Montana, the American Legion places a little white cross at the roadside wherever someone has died in a traffic accident. Sometimes they are in pairs. Sometimes they are decorated with flowers or notes. We'll pass a dozen or more in a day's ride sometimes. Considering how little ground we actually cover and Montana's population (under one million), the crosses are pretty densely placed.

Every town we pass through has at least one homemade sign warning against meth use. (I'll attach a couple of examples when I reach a library that allows me to upload some photos.) All of them share the tag line, "Not even once." In Idaho, every store has a poster showing the mug shot photos of one woman arrested maybe eighteen times over ten years, now dead. The photos document her frightening deterioration. Even with these warnings, meth is evidently a small-town plague.

July 1 Jordan, Montana, Day 31 76 miles 6:56
On the road early for heat. More rolling terrain, up a hundred feet, down a hundred, all day. Little wind. Some cloud cover until lunch so the heat wasn't too oppressive. Michele is anxious about thunderstorms since hearing about golfball-sized hail.
We saw pronghorn antelope along the way. Sand Springs was closed when we arrived. The proprietor, Daisy Dutton, saw us dismount, so she came out to open up the store. She sat with us in the shade of her tree and told us stories while we ate. She must be in her eighties. She's still active and lives alone, though one of her sons lives nearby. Her father came to the area from the Pennsylvania Amish. Daisy's father's family's hired hand, spurned by one of the daughters, murdered the parents and four of the children. Daisy's father, one of the surviving children, never employed a hired man. Daisy's husband was a WWII flier. After the war, he ranched mostly, and flew coyote bounty hunters and deer hunting parties. Daisy would go to Jordan a week or two in advance of her due date to be close to the hospital for delivering her children. For one child, the horses couldn't make it through the snow, so they had to turn back. Fortunately, they were able to get through a few days later before there was a crisis.
Michele spotted a toad on the sidewalk outside our motel. I carried across the street to a weedy lot.
The proprietor of the Hell Creek Bar is renowned for his broasted chicken. In his younger days, he was a champion at the logging contests. He would climb a hundred-foot pole in twenty seconds wearing his spiked boots and climbing rope.

June 30 Winnett Day 30 53 miles

What a contrast from the past two days! Tailwind! The road climbed seriously out of Lewistown for 750 feet (by the way, I want you to visualize climbing a 75-story stairway dragging a hundred pounds of stuff behind you) and then leveled off to a gentle steady grade. We averaged over fourteen mph.

Winnett is the seat of Petroleum County - population 130. Every one of those people seemed to be perfectly prepared to spend the rest of the afternoon chatting with us. We met the school superintendent. A neighbor let us use her telephone (cell phone? We get cell phone coverage once in a while) to call for a hotel reservation in Jordan. Other neighbors invited us to take a beer or two on their porch. Check out Winnett on GoogleEarth (I'd add a picture but the Jordan Public Library is a little cautious of people attaching gadgets into their computers). The Kozy Korner cafe is the building on the corner of the two paved streets. A plywood sign hangs from a chain over the door. Mom runs the place, bakes the pies. Her daughter tends bar when she doesn't have to be out haying. The waitress graduated from high school, class of 05 (that's the number in the graduating class, not the year). If you want to know more about the place, you could look it up in Gourmet magazine, November, 2005. People call ahead to reserve a slice of any of twenty kinds of pie because, once they're gone, they're gone until Mom bakes some more. She has shipped pies as far as Wisconsin for people who couldn't go without. The waitress will attend college in Missoula in the Fall.
Our neighbors at the motel turned out to be a guy and his stepson. They drove God-knows-how-many hours from LA to be here for the Fourth because they had an invitation to shoot prairie dogs. They hope to kill as many as 300 each on the day. 'Course that's not much - the record is 800 for a day. I wish the prairie dogs luck.

June 29 Lewistown Day 29 75 miles, 7:10 riding

Another grueling day! Instead of headwind, heat. Lewistown reported 100 degrees. Up-and-down terrain all day. Seldom a tree in sight. Near Brooks, I pleaded for cold water at a farm house. I ran the hose on my head and drank deeply of the cold water. That refreshed me. I eventually got Michele to pour a bottle of water on her head and then she squirted Roy with cold water. I soaked my shirt at the next farmhouse. We were exhausted by the time we crawled into Lewistown. If you get to Lewistown, it's Harry's Place for dinner if you're hungry. The steak comes with soup, salad bar, potato, and fruit pie or cobbler for dessert.

June 28 Geraldine, Montana 69 miles 7:01
What a day! Every inch into a strong headwind. More up-and-down terrain. We had a paceline in the morning when there was some flat terrain between the ridges. A paceline is a row of riders each taking advantage of the windbreak, the "draft", provided by the rider in front. The leader does the heaviest work because the leader has no one to draft. The leader position rotates among the riders every mile. This crowd couldn't agree on how to rotate, back to front or front to back. Back-to-front may be the custom among serious riders but it flopped for us. The rider advancing to the front is going faster than the rest and would drop the other riders, then have to slow down to let the others catch up. Front-to-rear worked better because the second rider, now becoming the leader, was already at the right speed. The rolling terrain tended to defeat the paceline. On flat ground, we could all settle into a steady and equal pace. With heavily-laden bikes, our comfortable riding paces were different for each rider going up or down hill. The paceline would get scattered all over the grade.

