Aug. 21-27: Monte, MN to Twin Cities, St. Croix River Valley (WI) and Duluth

Good riding up here. Still going strong. 

In this time, I rode through fields of field corn, sweet corn and sugar beets on an interminable, utterly flat series of country roads. The heat relented and the weather turned cool. A smooth dirt path deposited me in suburban Minneapolis and, giddy to be back in a big city, I pedaled like a madman Sunday afternoon to arrive with hours to spend at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. 

I loved it there. It’s an imposing classical building of stone in the style of the Pantheon in Rome, and inside, marbled corridors bounded labyrinthian rooms of ancient Buddhist sculptures, modernist and impressionist visual art, street photography, angels of pure silver. It was too much art to see in one day and I left crestfallen that I couldn’t visit the next day, when the museum would be closed — despite my best efforts to sweet-talk my way in with the friendly staff. 

In Minneapolis I struggled to find a host and, as the sun began to set, Wilbur rescued me. I stayed with him for two nights and three days on the south side, just down the road from a culinary district where we slurped down good pho with tripe and lots of basil. I rode his mountain bike through the hot, humid city and found my way to the top of a skyscraper, where I took in the view for an hour. On the second night we rode to a nearby lake and swam at dusk. Brian joined us — Wilbur’s friend. He must be in his 70s and he’s living on social security in a van. In the winter he lives in California. Far out in the desert. Last year, his van burst into flames and burned to the ground in the night. 

Wilbur harvested his sweet chard, tomatoes and squash, despite the best efforts of the persistent drought. He fed me very well. 

The bustle of the city, the diversity — it was hard to leave. 

When I mustered the strength to leave town, I rode through George Floyd Square. It’s a homage to Floyd and victims of police violence where Chauvin killed Floyd that was, and may still be, an “autonomous zone” where activists permanently drove out the cops. The names of those killed by police stretch in red paint down the street for two blocks. Activists supposedly guard the area 24/7. 

When I was there, hardly anyone was. Myself and three other white people wandered around, not speaking, with tears in our eyes. Everything was adorned in flowers, in signage, in affirmations of community and resistance, with unyielding calls for police reforms and economic development that are largely unrealized. 

Down the block a few businesses are still open. The Cup Foods, where Floyd begged for his life before his murder. An arts nonprofit. A shabby-looking auto body shop where a trio of Black men sat behind a spray-painted, plywood wall. Another corner store. During the riots the activists took over a gas station across from Cup Foods. It was a Speedway. Now, it’s the “People’s Way,” as declared by graffito. A homeless woman shuffled down the block, pushing a small cart of belongings. 

From this centre, the signs of devastation are visible more than a year after the riots. People burned a major post office to the ground that’s still there, in crumbling remnants, now covered in graffiti. It’s a hub for homeless people living in tents and vans. Someone since told me that rioters looted liquor stores, which left alcoholic homeless folks with no recourse to stave off withdrawals. They laid in the streets having seizures and social workers handed out bottles of vodka. I don’t know if that’s true. Wilbur told me the National Guard rolled down the streets in MRAPs. 

I left the city feeling raw. 

I’ll write more about this and the unfinished business of reforms here and in Aurora, CO where there are some important parallels. Notably, paramedics in both cities became notorious for subduing criminal suspects with ketamine. Both cities were rocked by huge demonstrations and political riots after the deaths of Black men at the behest of police. And reforms have largely gone unrealized. 

From George Floyd Square I rode excellent bike trails out of Minneapolis. A cool, cloudy day followed a huge morning storm. In St. Paul, 1,000 activists gathered with Anishinaabe protest leaders in a demonstration against Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement project. I found out about this later. 

From Enbridge’s website and the Duluth News Tribune, I gathered that project is the latest infrastructure update for the Canadian energy giant, which moves the most gas of any firm in North America. If completed, the new terminal would deliver more than 700,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Anishinaabe activists put out the call to oppose the project in the name of tribal sovereignty, water protection and climate protection. They’re attempting to make the issue as controversial as Keystone XL and Dakota Access before it. Those efforts eventually panned out. But so far, Enbridge has won several legal challenges — the latest of which, from the state Supreme Court, I’m told. It looks like the project will go ahead. Maybe Biden can do something about it. I’m not sure. 

That night I entered a virtual jungle of deciduous foliage. It was 80 degrees and extremely humid on the glassy St. Croix River. I crossed into Wisconsin and rode through the woods in the dirt for about 60 miles on the Gandy Dancer Trail. From there I rode about another 60 on Highway 35, in thick firesmoke billowing from the Greenwood Fire, to the bleak industrial sprawl of Superior, WI and crossed the very tall and somewhat treacherous Bong Bridge over St. Louis Bay into Duluth, MN. In ecstasy, I watched the first of four days of rain begin to fall. The deluges have since totally flushed out the smoke. For the first time since North Cascades National Park, I am riding soaked and freezing, and I am loving it. 

Reaching Lake Superior was another big moment for me. The lake frothed, black and menacing, at the light house in Duluth. Seagulls eyed the hamburger I scarfed down. 

