DAY 30

Day 30

Monday, July 19, 2010

Rugby to St. Michael’s, ND

81 miles

Let me begin by showing you this picture. Rugby, ND is the geographical center of North America.

Today we had a long ride, 81 miles. On days like this, the guides provide a prepared lunch at the sag/van. So at mile 50, there they were, with tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, and turkey to fold into wrap sandwiches, along with cookies, cold Diet Coke, and tunes blaring out of the Subaru sag: Alison Krause and the Union Station, and Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times.” Everyone lingered, laughing, swaying to the music, dancing, sitting in the shade of the trailer and talking.











And I thought as I anticipated writing about this, there’s no way to convey just how special this moment was without telling about what had preceded it last Friday. I’d thought I would write about Friday’s event as an addendum once I returned from the ride. Now I know that I really have to describe it here so it won’t be the last part of the blog.

Last Friday morning, my friend Barbara, who was my collision buddy (and was pictured on a previous post), was doing what she loved best – biking in warm weather, with a gentle tailwind. She often biked alone, since her recumbent bike is lower to the ground, and her speed is generally slower. One of her greatest pleasures on this trip was biking every foot of the way up Logan Pass at the Continental Divide, and making it there by 10:45 am (Remember, 11 am was the deadline, since bikes weren’t allowed on that road between 11 am and 4 pm).

Anyway, there’s no way to ease into telling this gently: on Friday at 11:30 am, Barbara was hit by a Ford F-150 and killed. The driver said he’d slowed, but hit her rear wheel. She was thrown about twenty feet from her bike. On Saturday, several from our group placed flowers at the site. I didn’t go, and it seemed creepy to me. But those who did were glad they did so. They said the skid marks only started after the location of the crash, not before; so it’s questionable that he tried to stop or avoid her. A criminal investigation is under way.

Obviously, this sent us all into a tailspin. It was both ironic and important that our scheduled layover day (two nights in one place) began right there in Minot at the end of biking on Friday. We were all in disbelief that this could happen. We talked about Barbara. Some speculated on how she died. Some spent lots of time at their computers trying to get more information. Some wondered if she suffered, though it appears that she died instantly. Some of us just went for walks.

I’d mentioned earlier that the president of Womantours came to spend time with us. We had a joint dinner with groups #1 and #2, because the end of their layover coincided with the beginning of ours. The next day, Saturday, we had a 2pm meeting of just our group #2 to talk more about this tragedy and to see how people were doing. By then I just wanted to get out of there. I already didn’t feel safe on route 2. Three people of the 28 were making plans to go home, and although I wanted to bolt out of there myself, I couldn’t get travel arrangements to work.

Later, sitting at my computer in the motel room, I heard three sharp knocks at my door. It was Carolyn. “I’m here to invite you to a party in my room.” So I went, and as I sat down, I saw that it was a wine and cheese gathering with all the SAG drivers, my current roommate, and another biker friend. Nancy began, “Lynn, we want you to know that we want you to stay, and we don’t want you to leave the group.” I became a puddly mess, crying and laughing at their thoughtfulness. They said if I hadn’t agreed to come to their “party,” they all would have ganged up on me and made me come. They called it an intervention. Nicest intervention I could have imagined. They told me to sag the whole way to Fargo if I wanted; just stay with the group.

Looking back, that was the turning point of a really, really horrible event. I did choose not to bike on Sunday, not only as my own way of affirming life, but also because that stupid highway was scary even when I had survived biking it and Barbara had not. I didn’t need to do any more of it.

On Sunday, everybody wore their Womantours jerseys, along with black necklaces in a show of solidarity with Barbara. They all cycled out of town en masse, and I took pictures of them before climbing into the van as a passenger for the day. I noticed as we later passed them, that everybody was biking in groups of three or four. Many of us usually prefer biking alone, but not on that day.

Today, Monday, I did bike the 81 miles, and the light-hearted tone had begun to return among all of us. The scenery was lovely, and the sky was moody, with grey clouds punctuated by a few streaks of lightning, even at 8:30 am. Interestingly, as we biked toward the direction of the lightning, the clouds moved to our left, and we escaped showers altogether.

And this brings me back to our lunch together at mile 50. I don’t know if it’s because we have only three more biking days after today, or because Barbara’s death gave us pause, but nobody biked like bats out of hell today. We savored the ride, the lunch, the company of good people, and the chance to be silly, swaying to the music of Bob Dylan.

IN MEMORIUM, BARBARA MINNICK

Where you are now, it's always sunny, in the low 70's, with a gentle tailwind, a wide shoulder, light traffic, and you get to call to others as you pass them, "On your left!"

DAYS 31, 32, AND 33

DAY 31

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Spirit Lake (St. Michael’s) to Carrington, ND

50 miles

Spirit Lake is the Casino/Resort where we stayed last night in St. Michael’s, ND. And Spirit Lake is also another name for Devil’s Lake. It’s one of the only non-man-made lakes we’ve seen, and since it has no source or run-off, it’s supposedly a salt lake. All we noticed was the yellowish-green, almost iridescent color of algae around the shore. The hotel was nice, and there was also an adjoining deluxe RV campground, with permanent cement pads for the RV’s and green lawns and landscaping. Another world.

