The night before, I had been thinking about doing a really long day. I woke up to see that the tail wind that had been with me so long still remained, although at a bit of an angle. The wind settled it, and I decided to see how far I could go.
When I crossed over into North Dakota, the land had changed into plains pretty quickly. For entirely too long now, I had been riding on those plains. Now, also in the same abrupt manner, I arrived at the badlands. What a change! There was a visitor center off the highway, so I stopped and admired a section of land called painted canyon in Theodore Roosevelt national park.
I still had more riding to do, as I hoped to make it to a state park outside of Glendive. Finally, at 7:00, I arrived at the park. My odometer read 118 miles. However, the riding for the day wasn't done yet. It turned out that the state park was one of those miserable parks in which there is a significant distance between the park entrance and the campsites. That distance happened to consist mostly of shockingly steep switchbacks, partially gravel. On the gravel sections, it was so steep that I had trouble keeping my back wheel from spinning. The view from the top at least partially made up for the climb.
In the end, I decided it would be much easier to just stay in a picnic shelter closer to the park entrance than to deal with that climb every time I wanted some water.
Around 12 that night, a violent thunderstorm hit. There was lightning every 2 seconds, and the rain on the metal picnic shelter roof was so loud I had to cover my ears. I had parked all my crud up against a low wall that ran the perimeter of the shelter, maybe 6 feet in from the edge of the roof, and I had to get up and cover everything to prevent it being soaked by wind blown rain. I can't imagine the disaster it would have been if I'd been under my tarp.
June 14
Remember that 50mph headwind? It found me. Okay, so maybe it wasn't quite 50mph, but it must have been at least 20, with some gusts a lot faster than that. It was bad enough that there were stretches miles long where it was all I could do move 6mph.
I hadn't planned on such difficulty at the beginning of the day, but even so had thought it might be wise to not go too far after the previous marathon day. Consequently, I headed for the town of Circle, which I estimated to be a mere 50 miles away. At an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour, that distance took 7 hours of time in the saddle to complete. It took me 8.5 hours of in saddle time to go the 120 miles. So much for an easy day.
Picnic shelters have become my default place to stay, and I've become quite the critic. A good picnic shelter should have: (1) Walls. Even if it's just one. Anything is better than complete exposure to the wind and/or prying eyes. (2) Electricity. Keeping my electronics charged is important. I use my phone for navigation, calling, and finding places to stay. I use my iPod for audio entertainment, internet, writing, and a stack of other things (such as adjusting the level of my saddle). (3) Water. I do have six water bottles with a total capacity of over a gallon, but it's much more convent to have running water.
With this list in mind, Circle happened to have probably the best picnic shelter I've stayed in yet. One end actually had three walls, there where outlets that worked, and a veritable forest of water hydrants populated the park in which the picnic shelter was located.
This park even had a huge bonus, in the form of a public pool. I hadn't had a shower in entirely too long, and was beginning to consider looking for a farmer's pond or something. upon gaining access to the the obscure (think Dickens) dressing room, I made the unpleasant discovery that the showers did not have hot water. Nevertheless, it was still worth it.
Daunted by the prospect of riding in such wind the next day, I decided it would be high time for a break if the wind didn't die down or change direction.
I woke up to wind, stumbled out of my picnic shelter to check the flag atop a close by grain elevator, and stumbled back into my sleeping bag. It was going to be a day off.
I had a list of things I needed to do on a day off, so I set about completing as many of the items as I could.
Item one was to clean the chain of my bike. Rain helps to clean off your patio, but it does the exact opposite for your bicycle chain. I had been on a lot of wet, dirty roads, and my chain was caked in sludge. After some consideration, I decided all I really needed was some kind of tray and about a quart of gasoline. I secured my gasoline by clandestinely filling a plastic peanut container at a pay at the pump gas station. This left only a tray. Like a true homeless person, I rummaged around in some trash cans until I found what appeared to be a styrofoam take home box from a local restaurant. After ignoring a brief doubt as to the integrity of the foam when exposed to petrol, I removed my chain and set to work. Or at least tried to set to work. The moment I poured gas into my tray, it dissolved into a sticky mess and spilled its contents into a puddle on the cement. I then proceeded with plan B, which turned out to be a gatoraide bottle with the top hacked off. I finished my chain cleaning without further incident.
The next task was to work on my new liquid fuel stove. The morning before, I had to fiddle with it for 30 minutes before I could get my eggs cooked, and didn't want to repeat the process every time I wanted some food. Worse yet, it could die completely, rendering me severely handicapped.
What I really needed was a maintenance kit, but seeing as how the nearest MSR dealer was probably 200 miles away, I'd have to see what I could do without. After downloading some schematics, I took both the stove and fuel pump apart, cleaned everything, replaced a couple o-rings with some extras that had been included with the stove, and lubricated everything at the appropriate points.
When I was done with these tasks, I spent the rest of the day loitering about, organizing my stuff, and cooking food. It was a good, relaxing day.
Some pics of painted canyon
My 5th state and 3rd time zone!
The campground road. Very steep.
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