BRO QUEST 2009

It's been nine days since we finished our trip, and I have been back in Oklahoma for three of those days. I'm not going to lie, I'm not really comfortable with being back. One would think that I would be relieved to not have to ride a bike, get rained on, camp, eat absurd collections of food, get sunburns and bug bites, perpetuate and worsen nerve damage in my hands/arms, etc, but on the contrary I find riding around in a car and trying to sort out the details of a "regular" life frustrating, scary and above-all, boring.

Some of this might be due to the depression and disorientation that occurs with a major disruption of one's surroundings and daily routine. But on the other hand, this is still part of a pattern of behavior that has been sprouting up since I was in my early teens, a behavior that leads to intense, almost obsessive commitment to some goal or set of goals, which usually results in the completion of the goals, in addition to physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, strained friendships and relationships, and (perversely) an ever-greater desire to push further, harder, to pursue ever more strenuous and esoteric objectives and adventures.

While riding on a particularly long day, I was overcome with a desire to do another Ironman triathlon. Training and preparation for the last Ironman lasted months and led, in part, to one of the most dangerous and prolonged illnesses I've ever had (remember pneumonia-fest '08, guys?) but during the 15 hours that I spent wrecking my body in various athletic disciplines, what can compare? All stresses, cares and even most of myself disappeared from my body and my brain, leaving me and the race itself, with the rest of reality distant and black, like the opposite side of a valley during a thunderstorm. Upon reflection, most of my thoughts and actions are geared towards producing the same effects, towards cleaving my perceptions from their normal reality, I guess it really is a case of being "high on life", and I am hopelessly ensnared in doing more of the same.

It might sound, at first blush, that I am some sort of adrenaline junkie. But that isn't the case--adrenaline can never supplant the feeling of having pushed one's body, one's brain to the absolute brink, to stare all-or-nothing situations in the face and to soldier on.

As Pat mentioned in an earlier post, an elderly gentleman told us that we were living the "real life" on our trip, and that when we finished it was "back to the nightmare". While it sounds overly poetic, it is true--after living homeless for two months, whipping around blind corners at 40mph, one's face turned into a grinning deathmask from wind and concentration, hiking through forests where there are no trails and riding a bicycle until one literally cannot form a complete sentence, who the hell wants to worry about paying a mortgage while sitting in a cubicle and waiting for time to pass?

I realize that one simply cannot live footloose forever, and I realize as well that working 9 to 5 and worrying along with millions of others about money and pollution and heart attacks or whatever helps define such adventures and places them in the appropriate context.

In my early teens I was an avid climber, and I idolized most the rugged mountaineers, who would run risks I could not brave in exchange for a reward that I could not comprehend. I understand now the devotion of those mountaineers, who will risk life and limb to climb frozen peaks in the worst condition, steadily losing fingers and toes over the course of their adventures until finally the icy wind snatches them and drags them into some howling void. And there is some chance that I will run the same risks as mountaineers, but very likely, I am going to continue to push farther, to forge ever ahead into uncharted experiential waters, and I would like to apologize in advance, because I understand that adventurers are often more defined by their absence rather than their presence, be it temporary or permanent, inadequately filled with photographs and incredibly long, masturbatory treatises such as this one. So to my family, I apologize for the empty spot at the dinner table, and to my friends, the empty spot on the front porch or the patio of some watering hole. And to Pearl, I apologize for the times that I wasn't there this summer and should have been, and for the empty spaces as yet unoccupied by me in the future.

This has gotten long, overwrought, and likely gives the (possibly accurate) impression that I am a selfish libertine concerned only with some overly-intellectualized strenuous form of hedonism. But nonetheless, I'd like to invite you to join me on whatever I do next: any and all are welcome to accompany me wherever I happen to go next, and I would love an invitation to whatever you are embarking upon, be it big or small. You know where to find me.

--S

So I am writing this days later, (we've finished the trip) but for the next few stories/blog posts we are going to pretend like we haven't yet finished. TEMPORAL SHENANIGANS.