I can’t express how happy I am to be in cool weather. Duluth was dark, blustery and shaded beneath huge white pines. Lake Superior is utterly beautiful. Vast, powerful, ominous. 

Leaving Duluth, I battled the storm of storms at a precipice on the Bong Bridge. It’s two miles long and 120 feet high. It was an absolute maelstrom up there. The rain pummeled me sideways, relentlessly blowing me toward the guardrail dividing me, and the narrow pedestrian path, from the churning, brown waters far below. By the time I made it over, I felt like I’d been punched in the face. Someone since told me that they don’t even like driving their car over that bridge. 

I probably have a few more weeks of riding. I’m beginning to take my time and savor it. 

                                    

Aug. 17-20: pain and glory: central SD to Montevideo, MN

Note: I’m discontinuing the “Shoulder report” section for this blog. After 3,300 miles I’ve come to believe that most roads are rideable. This is especially true for the unpopulated, interior regions of the west and for the cozy midwest, which begins in central South Dakota. Here in MN and WI, counties pave roads every one mile in every cardinal direction, on a grid system. You can go wherever you want, however you want to.

Condition reports were very important to me as a newbie because they provided a sense of comfort. The reality is, 95% of your days on a bike are chill. Find food on Google Maps, look at shoulder width on Google Street View and use iOverlander and WarmShowers for camping and housing. I still remember every sketchy stretch I forded this summer, and at the end of my trip, I’ll make a list to send into the ether via bike blogs and the bike touring subreddit. These roads were on ACA routes, so it’s not like those guarantee safety to begin with. 

 

***

No one ever said riding a bicycle across South Dakota would be easy. 

That was my mantra for perhaps four days. I lost sense of time. Most of all of these days were very difficult. When the state line finally appeared, announcing that I was finally entering Minnesota, I clattered down a steep embankment to the base of the sign and hugged one of its posts. 

The weather never cooperated with me in South Dakota. I hardly ever received the mythical tailwinds that supposedly blow from the northwest. Rather, the wind blew from the southeast for a week. After I left the Black Hills, the skies once again became white and depthless on account of the wildfire smoke billowing from the West. And that reliable weather phenomenon, the heat wave, returned. When I left Pierre, the wind-scoured plains bounding the Missouri were so bathed in humidity and heat that, by closing my eyes, I felt like I was in Tampa. 

Yet I have a strange relationship with South Dakota. The land and its people were not nearly as cruel as they could have been. 

It’s a land of contradictions. A state infamous for desolation and emptiness that contains many natural wonders in its western portion. The white people here are shorthand to liberals for the worst of American backwardness, yet they are largely working-class and obsessed with the climate and the deepening drought. As a culture they have refuted the vaccine rollout, albeit under the guise of health reasons, as they claim that the federal approval process was rushed and that they’ll accept shots when the FDA grants full approval. Topographically, the western and central portions of the state are excruciatingly hilly. The wind is supposed to blow from the northwest, yet it blew from the south/south-east for a week straight, unrelenting, soulless. 

An old hat eyed me suspiciously in a convenience store when I talked about my trip, concerned as he was that I was a freeloader living off of pandemic-era stimulus checks. But when I turned to leave he handed me a cucumber from the cooler he’d picked that morning from his own garden. South Dakota contains a slew of indigenous reservations, but I didn’t travel through them in my effort to ride as due east as was humanly possible; as such, almost every single person I interacted with here was white. 

Cattle country no longer; I’m in the breadbasket now. In diners and restaurants in gas stations I learned that field corn is ochre and grows in bulkier stocks than sweet-corn, which is green and spindly. The latter is canned and the former is industrially processed for its myriad uses in foods. The enormous fields of sunflowers are also grown to be processed into oil; sunflowers grown for their seeds are generally planted in North Dakota. This year, because of the drought and heat, farmers expected their sorghum and corn to suffer. That’s not the case so far, but the wheat yields are expected to be poor. 

In Huron, a moderately-sized town beneath a gargantuan soybean elevator, I sat down in a modest Thai restaurant. The green curry was the best I’ve ever had. I learned that’s thanks to an influx of Karen refugees, from Myanmar. Many of this community work in a turkey processing plant just east of town. I pedaled past it the next morning, in the humid gloom of a blood-red sun. Hispanic workers also toil in a nearby Jack Links plant producing cheap tubes of meat wrapped in plastic. 

As I approached Minnesota, I finally left the empty, rural West. The twangy, country dialects of cattle country are gone, replaced by the unmistakeable, vaguely German accent from “Fargo.” 

There are towns every five miles now, on a grid of perfectly-paved, quiet roads threading the corn fields. I rode 105 miles between Brookings, SD and Montevideo. Then I rode an easy 85 miles with a host and savored a rare tailwind. The roads are almost completely flat and stretch into the horizon until Lake Michigan, as far as I can tell. I don’t have to plan anymore for food or water or shelter. It’s a liberating feeling. 

