More fun tomorrow.

So... I guess I'm getting kinda boring. Dad has written me his version of a blog on my facebook, which reads like a thank you letter, and ends with, "Please write something... anything." So. There will be some spicy random things thrown in to keep it interesting for those who are falling asleep while reading.

Yes, there are days we don't feel like riding. Today was one of those days... gusting headwinds all the live long day, not much scenery...but we're in Morris, MN visiting Chris and Dena Leman (more to follow in tomorrow's blog). David finally got his new Brooks saddle in the mail and was breaking it in... all in all, not the most fun day riding, but one that you just put your head down and pedal through, eking the miles out one by one.

We are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind on the blog situation. I am also a dunderhead and managed to leave (even after double checking each room!) our usb modem at the last house we were at, which means we'll likely be without on-demand Internet for the rest of the trip. Monkeys.

A good long time ago we were in Minnewauken, which apparently means "bad water" in Sioux because a bunch of warriors drowned not far from their camp. I told my Dad we were staying in "The Venice of North Dakota". Then the robot army advanced. Minnewauken appears to be the town of bad water; the town was twelve miles from the lake fifteen years ago and is now in the lake, which has been rising for the last fifteen years without explanation. The people we stayed with lived near a state route that USDOT attempted to raise four times before abandoning. It is now completely underwater. More robots. We got a full tour of the town, which has sections where the water table has bubbled up, and the town itself is almost an island. Many people have had to abandon their land. Lyndee and Tyler Heser, whom we stayed with, had a house that is on the edge of town. This year, they will have very few remaining neighbors.

Lyndee and Tyler grilled out for us, made us breakfast, gave us a tour of the town, and genuinely made us feel like welcome guests in The Venice of North Dakota. Both are teachers, and both have committed to Minnewauken for the long run, although neither are from the town. David and I both thought that it takes pretty incredible people to stick it out, living and working in a town that is slowly flooding.

Someone (me) fell on our tent in the middle of the night a couple weeks ago, and broke one of the sticks that...you know... holds the whole tent up. We made a RIDICULOUSLY make-shift fix with bungee cords, sticks, duct tape, and nearby trees. It looked... well... stupid. Really really stupid. It also went from about the easiest tent in the universe to set up to one of the most complicated. Thankfully, when Tyler saw the hilarity that was the bungee/tape/stick madness, he donated some of his tent-holding-up sticks from a broken tent that he had. Whew! Our tent still looks a little silly, but not nearly as...tent-down-by-the-river-ish.

We got dumped on while we were camped out in their yard, and... unfortunately... we hadn't planned on any big thunderstorms so, again, the rain cover wasn't on. David threw the tarp over our tent, but the new tent sticks are higher than the old ones, so it only kept us marginally dry. Once again, the Therma-rest pads saved the day... we floated on our little blow-up islands during the night, and only woke up to the pools in our tent in the morning. Only a few things we needed were wet, and Lyndee and Adam let us use the dryer for those. Then we watched a moose tango.

The next morning, after a send-off breakfast of french toast, bacon, and parfaits... we got lost. There are a lot of roads that just don't connect to anything anymore! We followed the giant lake around lots of bends, and then all of a sudden, our road was closed, and we couldn't find a through-route. Ah, the days when we had our trusty Internet USB...how I miss thee. We looked up where we were on Google, and navigated our way out of the mess only +9 miles later.

That night we were in Pekin, which we've already written mostly about. What we DIDN'T write was that the 50 cent breakfast was not actually a 50 cent breakfast. It was 50 cent coffee, and we were crashing a men's group that meets at the community center every morning at 5am. whoops. We stayed around though, had some coffee, made oatmeal on the stove, and heard stories about old Pekin, while secretly lamenting the one package of oatmeal we had and feeling bad for crashing men's club. Mermaids.

That day, after stopping for ice cream in Hope, we headed to Page, ND. People kept directing us to a special 'bicyclists only' campsite up the road which ended up being one of the lovelier places we've been. The bathrooms at the park were essentially a hole in the ground inside of a shed (don't fall in!), and there were mosquitoes that were apparently very malnourished. We hadn't showered in a couple days, so we rode around town looking for a magical shower to appear by the side of the road. David pulled up to the Page High School, where I told him he had "a zero percent chance" that it would be open. He somehow found the positive percentage in there, because both the principal and the janitor were there, and were cool with us showering in the coachs' bathroom. mmmmmmmmmmmmm. What an unexpected treat. Showering made the 'Bikers only' camping look not so incredibly scary.

We set up our tent again just in time to wait out yet another downpour. This time, raincover on. The Page Farmer's Market is located in the same park as the 'Bikers Camping', and who should be among the three people selling baked goods, but one of the ladies from the Ice Cream store in Hope! She and her family were really interested in our trip, and they gifted us squash, potatoes, and snickerdoodle cookies. The squash and potatoes made it into the lunchbox. The cookies did not.

David really wants me to write that in Page, everyone parks in the middle of the street, runs their errands, and runs back out. It did look pretty goofy to see a constant rotation of cars parked in the middle of a lane. The waitress at the Page Cafe said she grew up in the town, and they've always done it that way.

The next day was a pretty short day to Fargo. All was going well, except that I kept feeling like my wheel was dragging. I knew it was all in my head because I had checked the wheel in Page, but I almost wished there was something wrong with my wheel so I could at least have a reason for the drag I was feeling. As I was contemplating all the possible things that could be causing drag (but that I knew weren't), I noticed that David's wheel was actually wobbling erratically. The rim was cracked in at least three places, and was cracking in others. We were only twenty miles out from Fargo, so we figured we'd just disengage the back brake, ride into town and get a new rim. It was a rough ride, but we got there.

Thankfully, Fargo is not Montana, or we would've been up a creek without a paddle. And really, honestly, I don't know what we would've done if we hadn't been twenty miles from Fargo because I don't know too many bike shops along our route where we could've gotten what we needed. Thankfully, there is a GIANT bike shop in an old train depot in Fargo where the bike mechanics like to talk shop to tourists (in the cycling tourists sense), and were happy to help David out (even sawing off wheel pieces) without charging an arm and leg for smiling at us. This was a welcome surprise. So, now, besides the new seat, David has a new rim, a new tire, and he broke down and bought a pair of gloves. I think I've forgotten to mention that for the last month and a half he's had no feeling in his pinkie and ring finger. I don't know if the gloves will help, but they certainly won't hurt.

I'm still days behind, but it's past midnight and once again, we're riding 100 miles tomorrow. I'll try to catch the blog up ASAP, find some WI-FI and keep all y'all posted. Mutant vegetables!