Lunch in Ft. Benton. Ft. Benton was the farthest point steamboats could reach on the Missouri to take supplies to the miners and ranchers. Gunslingers and miners, gamblers and fancy women, muleskinners and mountain men mixed on its streets. Dodge City and Tombstone killers are more celebrated, but Ft. Benton claims to have had the bloodiest street in the Old West. The railroad arrived in 1913 and put a stop to the fun.

We threw ourselves down in the grass and shade at the entrance to a farm. The farmer's wife came out to talk and gave Michele and Dave cookies. She warned us that Geraldine would close at six. We barely made it. We had a chance to buy chocolate milk (our recovery drink of choice these days). Roy, incurable optimist, always goes into the store and asks "What kind of india pale ale do you have? What's your darkest beer?" The answer is always the same: "You want Bud or Coors?" We camped in the city park. The mosquitos drained Dave. He doesn't have a tent. He zipped himself into his sleeping bag for protection, but you can't stay there for long when the nighttime temperature is maybe 75. Once he had to unzip to cool off, the mosquitos were on him like fur.

June 27 Day 27 Great Falls 57 miles 4:37 riding

Yesterday, we saw a curious facility alongside the road at the top of a ridge. It was a paved or graveled area, a couple of hundred feet on a side, set back a hundred yards from the road. It was surrounded by chain link fencing maybe nine feet high topped with barbed wire. There were no above-ground structures besides some electrical poles. We all made guesses about what it might be. We also saw a number of vans marked "Security Force" rolling around the roads. This morning, we met the county planning director (he gets cornered into assisting with checking on the fireworks stands at this time of the year to make sure nobody's smoking, etc.). He explained that Roy's guess had been correct - it's a nuclear missile silo. Cascade County evidently has dozens of them. We've passed several others since. One location houses the operators to control several missile silos remotely.

We met Lee Rickter, a Chicago high school biology teacher during the year to make a living, who bicycles home to Missoula for the summer to enjoy life. He's pedaled everywhere. He crossed Australia with a wine box refilled with fifteen pounds of water.

June 26 Day 26 Augusta Montana 57 miles 5:20 riding

Eighteen fairly easy miles to Rogers Pass and the Continental Divide! We celebrated at the top, took photos. Rash statements were made about "Downhill to Boston!" I have come to regret that since. Montana is a very wrinkled state. The road undulates straight ahead, crossing ridge after ridge. Any kind of steady road is okay, even uphill. You get into a rhythm and pedal steady and after a while you're at the top. The short uphill and downhill of the ridges destroys any rhythm. You're spinning the cranks on the downhill, shifting way down and groaning the cranks on the uphill. It's especially hard on Michele because she's having some shifter problems.

Michele wants a few words said about crosswinds. We often have a substantial crosswind blowing perpendicular to the line of travel. The front panniers and handlebar bag provide a big sail to catch the wind. With a steady crosswind, you lean into the wind a little and the pressure of the wind balances the lean; it's a little more work but everything's fine. On the steep uphills and downhills, things are a little more exciting. On the steep uphill, we may be making 3.5 mph, wobbling widely to keep the bike up. On the downhill, we may be doing 35 mph. In either case, when a logging truck passes you at 70 and suddenly cuts off the crosswind, you jerk toward either the truck or the ditch, depending on the wind direction. When two trucks pass in quick succession, I grip the handlebars so tightly that my fingerprints are in the metal!

We crawled over a succession of ridges, buoyed by the thought of lunch at Bowman's roadhouse at the intersection of 200 and 287. The roadhouse was closed. While we moped, the Schwan's ice cream delivery truck showed up - we made a deal to buy a box of ice cream sandwiches from the driver.

The road crew was resurfacing #287. The flagperson radioed ahead to say that she was sending through four "turtleheads" (helmet-wearers).

Augusta has a stated population of about 300. The RV park/campground proprietor had decided she needed to go fishin' for the day, so she went fishin'. We met John Badnares while we lounged around waiting for the proprietor. John went into the Army Air Force in 1944. He was stationed near Augusta at one point. One day he found a gold nugget while fishing in the Sun River - it ruined his life. He's been looking for more ever since. He uses a device of his own design. He plunges a length of pipe into the river muck behind a boulder where gold dust might swirl and settle out. Then he pans the pipe contents. I asked if he objected to my taking his picture. He explained that he didn't want his picture taken because he's in the "witness protection program" since testifying at a trial nine years ago!

June 25 Day 25 Lincoln, Montana, 80 miles 6:30 riding
Tailwinds! Fast riding all day. We followed the Blackfoot River gently uphill. The day started out colorfully. Dave Wainwright was checking out a noise on my bike - my raingear was touching the rear wheel to cause a hum. As he leaned toward my bike to listen, he steered the same way. The wheels touched and sent Dave careening away. He kept the bike up, so no harm done. Some sprinkles and a dusting of light hail right after lunch.

At Ovando, one can get espresso and welding done in one stop.

Michele flatted out on a big piece of glass right in front of the motel in Lincoln. Good timing. Our first flat.