I feel very proud to have made it this far. 

Character study 

One night, my host sent me his address and let me settle in before he came home from work. When I reached the house in the supreme heat of the afternoon, I doubled-check to make sure I’d slogged to the right place. The home, virtually a mansion, towered above a corner lot in a historic district. A century-old three-story wonder, freshly painted yellow and white trim. Latticework adorned the crest of the roof above a third-story porch. I sat on the veranda, which wrapped around the home. Kitty-corner stood a classical, stone building guarded by ribbed columns: the county prison. 

The house was impressive — from the outside. 

I slowly opened the door and stepped into an entryway filled with boxes of old shoes, magazines, hiking boots. In the lobby, through the third front door, it became clear the mansion was the domain of a hoarder. Large plastic tables filled the family room, upon which were piled books upon books, boxes of knick-knacks, a small Fender amplifier and a discarded electric piano. Cellos lined the wood paneled-wall in burgundy and black cases. In the dining room the table was similarly buried, topped by a dried-out case of watercolor paint and several in-progress landscape paintings of the prairie, as if the artist got up to make a sandwich and dropped dead in the kitchen, never to return. The sink was chock-full of dirty dishes, the cabinets open, the counter struggling to breathe under foodstuffs. Above the dining-room table a piece of printer paper was tacked to the wall, containing a daily affirmation to “stop smoking pot” and “live life.” At the end, the mantra was dedicated in part to “Jenny Cat.” She appeared while I stood amongst the heaps and chomped on her dry food. 

I plopped down next to the air conditioner and took it all in. I was fascinated. I wondered who would walk through the door and claim the space. The air conditioner hummed. Curiously, in the disorder of the place, a wire bookshelf was meticulously ordered with old magazines on mental health and travel. I read an article about a college professor who survived a psychotic break.

I didn’t have to wait long for the owner to appear. The screen door clattered and he blustered in, and I stood to shake his hand. A wiry man perhaps in his late 30s, he stood there, vibrating with nerves, in a white cotton button-down caked in Jenny-Cat’s hair, an old tie dangling above slacks and floppy shoes. His hair was missing from the balded crown of his head — he’d parted to the sides. He laughed nervously and set down his cello. 

He is a music teacher in a nearby school district. I sat down at the dining room table and he stood, explaining his job, stacked items from the cluttered chair onto the table’s heap. He sat down and gestured to the room around him. 

“I’m sorry about all this. I really am trying to get it all together, but I can never seem to…” he gestured wildly, at a loss for words, “get my life in order. I have some friends who come over every few months and organize for me. And then, I’m such a mess, it just goes right back to this.”

“It’s a beautiful home,” I said, honestly. “How old is it?”

“It was built in 1910. “ He smiled uncomfortably and wiped his sweating brow. 

 “Wow,” I said, grinning, attempting to put him at ease. Why was he so nervous? 

“Before we bought it, a family lived here. There must have been a bunch of kids because they all wrote their names in marker on the post in the basement. Then they moved out. After that it was an antique store. To everyone in town it’s still that — Aunt Rose’s Antiques.” 

“You bought this house?”

Nervous laughter again. “My parents did. They come every once in a while to try and clean things up. We had it painted last year.” 

He sat, sweating, as if in confession. I asked him if I could throw some things in the laundry; he encouraged me to and followed me down musty stairs in to the basement, where the scrawled names of now-grown children shouted from a support beam. The floor was not visible in the laundry-room on account of the mountain of discarded clothing. 

“I should clean this up,” he said, watching the unmoving pile, “but I figure I have so many clothes, I don’t need to do laundry anymore.” 

I laughed, crouching over his washing machine, and turned to him. He was serious, and stood pensive with folded arms in a reverie. 

We walked upstairs and talked for a while. A booger made its way through his naval cavity and partially out of his nostril. Every time he laughed nervously it bounced around and threatened to take flight. We sat for an hour at the dining room table, trading stories. 

He’s still finding his place in the world. He’s single, although he was sort of seeing someone recently who would help him attempt to organize his mansion. Cello was his passion and provided a glimpse of purpose in life for him in his 20s, when he attended a music conservancy in San Francisco. But a professional career never came together for him. And then he couldn’t acquire a music teaching license because of “personal differences” with a nearby accreditation program, so he moved to the Cayman Islands, where he taught in a private school that didn’t require credentials. 

“It’s two worlds there — the Caribbean, sort of, beach paradise, and then a poor country. I was someone there who was…confused,” he said. “I got taken advantage of a lot. I never seemed to know where I was.”

We decided to eat out that night. Suddenly, at the restaurant, his face flushed crimson. He balled up his fist to his mouth and squinted, his eyes watery. He was choking. 

“Are you OK?” I asked, freaked out. 

He nodded and then tried to speak, but no sound came out. He gestured, his veins popping from his neck, that he’d be back in a second. And he hurried to the bathroom and locked the door. 

