Day 30: “Storm” Day

-
Today was the shortest day of biking we have had in a long time, just 38 miles from Napoleon to Gackle (don’t get it twisted though, 38 miles is still 38 miles). The main reason for this was because the weather app was telling us that we should expect a big storm rolling through in the early afternoon and since biking in the rain is an all around horrible experience, we decided a short day was best. This also meant we got another day of sleeping in which is always the best feeling! The forecast all turned out to be a lie however as one of the biggest things that we have realized as we have come to North Dakota is that we really can’t trust the weather app much. Jason, our host for the night even said that North Dakota is where meteorologists who failed school end up and it sounds about right because what was supposed to be a day of mostly storms and bad weather turned out to be perfectly sunny with a mild crosswind. Hopefully this stays true because the next four days are also supposed to be thunderstorms! While we can suffer through biking in the rain, riding on metal bikes with flat fields all around makes for a nice target for lightning bolts. 

It was a pretty uneventful ride today other than about 10 miles in when we saw a cute little turtle trying his best to cross the highway. Even though we see maybe 15 cars total in a day on these side highways there was no way I was leaving this guy alone so I slammed on my breaks, grabbed a quick picture, and carried him off to the side of the road where he could be free in the wilds of North Dakota (honestly didn’t even realize they had turtles up here).https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1pyfjX1c4xCvnVBDIVplzdpmIkz8MPBHc

We got to Gackle around 1:30 (way earlier than usual) and set up in the Honey Hub. Our host for the night is the son of Honey Stinger which is a company that makes really lightweight and tasty energy snacks for bikers and we are absolutely loaded up on a ton of these treats now.https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1BcOA31PzGFQXiVe9Esyj4qQjatrAh_jy

We spent most of the afternoon showering, doing laundry, and taking naps which really hit the spot even after a shorter day of riding. We got both lunch and dinner at a place called The Freeze in town which had some great burgers, fried chicken and shakes. Dustin wasn’t able to finish his soup but we can’t blame him because he also ate an industrial size bag of smart food popcorn and a box of watermelon an hour before dinner and his soup was way bigger than expected. The man’s seemingly bottomless stomach finally reached an end and even he was surprised. After dinner everyone went to the bar and made friends with some of the locals while I went back to the house to shower and write the blog!
Tomorrow we are planning on sticking around in Gackle for the Fourth of July! If you’re thinking to yourself right now “wait a minute, they just took a rest day” then keep those thoughts to yourself and enjoy tomorrows blog which is gonna be full of drunk shenanigans
Photo Dump:https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=15zmilROUsXjhv4anKM7fpa6OVunUEC2Mhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=10m3ihTv-TLzPxMJPem3R3hlWRVI1SUdEhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=16qRufYuyvQ2_iwPe9qqTwPBt-vSk3g5Ehttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1It3Xmpd_VIf2q72DFtYPdsHHvYvQcq1Q

“Just gonna point this out, these people might be planning on killing us. The toilet paper is put on backwards” - Pat

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 52: WE ARE HOME!

-
Image
It’s the one and only Julia! Today is the day - we are finally home (I mean we still have to bike to the coast tomorrow, but that’s a later problem because tonight we finally can sleep in our own beds!) It has just been a surreal day. We only had 39 miles to home, so the end was very much in sight. Personally, I thought that today was going to be nice and easy since it’s a short day…. HA these routes always be playing. The whole first part of the day was straight uphill. Gotta love those nice 8% grades to kick off a day. Don’t worry, though, there was no tears or fear of vomiting so I call it a success! (Oh it was also raining all day, but it was actually pretty nice to have it cool us off) We were then blessed for the rest of the ride with mostly downhills. It was *chef’s kiss* beautiful. The night before Dustin and I were going back and forth about what route to take, and I will admit that Dustin was right and after the beginning, his route was basically all chill and downhill. (Dust...
Read more

Day 53: the last blog

-
Image
Hey y’all - it’s Dustin, sorry the blog is late for the last one… probably because the rest of our day started like this:  Anyway: so we got up and left for our last ride to the beach around 830 - our friend Lenny was a trooper and decided he would ride with us the 44 miles to hammonaset and he did an awesome job! He did so well that we went too fast and how to slow down so we didn’t get there before the welcoming committee. We were getting a bunch of angry texts telling us we were too fast so we stopped for ice cream at Ashley’s which is supposedly the best in CT - it was pretty good - I got peach and there were also frozen pieces of peach in the ice cream which is nice! Also - in a desperate attempt to keep the trip going (I don’t know why she would want to do that) Julia decided to run over some glass and get a flat tire! Her first since Washington state, and the groups first since Montana - I think she did it on purpose…  Anyway, after our entourage finally showed up at th...
Read more

Day 51: Border hopping

-
Image
If you read yesterdays blog you know that we started super early, around 7:15 am versus our usual 9:30. Well we decided to one up ourselves yet again and started at 6:30 today. That meant getting up at 5 and while it’s obvious that we like torturing our bodies because we decided to do this trip, sleep is sacred and I am tired. Why did we wake up at these god forsaken times? Because we have been avoiding the heat wave that’s been hitting the rest of the country all summer and we have the privilege of riding right into it the past few days. Today was no exception with the high being 93 degrees, hot for just enjoying the outside, and overbearing for riding 80 miles in. But with the end in sight we dug deep and got all of our stuff together with bleary eyes to begin our day. Special shout-out to the Crafts for being some of the best hosts that we’ve had on the trip! An amazing dinner last night, a huge breakfast at the crack of dawn, showers, beer, drying our tents for us, and anything els...
Read more