Yet another setback

My recreated map

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Somehow in the last 24 hours I lost my North Dakota map, the dumbest thing I've done since I left my wallet behind back in Augusta, Montana, forcing Terri, the manager, to drive it out to me.

I called the places I'd stopped in yesterday, including a bike store where I got sealant ("slime" they call it) put in my front tube (my back tube already had it). But the bike store didn't have the map, as did nobody else. It's likely that I took it out when I stopped to sit in the shade and just lost track of it.

In between catnaps of depression, I went and bought a state highway map, which was helpful but missing many of the roads I wanted.  So I downloaded an Adventure Cycling digital map, which was pretty good, but didn't actually name the roads I wanted, just showed me where they were.

So I called them. I got a cartographer, Nathan, on the phone, and he sympathized with the digital map's shortcomings, and actually scanned and sent me the very map I'd lost. I could print it out if I could find a store like Staples or Office Max in this netherland of highways, but it seemed too much risk and too much work. So I transposed salient details onto my highway map, and between that and the phone app, I hope to be OK.

It cost me a day -- I won't leave till tomorrow. My sense of purpose has lost momentum, and the day has dragged and dragged. Because I'm cheap, I spent a couple hours looking at a thrift store and Kmart (yes, Kmart exists out here) for some way to pad my sore derriere, instead of paying three figures for a proper set of riding shorts to replace my flattened old pair. Here's what I wound up with:

I'm pretty sure the Attends are aimed at women, but a sore butt is a sore butt.

A little over two hundred miles to Fargo, and Fargo to me sounds like paradise.

Slow news day in Glendive

Just had to share this!

The media and me

Primping

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Perhaps you didn't think I'd amount to anything. Well, let me ask you: Have you been on TV in Glendive, Montana? Are you preparing for a shoot in Bismarck?

This and more, my friends, have I achieved.

It's not just my naturally good looks. No. It's the strength in my legs, my ability to climb hills, and the way I laugh at a headwind. HA!

No, really, it's the MDA drive. Cross-country bikers are a dime a dozen. Well, let's say a dollar a dozen. I mean, it's not quite that easy. But it is done, usually by foolish youth. But to be 61 -- 61! -- with ailments, and to be raising money for others afflicted. That, my friends, is a TV worthy story.

In Glendive I had an audience with Chamber of Commerce director Christa Van Dyke and communications director Brendan Heider. Christa described some of the attractions of Glendive, including Makoshika State Park, Montana's largest state park at 11,000 acres, known for dinosaur fossil discoveries, including triceratops and T-rex fossil remains. Even from outside the park, it is a forbidding landscape, full of very creepy (from a distance!) badlands formations.

I also met there reporter Hunter Herbaugh, of the Glendive Ranger-Review, who interviewed me about my trip, my motivation, my MD (why I talk the way I do, why I walk the way I do), and the fund drive. I said I was at first only interested in the ride, and just, almost on a whim, threw in the MDA fund drive. Now I see the ride as almost subservient to the fund drive -- a vehicle (pardon the pun) to raise money for the MDA. Hunter's story is coming this week, I think. I'll post the link when it's available..

After these discussions Christa took me and bike in her pickup to the KXGN TV station where reporter Denny Malone conducted an on-camera interview with bike and biker. Open the link and scroll down to view! (I wish I had a better speaking voice.)

http://web.kxgn.com/2019/07/08/interview-with-cyclist-jon-olson/

The road, the hills, the wind

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE

All I got for my birthday was North Dakota. Not a lot there, but I think the sign is pretty cool.

I've been thinking about the Great Plains -- on the bike you have a lot of time to think. I guess I pictured them as flat and empty, but today, at least, they were full of hills and full of wind. I tried to note truly flat spaces -- and you do see them, often in crop fields, but even among those there are plenty of crops that circle hillsides and run over rolls and undulations to the horizon. A road like Old Highway 10, which I rode much of the day, follows the shape of the land pretty closely, and you feel every change.

I've also spent some time on I-94 (it's got a lane-wide shoulder for bikers), but it is a different species of road. It takes what are maybe a dozen separate rises, fills the space between them and creates one grand, rushing uphill raceway. Except for the  distant scenery, you could be in New Jersey or LA or North Carolina.

