Friday, October 21, 2011

West Dakota

Been a while since I posted ... Truth be told, the spare moments that we find in life (off bike, sans chores) are mostly filled with that blessed empty space of staring off into the great yonder and stretching my muscles.  Believe it or not, my legs ache no longer.  This little organism that I call home has become accustomed to the physical labor of biking.  In fact, I take daily pleasure in discovering new geometries of pedaling power.  I know my body on a whole new level.  And I have re-discovered a childhood pleasure in pure candy.  Hey ... when else do you have the excuse to gobble empty calories by the handful?

So ... West Dakota.  Never heard of it?  It's a vague empty space between Helena and Miles City, MT.  We hit our collective wall in that open wide space.  There were a few factors:

poor water.  'nuf said.

Wind.  Some days it loves you.  Some days you feel like an insect on the windshield of life.  Air cannot be underestimated as a force upon the plains.

No definable goals.  Next building 100 miles ... maybe we look for water there tomorrow?  Until then ... find a ditch ... sleep ... eat ... keep pedaling ... grey skies over a timeless landscape. 

New group member. Enter Nathaniel ... I thought to have a whole blog post titled "Rooster in the Hen House".  By pure cosmic happenstance, I came upon Nathaniel on a late Friday night downtown Missoula on our one day off.  He admired my bike and asked if I happened to be one of three women bikers going east.  He was headed our direction on a similar fool's errand, having started from the Seattle area, and had heard of us in the Lolo area.  We had a breakfast meeting the next morning and invited him to join our merry band.  Two days later he caught up with us in Helena.  We had a rough recalibration period.  Being a balanced group of three, adding the fourth was difficult.  Nathaniel is a natural addition, but there were a tough patch of days in there when we all realized that sometimes the most challenging (and rewarding) aspects of a trip like this is learning to get along with all the divergent visions of what the journey is all about.

As the dust settles, I sit here in Sturgis, South Dakota.  We heard it was a biker town ...

We had a great time at Devil's Tower.  Rode thru the black hills in the rain.  Had some lovely days, and now we sit in the lap of luxury at the Best Western Inn.  Hot tub, cold beverages, delivery pizza, warm showers, internet, and continental breakfast.   We told them to put out triple the normal amount of breakfast food.  They laughed ... but we weren't joking.

beijos, Flynn

3 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you made it that far after leaving Ryegate!

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  2. Yay! Keep plugging. You're an inspiration to me. Best of luck with your continuing journey.

    --Jim E., Moscow, ID

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  3. That sounds like quite a trip - especially at this time of year! I read your first post, and then I skipped ahead to this one. I've never gone cross country before, but I have done some touring in Europe. I found one thing that was super helpful to me was a new kind of bicycle quick release that I had on my bike over there - it didn't require any adjustment to take the wheel on and off, just open the lever, push in on the skewer, and off it comes. It was especially helpful when I found myself trying to change a flat in the middle of nowhere with a rainstorm on the horizon...every second counts, right? Anyway, what made me think of that was that you'd said you'd never changed a flat before, so I hope it's all going ok for you! Good Luck!

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