For five minutes I convinced myself that this man had died, in utter silence, on the cold linoleum floor of the bathroom. As a testament to my uselessness, I sat in my chair and waited, craning my neck every 20 seconds to see whether he would come out alive. Finally, a great hack emanated through the restaurant. Confused diners glanced at the bathroom door and then kept on eating. 

When he walked out, he had some food bits on his chin. He grinned and placed himself in his seat. 

“That always happens to me,” he said seriously, with a self-effacing smile. “It seems like every time I eat rice I forget to chew it and it sticks together in my throat.” 

I watched him, incredulous. 

We had beer that night on his porch and sat there as night fell. The crickets hummed around a great cottonwood tree near the sidewalk. 

He said he doesn’t know his neighbors, although he’s lived in the unmistakable yellow home for years. Once, a neighbor recognized him in public and waved to him. 

“So she must know who I am,” he said. 

Aug 11-16: Badlands, interior South Dakota

During this stretch I crossed my 3,000-mile mark and battled exhaustion. I almost ran over a prairie dog. I turned 26. With Lauren, I watched twin thunderstorms collide over the Badlands in a spectacular display of light and sound. We scrabbled deep into the labyrinth of painted hills and parched arroyos and sat in a sliver of shade against popcorn rock. Together we braved a foray into Wall Drug, the king of the tourist traps. After several days we reluctantly parted ways. She drove to Dallas, and I pointed my bike east. 

I proceeded to exit the Badlands on a dirt road where deep silence replaced the hum of I90, where I startled antelope, pheasants, grouse and deer. The land became fields of sunflowers, wheat, sorghum, millet, corn, cattle and the occasional buffalo. In Philip, a proprietor with neck and knuckle tats generously let me check into a motel room hours early. The room was surprisingly plush and clean and I slept almost for the entire day. When my alarm chimed, I looked through the window into the night and saddled up. By 8 a.m. I sat at a bar in a gas station gorging on bacon, hashbrowns, eggs and coffee, with 25 miles under my belt. The highway rose and fell for sixty miles, and, to my amazement, the air became powerfully humid. I crossed into Central Time and battled a crosswind until I coasted into a valley and crossed the Missouri River. A family hosted me there in the state capital, Pierre, in their immaculate home overlooking the river. I’ve since ridden 50 miles in extreme wind through unending fields to Highmore, SD. 

Shoulder report 

The roads are great. South Dakota is hilly and windy. The traffic is light. Pick a road – any road. It seems not to matter. Hopefully the wind is blowing in the right direction. I’m not sure if this is a personal problem, but nutrition has proved to be a big problem in small-town Wyoming and South Dakota. I’m eating absolute garbage. I’m not picky – bike touring burns that out of you – but I do need a modicum of fruits and vegetables. Even in many grocery stores, there are none to be found. This problem is related to my exhaustion, which I detail below. 

Encounters 

I have no shortage of folksy anecdotes about small-town South Dakotans. A man in a gas station reached into the ice cream cooler and gifted me a refrigerated cucumber, fresh from his garden. A cross-eyed woman patted me on the back and suggested I stay in her hamlet “for three or four days” to wait out the heatwave. I walked into a gas station – my only opportunity for food for the rest of the day and, sweating profusely at 8 a.m., I watched a man in a booth take a bite from a pancake. Happy beyond belief, I asked the clerk if they were serving breakfast. “You tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you whether I feel like cooking it for you,” she said. I told her, and I guess she felt like cooking. 

 Body update 

On my birthday I woke up and felt like shit. Lauren and I had plans to wander around all day in the Badlands but, after I ate breakfast, I confessed that I just didn’t have the energy to do that. I opted to lay on her yoga pad in the meager grass, underneath a cottonwood tree, watching the clouds cast the weird, scoured spires in alternates of shade and blazing sun. A bird shit on me. 

When this adventure is over, and I’m sitting on a leather sectional in an air-conditioned home eating ribs and drinking as many cold beers as I goddam feel like, and someone asks me what the hardest part of my trip was, I’ll answer: eastern Wyoming and South Dakota. The adversity is in the infamous wind of this continental corridor, spanning the U.S. from North Dakota to West Texas. It’s hilly and windy, hilly and windy. There’s no escape. And it’s extremely hot – 98 degrees at the time of writing. This may seem obvious to you, reader: it is difficult to ride a bike across Wyoming and South Dakota. I am personally surprised that it’s such a challenge because I’m feeling strong and experienced but, more likely, I’m just an idiot. To borrow a phrase from No Country for Old Men: this land is hard on people. This year, it’s especially harsh; a hot drought has dried out the region, like the mountain West, threatening crop yields and water levels. It’s almost as if we missed the boat on climate policy. Typically, the wind blows through South Dakota from the northwest, which would benefit me tremendously. Instead it’s blowing hard from the southeast on account of the current heat wave. 

As such I’ve become worn down. I think I’m fighting a cold. A good nights’ rest still goes a long way but, by 5:30 a.m. or earlier the next morning, I am intractably waking up to ride a bicycle through a maelstrom. 