I did 64 miles today, and that is really my outer limit. The wind is constant and exhausting. It blows hard enough to take all the fun out of a downhill ride, and you just have to accept it.

I was 10 miles from Dickinson today when I felt I could not go on. With another hill ahead, I pulled over, ate some snacks, drank my warm water, then stretched out on a flat space, used the inside of my helmet as a pillow, covered my eyes, and slept. I do this, actually, often. Give it 15, 20 minutes and you wake up ready to try again. I'm an easy sleeper, though, and this is probably not for everybody.

That's what i got today. I have other stories -- about Dan, who I rode with a couple days, the Glendive Chamber of Commerce and local media, and, and, and.

Thanks to my Uncle Mark for this night in the lap of luxury at La Quinta Inn!

Birthday dinner

Time for a break.

A day at the farm

On the farm.

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Jerry Schillinger remembers driving a tractor for his dad as a boy, pulling a trailer that spanned 10 rows. He was out in the sun for hours. One day his dad attached a radio to the tractor and it made the job more fun. Then he put an umbrella over the driver's seat to offer shade. The boy might've thought that was about as far as you could go in making a hard job comfortable.

Today Jerry has a sprayer that has an air-conditioned cab, a full sound system, and drives itself using GPS. It covers scores of rows, and keeps track of what it has done and doesn't have to do, shutting off specific spray valves when it hits, say, an irregular edge, saving spray. A field that might have taken full days to treat is now done in a matter of hours. It's just one of the many miracles of modern farming that Jerry Schillinger employs.

On Thursday, July 4, through my amorphous network, the Schillinger's invited me to their house in Circle (blueberry pancakes!) and, with the whole family, to their son Brett's house out on the farm for a barbecue of stuffed burgers and chops. There was a lot of food.

I asked Jerry a lot of questions -- probably too many questions -- about his farming operation, and he was happy to show me around. They don't have livestock; they grow crops. This year they have their 6,500 acres planted in wheat, peas and lentils. The peas are not eaten as sweet peas, but are dried and, because they have a lot of nutritional value, they or their ingredients become part of foods that you may not associate with peas (I hope I have this right).

The wheat, Jerry said, may be used in bread, of course. A single, beadlike grain of wheat has two parts. The husk, or bran, and the white interior. It's actually the bran that has most of the nutritional value of wheat -- so whole wheat bread, raisin bran, foods like that, are more nutritious than white breads, like Wonder Bread, which have the bran removed through milling. I suppose this is widely known, but hearing it, right there at the source where it starts -- well, it seemed profound to me.

*

The kids -- Brett and his wife's four kids -- were all over at the farm. They have a full playground, and lots of vehicles, including mini ATVs. Biking, as I am, you do come to recognize the advantages of a motor, and, for getting around on a farm, well, two pedaled wheels just don't cut it.

*

I just want to thank publicly the Schillinger family for including me so completely in their holiday. I hope that some day I can repay it.

Kenny and Sage

Jerry and Carol Schillinger (left and right) and their friend Pete. 

Land, land and more land

What's next?

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


I fought hard yesterday for every inch against a ferocious headwind and came away with 44 miles, which I was proud to claim. Sometimes, against a gust, I had to push hard just to move downhill. 

I slept in the backyard of Sand Springs' only store, and as Tina the manager was leaving to babysit her grandchildren way off in Billings, she said, "I wish I didn't have to go. Are you gonna be OK? Do you want some cards to play solitaire or something?"

It rained much of the night, but it had stopped when I woke at 5:30. I wanted an early start to beat the wind and started to pack up. Then it rained again and I dove back into the tent, dozed a little, and went back at it. I ate instant oatmeal using the hot water in the bathroom, had a little leftover pizza, bought a gooey roll in the store, and was on my way by a little after 8:15.

I wanted to reach Jordan, 32 miles away, by midday, and then do 20 more and figure out a place to camp, to put Circle within reach the next day (tomorrow, Thursday). There was nothing but nothing after Jordan for 70 miles -- no store, no dot on the map, nothing but land, so I thought of stealth-camping, but any tent anywhere would stand out like a sore thumb. Which meant asking a landowner if I could set up in a corner of his field for a night. If I could find a landowner.

