Note: If you're a regular to this blog, notice that this is the fourth post made today. I've uploaded days 27-30 today. It took me a while to catch up.

Miles: 52.6

Total Elevation Gain (ft): 634.6

Weather: Sunny, Hot

Hillbilly Insults: 0

Roadkill: 7 (2Birds, 2 Snakes, 3 Unknown)

Bugs Swallowed: 1

Mean Dogs Chasing: 0

Animal Rescue: 0

Not far from my final North Dakotan destination I had a problem.  My rear wheel, under the weight of the engine and gear, coupled with who knows how many hundreds (1000s?) of miles began to give way.  Two spokes became loose, like spaghetti, and were about to unravel. It's a testament to the strength of the wheel that I didn't even notice it until a water stop when I casually felt up the bike.  When I hit the weak spokes, I panicked and them sighed in relief that nothing happened while I was in the open prairie. 

I thought I was prepared. I packed the multi-tool, the chain repair kit, but no spoke wrench!  Murphy's law.  I couldn't hand tighten the spokes.  Just as I started to risk dumping more miles on the injured Fargo, I got a neighborly lift into the city by Marvin, husband of Teddy.  Just like those other 44 North Dakotans that inhabit this state, they were as friendly and affable as can be.  The details would bore you, but Teddy put in the request to Marvin and the dude abides. (Sorry, it's Fargo, so I can't resist throwing out a Coen Brothers nibble.)

Marvin didn't seem remotely inconvenienced on a lazy Sunday to take a stranger to town. He was a great storyteller and we got on just fine.  He's in his 70's but in fantastic shape. Marvin accords his health to ignoring all warnings about butter, eggs and "real food."  This is a guy that lived right and ate what hippies think they're buying when going "local."  

Marvin isn't a fan of the oil boom here and told me about the negative impact it's had in rural areas afflicted with the fallout from greed.  I wanted to spend more time with him and buy him lunch, but he shook my hand shortly after he dropped me off.  Once again, people like Teddy and Marvin are making me a softy. 

Although it's not the "real" sabbath, Sunday is THE day of worship in 'Merica.  However, one god trumps the Judeo-Christian deity on Sundays, even in god fearing country and that god is money.  And I say, can I have a hallelujah?!  Praise baby Jesus and Allah on his winged horse for unfettered capitalism!  

I had a big mechanical issue that needed to be fixed today and traditional bike shops are not open on Sundays, but Scheels is, and it's the A-Bomb.  

Family owned Scheels has called Fargo home since it opened in 1928.  It had modest growth over the years, but this sporting goods retailer built a  196,000 square foot shopping leviathan on 45th Street just north of Interstate 94.

It's so big that it features the indoor "Scheels Wheel," a 45-foot, 12-car, 1950's Ferris wheel.  There's a large cafe, masonry murals, an homage to Roger Maris and an archery range.  Most importantly, they have a complete bike service shop with "Barnett-certified technicians" open on Sunday! Sunday!! Sunday!!!

A genial kid named Aaron took my bike and put me at the head of queue. He went beyond my request and cleaned and lubed the chain and warned that I'll need a replacement in about 500 miles.  Aaron's help was typical of the type of the service I received at the store all afternoon. Yes, I am raving about this place. 

It's apparent that Scheels puts a premium on customer service and training staff to be knowledgeable about inventory as I later confirmed with my new friend and Scheels associate, Cassandra.  On top of that, the store gives back more than 10% of its profits to local charities.  

Look out Sports Authority, Dick's, REI, Bass Pro!  If Scheels plops down in your cat box, you're gonna lose a lot of litter. 

I purchased a Fighting Sioux cycling jersey and was told that I chose incorrectly.  Fargo is home to rival North Dakota State and the University of North Dakota is the state's lesser red-headed stepchild.  Fitting, I surmise, since an Indian is their mascot.  I explained to my critic that my choice was based on the sale price and that I needed to represent the aboriginals I've been writing about while excoriating the White Man. 

I got help from the Cassie choosing a compression shirt. She asked about my bike and I told her about the ride. When I was checking out, I was pleasantly surprised that she had my mechanic's fees waived and her manager, Josh, gave me a Scheels cycling shirt. 

"Anyone going cross country on a Fargo, in Fargo, gets my support," he said.  Cassie said she was inspired by the effort, so offered her waiver.  I really was touched by these people. It won't go unnoticed and I vow to visit and shop here again. 

I did get to take Cassie to dinner to thank her. Plus, I found she deserved a bit of recognition as it was her last day at Scheels before starting a career at mega-giant US Bank.  It was a bonus for me as I got a local tour of downtown Fargo.  It's going through a revitalization and has all of the proper affectations: fixie bikes locked outside coffee shops, an independent movie theater, converted lofts, buskers playing the hurdy-gurdy and third party Libertarian activists loudly soliciting ballot petition signatures.  

