I will add pictures–and probably more words–but this is what we’ve been up to since Rugby:
Judith–printmaker, bike enthusiast, and one of our new lovely Fargo friends–is from Minot ND, one of the larger towns in eastern North Dakota. Minot was on our route and she generously called her father to see if he would have space for us when we came through town. She ended up making all the negotiations, but assured us through emails and roadside phone conversations that her dad Joel (1) had space for us, (2) was excited to meet us, and (3) was a “pretty cool guy.” She was right on all counts, though he may have been faking the excited bit.
I called Joel from a Tesoro gas station just outside Minot. Instead of just talking us in, he told us to hold tight where we were, that he’d drive down and meet us there. To cut the heat while we waited, Matt and I got some $0.99 scoops of ice cream. They were enormous: a mountain of ice cream balanced precariously on top of a sugar cone. Joel arrived in his jeep to find us standing outside, each holding our cones far from our bodies while the ice cream ran down our hands and arms and we frantically tried to keep it all from collapsing and falling to the ground.
Joel is a tall broad, guy and over the past two days, I’ve hardly seen him without a smile. He told us to not worry about biking into town, that we could throw our bikes up on the rack. We were still short Joe, so we hopped on US 2 and drove east until we spotted him pulling out of the gas station in Surry, a couple miles back. Two-thousand two-hundred miles and only Joe’s second flat. Unfortunately, his first was just the day before.
We talked about the area on the drive through Minot. Joel is a general contractor and says business has been booming. As a point of comparison for my family in California: Joel has relatives doing construction in Elk Grove and says that Minot makes it seem whisper quiet. Part of the community’s prosperity comes from the oil reserves to the south west and part comes from the rising commodities prices, especially wheat.
Minot sits in a little valley with US 2 running east to west through its center. To the north of US 2 is “north hill;” to the south, “south hill.” We appreciated the ride up the house in Joel’s jeep; climbing north hill would have been an unexpected obstacle at the end of the day. The rest of the family came out to greet us: Judith’s step-mom Connie, step-grandma Marie, and half brother Austin. Connie quickly ushered us inside and pointed us towards showers. Joel, on the other hand, showed us where he kept the cold beer.
Their home, built by Joel, was beautiful. Connie and Marie are originally from Butte so stone and copper accents were around the house and Joel’s love of wood was evident everywhere. Judith had told us that she missed her father’s cooking, living now in Fargo. I understand why: for dinner we had excellent veggie lasagna and Marie baked a delicious coffee cake with walnuts and orange peel.
Connie’s friend Harold came by after dinner. He’s a life-long tourist and has been through ten countries outside the states. He was a wealth of knowledge and I have a page of notes from talking to him about our route through Montana and Idaho alone. Being a bike geek, he also wanted to take a look at what we were riding. Joe’s and Matt’s bikes won his approval, but he found my fixed gear set up mad.
Our second day we explored Minot. Marie is a cyclist herself and volunteered, after her morning ride, to take us around. She knew every shortcut in town. We darted up on sidewalks and along levees and moved on and off bike routes as they suited us. We went to the good will so Matt could replace some lost clothing and the bikeshop for various reasons.
It was a hot day–ninety-one degrees according to one bank–so the idea came up to go the municipal pool on Roosevelt Park. Marie thought Austin would like to join us so we went back to the house. Joel ended up driving him out while we rode our bikes, again with Marie as our guide. And so we spent the next four hours taking twenty-five cent slide rides and improving our front flips under Austin’s tutelage.
After Connie picked Austin up, we went in search of a bookstore recommended to me by Judith. A few wrong turns and poor guesses later, I think we succeeded in search. I held off on buying anything, hoping that a book will come into my life after I’m done with the one I have now. Dinner time was approaching so we went across the street to Off The Vine, a beer and wine bar, for happy hour and made jokes along with our bartender and the one regular about whatever she found on TV.
Our second dinner was as fine as the first: veggie kebabs and rice. Having had such a relaxing a pleasant day the hardships of the road were weighing on me and for one of the first times in the past five or six weeks I was not enthusiastic about returning to the bicycle. I went through the rest of the evening languidly: I packed my bags, looked at maps, and joined Austin for a few minutes of video games, but all the time thinking of crossing the rest of north Dakota and Montana, and the nearly one thousand of mile of travel that would require. This continued until I fell asleep.
But in the morning, as if by miracle, I was cured. My legs had their now familiar itch and it was all I could do to not leap out to the garage at dawn. After breakfast, and again trying to thank the Feists for taking care of us, we headed out to US 2. It was an easy day of riding and were stopped not buy exhaustion but the threat of rain ninety miles west in Ray ND.
After suffering through heat, rain, and mosquitoes the night of the sixth, we are only thirty-six or so miles west in Williston. We’ve been fighting relentless headwind and are now running errands to stay off the road. We plan to push on another twenty five miles or so, but are not looking forward to it.
