Leaving Crookston, ND, we had the longest day of the trip (117 miles) ahead of us. The day began not thinking of the miles ahead but the slow unveiling of the previous night’s covert activity.
To appreciate the story, you have to know Nolan Wildfire. He has a prolific resume of pranks: offering Sarah suntan lotion for her to discover it was ranch dressing after putting it on her face, the entire team waking up to find their shoes hanging from the tennis court fence, rocks in camelbacks, locking people in port-a-potties, removing the buckle from my waist strap,…In the midyear evaluation, we were asked what the team could do to improve. Many people responded that as a whole, we could be better at pranking Nolan. There have been responses, some successful, some not, but none that shook his confidence.
I gave nothing away during breakfast, even sitting at the same table, and managed to carry his bike out to the parking lot before he saw it under the guise of moving bikes to clean. If you don’t have a good poker face, getting very little sleep the night before works amazing. Nolan and I are to the point that when he discovered the 5 pound dumbbell suspended in the triangle of his bike (zip tied to suspend and locked to make sure he couldn’t remove it) I was suspect number one. Accused my poker face failed me, but you don’t need a poker face when you have the best hand. In mile increments, I disclosed first a wrong combination and then individual numbers to the combination with chalk on the road. As I chalked the last key in the road, I could make out Nolan’s gangly silhouette coming through the fog. He didn’t seem to care about the combination, and prankster and pranked rode the next 20 miles together. I’m pretty sure he would have rode the 117 miles with it attached to his bike had the zip ties not snapped 15 miles in. Instead of dumping it on the side of the road, he dumped it in his backpack.
We came across a cross-country rider from Sweden with limited knowledge of the country and English that allowed him to be conversational with some deliberation. Sitting at the rest stop, Nolan removed the weight to get at something deeper in his bag. The Swede cracked up and said that Nolan could carry some of his bags and drop them at the hotel. He made Nolan look more stubborn than impressive as he had 100 pounds on his bike. He was riding, constrained only by the plane ticket he had back home from New York in September. It was hot so he turned north. Kira learned that he was going to be riding to Rugby the next day, also our destination. Knowing that there was really only one route, she decided to look up Swedish phrases to chalk on the road for him. It amazes me the little things people on the trip do for others and reminds me to look for opportunities beyond pranking Nolan.
With the trees gone once we left Crookston, the potential for a tough ride was great. In the end, the wind was absent and the miles clicked by.
Seeing a few locals jump from the bridge that spanned the gorge 88 feet above the St. Louis River was enough to convince us that it was deep enough for a more modest 30 foot jump. Other cameras captured me look like a frog leaving the edge.
In St. Paul, we spent the day at separate worksites, each spending the day scraping paint from houses. I expected to be eating my cereal left-handed the next day.
One of my more flexible moments.
No two miles alike. Even the miles from backtracking after wrong turns offered a different perspective.
Llama Prama in Rugby, ND (the geographical center of North America). This deserves a whole post, but you are looking at a white dress shirt and tie thrown over the shoulder. Better pictures will emerge, but it had to be mentioned.
Hammering West 