Confession

We have rented a car for a day. That was not an easy choice for me, but I am pretty sure it was the best choice. Bruce feels no doubt whatsoever.

I've been watching the weather. Tomorrow we are scheduled to go to my cousin's house near Minneapolis. It's about 75 bicycle miles from St. Cloud, where we are spending tonight. The prediction is for thunderstorms tonight, tomorrow, and tomorrow night. That has been a worry for a few days; the percentage chance of the storms has been steadily increasing. On top of that, we have both had times we found it hard to eat after all the time we had spent in the heat. Yes, the heat is back today, along with the humidity. And I was worried that my wrist was getting worse - but it subsided this afternoon. And Bruce has reached the point where he wants a different packing system. His oh-so-cool bag has sagged one time too many. And his shoes are starting to come apart and his helmet doesn't adjust anymore. Finally, thanks to our decision to take an extra day getting to Xanadu, we were scheduled to ride 12 days in a row. Two are quite short, but even so, twelve is too many for us. So I argued with myself as we rode along this morning & eventually had to admit that the one & only reason not to take tomorrow off was that I didn't want to miss any of the miles. I had to admit that forcing ourselves tbrough tomorrow would not have improved the quality of the next month or so.

Oh, perhaps we could have pushed everything back another day. The day we could most readily alter is about August 27. The phone calls we'd have made would have taken more time & trouble than just doing the ride.

So...excuses, excuses. Hmm. Maybe I should just call it a celebration of reaching the half-way mark.

We actually had quite a nice day. And no, I do not attribute that to the relief my decision brought to us! Th day did not start out hot, and we often had cloud cover. Minnesota is very pretty. Green farms, trees, lawns everywhere except where they make way for all the lakes and rivers. Carefully tended flower gardens near almost every house, however rural. Gentle, rolling hills. Pleasant little towns with wonderfully friendly people.

We stopped for lunch in Bowlus. At first it looked as if the grocery store was our only choice, but we looked around one last corner and spotted Jordie's Cafe. Lunch was very good. Even better was the way our waitress and Jordie threw themselves into figuring out our best route into St. Cloud. Thanks to them, we backtracked slightly to ride a few miles of the SOO trail, which took us to (here comes another big landmark!) the Mississippi River and a bicycle & pedestrian bridge right across it. Then we rode down the Great River Road and caught regular glimpses of the great river. Bruce thinks perhaps someday we should ride all the way ftom the Mississippi headwaters to the Gulf. Sounds good to me.

Miles today: 65
Total miles so far: 2248