Headwinds and Rumblestrips - Welcome to North Dakota

There were bicyclists ahead of us as we left Baker this morning. Even more amazing - we caught up with them! They are a father and daughter from Seattle. They began at some point on the continental divide and plan to continue at least as far as Minneapolis. They are carrying camping gear and have done less touring than we have. In fact, the daughter rode her longest day ever their first day of the trip. I think she said it was about 50 miles. Yesterday she completed 80. It was not surprising that we moved a little faster. We did ride along together for a few miles. That's when we began noticing the headwinds. Not too bad, but definitely there.

We pulled ahead after a while. Before we knew it, we had crossed into North Dakota. It's my first time in this state. The moment we crossed the state line, the pavement quality was perfect. Incredibly smooth surface, nice, wide shoulder. Plenty of room to ride between the rumble strip and the edge of the pavement. Bruce looked across and saw that the shoulder in the other direction was considerably less generous. We scarcely had time to joke that the state loved to welcome cyclists, but hated to see them leave, when our generous shoulder ended. We, too, having been successfully lured in, were going to have to confine ourselves to about 12" of (still beautifully smooth) pavement.

The headwinds were getting stronger, too. Sometimes, to give us a little break, the road curved so we could play with crosswinds.

We came to our first town. It has an antique auto museum and ice cream parlor - together, I mean. An unusual combination, but that didn't stop me from enjoying ice cream accompanied by auto repair smells. The woman who served us was friendly, but - shall we just say lacking polish? She talked more or less constantly using what is often called colorful language; sounded more like a simple lack of vocabulary and thought processes to me. However, as I said, she was quite friendly. She also gave us accurate information about our next road condition challenge. We had seen a sign suggesting alternate routes to avoid muddy conditions ahead. She assured us it was not from flooding - just some road work. A few miles of roadwork - no pavement at all.

And she asked me what I was wearing under my bike clothes. That gave me pause. I mean, did she really want an explanation of why bike shorts and underwear are incompatible? Seeing that she had not even distinguished us from motorcyclists based on our attire, that seemed unlikely. And she really appeared to have some mild and reasonably impersonal curiosity. It took me a moment to realize she was wondering about the white arm-warmer-like things I had on. It was a warm day. Since you can't tell by looking that they are not part of a full extra layer, her question suddenly made sense.

Back on the road. The new pavement had ended. The rumble strips had backed off a bit. The headwinds had not. We stopped at a wide spot to eat something more nutritious than ice cream, and our new friends from Seattle caught up and joined us. We all set out to see what the road work would be like.

It was pretty rough. At first there were lots of smallish rocks, but soon there was just a fairly solid dirt stretch. On the bright side, we were getting crosswinds from the right, so the dust kicked up by cars sharing the experience with us was swept away from us. After a mile or so, the rocks were back and I chose to walk the rest. Not bad - the total distance was less than 2 1/2 miles without pavement.

Then back to the winds. And the discovery that there were lots more up sections than down sections.

Believe it or not, in spite of the road's attempt to keep our attention, we are rather liking this new state. We stopped at another little town & found a woman in a store who was eager to advise us on places to visit here. We rode into Bowman, which seems to be a nice little town with plenty of places to eat and do laundry (I tell you, your needs get pretty limited out here) and some nice green surrounding areas. Tomorrow we will only do local rides to get errands taken care of. Unfortunately, the town is big enough that we have lost track of the Seattle cyclists. Maybe we'll spot them tomorrow.

Miles today - 47
Total so far - 1544