North Dakota is one of those amazing places, when a young man offers to take your wife alone into his house to bathe,
without hesitation you say, 'oh how kind, thank you very much'.
without hesitation you say, 'oh how kind, thank you very much'.
Caramel Pig
Peddling the Dirt across North America
Contents
Holy Host
Stage 5.1
Beach, North Dakota – Napoleon, North Dakota
245.90 Miles – 405.73 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 2116.93 Miles – 3159.63 Kilometres
We had a glorious and precious sleep-in, followed by a slow lazy breakfast. After eating we set about tightening all the loose bolts. With the bike rattling away over poorly maintained American roads, most things are shaken to within an inch of their lives. We also decided to clean our bikes and bags as well as the obligatory loads of clothes washing. There is a surprising amount to do on our days off.
Upon saying this, in the late morning we started searching the rather industrial farming hamlet of Beach for a caffeine fix. Surprisingly in the land of bad coffee, we found a passable interpretation. And believe it or not, it was in a poky Western Outfitters store. It was a quaint place, very, very brown with small, round wooden tables and tiny lovely chairs. This was not a fat person's store. We sat on one of those wee seats, surrounded by chaps and hats, boots and shirts, and read our books whilst enjoying upside-down Americanos. It was quite a surreal yet pleasant experience.
In the afternoon I walked down to the library. I had to find ways of replacing our melted gear. The heat of the previous week had been brutal, let me tell you a few stories.
- We grated our cheese to put on our nachos and discovered it was melting before leaving the grater.
- We took ground beef out of our pannier and put it on our frying pan. The beef started cooking before we had lit our stove.
- Our high-vis vests were beginning to turn white.
- The dry bag on the back of Sharon's bike was becoming translucent.
- Sharon's helmet had started melting and now has a teardrop similar to a paint run on the side of it.
- The plastic bracket for my bar-bag melted and buckled out of shape.
There was nothing we could do about the drip in Sharon's helmet or our high-vis gilets. Interestingly enough, Endura, the company that produced most of our cycling clothes, took no responsibility for Sharon's melting helmet and suggested that this is what we should expect when we use them in such testing conditions. In total contrast, Ortlieb, the people who made our panniers, were very quick to help. My bar-bag had developed a finger-sized hole and as mentioned, the mounting bracket had melted. Ortlieb guaranteed they could send a replacement bracket to anywhere in the USA within a week. Then told me what to buy to repair and seam-seal the hole, and over the phone talked me through repairing it. On top of that, understanding that I could not part with such an essential piece of kit, they informed me that once I'd finished my ride, they would replace the bag. Fantastic service and the reason why we tell everyone to buy Ortlieb and no one to buy Endura.
My only problem was trying to find a place for my replacement mount to be sent. I was sitting in the library using its internet to find addresses in Napoleon, North Dakota, which was where we were planing on being in a week's time. I didn't realise that the librarian was listening as I called every Protestant church in the area, asking if I could get my stuff sent to them and collect it when I arrived. Everyone seemed quite cautious and suspicious of me. Eventually the kind lady walked over and said, 'Can I help?' She quickly jumped on her phone and called the Catholic church, which was more than willing to accept my post. This had been quite a long, slow air-conditioned process, however a few hours after arriving, I had updated the blog, uploaded photos and videos, found replacement Ortlieb parts and an address to have them sent too. The only person who had interrupted me during this time had offered to help. Oh what a difference a border makes.
Upon arriving home, I noticed people in the backyard chainsawing down a little tree. As they left, they gave me fifteen dollars and told me to be blessed. I quickly passed this on to Sharon, who dashed away to get a long overdue haircut.
Way to go, Beach! You were an awesome, pretty wee place and a very restful stop. Thanks so much for your lovely hospitality.
We spent the evening reluctantly packing and were in bed by 7 p.m., ready for another 4 a.m. start.