Thankfully, the end of the heat is in sight. I’m four or five days from Minneapolis where the weather is looking cooler and wetter. I have faith that the Great Lakes region will offer me a final respite from this sauna of a summer as August slips into September. I’ll probably end my trip about a month from now. Another note on this: I believe firmly that, even on the hardest day of bike touring, it’s easier than getting up in the morning to work a job you hate. Touring is epic to the point of life-changing, and there is a magic interwoven into each day. But it is basically a long vacation for privileged people. I don’t have any illusions about that.

Aug 5-10: Buffalo WY to Devils Tower, Spearfish SD, Black Hills travels

Holla. Long post.

Shoulder report 

I haven’t had a big problem with Sturgis, the motorcycle rally. Some people suggested before I came near here that it’s better to totally avoid the place when it’s happening. I don’t think that’s necessary. It’s mostly funny to witness the spectacle. 

The roads are great out here. It’s the wind that will break you. 

Territorial pissings 

I swept down the Bighorn range and entered the high desert of eastern Wyoming. 

In Buffalo I stayed with John, a retired environmental historian. He’s eccentric, with a sharp wit, a keen eye for bullshit and 100,000 miles of bike touring under his belt. I could write a book on him. That evening I tagged along with him to a local meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in a church, where I sat with seven others around a plastic table. I’m not an alcoholic, but I’ve long been curious about AA. I won’t write about the meeting out of respect for those in the group, who are truly inspiring people. 

Next I grinded through my first “century,” or 100-mile day, to Gillette, on highways 14 and 16. I began that day near 6 a.m. under the expanse of an indigo storm cloud dropping fat, cold pellets of rain. I outran that storm and traversed a placid country of modest canyon walls, jagged hills posing as mountains on the horizon, irrigated meadows. The road was almost completely empty until 10 a.m., when the skies cleared and I spotted a white pickup parked in the distance. When I arrived there a man held a handgun and a pair of earmuffs. A whitetail deer laid shaking in agony in a ditch near the road. A car had evidently just maimed the creature. “Keep moving,” he shouted wearily, waving me on. “I’m putting this animal out of its misery.” 

I shouted back. “You hate to see it.” 

His companion, a woman stood near the truck. Her face was screwed up in pain. “We hate it too,” she said to me. “It’s so sad.”

I pedaled past and looked behind me. The man donned his earmuffs, squatted, aimed the handgun, and shot the deer in the head. It immediately stopped its convulsing. 

A black storm cloud coalesced above and began pouring rain on the land. In a rare moment of perfect timing, I crested a hill and spotted the Spotting Horse just as the first drops fell. It’s the only building within perhaps 40 miles of road there, on the high prairie. About two dozen wet bikers stood in their leather underneath the awning of the bar. Inside were another dozen. 

This was my first brush with the thousands of motorcycle riders flocking to, or from, the colossal Sturgis Rally in South Dakota. You hear them, then you smell them, then you see them. 

I ordered a Bud Lite — it being about noon at that point — and watched as the storm passed overhead. The small U.S. flag in front of the bar began blowing due south. Never wanting to waste a tailwind, I chugged the beer and took off immediately. 

The wind carried me 30 miles to the great coal mines of Gillette. The statistic I’ve heard is that 40% of the country’s coal stocks are mined here in open pits. The size of the mines is astounding. They’ve been extracting coal for about 45 years now outside of Gillette from a 70-foot-thick slab beneath the surface. The city is also surrounded by a vast oil field. As such, the city’s economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction. 

With coal becoming less economically attractive and, to a lesser degree, oil, the future of Gillette is very much in question. I’ve gathered this from newspaper articles and from my Warm Showers host there, Jim, who recently retired after long working for the mines. He said Gillette and other Wyoming cities are currently vying for a new nuclear power installation. I’m pro-nuclear — and if you’re miserable in this budding climate breakdown, you should be too — and I was happy to hear this. That said, I don’t have faith that any Democratic administration will successfully steer economic diversification efforts in places like Gillette. Republican lawmakers refuse to see the writing on the wall, even if mining companies themselves do. If I had to bet, I’d reckon that Gillette will wither in the coming decades. 

The next day I rode to the Devil’s Tower and I spent my last night in Wyoming. The sky was hazy and, in the early afternoon, I battled heat and a headwind. Out of the haze rose a ridge line peppered with pine trees. Here I knew that I was entering the hill country of eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota that would swell into the legendary and sacred Black Hills. Biker traffic became impressive and then annoying — thousands of them descended in a swarm, roaring past me, blaring their Boomer anthems, “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Jukebox Hero.” I swept down and around a corner and there it was, the Tower, in the haze. 

This was one of my favorite natural marvels since Yellowstone. To borrow a phrase from Samwise Gamgee: by rights, it shouldn’t be there. The hills surrounding the monolith are pleasant and modest. There’s no nearby reference point for the slab of stone. 

