Bike Diary #9 sent Sunday July 22, 2001

Not much to report. I replaced the chain on the bicycle since it had over 2000 miles on it, although it probably could have finished the ride it would have taken the freewheel out with it. I spent most of the day relaxing, there are all sorts of aches and pains from fatigue injuries that have accumulated during the first half of the trip.

Day	25
Date	Tuesday July 17, 2001
Layover day

I picked up my mail in Minneapolis today. Thanks, Maria! I still love mail. Andrew, his father, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend all arrived today after driving a station wagon and a rental truck up from California. It's good to see Andrew again; California seems to be treating him pretty well. I'm shipping out first thing in the morning tomorrow since the forecast is calling for a very hot day.

Many thanks to the Howard clan for all the hospitality of the past two days. They provided me a chance to take a much needed rest midway through the ride when the long distances had been wearing me down, for which I am very grateful. It was also good to see Andrew Howard again, who left Cambridge even before I did.

Day	26
Date	Wednesday July 18, 2001
Distance	78 miles
Moving average speed	14.1 mph
Left at	6:45 AM
Arrived at	2:00 PM
Overnight in	Deluxe Motel, Milaca, MN
Latitude	45 d 45 m 47 s N
Longitude	93 d 39 m 14 s W
Cumulative distance	1964 miles

Andrew Howard escorted me out of Minneapolis. Here with are with our respective rigs on his parents' driveway.

I made an early start in the hope that I could stop riding before the afternoon temperatures got out of control. As it happened, although it was a hot, muggy midwestern day, the winds were largely favorable, coming from the south as usual while I was riding north all day. Therefore, I was able to make pretty good time despite the temperature. I decided to make it a short day anyway, in deference to some lingering fatigue injuries from the first half of the trip. Most of the day I was riding due north out of Minneapolis freelancing my own route along the way until I rejoined the Adventure Cycling route just east of Milaca on county road 2.

I'm in another small town motel again tonight, this time the closest reasonable campground was another 53 miles farther along the route. Small town motels always seem to have something a little surprising about them. This one, the Deluxe Motel, has a ancient wooden telephone booth in pristine condition in the lobby. I spent some time examining it while I was waiting for someone to meet me at the front desk (you pick up a telephone there and call for service, the desk isn't manned but the proprietors live within easy walking distance). It no longer has a telephone in it, hasn't for about 15 years, but has been there as long as the current owners have been the owners, about 30 years. It seems like small town motels are the museums of vintage telephone equipment, at least to judge by this one and the one in Wyoming, IA.

Phone booth in Milaca, MN.

Day	27
Date	Thursday July 19, 2001
Distance	81 miles
Moving average speed	14.1 mph
Left at	6:30 AM
Arrived at	4:30 PM
Overnight in	Budget Host Motel, Long Prairie, MN
Latitude	45 d 58 m 7 s N
Longitude	94 d 51 m 58 s W
Cumulative distance	2045 miles

I got a good early start this morning, warned by the forecasts that the afternoon would be a long and hot one otherwise. I made very good time because of a strong east wind that blew me along the westbound stretches and didn't interfere too much on the northbound stretches. Things were going pretty well until I reached a point about five miles east of Royalton, MN when suddenly the tailwind stopped and I found myself riding in still air. A change in the wind usually portends a change in the weather, and my suspicion that the still air was simply the turning point as my tailwind metamorphosed into a headwind was verified within another two miles. I resolved to seek shelter in Royalton to wait out the coming storm.

Ironic signs on the way to Royalton.

I found a city park pavillion in Royalton and began what would become a two hour wait for the weather to clear. In fact, not much of a storm ever did materialize, just an indifferent rain with a few steady moments and alot of sputtering. I probably could have ridden through it without danger, but in the end I was glad I didn't because while I was waiting out the weather in the pavillion I encountered my first westbounder.

Brian Higgins flew from Scotland to Boston and picked up the Norther Tier by riding north to meet it where it emerges from Bar Harbor, ME. Brian quit his job, sold his flat in Glasgow and has devoted himself to bicycle touring for the entire year. He had been on the road eight weeks when I waved him down from my pavillion in Royalton. He's riding the Northern Tier to Montana, then planning to divert south and head for San Diego, after which he will head off to New Zealand and Australia to cycle through the northern hemisphere winter. Having already got the Lands' End to John-O-Groats ride under his belt, he will have a fair claim to have cycled the entire English-speaking world.

