Day 32 started with breakfast largely composed of the same items I had made dinner out of the night before. I heated some tortillas, scrambled eggs with garlic, tomato and cheese and rounded it out with a banana and some yogurt. I can't complain, I make a pretty fantastic breakfast.
The Luce Line Trial through Hutchinson is paved, which is nice and follows the Crow River, which is pretty. All in all, a good trail through town, though once you get outside of town, the pavement reverts to crushed aggregate rock. On one hand, nice trail going through pastures and fields. On the other hand, you just cannot go a fast on a gravel road as on pavement. That's why highways tend to be paved. Maybe one day the demand and funding will be there. What certainly was there were other users. Familes, couples, single riders, people walking their dogs or out for a jog, with a pleasing range of ages and ethnicities. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself in the post, but by the time I got to John and Shelley's place at the end of the day, I had seen more people on bikes than probably the entire route back to the American River Trail in California, if not the whole way to San Fransisco. This is very exciting to me and makes me love upper-midwesterners even more. There were so many, that I soon stopped waving at them all.
Soon after a quick break in Waterville to dump some empty gatorade bottles, a woman pulled up alongside me on a bike and asked how far I was going. This was Michelle, and we rode together for about the next 20 miles. She had a lot of questions, and answering them made the miles go by faster. Weather-wise it was, we both remarked, the absolutely perfect upper-midwestern Memorial Day. 78 degrees or so with a light breeze out of the west and brilliant sunshine. The perfect day to go for a bike ride.
Reaching Plymouth, she left at the parking lot where her car was waiting. I followed the path forward, stopping at a beach off of Medicine Lake. After a quick break, I followed the trail along to where it meets the Cedar Lake Trail, which I took all the way to where it ends in front of Target Field. Too bad the Twins just started a week-long road trip with a visit to Seattle. Then, I got a little lost following bike routes to what I thought was the river. Eventually I found my way to the Stone Arch Bridge, one of the first to cross the Mississippi this far up.
Mile 2431.5 was another one of those momentous occasions on this trip: I crossed the Mississippi River. Unlike reaching Carson Pass or the Continental Divide where there was only the occasional car around, this bridge was closed to motor traffic, but had lots of pedestrians and a fair number of other cyclists. I then entered St Paul and somehow made a wrong turn and soon found myself on the Hennepin Bridge crossing over the Mississippi again. That can't be right. I rode forward another block, recognized the buildings in front of me as clearly Minneapolis and turned around to cross the river a third time. Going past the campus of the University of Minnesota, I soon came to Roseville, where my friends John and Shelley live with their 4 month old daughter, Katie. She is a very small person.
It was nice to end a day among friends, people who I have known for almost a decade now. It was also nice that I got to spend almost all of my miles today on bike trail or in a bike lane. Also, since I was slowing down for the reunion in Appleton, I knew that the next several days would be spent relaxing, any riding I would do would just be around town until I left for Duluth on Thursday or Friday. We grilled up some steaks with corn and potato salad and were enjoying a nice dinner until Katie woke up and decided she needed to be fed right that moment. I look forward to seeing her again in the future, when her communication with the world has become more complex than smiling or crying.
Day 32, Hutchinson, MN - Roseville, MN
76.0 miles in 6:23:06. The totals are now 2441.9 in 207:33:47 and I got up to 23.1mph today
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