In the evening I was weary of the bikers and found a campsite just underneath the Tower. I slept fitfully for an hour and woke up to find my sleeping pad literally pooled with sweat. I’d also planned poorly for the evening and, for dinner, I ate a bowl of ramen and then a can of chili, which didn’t cut it. I began reading a biography of Che Guevara. For dinner I had four Starbursts. 

At sunset I decided on a whim to hike the loop trail around the Tower. This decision was a stroke of genius. The sunset was otherworldly, and I picked my way through a prairie dog town, them all squeaking and side-eyeing me before pitching headlong into their dens. I reached the talus slope at the bottom of the Tower on the west side and sat on a boulder the size of a bus for some time. I felt very strongly that I should wait for the rock to speak to me in some way and, when I relaxed enough, it did. The sun set and I hiked back in the silent dark, cleansed. 

There are ongoing politics related to the name of the Devil’s Tower. The name’s origin, unsurprisingly, is rooted in a misinterpretation of a native term. The Lakota, Kiowa and other tribes have many names for the Tower which should be represented in the Park’s lexicon — at the very least. I’m currently educating myself on Land Back, the collective tribal call to return the Black Hills and sacred sites to the various tribes with deep cultural roots here. 

In the morning I woke up very early and rode to the hamlet of Hulett, WY. The time was near 8 a.m. and few bikers were up. My tactic in navigating the hordes of Sturgis was the same I’ve employed since June: I wake up early as hell and ride my bike while everyone else is asleep or lumbering around their RV making coffee. I figured correctly that the aging bikers comprising the rally would be hungover and largely off the road. So Hulett was virtually abandoned. 

It was Sunday and nothing was open. While I searched Google Maps for a convenience store, I glanced to the hill above me and found that I had parked beneath a Best Western. I docked my bike, walked in, and ate a huge, free, continental breakfast. Everyone in there was friendly. 

I drank two cups of coffee and hit the road again. A hard ride against headwinds and hills then. The mercury hit 90 just after noon. I braved a biker bar just after crossing into Beulah, South Dakota, for a pulled pork sandwich. The PA system blared “Don’t Stop Believing” and a few dozen haggard-looking senior citizens in leather vests shot Jack Daniels. A woman in a bikini,  an employee of the bar, waded around an empty swimming pool built with composite plywood into the outdoor counter. In the middle hung a series of beer bongs. No customers were in there yet. I glanced at the fetid water in the pool and shuddered. She smiled at me. I hope they tip her well. 

Until then I’d figured that all of the bikers were too senile to actually party for the ten-day duration of Sturgis. Color me impressed. 

I felt microwaved by the heat when I made it to Spearfish. 

The subsequent two days were sublime. Lauren, a friend of mine from Denver, met me in Spearfish. Andy, a newly-retired physics professor there, graciously allowed us to use his beautiful home as a basecamp. This man also deserves a book. 

We drove around the Black Hills for two days in Lauren’s black VW bug. The area, like Yellowstone, has so much to offer. We were floored by Jewel Cave and, although it’s very developed, Wind Cave. We cracked up as we realized that the only way to escape the roar of Sturgis is to literally go underground. 

Mt. Rushmore was mediocre in our estimation, although we met some awesome bikers there. In one of my favorite moments, Lauren started doing backflips in a field near some spires we climbed. She’s an ex-gymnast. 

We since decided to get to the Badlands and spend another night or two there together before splitting off. This requires some logistics and patience on her part because there’s no way my bike could fit in her car. We’re currently not sure where we’re going to sleep, and we’re frugal, and it’s getting really hot out there, so we’re holed up in a cafe in downtown Rapid City. I believe I have another 100-mile day tomorrow. Pray that the wind blows east.

Aug 1-4: Chilling in Cody WY, Worland, Tensleep, Big Horns

I’m in the middle of Wyoming now. In my mind I’ve entered the real substance of the trip. I’ve always had a fascination with the vastness and what I believed to be the desolation of Wyoming and the Dakotas. I always wondered how it would feel to cross this great barren corridor of the country on a bicycle. From what I'd seen of the place, it seemed utterly inhospitable. 

Desolation and waste is not what I’ve found. At least, not yet. 

 

East of Cody is a rolling sea of sagebrush and modest mesas. I saw a richly-patterned antelope vault across the interstate and shimmy under a barbed-wire fence. The land soon became a rich breadbasket of barley — it’s harvest season supplying Coors, I’m told — and sweet-smelling, shoulder-high field corn crowded the fields. If the long views were not shrouded in smoke I would have seen the Big Horn mountains rise from the high plain. But between Worland and Ten Sleep the land dramatically warped into a labyrinth of badlands streaked with strips of coral, white and toffee. The clay mesas split into craggy, decaying fingers above the swales of juniper and tall sagebrush. The highway wrapped and bobbed, up and through, and the weird place seemed infinite. Finally I crested adjacent to a blood-red canyon wall, and I quickly descended beside it, hundreds of feet into an irrigated valley of impossible green bounded by high canyon walls. Beyond the town of Tensleep the white walls shone like Navajo Sandstone and towered a thousand feet above the cool and brushy canyon. It looked like southern Utah there. And I adore southern Utah. 