If I were to make a list off the top of my head of the coolest ways to shuffle off this mortal coil, it would probably look like this:

• Spontaneous combustion
• Spontaneous combustion, while on a motorcycle
• Boat jumping accident (I am in the boat and the boat is jumping something)
• Boat jumping accident (I am jumping over a boat)
• Getting crushed under a 15 foot tall wave of molasses
• Colliding with bear on bicycle, being decapitated by said bear

There might be a few more, but this is just the result of a few minutes' thought. Anyway, on the Vermont/New Hampshire border I was riding about 20mph to catch up with Pat (I had stopped to take a phone call) and I saw a big furry head push out through the brush on the side of the road. My train of thought went something like this:

"That's a really big dog"
"Wait, that isn't a dog--"
BEAR CRISIS!

By the time the bear got all the way out on the road (and by the time I successfully identified the creature as a bear), I was only about 25 feet from the guy (or gal). I yelled "HEY!" really loud, hoping to scare it. The bear growled/roared at me and took off across the road, giving a disturbing display of the ursine capacity for speed (they can sprint at upwards of 35 mph).

Very luckily for me, the bear got spooked. If the bear had stood its ground or simply not moved fast enough, I would have slammed into the side of a black bear that was about the same height and weight as myself. While defeating a bear in single combat with a pocket knife and bicycle pump and then taking its fur, claws and teeth as trophies would have been both admirable and impressive, very likely I would have squealed like a little girl as the bear mauled me and then ate me.

This was probably the weirdest experience for me on the trip and also the most dangerous bicycle experience I've had, including the three times I got hit by cars. Just thought I would share the experience with you guys.

Apparently this is the rainiest/coldest summer that New York has ever had. In Western New York the temperatures weren't bad, sixties-seventies and maybe slightly chilly at night. The rain, on the other hand, came down in sheets and repeatedly soaked us every day in New York (so far). We started out from Niagara Falls headed toward Rochester, loosely following the Erie Canal Historic Passage. Turns out there is a bike/horse/pedestrian pass that runs the entire length of the canal, but it didn't really go where we wanted to go, so we had to satisfy ourselves by jealously taking pictures of the wide, beautiful and traffic-free path whenever we crossed it.

Erie Canal and accompanying multi-use path

About ten miles out from Niagara, we ran into a family of Californians that were headed from Maine to Seattle. The father and older son were both riding Surly tourers with trailers, and the mom and younger son were pushing a co-motion tandem with saddlebags AND a small min-pin in a doggie carrier located on top of their rear rack. Apparently the dog would stick his head out of the front of the carrier and rest it on the back of the bike saddle. Happy trails, Californians.

In Rochester we got to stay with the family of Nick Galusha, my former roommate and OKC's friendliest TV mogul. Nick's family were totally AWESOME, thanks a million for the pasta dinner and the breakfast.

We decided to ride across Northern Rochester to avoid traffic and also to see Oklahoma Beach, which is apparently located on Lake Ontario. All went well and good until we got to the bridge crossing at Irondequoit Bay, which was apparently closed during the summer months so that the bay could function as a marina. We were seriously only 30 feet from the other side of the Bay with no way to get across. Given that they Bay is long and narrow, we'd have to ride all the way around the sucker and then back up the other side in order to get to Oklahoma Beach.

Faced with a possible 20 mile detour involving lots of traffic and some rough roads, we hitched a ride on a motorboat:

Crossing a 30 foot water gap
It took us three tries to find a boat willing to ferry us and our stuff across, we tried to pay the captain but he refused to take any money for his services. A really generous guy and an extremely positive experience.

Detour? Don't think so!

Oklahoma Beach wasn't actually that great, just a strip of private land dotted with houses that faced Lake Ontario. We were hoping for at least a place to buy beers/hamburgers/tacky Oklahoma souvenirs.

