Mile 2013.66 - A big day

I want to start this post by congratulating the westbound drivers on highway 14 between Philip and Midland. You got the first ever 100% waveback rate, beating out the high 90% from Eureka to Ely, NV. Way to be friendly! Then again, Eureka to Ely is a bit more than twice as far and the people past Midland... Oh, and since we're on that subject, people, please, wave back at me. Pump your fist, raise two fingers off the wheel and nod, wave frantically, roll down your window pointing at me and yell 'you the man!', but please, please don't honk at me. Car horns are made to be heard by other drivers through their protective glass and steel and over their lousy taste in music. I have only 40' of air between your horn and my eardrum. Thank you.

Oh day 26. One of those days where I really felt like Odysseus every time he thinks he's moving forward; here's all this really cool stuff, but oh, there's just one tiny little setback first. Except I never sacked Troy.

I had some nice rolling hills between Philip and Midland, and the combination of a couple hours of extra rest the night before and a non-committal wind made it more fun. I would get to the top and see how fast I could go down, 33.7 lasted a few hills then 35.6 after another one, soon topped by 38.3. That one lasted the next 8 or 9 hills. I came to the top of a hill where I could see Midland poking out from around a hill up ahead. I wasn't racing down this one, but suddenly, something was wrong. The weight on the back was shifting and something was scraping along the side of my rear tire. I came to a stop and looked. The rear left pannier (the one I keep my food in, for any bears or mountain lions following along) would have been thrown clear of the rack, but a bungee cord that holds the tent and sleeping bag down had caught the strap and was instead dragging the bag across the face of my spinning tire.

The rack itself was a solid piece, but the part that bolted to the frame was adjustable. Like a pair of crutches, there were a couple different screw holes at varying heights. The rack was bending forward and since the bolt was rigid, but that part was not, the metal gave way under the stress. That rack didn't even make it 300 miles, including the 40 back to Deadwood that Dan doesn't count. I pulled out my roll of tape and taped it to itself and the frame, making a pretty good if very temporary fix. I could the same thing was happening on the other side, so I gave it a bit of reinforcing tape too.

I gingerly made my way down to town. I hadn't yet gone 24 miles and all the fun was taken out of my day. I rolled into a gas station parking lot fuming. After calming myself down a bit, I got the number to the bike shop in Pierre. No, they didn't carry touring gear, there wasn't much market for it around there. (My thought, that's the kind of market you build, you don't just walk into). I started looking for the next shop along my path, and there was one in Brookings. I called them. Yeah, the guy told me, I used to tour myself and I have a couple different ones on hand. Perfect, I said, I'll see you in a couple days. The problem: Brookings was 250 miles away, almost at the Minnesota border.

I took it easy, going a little more slowly and carefully. My fix was holding, but I didn't know how long I could count on it. I went about 12 miles and took a lunch break on top of a hill with a grand view all around. I could see the huge right hook the road took 7 miles north of me, and across green pastures all around. A little further and I started seeing more frequent signs for Wall Drug pointed at cars going the other way. Around here, another significant change of landscape started happening. From the nearly exclusive cow, sheep, and horse pastures of the west, I came into my first fields. From the looks of it, mostly soybean, but some clear remnants of last year's corn husks lingered in a few fields. I was getting closer to the land I grew up in, and as I did, the landscape started to look more familiar.

Finally, after more than 80 miles, I started down a hill into Fort Pierre. As I climbed a short way into town, I saw a huge American flag waving above the road. I jokingly supposed there'd be a Perkins at the bottom of the flag. A little way further up and I was right. I really am coming back into the Midwest. Passing that I came to one of the country's grand rivers, The Missouri. I found my way onto the much too narrow bike/pedestrian path over the bridge and took a few photos. I stopped in the middle of the the bridge for a moment, triumphant that I was now crossing into the Central Time Zone.

I came into Pierre and grabbed a quick bite at a fast food joint. I asked directions from there to the state capitol building, and was given conflicting information from the two people from behind the counter. I followed the girl's advice instead of the guy's and came directly to it. Yeah. I stopped in front of the South Dakota Capitol building at mile 1999.0 of my trip. I'm sure there's somewhere in there I could have squeezed one more. I sat down, called my girlfriend, mom and a grandmother and then set off to get a little further out of town. I knew I was going to camp, so I wanted to get a way out of town.

Mile 2000 occurred on a random block on Euclid Rd in Pierre. There was a pretty cool old house on the far corner, so I took a picture of it.

On the way out of town, it felt like it was harder to push. I thought the combination of the hill I was on and 90 miles on my legs so far for the day was taking it's toll, but it continued on the flat. After about 10 miles, I stopped and found that the rack had dropped down a bit and the reflector on the end was basically acting as a break on the tire. Except actually on the tire and not on the rims as breaks should be. There was now a parabolic indentation on the reflector and my nice armadillo tire looked as if it had gotten an extra 1500 miles worth of wear.

I finally had gone past the minimum point I wanted to attain for the day and started looking for a good place to camp. I found one not too far off between a soybean field and a dried out corn field, where the only problem was the swarm of mosquitoes. Or groups of swarms, as they were distinct bodies. I hosed myself down with bug spray, got the tent up quickly and shoveled everything inside without letting anything with six legs in. With all the insects, thankfully, came their predators, lots of birds and a fair number of dragonflies. At one point I stepped out of the tent to get a picture of the sunset and a small bird in the cornfield started going 'Eep Eep Eep Eep Eep Eep' until I got back in the tent.

Despite comparing myself to a hero of greek tragedy earlier, today was a thoroughly moderate day. A couple longish hills, but nothing too bad and the wind behaved. If someone who's been riding a little while wanted to try their first century, that wouldn't be a bad place to do it.

Day 26, Philip, SD - Camp northeast of Pierre, SD

101.56 for the day in 7:18:11. 2013.66 to the trip so far in 169:05:51 and a top speed of 38.3