Crossing the North Dakota/Montana state line.
| Day | 36 |
| Date | Saturday July 28, 2001 |
| Distance | 104 miles |
| Moving average speed | 13.7 mph |
| Left at | 8:00 AM (CDT) |
| Arrived at | 4:00 PM (MDT) |
| Overnight in | Sherman Inn Motel, Wolf Point, MT |
| Latitude | 48 d 5 m 26 s N |
| Longitude | 105 d 38 m 11 s W |
| Cumulative distance | 2788 miles |
Indian reservations are the ghettos of the great plains: isolated pockets of poor dark-skinned people surrounded by relatively affluent blonde whites of Scandinavian descent. They have all of the social ills normally associated with inner city slums (poverty, unemployment, petty crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence) as well as their outward manifestations (federal housing projects, pawn shops, detox clinics, crisis centers and dozens of missions trying to help by pure dint of religion). The word from the eastbounders so far has been unanimous: don't camp in city parks on the reservations.
I entered the Fort Peck Indian Reservation 30 miles after crossing the Montana state line (yes, I got a picture of the bicycle leaning against the sign). About 15 miles later I hit the little town of Brockton, MT and decided to stop at the convenience store there and perform the buy-Gatorade-and-fill-my-bottles ritual once again. There's nobody in the store except the woman working the register and a guy who appears to be just loitering there. I buy my Gatorade, fill my bottles, make some small talk with the woman at the register about the "4-for-2, contact your Congressman" sign outside the store (they want four lanes for this stretch of US route 2). I walk outside to my bicycle, and the loiterer follows. "Do you have a dollar?" he asks. "Yes, several," I reply and start drinking my Gatorade. "Will you give me one?" he asks. At home, I walk through swarms of pan-handlers every day in Harvard Square and I have about as bad a case of compassion fatigue as it is possible to get: "No", I reply. "How about a quarter?" he asks. At this point, I just want to finish my Gatorade in peace, so I hand him 50 cents and hope he will go away. But no, still unsatisfied he decides to try a rather blunt intimidation tactic: "Don't you ever get scared, riding that bicycle all alone?". Two can play at that game, I thought: "I'm not alone," I lied, "there are four guys behind me. I told them I'd wait for them here." "Oh," he says, and overwhelmingly outnumbered, leaves. I think I have guessed his MO: he waits at the convenience store for strangers to happen along. All the locals have heard his sob story before and stopped giving a long time ago.
Crossing the North Dakota/Montana state line.
One important tidbit of information I got from the woman at the store was that the forecast for tonight is for crop-damaging hail, so I wasn't really tempted to camp at all. It was hard to believe during the sunny and pleasant afternoon, but sure enough, now something is really moving in with a vengeance.
The westbound Empire Builder passed me in Brockton at 1:15 PM MDT. Assuming that it covers the remaining 35 miles to Wolf Point in half an hour (a bit generous, I admit), he was running more than two hours late, a fairly typical Amtrak performance, unfortunately. (Yes, of course I have an Empire Builder schedule with me. I'm not going to ride 600+ miles exactly parallel to its route without bringing a schedule!)
BNSF Dash-9 locomotive; photo of a moving train taken from a moving bicycle.
Passenger rail station in Wolf Point, MT.