You ain't seen the south until you've seen that red durt

Riding out of Rochester and into Auburn was fun, though we got in late due to a nasty two-hour thunderstorm. The state highways and old US highways in New York have absolutely gorgeous shoulders, wide, freshly-paved and free of rumble strips. We took US 20 (the Cherry Valley Turnpike) east from Auburn, stopping almost immediately to go to an antique boat show, which also had antique cars. And one of the original "fab five" from "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy", who stared at me for a while before speeding off on a boat. Bizzarro-world.

Boat and matching car

We stuck around too long looking at expensive hobbies for white guys in the Northeast, but we did learn some sweet terminology, such as "Lapstrake", which is apparently a form of boat construction in which the boards overlap on the hull, rather than being smooth-sided. BOAT SCHOOL: IN SESSION.

BOAT SHOW, FOOLS

There were some kickass rocket boats too, but we didn't get to see any sweet jumps or like boat explosions or anything, mostly just rich people and expensive toys. We did eat some really good fish and chips, though. I think the town is called Skaneateles?

Boat maxes out at warp 6.7

So it turns out the Finger Lakes region and the Cherry Valley Turnpike contain some really steep hills, probably steeper (though not longer) than anything we've experienced on this trip. The countryside was beautiful and we weren't exactly getting worn out from the hills, but climbing them certainly took a lot of time and as a result we only made 50 miles before it got dark.

About 1/3 of way up a STEEP-assed hill

On the plus side, we did get some really good downhills in, routinely hitting 40-45 mph. On one hill we ended up almost hitting 50mph. In fact, we probably would've, but I had to tap my brakes to avoid rear-ending a motorcyclist who was wandering all over the road. Yes, I almost hit a motorcycle from behind and at high speed on a bicycle.

Anyway, I noticed that my front tire was wearing out, so I had to quit taking downhills at full speed because a front tire blowout at speed is a pretty good way to need skin grafts, blood transfusions and fake teeth.

That diagonal line on the opposite hillside is where we hit our current speed record, 49.29mph

We knocked out a hard day exiting the Cherry Valley and ended up only 25 miles from Saratoga Springs, so we decided to ride in just our regular shorts and no shirts. Which worked great, until it started raining, and then we didn't have dry clothes to wear. Whoops! Luckily we were in town by 11:30 in the morning and just sat around all day.

Doing it up hesher style in Eastern NY

Anyway, I have another flat (that makes seven for the trip). Actually, the distribution of flats has been very odd--a thousand miles and then one flat, two thousand miles with no problems, and then 6 flats over the next 700 miles. I think it's mostly due to worn-out tires. Both us and our bikes are getting a little worn out, but we've only got another 250 miles or so until Portland, Maine. Thank you so much for sharing this journey with us, you should hear from me again in Vermont or maybe New Hampshire.

After having biked almost 3500 miles, I can tell you that bicycle touring changes you, both physically and mentally. Our legs, of course, are grotesque, as expected:

YIKES!
In addition to our legs, though, we've got bruises and callouses on the palms of our hands (from the handlebars), repetitive-stress induced nerve and soft tissue damage to our shoulders, elbows and wrists, and our hands and feet routinely go numb at night due to exceedingly low blood pressure. We can each consume a large pizza in one sitting and then happily eat another meal, we don't bleed very much when injured (Pat first noticed this, it's really really weird) and we have so little body fat that we've taken to wearing jackets when the temperature drops into the high sixties.

All this, of course, is nothing compared to the mental changes that have occurred--mileage is not a concrete measurement but rather part of a larger, more complex "distance we can cover" value that involves road conditions, weather, wind, number of stops etc. On pretty much any day where we are only covering 70 miles we don't even consider it real riding--we'll get up late, take a long time at breakfast and lunch, etc. The effects of essentially being left to your own devices for 6-10 hours of physical effort does strange things to the psyche, too--you start muttering to yourself, create long lists, disappear into your own head, look towards the future, the past, to people you've met and to books you've half-finished. You become a master of keeping yourself amused.

AMUSEMENT

When talking to strangers, you end up taking turns answering the same questions. "We started in Portland, Oregon. It's been almost two months. I don't know why we're doing this, maybe we're crazy? You unconsciously check nutritional labels on everything prior to purchasing it. When you meet other touring cyclists the questions boil down to just three:

• Where from and where to?
• How many miles a day?
• What do you think about <x> gear?

