Sucking Wind

Day 34: Lakota, ND to East Grand Forks, MN--68 miles

We delayed our departure by an hour this morning due to a severe thunderstorm. But that gave us an opportunity to talk with some of the local farmers who came into the cafe for breakfast. What a crazy industry they have! Very government regulated--they are told what they are allowed to grow, etc. So if you want to grow pinto beans, you have to ask the goverment and you usually can't grow them unless you have grown them in the past. Very interesting--and those big machines they use to plant and harvest run on the order of $300,000 each! The government doesn't buy them for the farmers--so many of the individuals are going bankrupt. It's an industry on the edge in my mind, and they are such hardworking folks. What would our country be like without our farmers and their products?

Anyway, our ride was horrendous today. We started in a crosswind and rain--the aftermath of that thunderstorm. Of course, our great shoulder also disappeared so that every vehicle that passed by splashed us with road slime. Fun!

The rain stopped and the wind switched, but it became a straight headwind. David pulled me for awhile and then the sun came out and the wind changed once more to a crossing wind from the other direction! Notice that NONE of those winds was a tailwind! So it was like climbing a 68-mile hill.

I always want to do my part, so I offered to pull us along in the wind. After all, how hard can it be to take a turn? Well, David let me pull and I lasted all of 5 minutes before my legs gave out. I nearly expired from the exertion! And we still had at least 20 miles to go...David had to do it all for the rest of the day.

I had hoped to be into Grand Forks by about 2:00 p.m. to miss the heat of the day. At about 1:00, the sun became a boiler and we started to bake. I put on my sunscreen shirt and we started sweating buckets. About 14 miles out from Grand Forks, ND we passed the Grand Forks Air Force Base. That's when the "fun" began. It seems we entered the Bermuda Triangle of the trip.

The first thing that happened was that I got a flat tire. David found a huge shard of glass that was shaped like a sword in my tire. It caused an immediate flat and he fixed it (this is about 10-15 minutes of hard work for him--especially getting the tire pumped up to the right pressure). Off we went, pedaling as fast as we could in the wind and getting more dehydrated by the minute.

Then my bicycle computer stopped working! We tried several different things (delaying us more and extending our time in the sun) but nothing could make that computer register that I was going any speed. What a bummer--adding to my dehydrated annoyance.

Then the unbelievable happened--another flat tire on my bike! I mean, how many can you have in one day? This time it was a very small piece of glass, but we found it and David fixed me up one more time. I started riding and about 20 yards later--ANOTHER FLAT!!!

Once David fixed that one up, we decided that was a "brain fart" flat. We think we both forgot to screw the tube's input valve back in before we put the cap on, so the air just leaked out. But even though it was a brain fart, David still had to pump that tire back up one more time. I was totally ready to just walk to town, but he convinced me that we should just fix the tire and move on. Believe me, it was a hard day for David! (But he forgave me...)

Finally, we made it to town, which had a bike path with NO glass! And I guess we exited the Bermuda Triangle, because my bike computer started working again. Very mysterious, and I have a conspiracy theory going that the 10-mile blank-out had to do with our proximity to that Air Force Base!

We crossed into Minnesota at the forks of the Red River of the North and the Red Lake River. The rivers split the town of Grand Forks and the states of ND and MN. We stopped on a busy bridge that had the MN sign on it and David ran out into the road for a picture. He really had to do everything that day!

We found a great little motel (the Plaza Motel) right near the river on the MN side of town (East Grand Forks). We could almost have thrown a rock into ND, but we were still in MN and that was good enough for us. It was walking distance to GOOD BEER ON TAP! Yeah! The beer desert seems to have ended. We had lots of VEGGIES for dinner, and 1/2 price wine was the happy hour special! We LOVE Minnesota! Need I say more???