Bike Trip Forums: July 11th Update from Brian

This past week the heat really cranked up for us and would be about 100 day after day after day. Nights would droop to the mid 80's, and since the Minnesota mosquitoes are especially fierce, we were forced to our tents to sweat out some really hot nights. Biking 70+ miles a day does help you sleep through just about everthing though. We have been following the banks and bluffs of the Mississippi River for the last week, so the hills add to the ability to sleep at night too.

Through all of this we've had one goal in mind....make it to Minneapolis where we're meeting our friend Dean Rice and taking some time off. On July 8th, Dean met us in Stillwater and biked us the 40 miles to his house. 1.5 miles away from his house a midwest storm got in one last lick and pounded us before we could find refuge in his garage. But we rolled in none the less and for the past two days have been indulging in all that we have missed in our time on the road. We started with a huge home made lunch at 3:30, grabbed showers and laundry, then had a huge bbq dinner at 6pm. A true cyclist eating schedule. Movies theaters with popcorn, drinks, and AC can never again be as good as when you're out biking.

And so we've been lounging this way for two days now and have shaken off the grime of 1500 road miles and are preparing for the second half of our journey. Dean's wife Carol buys lunch rolls, cuts them in half, butters them, and puts them back in the bag, so if we're not refreshed and spoiled after this treatment we'll never be ready.

The last week and a bit on the road continues to be classic biketrip style. We've been on a huge swimming pool run lately, and have been able to swim at a pool pretty much daily for as long as we can remember. Sometimes we hit a 4 hour mid day break and jump off the diving board for a majority of an afternoon....Chris can do a double flip now. Other times we camp at the city pools, swim, have dinner, and swim until dark again. Its the best way to beat the heat by far. Temps should be cooler this coming week as we head out into the remoteness of north dakota.

Sidenote: Kit and Angelo hit a baby deer on their bike the other day. We're not sure if it survived.

I always love to watch a good storm roll through at night while we're safely in the shelter of the pavilion. Its fun to watch the raw power of nature, and enjoy the fact that you got to the shelter before it could pound you. So in Colesburg Iowa, we rolled into town with dark clouds on the horizon, had dinner, and chilled out in the pavillion waiting for the approaching storm. Just as we went to sleep in this pavillion the storm hit. Constant lightning, and biblical rain. Within a minute, the pavillion had flooded, and as we scrambled to get everything off the ground, the wind picked up and we got rained on sideways for a couple hours. We wrapped up in our tents, but lots of our stuff was still soaked by the time the storm was done with us. Slow start for us the next morning as we packed our drenched belongings.

On our way to Dean's place we stopped for the night in Winona MN. It was our last night on the Mississippi, so we strolled downtown and took a dip at the beach. After dinner we heard some live music so we walked over and found a nice blue grass festival in the park. As I got closer, I noticed how young the band looked, and as they introduced themselves between songs, we found out they were 13 to 16 years old and were a group of blue grass proteges that got together and formed a band called Sawtooth Bluegrass.... and are on tour right now. As individuals, they compete in fingerpicking competitions, always with the youth division, and place high in the men's division each time. We sat on the grass for hours as these guys rocked it out song after song on the banjo and fiddle and full acompanyment. A few years from now when they're super famous and rich, we'll be able to say we saw them in Winona while we were biking across the US and they were just a bunch of kids. No telling what's next in the coming towns.

We're bikin it.

Brian

Edited by Dean (07/14/07 10:45 AM)

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