Your coping skills also improve: hills, rain, wind, traffic--they can't be avoided, so you just ride. Outside of Hamilton we hit a patch of road construction during a rainstorm. The traffic was truly awful and the road had a seven percent grade, meaning you had to balance riding your brakes enough to keep from hitting 50mph and not accidentally locking your wheels and sliding under somebody's two tons of transportation. There's a sort of fatalistic grim humor to almost getting hit by a car or running out of water ten miles outside of the next town.

Given that we can't carry everything with us, breakdowns get handled in interesting manners. For example, we repaired Pat's bike the other day with a broken phone and a piece of pipe that we found on the side of the road, a hack that was inspired by the piece of aluminum pipe that we zip-tied to his rear rack to fix the problem on the other side of his bike.

I'm not sure how transition into non-touring life is going to go, but I know that this trip has made me more patient, more resourceful, and more willing to go without showers for days on end. Might have to watch out for that one.

We're trying to make it to Auburn for the evening, we've got more photos and such when we get there.

Greetings from America's Hat!

We crossed through Sault Ste Marie, MI into Sault Ste Marie, Ontario a few days ago (three? four?). The Canadian version of Sault Ste Marie is about 6 times the size of the American version, and also has all the jobs because of the Algoma Steel Mill, which "smells like a butt" according to Pat.

The north side of Lake Huron is pretty much untamed wilderness with the occasional tiny-ass town plunked down off of the highway. Highway 17, by the way, is narrow, has no shoulder, and is host to a significant amount of truck traffic. I almost got my ticket punched by a cattle truck.

Anyway, Northern Ontario is extremely expensive due to nobody lives there, transport costs, marginal expense, etc. One thing that Canada does have is poutine:

Pat kind of got his manhood insulted and had to order a "medium" plate of fries covered in gravy, bacon and cheese, which he couldn't finish. Here I am with my sweet fake money and reasonably sized portion:

After two days of rain, mosquitoes, hills and gorgeous landscape, we rode through the La Cloche foothills and onto Manitoulin island, which is basically a bicycle obstacle course when the wind is blowing out of the west--the highway curves around the east side of the island, rolling along straight, flat west-east stretches and then turning north-south to cross rolling hills. Essentially, every time you weren't in a head wind you were uphill. It really wasn't bad. We made it to the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry (literally "big canoe") with about 10 minutes to spare, and they let us load with the motorcycles, in front of all the cars. Here's pat pretending to be a real biker:

Anyway, the ferry ride was like an hour and a half and the food was that awesome combination of expensive and not very good. But it was covered in gravy and was high calorie, so hey!

Southern Ontario is mostly farm land and protected forests, with really awesome rolling hills. Also we found a place with all you can eat fish and chips and a live musician who refused to play "Tom Sawyer" or "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald", which were really all we wanted to hear.

At the end of the day yesterday I managed to wear out a trailer tire en-tire-ly (hahahaha), which meant I had to use the spare I had been carrying since North Dakota. Also, Pat and I both noticed that our rear tires were pretty much worn out, so we're working on that, too. Also I look homeless now?

We're currently in Owen Sound, which is like Guthrie, OK, except with a much bigger downtown. And a huge, really nice park that lets you camp there and also take showers. Back in the USA in two days (we think). Going to leave you with an inexplicably angry puppy (from Tobemory, Ontario):

First off, a big thanks to Ed Knight, Mary Jane Alexander, and their kids, for letting us crash in their apartment at Lake Superior State University for two days, and for being really awesome hosts. Mary Jane Alexander is an excellent photographer and published a book called "Salt of The Red Earth", which is collection of photo-essays from one hundred different Oklahoman Centenarians. It is an outstanding work (Pat and I have both read it cover to cover today) and is worthy of a spot on your bookshelf/coffee table when it goes to second print. Further, Ms Alexander is up for Outstanding Artist in The Oklahoman Gazette's "Best of OKC" survey (as M J Alexander). The survey can be found here. Please consider voting for her, we can vouch for her photographic genius. We're also proud that Sauced Pizzeria, one of our sponsors, is up for "Best Pizzeria". Not to sway your vote, but you know how much you love Sauced, get vocal about it.