Brian Higgins in Royalton, MN.

After the rain stopped, we rode together for the rest of the day and are sharing a motel room tonight in Long Prairie tongiht. It appears likely that we will part ways tomorrow as I am trying to make it to Fargo on Saturday before the Post Office closes (there's another mail drop waiting for me there), which is a somewhat more rapid pace than Brian would enjoy. He's riding a leisurely tour and taking days off here and there where opportunities arise, whereas I am more or less on a mission to finish in seven weeks, or at least to meet my dad's train in Whitefish, MT on August 5.

After dinner Brian and I took a stroll through Long Prairie and stumbled onto the town's bike shop. It's a bit unusual to find a bike shop in a rural town of 3,000, generally speaking you wouldn't expect there to be enough business to support it, especially in a place like Minnesota which is renowned for its long, brutal winters. Nonetheless, there it was defying the laws of economics, and in front of the shop was a small group of cyclists who had just returned from an afternoon joyride. The proprietors of the Wheelwright Bicycle Shop, a young couple, were among the group, and they invited Brian and me to their home for a beer.

Juergen Brunkhorst and his wife Luan followed a complicated path to Long Prairie. It started in Germany, where Luan, originally from eastern Pennsylvania, was a student of the German language and Juergen a surveyor. When they came to the United States, it was initially for the purpose of riding their bicycles from Orlando, Florida to Arizona (the trip was during the winter, hence the choice of a southern route). After spending three months in Arizona, they searched the Internet for American schools looking for a German teacher (Luan has a teaching certificate in addition to her degrees in German). "It came down to Las Vegas or Long Prairie," says Luan.

They bought a $300 Chevelle and started driving north to Minnesota, where they have managed to find (or perhaps carve out) a niche for themselves within the small town life in Long Prairie. The lifelong locals seem to have a certain affection for these two cosmopolitans who have moved into town. For example, Juergen had just retrieved the Chevelle from the local garage where some brake work was done, and the tag they had attached to the key to identify it read "German Dude from the Bike Shop". That is a completely unambiguous personal identifier in Long Prairie.

I immediately took a liking to Juergen and Luan when I saw that they were riding on Brooks saddles (B-66 Champions, to be precise) and Brian and I had quite an enjoyable evening with them swapping war stories from our various bicycle tours. I really admire Juergen for having the guts to open up a bike shop in such an improbable place. He seems to do a pretty steady business in the summertime; although the local population will most likely buy their bicycles at Sears or Wal-Mart, those stores don't do repairs and the bicycles they sell are guaranteed to need them frequently. The fashion among the pre-teen boys in town is for BMX trick bicycles, and the more elaborate the trick the more likely it is that the bicycle will end up on Juergen's stand.

Things slow down considerably in winter, so Juergen has tried a few other things to generate income during the off season. Driving a school bus was as terrifying as one might imagine; now he is running a web site with real estate listings for the area (http://www.minnesotareal.com/).

Day	28
Date	Friday July 20, 2001
layover day

I woke up early with the intention of getting an early start on the day, and I had the bicycle loaded and outside when I noticed it was spitting rain. The weather forecast called for "severe thunderstorms", although these things tend to be highly localized around here so the important question was "where?" The weather radar showed storms in the northern part of South Dakota moving east, but outside the motel room things didn't look so bad, so I figured I would press on. Brian took a look outside and came to the opposite conclusion, so we said our farewells and I was on my way.

About three miles out of town I got up high enough to have a better perspective on what kind of weather was moving in, and I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that Brian was right. It was one of the most threatening skies I have seen so far, the wind was shifting all over the place and lightning was striking not too far away. So I turned back and decided to layover today with Brian after all.

Juergen Brunkhorst at the stand in his bicycle shop.

I spent a while in the local historical society museum and at the public library (which had public Internet access terminals), hung out for a while with Juergen at the bike shop, and saw a good fraction of what there is to see in Long Prairie. In the end, there wasn't much of a storm at all in Long Prairie (although who's to say what I might have encountered farther down the road), and the skies were clearing by 4 in the afternoon. I've had to shuffle my schedule a bit, since I want to hit Fargo on a day when the post office is open I need to time my arrival for Monday instead of Saturday as originally planned. This means slowing the pace down a bit, and so Brian and I will probably ride together at least as far as Fargo.

