Chapter 6- Ride like the wind or ride against it
My bike ride out of Montana to Williston, North Dakota started out great, flat roads ahead of me and the wind at my back. I made it to the town of Poplar quickly, but then the wild dogs in the neighborhood started chasing me. I didn’t like dogs chasing me, trying to snap off my leg, so I usually tell them to go away in a deep, gruff voice while pedaling away as fast as I can. It's really freaky though because what would happen if they caught me? They were literally snapping inches away from my ankles.
Most of the rest of the way to the border was flat except for an area called “the Cuts”. This area is sort of a badlands consisting of steep hills that have been eroded away by nature over thousands of years leaving the underlying sediment exposed. All of the clay, silt and peat from ancient times were visible in hundreds of layers of different colors varying from brick red, to grey, brown, mustard and pale green. It was quite beautiful, but I was nonetheless glad to be out of the hills and into more flat land when I arrived in Colbertson.
I had been travelling along Highway 2 the whole time east of Glacier Park. I knew that there was road construction at the border, but I didn't want to take an alternative route. Many of the alternate routes on my bike maps had proved to be less than friendly to my skinny, smooth tires, so I just pedaled as far as I could and when I got to Bainville, I had to get off my bike and stick out my thumb (the road was literally dug up to the dirt beneath and impossible to ride on).
I had no hitch hiking luck initially, but then I pulled out my pal Duke, the rubber duck that I started carrying since Cut Bank and held him up as trucks passed me by with a big smile on my face. Five minutes later, I had a ride and they were willing to take me all the way to Williston. I didn't want to take the easy way out so I had the mother and daughter drop me off just a couple of miles on the other side of the road construction and rode the rest of the way in to town. It wasn’t long before I found an internet café in town and waited for my Couchsurfing host, Micah to call me.
He only lived a few blocks away. When I got to his house, I was surprised by his awesome collection of posters, vintage baseball hats, and art. He was a very unique guy, a Christian man AND he had books from nearly every religion in his apartment, so he was open minded to all religion. I always enjoy fellow artists, we tend to think alike. He gave me a book for my journey entitled “Siddhartha” and we made up songs on the guitar and drank beer. I slept well that night on his couch covered by a quilt that his mother made from fabric prints of just about every childhood cartoon character that I remembered. This was the exact opposite environment that I was just in on the Reservation, I felt comforted by childhood memories and a safe place to stay. The next morning, I left around nine and the wind was blowing extremely hard out of the north. It was hard to even go ten miles per hour. My maps showed that there was no town along the north shore of Lake Sakakawea for seventy miles, so that was as far as I had to ride. I didn’t know that North Western North Dakota was so hilly, and the grade was more like eight to ten percent rather than the typical four to six percent. At the top of some of the hills, I could see the peaks of at least a dozen other hills. I felt like this was the temple of the road, the picture perfect rolling hills. People always say that the Dakota's are flat but I experienced the steepest hills on my trip here.
A storm hit at about mile forty along the north shore of the lake and I had to take shelter under some trees on private property. When it passed, I continued my struggle onward and finally made it into New Town, another Indian reservation. These people were placed here away from their traditional farmlands; there always seemed to be a Fort nearby, there was always a fort close to the reservations. I guess our American government needs to be always watchful of the land that they control. I really questioned freedom, why is it freedom for only some? What happened to treaties and promises. My native brothers and sisters really deserved to be honored and not just placed on the most desolate lands.
I bought a fish sandwich at a local "grease hole" and overheard a lady talking about a group of bicyclists coming through the area in a week. I asked her about camping in town and she told me that I could camp behind the Lutheran Church in the nicest grass in town. It was the best place I could have possibly camped, especially since it was free. I made a pit stop at the liquor store and bought a tiny plastic bottle of tequila and cooked my dinner in my tent with the front zipper wide open. I was once again exhausted from the long ride fighting the wind and fell asleep easily. I was awakened by the sprinklers watering my tent at four in the morning, but I just chuckled and went back to sleep. That morning I got up early, ate a huge American sized breakfast and finished the rest of the tequila that I bought the night before. I was self medicating for my aching lower back, butt and legs. This area of North Dakota was filled with what the locals called “Potholes”, thousands of small ponds that waterfowl found homes in and were created from receding glaciers. As I pushed on, I began to see large fields of volunteer sunflowers spreading across the hay fields. It was so beautiful and strange to be in such a remote and unfamiliar place.