So I did 12 miles, 15, 16 -- halfway to Jordan. The wind was mild, the sky was dark, the air cool -- and then it began to rain. Dots, then more, then more. I put on my raincoat, pulled up the hood. Water began pooling in the low spots in the road, spraying up when I ran through them and when cars passed. I wanted an overpass to hide under, but nothing crosses Highway 200 in Montana.

Then a heavy pickup passed me and pulled to the side. When I reached it, the driver leaned out. "Do you want a ride?'

"Where are you going?"

"To Glendive," he said.

"Is Circle on the way?"

"You go through Circle to get to Glendive."

It wasn't a hard choice. We loaded the bike and bags and drove 80 miles to Circle.

We talked as the shoulder of the road disappeared, the pavement grew narrower, the hills more drastic. I imagined biking this and appearing, right past the brink of a hill, with trucks behind me not seeing me until they had crested the hill -- and nearly missing me, or not.

Jim 

The driver was Jim, a road builder. The rain had canceled work for the day, and the next day was the Fourth, the holiday, and the road crew never works the day after the Fourth, because traffic is so heavy. So he wouldn't work again till Monday, which he didn't like, because, after 23 years with the same company, he's paid hourly -- work an hour, get paid for an hour. He said he was a "permanent seasonal" employee -- he'll always have the job, but you don't build roads in the winter in Montana, so he's laid off and collects unemployment.

I asked if he had kids, and he said two daughters, one in Everett, Washington, and the other in Montana. I said that must be nice for him, to have them live so close, because our own kids are on opposite coasts. He laughed and said, "Everett is 1500 miles away." I will never get used to these distances.

Jim said his family owns a ranch -- 450 head of cattle on 24 square miles of land. They rotate the grazing parcels and have to keep peace between the bulls. They rent out use of the land to the owner of the cattle, though it's all held between different family members. "I just own two head," he said, and when the two get a calf, part of it goes to each daughter when it's butchering time.

I mentioned something I'd read about semi trucks, which he used to drive, and he said, right out,  "I'm illiterate." And later I felt bad when I used the word "meticulous," and he said, "What?" "Um, careful," I said. But on his subjects -- roads, trucks, pay -- he was a good talker.

I'm going to stay here in Circle two nights, courtesy of my amorphous network.

A real county!

A hint of what once was in Winnett

Another hint. 

Lunch in Montana

s

Bill, Stephanie, and Lurch.

To give: JON'S MDA DRIVE


Lewiston/Lewistown. See the difference? Lewiston is in Idaho, where I spent a day doing laundry and getting my tire fixed. Lewistown is in Montana, where I camped last night. I met Bill and Stephanie there. Not a couple, they have kept bumping into each other in campgrounds and on the road as they have made their ways west and north. Bill's a retired middle-school teacher from Illinois, and Stephanie is from Germany, where she has worked in an after-school program and has a job at the museum. Poor woman had a broken bridge and was going to spend a day in Lewistown seeing a dentist.

We had a great evening. Bill actually had the temerity to leave the campground and purchase beer (soda for me), and Fritos!!! Such a grownup thing. They are going the opposite of my direction -- east to west -- so we exchanged views of what we would see and where to stay.   

They had ridden 70-plus miles that day, and I had done, I think, 47. You can say, well, you know, I noticed more, my miles were higher quality, my riding style is more elegant. Yeah, you can say that. You can also say you're rich as Croesus -- and of course that doesn't work because everybody will say, "Who's Croesus?"

For yet another time today, my ride -- probably my life -- was saved by a little local bar. A lot of these little towns, where at the high school they play 6-man football and post their state championships at the stadium, have a bar/grill that's open all day. People come and go, or come and stay, and chat with the motherly barmaid and idly shoot the bull. I've had really good chef's salads, egg rolls, macaroni, and of course hamburgers (though one gave a gut-ache that made me want to cry).

If not for these places, though, where I can spend an hour off the bike, refueling, I would have far fewer miles (those high-quality, fully noticed miles) than I do.

Here's today's midday stop, in Grass Range, Montana:

Dare to go in! It's just people!

A first-class field house in a town where everybody lives in a trailer.