We got delayed by a day due to health/weather (things are ace for tomorrow, no worries), so before we head off into Canada (a/k/a the Mexico of the North) I thought I'd talk for a few paragraphs about a subject near and dear to BROQUEST--food.

One would think that since we have devoted our summers to being in the best shapes of our lives that we would be absolute health fanatics with scientifically-determined proportions of macro- and micro-nutrients. Further evidence supporting this theory is that all three of us are decent-to-excellent cooks and that prior to this trip we were all reasonably conscientious of our health and diets.

However, the theory is false: At this point Pat and I have eaten pretty much every item sold by grocery stores at least twice, and have consumed all manner of cheap hamburgers, greasy fries and pretty much any other caloric garbage we could shovel into our maws.

Not to sound like we are just eating a bunch of random crap, we have had some outstanding meals both at camp and at restaurants, and we try to get as many fresh fruits and vegetables as possible. The issue at hand is the sheer quantity of food we burn through. For example, here's what we ate for dinner last night:

• Family-size bag of doritos (thanks to our hosts, the Alexander family)
• Six pack of beer (thanks again to our hosts, the Alexander family)
• Family-size box of couscous
• Six gigantic cheddar bratwursts
• Two heads of broccoli
• Three quarters of a red onion
• Half a container of mushrooms
• Two cherry turnovers

Here's breakfast this morning:

• One lb of breakfast sausage links (approx. 16)
• Eight eggs
• Remaining quarter of an onion
• Remaining half-container of mushrooms
• One lb of hash browns
• Half lb of cheese

And here's dinner tonight:

• One lb of cod
• One lb of hash browns
• Half pint of whipping cream (in batter)
• Three eggs (in batter)
• One sleeve of saltines (in batter)
• Half-container of butter (for cooking)
• One lb of broccoli
• One lb of green beans
• Four zucchini
• One onion
• One bell pepper
• Six pack of beer

Keep in mind that the above meals were split between two people. Actually, I'm still kind of hungry, and I bet that Pat and I will eat this container of powdered donut holes that we picked up before bed. And we're planning on cooking up 30-ish pancakes for breakfast, which will be downed with some bananas and maybe some pop tarts, along with about a half-gallon of coffee.

Obviously we're on a budget of sorts, and we've developed a sort of calculus of utility, where we balance four different factors:

• Price
• Caloric content
• Weight
• Transportability

As an example, the ultimate calorie-per-dollar value is ramen noodles, which comes in at 500 calories/package, meaning 3,000 to 5,000 calories per dollar spent on food. Weight-wise ramen noodles are among the lightest food, and since they have to be crushed prior to cooking they also do very well on transportability. Of course, nutritionally it's an awful choice, but we eat like 6000-8000 calories a day and can't feasibly eat a balanced diet.

Some other things we've noticed:

• Butter toffee peanuts have about 1,000 calories for a $1.50 package
• Yogurt has more calories per serving than snack-pack pudding
• Literally everything has high-fructose corn syrup in it
• The standard candy bar has between 200 and 300 calories
• Standard-sized drinks almost universally contain between 120 an 200 calories, and are chemically virtually identical
• Hostess fruit pies have 470 calories per pie
• Those individually packaged muffins typically have 600+ calories
• Pretty much regardless of caloric quantity consumed, the second we start bicycling we get hungry
• Goober brand peanut-butter-and-jelly-in-the-same-jar does not need to be refrigerated, and will last one-and-a-half meals between Pat and I
• Beer, in moderation, is actually chemically superior to gatorade, powerade, etc--less processed ingredients, same balance of carbs and electrolytes, mild anesthetic

Typically when we go to a convenience store (anywhere from one to four times a day while riding), we first scan through the entire store for things we haven't yet eaten. Next, we'll scan the backs of products for overall calorie content versus price. People tend to stare at you when you start muttering about how nothing has enough calories. If it's in the afternoon, the process is complicated by the fact that we're pretty much zombies from the road. It's really something special.