I always wanted to see this place. One of my favorite writers, Chuck Klosterman, is from here and he aptly describes it in his article, "Fargo Rock City."  This stop was a nice way to finish the lonely march through North Dakota.  

I'm heading to a nice event now. My widowed father-in-law is getting married to his widowed high school sweetheart.  It's a quaint story of unrequited love, now "requited."  I'm

very happy for him. 

Fly out of Fargo July 2nd. Back on the bike July 7th or 8th depending on my mood and posterior recovery.  Then I've been told that the scenery improves when I cross the river into Minnesota. 

Waiting for my flight, I've been staying at most sterile Hilton Homewood Suites.  My chamber looks like the bedroom set outside of Neptune from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I love it. 

Miles: 73.6

Total Elevation Gain (ft): 1122.0

Weather: Sunny, Warm

Hillbilly Insults: 0

Roadkill: 26 (6 Birds, 9 Snakes, 2 Frogs, 1 Badger, 3 Chipmunks, 1 Rabbit, 1 Turtle, 3 Unknown)

Bugs Swallowed: 1

Mean Dogs Chasing: 0

Animal Rescue: 1 Turtle

I'm riding through Southern Saskatchewan, or as some call it, "North Dakota" and  wondering why anyone would live here.  Don't get me wrong, I am truly happy for the 46 friendly people that call this home, but their frigid winters, boiling summers and spring floods would test the patience of Job. 

If you are one of the 46 that can stand North Dakota, it must be great.  Wind blown plains, eternal miles between small towns and, winters on a scale that shame Minnesotans surely must have a unique charm.  Ya know, come to think of it, it's Nebraska, without the decent college football. 

No matter, the people are great. The state is doing well (oil shale) and unemployment is low.

I've been without the company of Kathleen and the kids for several days. I've had a lot of time in wide open isolation to consider the most monotonous and isolating kind of potentially fatal weather imaginable out here.  I marvel how the pioneers endured this place as I huff up hill into a 30 mph wind gust.  At least I've got pavement, a steri-pen for water and a smartphone (without coverage). How did the strong men and women of the 1800's make it with woolen clothing, cholera and Dr. Semmelgeiss' Snake Oil?  

I conclude that I'm a dandy wuss with my petty complaints of heat, wind and saddle boils.  I persuade myself that I'm in heaven until a rabid looking badger hisses at me from the side of the road.  I yell, "Go home!" and mutter, "Honey Badger don't give a f***," remembering the Internet meme which can be seen here: 

http://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg

The badger ruined my brief self-delusion of being in a quaint paradise.  Now, I feel like I'm in some post-apocalyptic landscape. I rarely see traffic, never a cop and the main streets of towns are abandoned.  I'm pretty sure the state tree is the telephone pole and wait...what's that?  That huge white thing in the sky.  It's a...pelican. In North Dakota?  Puhleeze!  No way.  Pelicans thrive in the wetlands, here. That's right, pelicans. 

I thought I was suffering heat stroke hallucinations when I scanned a small choppy lake and saw this giant white "pigeon" soaring just a few feet above me.  What the hell?!  I did a double take.  This was the first of dozens and dozens of pelicans and seagulls I would see. 

The aptly named "American White" is a pelican unlike its ocean dwelling relatives. It does not plunge-dive because its American, fat and lazy.  The literature says that Whooping Cranes are often confused with the American White, but I found that unbelievable.  The crane is easily distinguished because it flies idiotically with legs and neck extended, like a rubber chicken. 

I realize that my descriptions seem dubious, but I checked the digital oracle and what I write about the weather is true, at least for the state as a whole.  The record low in North Dakota is − 60F and the record high is 121F. To put that in perspective, the temperature delta here is 181 degrees which is more than the difference that separates freezing and boiling.  Both temperatures were recorded in 1936.   That's also the year that Jesse Owens defeated Aryan Supermen in the Olympics.  Yet, such an historic feat gets the silver medal compared to whomever endured the Great Depression and biblical climate around here.

Miles: 66.1

Total Elevation Gain (ft): 1217.8

Weather: Sunny, Hot

Hillbilly Insults: 0

Roadkill: 14 (4 Birds, 3 Snakes, 4 chipmunks, 3 Unknown)

Bugs Swallowed: 0

Mean Dogs Chasing: 0

What's the modern reward for vanquishing the Indians that provided us with a modicum of challenge and danger?

The new F-word.  Fracking. 

Peak oil be damned!  We have the technology to extract America's energy juice from the tiniest crevices.  Oh sure, there's some minor side-effects like despoiling and poisoning the earth, but the short-term economic and political gain is a whopper!