The morning was a quick 44 km, mostly along the Old Highway 10, through the not so impressive Badlands, into the very pretty Medora. This town was a bit of a mountain biking and tourist Mecca, which meant that the bicycle shop was not the only outlandishly expensive establishment. We had panihapon before settling in for a long coffee at Hidden Springs Java. I'm not if this was a wise idea before spending the next 15 km riding the freeway. Motorway cycling is mostly flat with wide shoulders and American drivers, or at least North Dakota drivers, were very considerate. There were just two things that worked against us: the huge amount of truck debris and the noise. The consistent drone of large tyres on poor roads coupled with caffeine left us feeling very tense.
Whilst cycling along the I94, to my utter delight, I spotted wild bison sauntering along the freeway on-ramp opposite us. Naturally we took the off-ramp and cycled over to have a look. We had stumbled upon the Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the Painted Canyon Visitor Center.
There was no fence between us and the bison. I loved their faces, they looked startlingly human to me. I caught one beast's eyes, he stamped his foot and rocked his shoulders towards me. Involuntarily I pedalled faster, giving this king of the surroundings and his herd a wider berth. We spent quite a while watching them walk along the road and verge, past the visitor's centre. They were majestic animals that reminded me of elk. After using the toilet and filling our water bottles, we jumped back on the freeway, then Highway 10, and cycled through quite a strong northerly to Belfield.
One of the things that caught me a little by surprise was that upon entering North Dakota, accents changed significantly. They were a little quicker and more clipped.
We were hot when we arrived in town, first impressions were not that flash. We did our usual sortie. We found a film theatre hosting a Ukrainian Film Festival as well as a Couples' Retreat, stopped and chatted in a tattoo parlour, then followed the sound of bells all the way to the Catholic church before settling at the Outdoor Pavilion.
The plan was to have a quick swim and shower at the pool next door. When I arrived, a storm was coming, lightning was bouncing around and the baths were being evacuated. The staff let me have a quick shower before they closed and ran for it. This meant that despite me begging the pool attendants, poor Sharon missed out on her shower. We were sitting in the Pavilion enjoying the rain and cool air when one of the young male lifeguards wandered in and offered to take Sharon across the road to his home to use his shower. North Dakota is one of those amazing places, when a young man offers to take your wife alone into his house to bathe, without hesitation you say, 'oh how kind, thank you very much'.
I slept well that night. Sharon heard someone reverse and park a trailer at the other side of the screen right behind us, but I didn't. Nothing like a dry, sheltered, concrete floor for a deep night's sleep.
Still trying to beat the heat, we rose at 4:30 a.m. and headed out to the Creative Energy petrol station for our morning ablutions and a free coffee each. The sign out the front said 'pray for rain', so we did.
We followed the uneventful Highway 10 all the way to the rather unflattering and arrogant fracking town of Dickinson. I purchased a pencil case for a toolkit, Sharon acquired our lunch and we sat in the shade of a large flatbed truck and ate before getting the frack out of there.
It was a hot rail-side journey through the heat all the way to the quiet town of Richardton. The Québécois cyclists that we met in Jordan had told us the Assumption Abbey monks always offered hospitality to peddling travellers. The Abbey was the largest building in town, so super easy to find.
The church itself was surrounded by lovely shade trees and enveloped in the peace of God. We put our bikes on their stands and before long, found a helpful brother who offered us a room in the even cooler basement. The room had two single beds and a shower with a shared toilet upstairs. Sharon, being Sharon, found the need to lock our rides parked in the hallway beside our room, I think she was worried about bad Benedictine brothers borrowing our bikes. After a hot outside lunch, one of the aforementioned brothers kindly drove us to a supermarket. Our bicycles were still there when we returned.
We had a yummy tea with about 40 monks. The dining room had huge windows framing a burnt and rolling Dakotan vista. The brothers were lovely, curious men and very welcoming. They invited us to join them for the evening Eucharist and to our surprise they had saved us a seat on the stage with the monks, looking straight out at a congregation of mostly Filipino farm workers.