I realize that this was not the most entertaining article, and I apologize for that. I hope it does shed some light on how the touring cyclist thinks, and we hope you're all doing well in your respective lives.

Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would be in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Never in another million years would I have guessed that the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a totally AWESOME place.

We have ridden through the Chippewa, Ottawa and Hiawatha forests, along several hundred miles of Lake Superior, over hills big and small, through extremely remote areas populated only by iron miners, along snowmobile trails and along 25 miles of perfectly straight, perfectly flat highway known as the "Seney stretch".

Some dense-assed forests up in da yoop, doncha know

Personality-wise, only the older folks have the true "yooper" stereotype of die-hard sausage-and-beer funnels that root for Green Bay and speak an English so stylized it's practically German. The younger folks are like young folks everywhere, and we enjoyed spending time with everyone we met, including sasquatch (he serves beer in Bergland, MI):

The Upper Peninsula is short on jobs but big on culture--the Finnish and the Germans were the primary settlers up here, and the cuisine reflects it. We tried both of the culinary specialties, the pasty (rutebaga, onion, potato and meat stuffed into a pastry pocket) and the cudighi, a sandwich made out of italian sausage, onions, peppers, marinara, cheese and mushrooms. We have been discussing going on an all cudighi diet at least through the end of the trip:

I realize I didn't really post much from Wisconsin, but it was fun too. We camped along the shore of Lake Superior:

We also got some photos of the most metal winery ever, White Winter Winery of Iron River:

The more time one spends documenting the less time they spend living. So it is sometimes difficult to balance the re-telling of experiences with the actually process of experiencing things. We have been riding pretty hard and we have lots to tell (and have one less person to tell the stories), please be patient as we get our words in order and our commas properly placed. We're headed into Canada tomorrow morning, so we'll likely be without internet access until Toronto, and without phones for over a week.

See you on the other side.

KONICHIWA from Minnesota!

Though we've only been here for three days, we have had like two weeks worth of fun. Here's Pat saying "HEY!" in the native tongue of glorious nippon at the giant Paul Bunyan statue in Bemidji:

Bemidji bills itself as the "first city on the Mississippi", and here is the lake that the Mississippi both feeds and drains:

Having only ever seen the Mississippi river in the south (St Louis, Memphis, New Orleans), it's pretty funny to cross it way up north, where it's about as heavy a subject as a bag full of farts:

Northern Minnesota is basically rolling hills and swampland/marshes, but somehow WITHOUT the massive bugs we were expecting. The humidity has been relatively low, the winds gentle and unsteady (except for the last day, when Lake Superior tried to HOLD US BACK), and the roads carrying a shoulder big enough for us to ride side-by-side.

Giant marsh

We rode through the Cass Lake Indian Reservation, were again warned that it was a terrible place, and again, had no problems. In fact, there was an awesome bike path that removed us from the highway and allowed us to ride through slightly more remote sections of the Chippewa National Forest, which was X-tremely worth it:

Then we got to Duluth, which totally BLEW OUR FACES OFF. First thing you should know is that Duluth has some of the steepest hills. Ever. As steep as San Francisco. We had to get off our bikes and WALK down them because our brakes couldn't handle the grade, our equipment, and our fat asses all at the same time:

The town, which has 86,000 people and two colleges, looks like it might be a rockin' place to live. Trent, who we stayed with, claims the unemployment rate is pretty high, but cost of living is low and at least in the summer it's pleasant (I'm sure the winter is different). Here's a shot of Duluth:

Apparently in Minnesota, indian tacos are known as "oof-da" tacos. The first time we saw a road sign we had to pedal back and look at it again to make sure we hadn't just shared a hallucination. After talking to a lady in Erskine, we finally puzzled out that it's the fry-bread state fair food that everyone loves to eat. Oof-da is also an expression of unbelief, similar to Oy-vey, as in "So where did ya bike from?" "--Oregon" "Oof-da! Your asses must be sore!" (This is a literal transcription of a conversation we had in Brookston, a small town with a bar that has $2 bacon cheeseburgers on Wednesday nights)

One last reason Duluth is cool--if you go to the grocery store and forget your bike lock, you can totally throw your bike in your shopping cart and wheel it around the store--the clerks thought it was hilarious and talked to me about BROQUEST for a while.