I've been diverted south from the original Northern Tier route because of dangerous truck traffic around the Williston Deposit in the mistakenly branded "Bakken Oil Field."

So, this entry  is a one-fingered salute, of sorts, to the Bakken for slowing my reverse Manifest Destiny.  The added miles are good for physical fitness but hell on the psyche. 

The Bakken formation is a whole crapload of rock.  Its formation lies below 200,000 square miles of subsurface in Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It's named after Henry Bakken, a farmer in North Dakota who owned the land where the formation was initially discovered. 

In 1951 oil was struck, but technical difficulties made it too hard to produce.  Ever since, greedy bastards have been working non-stop, like squirrels on a birdhouse, to get all that black gold flowing. They had plenty of incentive as various estimates place the total reserve at up to 24 billion barrels.  In 2008 new rock fracturing technology ("Fracking") brought a boom to the region.  In 2010, oil production rates had reached 458,000 barrels per day, outstripping the capacity to ship the stuff out of the place.  

One nasty byproduct of Fracking is the release of millions of gallons of natural gas.  This seemingly positive windfall is, in fact, an Al Gore nightmare.  The gas is flared off for a lack of infrastructure to make use of it.  I've been in Watford City and the night is lit up like Kuwait after Saddam Hussein spitefully retreated his army in 1991. 

Americans love to lionize and label anyone in the the military a hero.  It's a bit ridiculous, because a lot of us know real jackasses that joined up not for the call of liberty, but for all sorts of pedestrian reasons.

Military worship is ingrained in us at a young age.  Eisenhower's fear of the military industrial complex is now a reality and it has a big marketing budget.  Those flyovers at football games ain't cheap.  So, our collective guilt for allowing imbecilic jingoism and dunderheaded invasions is soothed when we get sappy over a few minutes of choreographed symbolism before a big sporting event.  Unable to admit being wrong, we justify foreign policy disasters or tacitly ignore them by making stars out of corporate country music clones. They croon impossibly romanticized tunes about patriotism, drinking and adultery.  Then there's the July 4th mass mouth breathing under fireworks and three day weekends where we shop at big box stores and ignore the lesser news feeds of men and women in uniform getting blown up. 

If anyone is bristling with contempt for me right now, I apologize for my belief that I am right and you are wrong.  I support the troops wholeheartedly.  That's why I think they should have never been put in harms way for our expensive unjustified wars for the last decade. What I I call flag waving nationalism is dissent in the face of a torrent of public negligence and government stupidity. 

This is a meandering way of saying that all the focus on the military robs our attention from the civilian champions that keep our cities, suburbs, churches and gas guzzling hybrid vehicles churning.  I'm talking about roughnecks, hookers and meth dealers.  These unsung "heroes" sacrifice their own comfort for the rest of us.  They act symbiotically to make their lifestyle bearable so that we may reduce our dependence on foreign oil and maintain our precious carbon based economy. 

I'm fully aware that I'm a hypocrite, contrarian and jackanape.  Just because I self-righteously  ride a bike doesn't mean that I don't also enjoy the comforts of my FJ Cruiser and my and my fourth Scion xB.  I'm no consumer slouch.  Ha!  I'm composing this post on my nifty iPhone--designed in California, mined in third world hellholes and manufactured by Chinese indentured servants. 

I merely want to give credit where credit is due, hero-wise.  Presently, it's not the troops putting down nefarious enemy combatants keeping us safe, it's the aforementioned sex, oil field and narcotics workers on 18 hour shifts making it all happen.  So, the next time you guzzle a frozen latte or wolf down a cheeseburger and sneer at a vagrant, prostitute or someone slinging from the comfort of your car, SUV or minivan, remember that you're looking down at patriots that simply haven't made the pilgrimage to North Dakota, yet. 

What did you do for your country today?

I got a late start out of Hazelton because I stopped at the only small market in town and had the lunch special:  cheeseburger and baked beans.  

I sat down with the other patrons, Fern, Bernice, James, Katie and Joanne. They're all part of the Main St. Market Singles Club.  That's what I call it, anyway. 

James, in a thick German accent explained how he was the bachelor amongst all the women in the place, either widowed or waiting for Mr. Right.   They were all locals and I could tell they must've thought I emerged from a flying saucer in my spandex and noisy cleats.  I think I'd pass as a pretty good Klaatu and my bike could play Gort, if I threw the LED lights on it.  Hazelton is a perfect setting for another "The Day the Earth Stood Still" remake. 

I got on the road and the sun was shining beautifully on the rolling hills, but the wind wasn't cooperating like it was from Bismarck.  This wasn't a brutal  headwind, but an insidious crosswind that drains one slowly.  It's like a heavy Belgian ale.  The few times I've had some Trappist monk brew, I feel pretty good until the 25% ABV hits like a ton of bricks.  I had that feeling about four hours into the ride. 