 

The 6,000-foot climb up the Bighorn mountains wrecked me. Finally I stood at the crest of the range at 9,666 feet -- my highest point I'll reach this summer. The wind blew fiercely from the west across the tundra. In the evening, far below in a mountain meadow, a hail storm clobbered tourists on horses. It's rumored that wolves have reached this isolated Rocky Mountain range.   

The mornings are windless and, because I often have the roads completely to myself, they are silent. 

I'm still enjoying myself despite some challenges. In Bighorn canyon, it took two hours to hike up a BLM trail that threaded the talus slope and crested the canyon wall. I was surprised to find myself among giants — ponderosas. There was no mesa in the highlands; the land sweeps into a rolling, high-altitude plain toward the high peaks. 

I'm in Buffalo, WY now. I have left the Rocky Mountains for the last time. It’s sad realizing this. The mountains have offered respite from the blazing heat on the valley floors.

Condition report 

The shoulders are huge from Cody on the ACA PPP route to Bighorn Canyon. The challenge out here isn’t traffic. 

I met another touring cyclist early on who is a recovering alcoholic. He said that, of any adversity or temptation in recent years, he came closest to drinking while he was traversing Wyoming. The wind was so cruel, so unrelenting, that he sought out his old vice for the first time in years. A mystical and malevolent force, it was, prone to reversing direction on a whim. He said actually sat down at a bar, ready to doom himself, until he saw non-alcoholic beer on tap. 

So far the wind has smiled upon me. It’s generally blowing lightly when it is noticeable. I hesitate to admit this in writing because the gods will surely thrust thunderbolts and gales upon me as penalty for my hubris. In my four days from Yellowstone the wind has blown from every angle. I’m laughing as I write this, recalling an impromptu meeting with two college girls who were cycling the other direction, about forty miles from Yellowstone. I saw the first one rise out of the haze literally a mile away from me, and when we finally reached each other we pulled over to chat.  

“Well, enjoy that tail wind,” they said. 

“Tail wind?! I’ve had a headwind all day.”

We cracked up. Both of us thought we had headwinds. Maybe we both did. 

Can the wind blow two directions at once?

Two character studies 

I first saw Brian sitting against a tree in Grand Teton National Park, looking exhausted. I raised my hand and he solemnly nodded as my dad and I coasted to our campsite. It was hot and hazy. 

Some time later he walked over and introduced himself. A small guy, like me, and weathered, 32 years old. He wore an orange shirt and, when I glanced at his touring bike parked across the little road, I noticed his outfit almost entirely consisted of orange: orange panniers, an orange Surly cross check, an orange helmet, even orange water bottles. 

Brian has lived on a touring bike for three years. I didn't ask specifically, but I imagine he does not see himself as homeless. He was raised affluently in New Jersey. As a high school lacrosse goalie, his team won the state title. He later attended Penn State during the Sandusky scandal and ultimately he worked as an engineer designing hospitals or, as he put it, "responding to aggressive emails." 

He since took to the bike and has two goals: to ride to every state capital on the U.S. on his own routes, and -- more loosely -- to climb the high point in every U.S. state. Denali may not be in the cards. On the road, he’s making tremendous progress despite a serious dietary constraint: he can't eat any fructose at all, so he literally lives on potato chips and McDonald's fries.

I wanted to dive into Jackson Lake that hazy afternoon and he agreed to search for the swimming beach with me. Although, I'd learn later that he distrusts cold water and he generally loathes people. When we finally found the rocky spit of land before the lake we found it crowded with tourists. He surveyed the scene with disgust. 

"I would love it if humanity went extinct," he said. He gestured to the firesmoke clouding the Tetons from full view. "These forest fires would burn and burn themselves out until there wasn't anything to burn anymore, and the skies would clear." 

Brian said he always had a goal in life: to save enough money and then travel the world on a thirty-year vacation. He still has a book from his childhood that guides this journey: 1,000 places to see before you die.  

After taking refuge during the hysterical first months of the pandemic, he's been back on the road for over a year now. He's full of wisdom. He charms Warm Showers hosts with kids by arriving with a bundle of toys straight from the town Family Dollar. He was instrumental in helping me plan for my upcoming trips to the Black Hills and the Badlands. At that moment he was headed north into the great smoky waste of Montana for his sister's wedding. He also hates weddings because he “can’t drink, can’t eat.” He’s “bad at small talk” and he “doesn’t like people.” I nodded seriously. “Those are all perfectly good reasons,” I agreed.  

He shudders when considering dating or raising a family. 

"Look at all of these parents," he said at the beach. One man frowned as his children mocked him for slathering his face in zinc. Another woman in a life vest clung to a vibrating paddle board not ten feet from shore while her children shrieked with laughter. "They look totally miserable." 

A family of four walked past, all smiles. "OK," he confessed. “That was a bad example."

I'm fascinated with people like Brian who travel indefinitely. If there is any nobility or higher purpose in what he's doing, he doesn't see it. He’s eyeing Central and South America as new territory. 