Anyway, we're either going to make it all the way across Wisconsin today or make it most of the way across, so you'll hear from us again in a day or two--we have a rest day scheduled for Marquette, MI.

North Dakota was a relatively stressful state for broquest, with some annoying headwinds, some unexpected hills, rain and gigantor mosquitos. Though we spent only around 400 miles in the state, it took us 5 full days of riding (plus the end of a day in Montana).

Though there was some BRO DRAMA, overall the state was pretty awesome.

The landscape was much prettier than people in Montana would have you believe:

The scandinavian cultural influences were an interesting touch:

The geographic center of North America was in Rugby:

And the people were all very nice. Every motorist gave us a full lane when they passed, and we got more courtesy honks and waves than we could count. People that we talked to were all interested in what we were doing, and offered helpful hints re: road conditions. We also met Luke:

While packing up our campsite in Tioga, this six year old came marching up to talk to us, unescorted by adults. His dad was an oilfield worker and his family was living in the middle of North Dakota's nascent oil boom. For a six year old he was very self-assured and articulate, and was pretty good at math, to boot.

The only puzzling thing about ND was that occasionally it appeared that someone had dropped a metric ton of roadkill onto the highway from a height of about 4000 feet--you'd be riding along for a while and then boom! GORE CARNIVAL for about a mile and a half. We even found a dead stoat (also known as an ermine or a mink) that didn't appear to have been hit by a car. Judging by its temperature (yes, of course we picked it up), it had been killed a very few minutes before we found it. Also, Pat accidentally threw it on my bicycle. THANKS PAT:

We're now taking a rest day on the ND-MN state border, going to cook up some steaks tonight and head for Bemidji (110 miles east) tomorrow. Happy fourth!

We're currently at the GEOGRAPHIC CENTER OF NORTH AMERICA and we're stalling because apparently there's some sort of BIG TRUCKS DRIVING THROUGH MUD event celebrating the third of July or whatever and we want to go to it. Also, it's hella windy, in the wrongest of ways.

Pretty much what we look like while camping

THINGS WE HAVE LEARNED:

• After passing two hawk corpses, pretty much everyone vows to stop and take feathers/beaks/talons next time
• Groundhogs are pretty much terrible at crossing the highway
• The guy that laid down the rumble strips on Highway 2 in Montana was pretty much drunk the entire time
• North Dakota's liquor laws are designed to both confuse and infuriate
• Salted Nut Rolls: A big deal in the north
• The wind in North Dakota blows approx. three directions at once, all somehow in your face
• People are more weirded out by the fact that we haven't stayed in a hotel than that we are bicycling across country
• You can get called "faggot" in pretty much any state (except Oregon, apparently)
• Some of the best scenery east of the rockies is provided by remarkably stupid bumper stickers
• There is a very fine line between "touring cyclist" and "homeless dude"--after talking to a guy in Chester, MT for a full ten minutes I still couldn't tell if he was on tour or just without a domicile
• Chicken fried steak--don't order it anywhere but the South
• SPAM: Better than you remember (tm)
• The mosquitos in Western North Dakota are some serious prehistoric shit but apparently nobody really cares that they are losing about a pint a day to them?
• Small-town bike shop owners get sort of huffy when you ask for things they don't have, like tires
• When a motorist says it's flat, they really mean there's 40 miles of hill climbing between you and your destination

It's almost time for the MUD RUN, so I'll have to let y'all go, but I'd like to say hello to the ladie golfers of Havre, MT--sorry we couldn't stick around and auction ourselves off as caddies for your charity tournament (we don't know anything about golf anyway).