The highlight of the day, for me, was biking through Sheyenne (yes, with an S), a small town with one grain elevator on the right side of the road. I noticed a small sign in front of it with an arrow pointing left. When I looked left, all I saw was a Taxidermy Shop.


But I’m always up for a morning coffee, so I got off the bike, and looked in the window of the entrance. A sign said, “Internet Café.” Well, this made me curious, so I proceeded inside with Laura. We found ourselves in a newly pine-paneled coffee shop in the front, and in the back, ropes leading us on a path through a taxidermist’s delight: specimens of elk, moose, black bear, deer, a grizzly bear, and God knows what else, all perched in naturalized habitats. When you got over the fact that it was all a little weird, you couldn’t help but laugh.

Further discussion with three nice women working there revealed the story of the place: the town had lost its school, but didn’t want to lose the whole town. People there decided to re-purpose the school into a not-for-profit hunting and fishing lodge. They wrote a grant proposal, and got a grant to pay for a new roof for the school. in order to raise more funds for the lodge development ,about twenty women now staff this café on a volunteer basis, calling themselves the Sisterhood of the Traveling Crockpots,. Sure enough, while we were there, one of the “sisters” showed up bearing a crockpot for today’s lunch. I have no idea how North Dakota’s health laws work. But I digress. They serve about 70 lunches a day, usually only open between 11 am and 1 pm. We arrived before then, and had delicious rhubarb cake with pink coconut frosting and a cup of coffee, all for $1. We told them they needed to charge real prices if they hoped to get this thing off the ground.

But the best part was the T-shirt we bought for $10 apiece, with the name of the place: the Wild Things Taxidermy and Spicy Road Kill Café. We each gave them a $20 and told them to keep the change. When we asked to use the restroom, they directed us to the back, through doors that opened into (cringe) the taxidermy lab on the left and restrooms on the right. The guy was working on a deer. I think this might very well be the oddest bit of Americana we’ve encountered, but the women were so proud of their venture, and clearly got a kick out of visitors’ reactions, that you couldn’t help but share in their enthusiasm.

DAY 32

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Carrington to Mayville, ND

91.8 miles, of which I biked 49

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The Carrington Inn and Suites served homemade donuts as the main part of their motel breakfast. Of course, Linda had the usual oatmeal and eggs at the trailer to be sure we had enough protein for energy to bike. But really… homemade donuts?? We just don’t get these every day. So that’s what I had for breakfast. I should also add that I had only slept for 5 hours the night before. Put together, that’s a bad formula for enough energy to bike 92 miles in a day. In biker parlance, I “bonked.” I just had no energy at all, and my legs felt like dead weight. In addition, there were a lot of trucks on the road that day, and the back third of us all felt a bit skittish. So, five of us called it a day at mile 49 when the van came by and loaded our bikes on top.

Meanwhile, it was an odd day for a couple of others, too. Jane took this picture of Ellen, seen here, ducking. Double-click on it to see it in better detail. File it under: One Damn Thing After Another.


Ellen saw the crop dusting plane, thought it was just buzzing the group of bikers to say hello, so she stopped to take an overhead picture of it. Suddenly, she realized that it was actually landing on the road behind her!! Its wingspan was wider than the road itself. It’s definitely time to go home.

Mayville is the home of Mayville State University, which might look more like a community college around home, and much of it was under construction or renovation, with lots of wire fencing, so I couldn’t use the library there. I had gone to the town library and asked where the newspapers were. It was a sweet old library with library smells and old oak woodwork. But the librarian replied, “We don’t have any. You’ll have to go to the college.” Whoever heard of a library with no newspapers? So Mayville proved to be a newspaper-unfriendly town.

DAY 33

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Mayville to Fargo, ND!!!

59.8 miles

Well, it rained some and we had a headwind against us all day. Most of the day I biked with Sue, and as we got into the Fargo area, the corn and wheat and soybean fields gave way to roads leading to North Dakota State University, the airport and downtown. We kept looking for a Fargo sign to hoist our bikes in a grand finale, but there wasn’t any! The closest we came was this one for a photo opp:

Not satisfied, we asked a guy at an adjacent gas station, “Aren’t there any Welcome to Fargo signs around here?” He thought a minute and said we might try biking over the Red River into Minnesota, and then come back over the bridge again. He thought there was probably a green Fargo sign there. You’ll have to see the next blog entry to find out whether we satisfied this goal. (There will be two more entries: one of pictures of the trip, and one describing some of the riders I’ve enjoyed for the past five weeks).

We found the bike shop to leave our bikes for shipping. Felt funny to walk away without them. In the parking lot there was this bike, evidently on a very long journey, with even its orange safety flags faded in color.



Later as we sat in a downtown restaurant window, we saw the bike back on the road, along with another equally loaded down tandem. It turned out to be a family of five, doing a self-supported trip! The three kids appeared to range from about age 7 to 12. Wow, and we thought we had accomplished something big!

In the evening, we had a final banquet at the Radisson, which was in Fargo’s downtown. Fargo was surprisingly bustling and even a bit urban. The banquet was fun, and we toasted the guides and the sag drivers, and though we didn’t talk a lot about Barbara, we agreed that she was there, too.