About that time, I stopped in a town I cannot recall the name of.  It had a Maid-Rite diner.  I choked down a grilled cheese sandwich with a strawberry lemonade shush chaser.  I was just finishing up, when "THWAAAAP!!!," an elderly woman caught her foot on a stool and face planted on the concrete floor with lightning speed. 

I thought she'd be knocked out, or worse.  82 year-old Eileen Geislel was in the process of getting up when I jumped on the floor and put my arm around her. She was bleeding and probably had a broken nose. I didn't want her to move too much in case she needed to be immobilized.  After a while, we got her in a chair and put an ice pack on her face.  She said she was fine, but I asked that one of the many friendly cackling hens in the place to take her to the ER, just in case she had a concussion.  

The sound her head made hitting the floor would make pro-linemen wince. Eileen, you're a soldier and I promise to send your war photo in the mail when I'm done with the ride, since you don't use the Internet. 

I got to Gackle and was put up by Jason Miller, of Miller Honey Farms. These are the folks behind the cyclist brand favorite, Honey Stinger products.  My kids love the stroopwafels, but you gotta lose Lance Armstrong on the packaging.  That guy's a dope!

I never met Jason, but chatted with him on the phone. He was out of town, yet he leaves his home open for touring cyclists.  With his wife Ginny, they've turned their basement into "The Honey Hub of Gackle: A Cyclist's Respite."

What a great place.  Free lodging, wi-fi, a hot shower, linens and beds.  Perfect.  I was tempted to stay two nights, but Gackle turns into a zombie movie set after 8 p.m. and I have fantasies of making Fargo before my self-imposed July 1st deadline. 

Thank you Millers and Honey Hub!  You can check out the relevant details for this gem on Adventure Cycling's Northern Tier Addendum online information. 

Enderlin tomorrow. Long stretches, no water stops.  Will be packing lots of fluid in the Platypus bladder. 

Miles: 47.5

Total Elevation Gain (ft): 1397.7

Weather: Sunny, Warm

Hillbilly Insults: 0

Roadkill: 11 (1 Bird, 4 Snakes, 3 chipmunks, 3 Unknown)

Bugs Swallowed: 0

Mean Dogs Chasing: 0

My last day of support and company with my family ended today,  but not before we enjoyed a movie and the gluttonous orgy of stupidity that is Golden Corral.  How does this swill trough make money?

I inhaled eight glorious yeast rolls with my two steaks, multiple sides of meat and assorted deserts.  Thank you, thank you strip mall civilization!  You have my gratitude for the bounty  provided and about to be shat from wholesome American guts!  

Our irresponsible binge was capped by my feral children exuberantly misbehaving.  Felix threw a shoe at his sister like an angry jihadist and Camille started to bite her toenails.  Katy mused about what proud parents we are as we sternly admonished the kids and laughed maniacally at each other.  This dinner odyssey was meaningful in ways that few people can understand. I know now that my piecemeal multicultural family is fully assimilated in mainstream culture.  Mission accomplished. 

The nice thing about coming off the prairie to a city with a Wal-Mart is that I can usually find a decent bike shop.  I met Jared at Epic Sports and he took loving care of the Fargo. She had been mothballed during my dalliance with the Colnago.

I needed a minor tune-up and my pedals swapped out.  I've decided to go with my old Look pedals for the rest of the trip.  Touring purists will make church lady, pinch-faced scowls at the bizarre hybrid style I've  created by wearing racing cleats and shoes on the lumbering Fargo.  It's just that the Scott shoes are so comfortable, I can't return to the Shimano SPD/Flat pedals.  They were giving me unnecessary nerve damage.  If I decide to stop and walk around somewhere, I'll just slip off the Scotts and pull my New Balance Minimus out the dry bag.  Sorry Shimano, I need a big platform and your product felt like a red hot ball-peen hammer bashing my feet. 

Jared took good care of everything and continued the streak of human kindness I've experienced since my departure from Astoria.  He's a pretty fit looking mountain biker and warned us against eating at the "Alien Cafe."  I thought it would be nice to take the kids there, but Jared's description made Chucky Cheese sound like Nobu by comparison. 

I procrastinated in an air-conditioned movie theater waiting for the winds to die down after thr family left for Elk Point, SD and then onto Kansas City to visit friends.  I watched Angelina Jolie's husband thwart zombie hoards.  George Romero did it best 50 years ago.  It's time to warehouse the undead trope for a few years. 

Hit the road at 7:30 p.m. and after a bit of climbing rolled into the Hazelton park campsite in the dark.  It was a perfect cool evening.  I snuggled into my tent sleeping bag and tossed and turned. Gave up on sleep and watched the ignominious "Fast and Furious" on my iPhone.  It was worse than I imagined and not worthy of the small screen.