"I am the most selfish person in the world," he said, as we stumbled across the lakeshore.

***

#2 arriving 8.6

 

July 28-31: 3 days in Yellowstone and Cody, WY

 Yellowstone is out of this world. 

My dad told me a story last week. He said that, when he was in his 20s, he drove with a friend through the U.S. West. Both of them were relocating to Oregon and neither had seen the region. He said that, when his partner began grasping the sheer volume of natural beauty here, she literally began crying. 

That’s how I feel now. I feel humbled and blessed beyond belief. Time has slowed down. 

Shoulder report

I actually got used to cycling in Yellowstone. It requires an attention that wears you down, so it’s important to keep focused. My method, in the areas without a shoulder, was to physically wave to each car passing behind me. That way I was establishing a visual connection with them. I watched the traffic move through my space in my rear view mirror. I would routinely hear big RVs and industrial trucks approach and, in particularly dangerous moments, I would pull off the road. This may seem like a lot of effort to you. But you have to understand that, when the riding is good and safe in Yellowstone, it’s sublime.

The shoulder is great from: West Yellowstone to Old Faithful and from Old Faithful north to ten miles above Norris Junction. It’s pretty good from Norris to Canyon Village. The eastern part of the park, in the Absaroka Range, is much less crowded and stunning. 

Blatherings 

I spent a total of six days in Yellowstone — long enough that, when I successfully pushed my bike through an unruly bison herd in the Lamar Valley, folks cheered for me. “We’ve seen you everywhere!” one woman told me. We stood among a dozen others on a sagebrush precipice, surrounded by a thousand-strong throng of the bison. “You’re crazy! I mean…” she threw her hands up, searching for the proper word. “It’s wonderful!” I laughed. “It’s a little bit of both,” I said. 

My six days here were separated by a jaunt to the Tetons, which were too hazy to properly enjoy. In that time I hit all of the major attractions in the park. The weird, Venusian landscape of the Norris Geyser Basin. Mammoth Hot Springs, an entire, smoldering mountain made up of entombed thermophiles. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and both Yellowstone waterfalls. Of course, Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic. Yellowstone Lake. The Absarokas and the Gallatins. I probably cycled several hundred miles within the park. I’ve generally stopped looking at my odometer. 

I was also able to plant myself for two nights at Mammoth Campground and, with a backpack generously lent by the lovely camp hosts there, I climbed Mt. Bunsen. The steep ascent took me above treeline and offered an outrageous view on a clear day of the northern end of the park, the stately Gallatin range and the wilds within. I found complete solitude here deep in a lodgepole pine forest and endured the hardest rain of my summer to date. I later thought I’d found myself alone swimming in a deep pool of the Yellowstone River, at sunset, until a bull bison lumbered through the woods. A solitary deer paused mid-step on the opposite riverbank and stared at me, onmoving, for 45 minutes. Chills racked me when I watched a black wolf sprint across a distant meadow of tall grass. Bighorn sheep side-eyed me as they traversed a boulder field above Sylvan Pass. 

Each morning I would consider leaving Yellowstone. I joked to myself, facetiously, that the park was like an abusive relationship. It was often dangerous and stressful to navigate — especially during its downpours. The food was expensive. I couldn’t do laundry or shower for an entire week. I was becoming run-down after days of vigilance against grizzlies — which I did not see — and marauding RVs. Yet I couldn’t leave. 

I virtually begged for mercy from the beauty on my last two days there. I simply couldn’t keep stopping at every juncture, every bend that deserved an entire afternoon of exploring. In one of my last stops, I pulled over at a bubbling vat of noxious fumes. There stood a raggedy bison, its fur laying around its haunches in strips, its ribs jutting from skin. It stood there, alone, waiting to die. 

This week I traveled completely out of my way to savor an area. I plan to do much more of this. I’m considering purchasing a small backpack for day-hikes. 

I’m writing now in the basement of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, WY. It’s a top-rate museum. I’m writing in a leather chair next to the McCracken Research Library, which remains empty and inaccessible beyond locked, glass doors. Inside is a hall of leather-bound books and a mahogany table. READING ROOM AVAILABLE BY APPOINTMENT ONLY, reads the script on the glass. It’s a Sunday; I’ve had multiple staff attempt to open the room for me, but the sole woman with authority is off work today. So I’m writing next to the library in the hopes that I receive some inspiration and peace from them space via osmosis. Maybe someone will unlock the door. 

Some thoughts 

The time afforded by money has given me much to chew on. I’m developing some journalism ideas to explore the nexus of indefinite vacations, bohemian vagabondism and the American middle class. I promise any story that results from this won’t sound nearly as pretentious. 

It occurred to me recently, through my conversations with others on the road, that I have lived too conservatively. I’ve encountered no shortage of people who no longer hold themselves back from what they want to do and who they want to be. I’m not going to do this anymore. 

It’s incredible that something as silly as riding a bike across the country can impart such lofty virtues: tranquility, audacity, self-sufficiency, generosity, vulnerability.