Juergen and Luan had us over to dinner at their place, we ate outside on a picnic table in their yard. Long Prairie is a town where people wave, every time a neighbor drove by there was a visual exchange of greetings. Then one drove by in a tractor. Although we're in the middle of farm country, seeing a tractor driving through town is still a pretty unusual sight (although it's commonplace on the back country roads we cycle on). By way of explanation, Luan only offers a three-letter acronym: "DWI". Apparently this particular gentleman had lost his driver's license for driving while intoxicated, which means he can't legally drive a car on public roads. However, you don't need a driver's license to drive farm machinery on public roads, so that's what he does. I was vaguely reminded of the movie "Straight Story".

Dinner with Juergen and Luan.

Day	29
Date	Saturday July 21, 2001
Distance	73 miles
Moving average speed	14.0 mph
Left at	8:30 AM
Arrived at	3:45 PM
Overnight in	Twin Lakes Landing Campground, Amor, MN
Latitude	46 d 24 m 47 s N
Longitude	95 d 46 m 8 s W
Cumulative distance	2124 miles (includes 6 miles from false start yesterday)

The weater forecast this morning was an exact duplicate of the one yesterday that had kept me in Long Prairie: severe thunderstorms all morning and afternoon. The sky was dark and threatening, the wind from the northwest and quite strong. However, I had resolved not to be fooled again as I was yesterday, and Brian was pretty determined that the time had come to move on. So we did.

In the end, it turned out to be a perfectly nice day for cycling, the skies were clear well before noon and we spent a good deal of the day riding north being pushed along by a south wind (the wind gradually returned to its normal pattern -- out of the southwest -- during the course of the day). We decided to split the distance between here and a Minnesota state park that's just outside of Fargo; hopefully we'll get there tomorrow, allowing me to ride through Fargo on Monday during business hours and pick up another mail drop at the post office. In this part of Minnesota, there is a great deal of flexibility in choosing where to end the day; we're travelling through the lake country and the place is lousy with campgrounds.

Day	30
Date	Sunday July 22, 2001
Distance	87 miles
Left at	8:30 AM
Arrived at	4:00 PM
Overnight in	Rodeway Inn, Fargo, ND
Latitude	46 d 50 m 44 s N
Longitude	96 d 47 m 52 s W
Cumulative distance	2211 miles

The forecast for today must have looked identical to the ones for the previous two; I'm sure the words "severe thunderstorms" were included for good measure. I'm starting to lose the respect for these "severe thunderstorms" that I learned in Illinois. At any rate, all three of the past three days have turned out fine for cycling, despite starting out with threatening dark clouds, high winds and some lightning. Today I was briefly caught in a shower, but by and large I managed to dodge all the rain. The horizon is getting low enough so that you can see the rain quite a distance away, but so far the storms have been so localized that the probability of getting hit is still pretty low. I'm sure it must be a source of a great deal of frustration for the farmers in the region who desperately need the rain to hear these forecasts, see the clouds and then get only a trace of rain at any given location.

Brian and I left Amor this morning intending to ride together to Buffalo River State Park 16 miles east of Fargo on US 10, but we hadn't got very far into the day before our differences in pace separated us by a good distance. He caught up to me while I was stopped beside the road putting on my foul weather gear and suggested that we should break the link. There was perhaps more than a difference in pace between us, but also a difference of philosophy. Brain is taking a much more leisurely approach to his trip, he said to me "I'm not really hung up on this completion thing." I, on the other hand, am very much hung up on the completion thing, and I would like to complete this thing quickly enough to be able to spend some time with friends and family on the west coast and still get home to Boston before the end of August. So we parted friends and as a tailwind picked up (take that you smug eastbounders: your prevailing winds don't always prevail!) I pushed my goal for the day beyond the state park to Fargo, as this should line up the stops in North Dakota so that I can get from Fargo to Minot in three days. All the advice I've heard from eastbounders is that there's no reasons to linger in North Dakota.

Just east of Glyndon, MN I encountered more eastbounders on US 10; this time four men, two on single bikes and two on a tandem. They were headed for Rochester, NY from Anacortes, WA. I talked to them for a while about my adventures in upstate New York and gave them a message to tell Brian that I was pushing on for Fargo should they encounter him later in the day. They were planning to spend the night in Cormorant, MN.

Eastbounders near Glyndon, MN.