Day 18, Thursday, July 17.
Minot, ND to Fessenden, ND
Daily Mileage: 90.92 miles
Total Mileage: 1,654.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:20 hours
Average Speed: 12.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 21.3 mph
We awoke to our wake-up call at 6:30AM, and then went quickly back to sleep for another hour. At 7:30AM we went downstairs for our first round of the continental breakfast. We ate as much as we could, then went back to the room, turned on CNN, and fell asleep listening to the problems with the MIR Space Station and the Versace murder. I woke up several hours later and went back down for more cereal and orange juice. I shave my face when I got back to the room (for what was only one of the few times during our trip), leaving what sort of looks like goatee. It was sure nice to sleep in a real bed last night, get a hot shower, and watch the news. It's too bead we spent some of our food money for the room.
Before hitting the road, we checked the map and decided to slightly alter our route through North Dakota in hopes of cutting off some miles by taking a diagonal path through the state.
Our ride today just started bad. We had a headwind constantly from the very beginning and it took a while to get into a groove that wasn’t interrupted by saddle sores. We took breaks every ten miles for about five minutes each, which seemed to break up things enough so the miles didn't get to be too unbearable.
Our first stop was at the Cozy Corner Café in Balfour. It was a great café that had a circular bar with built-in stools, wood booths, and appliances from the 1950's, including a huge malt machine. All of the cigarettes in the machine were “Generic” brand. This place was the genuine article—no retro-diner here. From the moment we stepped into the joint the place got real quiet. It was like a scene from an old Western movie when someone (usually with two six-shooters) walks into a saloon. Finally, one of the three elderly gentleman at the bar said, “Where you comin’ from and where you goin’?” And we were in with them from then on.
The day really started to get interesting around 8PM. As we were riding to Fessenden, we decided to adjust our schedule and start riding a mini-RAAM. The real RAAM (Ride Across America) occurs every year. It's an insane race from the West Coast to the East Coast. Some people do it in teams, and others do it solo. The whole idea is to see who gets to the other side first: Solo riders often ride for twenty-three hours straight without any sleep, falling into deep hallucinations. The total distance is covered in less then seven days. We decided to adapt this tactic to our trip just to get to Minneapolis—our first day off. We just wanted to keep riding until we got there.
We needed to check in with our relatives, so we decided to stop in Fessenden to call, stock up on food, regroup and go, but there our plans changed. While David was making his calls, I had a really nice conversation with these two married couples in their 40s. After I finished talking to them, I went inside the Cenex convenience store/gas station to ask the sheriff and farmers about the weather. We'd heard it was supposed to storm pretty hard and didn't want to be caught outside doing our RAAM in bad conditions. Well, after talking with them, they persuaded me that we should stay in their local park. They wouldn't charge us, and it had showers. As we were still deciding, the sheriff and his wife came outside and offered to let us stay in the vacant house that they were remodeling. We couldn't believe it—it was a house, in a neighborhood! The sheriff let us bring our bikes right inside, and after he got us towels (real towels, not the camping ones we had that supposedly absorb 97 times their weight but did so poorly). We took pictures of the place after they left—still elated that they were letting us stay in their house not even knowing who we were.
We changed into our “civilian gear” and then started to walk back to the Cenex when we ran into two girls driving around in a pickup truck who gave us a ride to the store. We picked up some food for dinner and started heading back “home.” We sat on a bench on the main street of town for a while, right outside of the bank, below the rotating time and temperature sign, and across from the Main Street Café and Saloon. When we had enough of the mosquitoes, we walked the rest of the way home to finish eating our Doritos, chips and salsa in the comfort of our own living room.
(Photo: The Continental Divide?)
Daily Mileage: 90.92 miles
Total Mileage: 1,654.5 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 7:20 hours
Average Speed: 12.3 mph
Maximum Speed: 21.3 mph
We awoke to our wake-up call at 6:30AM, and then went quickly back to sleep for another hour. At 7:30AM we went downstairs for our first round of the continental breakfast. We ate as much as we could, then went back to the room, turned on CNN, and fell asleep listening to the problems with the MIR Space Station and the Versace murder. I woke up several hours later and went back down for more cereal and orange juice. I shave my face when I got back to the room (for what was only one of the few times during our trip), leaving what sort of looks like goatee. It was sure nice to sleep in a real bed last night, get a hot shower, and watch the news. It's too bead we spent some of our food money for the room.
Before hitting the road, we checked the map and decided to slightly alter our route through North Dakota in hopes of cutting off some miles by taking a diagonal path through the state.
Our ride today just started bad. We had a headwind constantly from the very beginning and it took a while to get into a groove that wasn’t interrupted by saddle sores. We took breaks every ten miles for about five minutes each, which seemed to break up things enough so the miles didn't get to be too unbearable.
Our first stop was at the Cozy Corner Café in Balfour. It was a great café that had a circular bar with built-in stools, wood booths, and appliances from the 1950's, including a huge malt machine. All of the cigarettes in the machine were “Generic” brand. This place was the genuine article—no retro-diner here. From the moment we stepped into the joint the place got real quiet. It was like a scene from an old Western movie when someone (usually with two six-shooters) walks into a saloon. Finally, one of the three elderly gentleman at the bar said, “Where you comin’ from and where you goin’?” And we were in with them from then on.
The day really started to get interesting around 8PM. As we were riding to Fessenden, we decided to adjust our schedule and start riding a mini-RAAM. The real RAAM (Ride Across America) occurs every year. It's an insane race from the West Coast to the East Coast. Some people do it in teams, and others do it solo. The whole idea is to see who gets to the other side first: Solo riders often ride for twenty-three hours straight without any sleep, falling into deep hallucinations. The total distance is covered in less then seven days. We decided to adapt this tactic to our trip just to get to Minneapolis—our first day off. We just wanted to keep riding until we got there.
We needed to check in with our relatives, so we decided to stop in Fessenden to call, stock up on food, regroup and go, but there our plans changed. While David was making his calls, I had a really nice conversation with these two married couples in their 40s. After I finished talking to them, I went inside the Cenex convenience store/gas station to ask the sheriff and farmers about the weather. We'd heard it was supposed to storm pretty hard and didn't want to be caught outside doing our RAAM in bad conditions. Well, after talking with them, they persuaded me that we should stay in their local park. They wouldn't charge us, and it had showers. As we were still deciding, the sheriff and his wife came outside and offered to let us stay in the vacant house that they were remodeling. We couldn't believe it—it was a house, in a neighborhood! The sheriff let us bring our bikes right inside, and after he got us towels (real towels, not the camping ones we had that supposedly absorb 97 times their weight but did so poorly). We took pictures of the place after they left—still elated that they were letting us stay in their house not even knowing who we were.
We changed into our “civilian gear” and then started to walk back to the Cenex when we ran into two girls driving around in a pickup truck who gave us a ride to the store. We picked up some food for dinner and started heading back “home.” We sat on a bench on the main street of town for a while, right outside of the bank, below the rotating time and temperature sign, and across from the Main Street Café and Saloon. When we had enough of the mosquitoes, we walked the rest of the way home to finish eating our Doritos, chips and salsa in the comfort of our own living room.
(Photo: The Continental Divide?)
