One Long Day

At the start of this trip if you would have asked me which states I was looking forward to the most, South Dakota would have been close to the bottom of the list. I imagined barren wastelands and lots of headwinds. South Dakota has been fairly empty, we'll drive for miles between towns with no signs of houses anywhere, however it has been absolutely gorgeous and by far my favorite state so far in our trip. We've been getting on our bikes just before sunrise every morning, usually around 5 am, and have seen some beautiful sunrises. For me, those mornings have been my favorite part of the trip. It's been funny to see how different life is out here though. We'll see a "town" coming up on our map and as we approach the sign welcoming us to it the population will only be 60 or 70. We took a break at one of these "towns" population 67 and turned down "Main Street" which was a dirt road. Felt kinda strange. Though it seems to be a peaceful way of life. Everyone here is really friendly and helpful.

South Dakota has also brought other suprises. We knew going into this trip that we wanted to top 100 miles at least once in this trip, and try to beat Sheldon and Sheilas record of 112 miles in a day. However, I was not expecting a day like Monday. We woke up early and got on the bikes knowing that in front of us was a whole lot of nothing. Alot of beautiful scenery, but other then that not many towns, and certainly not many campgrounds. We hit 90 miles by 3 and were in a little town, White River, that had a campground but seemed a bit sketchy. So we made the decision to keep going and see how far we could get. At 114 miles we hit another "town" that had a city park, but looked even less promising. So we made the decision to head for Interior, SD right at the entrance to The Badlands. All that was between us and Interior was an Indian Reservation so we knew it would be all or nothing. Around 9:30, as it started to get dark, we realized that what we were attempting was probably our stupidest idea on the trip so far. The night before me and Bruce had talked about riding that far and at that point is was "the macho thing to do." "Can you believe what people's reaction would be if we said we rode 160 miles in one day?!" However, those thoughts of inflated chests where long gone. Around 11 our legs were starting to give out on us and mentally we were all about to tank. We didnt know what to do because we were still 25 miles away. Bruce wanted to just throw a tent in a field along the road but me and Evie weren't keen on that idea. So we kept pushing. We could only go about 20 minutes before one of us would need to stop to eat or rest their legs so it was an extremely long and agonizing process.

Finally we saw the sign were we turned north to head up to town, still another 14 miles away. Their had been a slight south wind most of the night and as we were coming up to our turn Bruce said "now if only that wind would pick up to about 30 mph." And as almost as soon as the words came out of his mouth the wind suddenly started to get stronger. Not 30 mph stronger but a noticeable change. And as we turned to head north and felt the wind to our backs we all suddenly got a new wave of energy. It was amazing the change in our perspective. And speed for that matter. Whereas before we were struggling to go 7-10 mph we were suddenly easily going 15. And then we headed downhill. Downhill for a long time. Between the wind and the terrain I was able to coast at +30 mph for over 2 miles. It was amazing. I remember coasting up beside Bruce and just laughing. Laughing as opposed to 30 minutes ago about to break down emotionally. It was amazing. We ended up pulling into our camp around 1 am central time, which was the time zone we left in, but only midnight in the current mountain time zone. So we were on the bikes from 5 am til 1 am. Never again!

And to bring a laugh to the end of our night, as we pulled up at what we thought would be our camp (ended up being a couple miles short yet) I found Evie laughing. Apparently as she was zooming along in the dark (though we did have headlamps and tail lights) a bird flew right into her and smacked her in the face. Poor Evie. Had to tag along with our macho male egos driving us into insanity and then gets smacked in the face by a bird. No harm to her face though, she seemed to be fine.

I'm happy to be able to say that we did 167 mile in one day now in retrospect, but never again will I attempt that. I have a feeling I might have to keep reminding Bruce how miserable we were in order to keep him from wanting to try something like that again.