About forty miles outside of New Town, my route turned north, heading straight to Minot with more of the same terrain. I started to see corn fields mixed with the hay fields in this area. Around 3pm, I was pulling up to the visitors center in Minot, but I couldn’t get out of my clipless pedals, fell to the ground and gashed me knee open. I had placed my first aid kit in an easy to reach place a few days ago, so my wound was bandaged up quickly.
Minot had a great replica of the original famous Scandinavian Stave Church complete with carved wooden doors with intricate iron work and carved dragon eave ends amongst other beautiful monuments at what they called Heritage Park. Many Scandinavians had settled this area to farm and create towns, which might explain some of the midwest accents that I started to hear, it was actually from the heritage of our European ancestors.
I ended up checking out the town for a few hours looking for a good place to camp and couldn’t find one except for a public park next to the zoo, but I got a real bad feeling about the area so I just decided to leave town. I ended up riding in to Surrey, about ten miles East of Minot. I snuck in and camped at the local high school in the baseball dugout because it was sheltered and at this point I didn’t know what kind of storm would hit next.
As I was boiling water for my couscous dinner, some kids kept driving around in a four wheeler close to the baseball field but finally went home when the sun went down and the moon started rising. I thought my cover was blown, I knew that it was probably bad that I was trespassing on school property, but I felt safe there and sheltered. I could tell that the moon was waxing, I had become very in touch with the reality of the world by being out in nature every day. The cycles of the heavens, my own rhythms and the vibrations of the earth had all become very in tune with each other.
As I woke up, I knew that the day would bring good things because the wind was blowing out of the West. I rode several hours well above 20 miles per hour according to the odometer on my bike until I came in to a town called Rugby, which is known as the geographical center of the United States! I met another biker who had very red hair, named Francis and he took my picture at the ridiculous obelisk monument that some coffee shop had erected, good marketing I guess. We rode in to town together looking for a bike shop, but it was only open by appointment and when I called the number I got that typical “the number has been disconnected” recording. Oh well, I thought, so I left town.
I made it to Devils Lake by dinner time and considered staying there the night, but I didn’t get the right feeling and I didn't see any parks or camping. By this point I had ridden over one hundred miles but instead, I left town and I decided to just go as far as I could, tailwind still blowing strong. I travelled 144 miles that day and found a city park in a town called Lakota, just off Highway 2. This felt right, a church lady pointed me there, I always went by my intuition and feeling, they had never let me down.
There was a pavilion to set up under and in the morning I found that the lock on the gate to the local pool in the park had been cut open, so I took that as I sign that I should go in and take a shower. I hadn’t had a shower for three solid days, so I was extremely pleased. Still, I did this quickly so that the authorities wouldn't think that it was me who cut the lock just in case they came by.
I had about 60 miles to go to get to Great Falls that day, but I had a strong headwind the whole way. It took me until about 4pm to get into town and my potential host hadn’t called me back for a couple of days. I decided to just go downtown and hook up to the internet to find a new host on the Couchsurfing website, there was a great coffee shop with old wood floors and benches, stained glass lamps and brick walls. I was just happy to be there, the wind never did stop that day.
As I finished my coffee, my original host finally called me (she had been sick for several days) and I went over to her apartment. Linnea and Phil were extremely generous people, they fed me home made curry and they had wine. They even had tons of musical instruments and all of the board games that I like to play. They reminded me of some friends from when I lived in Portland, just really down to earth, artistic people. I was meant to be hosted by these great people, I truly felt that.
My attitude about life had already become so very present and situational by this point and there didn't seem to be anything weird about anything that happened to me. There were no positive or negative events, they were all just moments in time meant to be savored and experienced. I only meet people that I was supposed to meet, and they always imparted some special wisdom from themselves to me.