Tuesday was a hard ride, no two ways about it. I got up and had a nice breakfast with Jan and Leonard before heading out, but the skies looked ominous. I put rain covers on all the luggage and put my Fro
gg Togg jacket on over my regular riding jacket to help block additional wind as I rode. The temps started out in the upper 50s, but started to sink as I rode north.
I had a new companion on this trip this time...the wind (the video is a very good representative slice of the day, double click to play). For all 345 miles of riding, I had a west wind coming at me from the left. It made the entire ride feel like I was having an argument with the bike. I wanted it to stay in a fairly straight line in one lane, but he wanted to meander, occasionally from lane to lane. This time I kept adding layers at each stop instead of shedding, and still was staying on the cool side. About 100 m
iles into the trip, I noticed that my hair felt like the breeze was starting to catch it. Sure enough, I'd lost my pony tail holder, and the braid was no more. One more ride like that and I'll be grabbing some scissors!! I took Highway 81 north from just below Yankton, SD, and took it north, with one jog to the east up until Watertown, SD. At that point I got onto I-29 North and started putting the miles behind me, while fighting (still) the wind from my left. Finally, I rolled into Fargo around 3:45 p.m., seven hours after I'd left. There had been some slight misting rain, but nothing of any import.
I went by our branch and got to meet some folks I regularly talk to on the phone. I was staying with the family of one of my friends from the branch, and after a short rest, I followed him on the bike while he went to pick up his son from after school care. While I was tracking him on the interstate across town, the bike started to act a little peculiar, surging and losing power. I hunkered down some to see if that would help, if it was just the wind buffeting the bike, but that didn't help. After the next surge, my brain clicked...I was on the verge of running out of gas from my regular supply, so I reached down and flipped the switch to my reserve fuel while riding. The bike settled down after about three seconds, and when we stopped at the school, I mentioned that I needed gas, and the next stop was the station at the end of the street. I put 4.345 gallons in the tank that only holds 4.8 total gallons (4.2 regular and .6 reserve), so I was definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel. That beating I took on the ride up there translated into 36.7 mpg. Even with a twisty wrist, the worst I've gotten so far has been 46 mpg, so that tells you how much the wind was fighting the bike.
Once I arrived at Darren and Darla's house, I got to meet the kids Logan and Gabbie, who seemed to think I 
was all right :) The terrier, named Izzy took a little longer to warm up to me, but eventually decided I was not going to do any damage to the house. Supper was at Johnny Carina's, which has HUGE portions (!) and then back to the house to veg for the night. I ended up getting the tour of the 'being remodeled' basement (which had some interesting outside corners on the drywall) and settling in to chat for the evening. About midnight I dragged my sorry self off to bed and had no problem at all dropping off to sleep. I had a lunch date set the next day in Chaska, MN, about 250 miles away, so even getting to bed that late, I still had to get up around 6:45 a.m. to gear up, pack up, load up, eat up and saddle up.
Oh, and one more aside. I always thought that Iowa had the richest, most beautiful soil. The soil in the Red River Valley isn't just dark. It's literally black, black, black. Although the corn was popping up in Iowa, they'd only just gotten seed planted in Fargo, so the expanse of the soil was unbroken in large parts. Bee-yew-tee-ful!
mmhmm, that's why they call New Jersey "The Garden State", the soil there is black too and it grows wonderful vegetables.
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