Slightly in front of us, using the beautiful lexicon of Catholicism, the lead Priest consecrated the bread and wine before serving it to the assembled brothers. Each priest raised his cupped hands to receive the holy bread. Without thinking, Sharon raised her Protestant hands and received a precious and pure wafer. I crossed my arms over my chest, signifying I wasn't Catholic and would gladly receive a prayed blessing. As I did this, I leant towards the earnest priest and said 'we are not Catholic'. A subtle but definite look of horror spread over his face as he hurriedly scampered his aged, bony fingers through Sharon's still cupped hands. It took him a few attempts before he was able to scratch the sacred biscuit back and avoid signifiant pollution of the Holy Host. Though this mostly unseen moment was absolutely hilarious to me, I felt sorry for Sharon and her mistake, and bad for the priest who was trying hard to honour his belief structure. I laughed my way to sleep that night.
We were up again about 4:30 a.m. and unsurprisingly the monks had not stolen our bikes.
We once again took the advice of our lovely French Canadian friends and jumped on the freeway as soon as we could. It was busy with nasty rumble strips. On the good side, we were experiencing the strongest tailwinds we'd ever encountered. It felt like a large hand was pushing us along the gently undulating 139. This was both beautiful and scary.
After 42 miles, we fair dinkum flew into New Salem. We placed our bikes on their stands, rear ends into the wind, and instantly all 123 pounds of my loaded bike was blown to the ground, followed by 41 kgs of Sharon's. Gosh it was windy. It was 11 a.m. and we had reached our destination for the day. We sat there on a park bench for a while, trying to decide what to do. It seemed crazy not to take advantage of this wind. So we whipped down to the supermarket, purchased a barbecued chook, pasta salad and a loaf of bread, scoffed them down and jumped back on our bikes.
In a flash, 53 km later, the 139 deposited us in the Bismarck satellite town of Mandan. It was 2.30 p.m. and, to say the least, we were hungry. We stopped at a burger joint and both drank three root beers and ate a burger. I also took advantage of the free internet and downloaded and transferred fresh maps into our Garmin GPS unit. With tomorrow being a Sunday, I called the local Vineyard and Calvary Chapel churches looking for a bed and church service and left messages on their answering machines. Eventually, we decided to cycle to General Sibley Park, located pretty much on route at the southern end of Bismarck.
We followed good bike paths south and crossed the Missouri River again, when suddenly, I was shaken to attention by the sound of Sharon hitting a large bump, swearing and her bar-bag bouncing along the asphalt beside me. The cable holding the bracket on had clean snapped. Fortunately after my bracket melted, I'd pre-empted Sharon's malfunctioning and ordered a replacement. This was to be picked up in a couple of days' time in Napoleon. Gosh, I was beginning to look forward to that grandly-named town.
I had picked up enough bungee cords from the highways, and strapped Sharon's bag on to her rear-rack. Not ideal, but sufficient for a few days.
We arrived at the General's camping ground at 6 p.m. to discover it was some kind of holiday weekend and the campsite was free. The lassie that checked us in was excited to hear our accents, she had au paired in the forgotten southern New Zealand hydro town of Twizel.
We camped beside a father and daughter cycling combo, Bill and Julie from somewhere in New England, and spent the evening happily exchanging trail information. We had cycled a staggering 133 km, thanks to the very strong wind. This was the furtherest we had ever cycled together.
We arose in the morning to what sounded like drug-induced singing. A man who never exited his tent was screaming verses like 'I used to love her, but then I had to kill her' or 'people say I'm crazy and they're right'. His noise lasted a couple of hours and was quite disconcerting.
As we rode into the campground, we noted a church on the corner and since neither of the two churches we called had replied, we decided to visit. We cycled in about 15 minutes early, clean and freshly showered, and asked if we could store our loaded bikes inside during the service. At first the pastor was quite suspicious and it took quite some time of explaining who we were and what we were doing.
I was still explaining how we were pastors from Lithuania on a cycling sabbatical when he politely interrupted and asked if I would share a little in front of the church. Naturally I said yes. It turned out that we were in All Nations Assembly of God. Most of the congregation were Native American Indian. It is extremely hard in the United States to meet, rather than being served by, people of colour and suddenly I was in a room full of lovely, warm and inviting First Nations people, this was truly both an honour and joy. Straight after worship, I was invited to share what God had been doing through us in Lithuania. I spoke for the agreed five minutes and was about to sit down when the pastor asked me to carry on, so I went into more detail. At the end, questions were called for. A lot of hands shot up, each and every one of them pretty much ignored what I had said about Lithuania and asked questions about the plight of Aotearoa Māori. I am neither tangata whenua, nor any kind of expert on Māoridom, but after fielding all their questions, I formed the conclusion that these lovely Native Indians in front of me suffer hugely in the American system. It felt like they were simply forgotten nations. To think I grew up with my sheriff's badge and my plastic colt and just like the cowboys on the tele, I spent time in my imagination shooting these people. And what did they do other than wanting to live on their land? I am not American and I still do not understand the plight of these people, but I did feel their pain.
A lot of time had passed and I turned to the pastor and gave him a look that said, 'you still need time to preach'. He looked at me and said, 'carry on, this is the sermon'. I answered all their questions, prayed with them and afterwards spent some time listening to their stories. It was a beautiful and profoundly sad morning. They took up a collection for our journey and gave us US $60.
I wish we had been able to stay longer, but we wheeled out in the heat of the early afternoon. We stopped just past the University of Mary for a lunch of freeze-dried, dehydrated mashed potatoes. It was a quick, horrible and hot stop that did not salve my growing melancholy. We had a wee climb after lunch and eventually stopped at a motorbiker bar in Moffit. We fuelled up on root beer and potato crisps and rode the last 14 miles to Hazelton. We arrived in town at around 7p.m. and were famished. All the shops were shut, so stumbled into another bar and purchased yummy pizza and the obligatory root beer. We met a trucker and were able to ask him, what we cyclists can do to make his life easier when he is trying to overtake us. The answer was, 'that we should be in as tight a formation as possible'. I was able to explain that on the flat this was easy, but in the hills and mountains because of our different bike weights and physical abilities, that sometimes this was very difficult. North Dakotans, though reserved, were some of the most beautiful Americans we met.
After pizza we cycled to the town park to erect our tent. I think this was the first town park we'd stayed in that had filthy toilets. We searched for a place on the grass to pitch and while doing so, I popped my head up to find a flag to see which way the wind was blowing. To my shock, I could not find a flag. This was terribly unusual. Usually in the USA, we were never more than a few meters away from the Stars and Stripes. It is like the whole nation has some kind of identity crisis and needs to be continuously reminded of who they think they are. Bizarre, no flags. I was forced to pick some grass and throw it into the air, only to discover there was no wind.
The following day was a simple ride along the 34 into Napoleon. The journey was warm, lumpy and with a strong, difficult wind blowing from the south. We arrived in time for lunch. Naturally we rode straight to the church to pick up our parts, but they hadn't arrived. So we searched for a motel in which to spend our much anticipated rest day. We settled with the friendly Mozy Inn on Broadway.
Like so many American towns, Napoleon was set up for cars and we felt quite out of place walking. However, before tea we had uploaded new maps, completed a blog post, gone out for coffee and done a load of washing. Our lovely hosts were perplexed when we explained that we didn't want to use their dryers and preferred to install our clothes line in the shade and dry our garments naturally. Though they had an outside line, it still seemed like a novelty to them.
We finished the day sitting on plastic chairs in the parking lot, watching the night approach and watching our Budweiser cans empty. It was such a treat to sleep in a bed in a clean, serviced motel room, knowing that there was little to do the following day.
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