Hello, everyone! I'm writing to you from the Pierre, South Dakota public library. Turns out it's difficult to find internet access when you're biking across lonely highways in South Dakota. But I found a computer and half an hour of free internet time, so I'd like to tell you a few things about our continuing adventure!
Ben and I made it to Pierre last night after our loooongest day yet...88 miles. They say South Dakota is flat, but I'm starting to think that's all part of a big joke aimed to confuse bicycle tourists. This state is not flat by any definition I regularly use. Yesterday we had the pleasure of biking 88 miles over some pretty significant "slow rollers," on Highway 14. It was a fairly cool day...only 92 degrees...and we were on the "scenic byway," which basically meant there was some variety to the amber fields of grain lining the highway (hay, afalfa, hay, hay, afalfa, sunflowers, corn, corn, afalfa, hay). But somehow we made it, crossed over the Missouri River as well as a time zone early last night, and collapsed into an actual BED, courtesy of our lovely Warm Showers hosts, Tom and Ellen.
When we crossed over the Wyoming/South Dakota border a few days ago, we were met by a huge picture of Mt. Rushmore with the state's slogan, "Great Faces, Great Places." scrawled underneath. I'm happy to say we've experienced a little bit of both those things, yet we purposefully avoided Mt. Rushmore, thinking we'd seek out our own Great Faces. We spent our first South Dakotan night in a campground in Deadwood (luxurious!), and the next day spent a considerable amount of time climbing through the winding, hilly roads of the Black Hills. We hit up Rapid City, an adorable little town with several bike shops and a tempting water park, and made it 20 miles east of Rapid City to the general store in Caputa, where we didn't mean to spend the night.
We meant to just re-fill on water and ask some locals about different roads in the general store (which is, along with a handful of houses, all that Caputa consists of). Entering the store, we were immediately met by Ricky, the genuinely helpful owner of the store. He gave us a little history about the town (railroad pick-up point for sugar beets, the store had been in his family for 3 generations) and pointed us to the back of the store where they were having a little wine tasting. I'm never too proud to refuse free wine, so Ben and I helped ourselves to the dixie cups full of various wines and delicious spread of cheese and crackers layed out.
I was in the process of loading up yet another cheese/salami/cracker sandwich when someone came up behind me and asked if that was "thermophile or mesophile...." or something along those lines. I quickly found out he was referring to the cheese platter, and that he had assumed that since I was hovering over it so nurturingly, I must have made the cheese myself. I told him I had no idea, but that I liked his shirt (neon fishes with some obscure beer logo). I then found myself deeply engrossed in a conversation with him about the intricacies of producing raw milk cheese, and why the bleeping government won't let us sell it, etc., etc. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just entered into a lengthy interaction with Mountain Mike, a local oddity with scraggly long hair, fierce brown eyes and an enormous round belly that he kept rubbing like an expectant mother.
At this point Ricky-the-friendly-shop-owner had already offered us a place to camp (in the grassy spot behind the shop), we had already had several dixie cups of free wine and were eyeing the fat tire on tap, and the conversation with Mountain Mike was just getting more interesting, so we decided to stay in Caputa.
Somehow the conversation turned from raw milk cheese to politics (as these things often do) and Ben and I both bristled when Mike said something completely racist about how the Indians outta be grateful that white people came here and "gave" them industrialization. Normally we've been trying to avoid politcal discussions in our travels across rural America, but this was an outrage impossible to ignore, so we took the bait and ended up having a several hour long conversation about everything from immigrants to pioneerism to the government to welfare to the war in Afghanistan. As it turned out, Mountain Mike and Ben and I agreed on more than it seemed at first (what-the-hell-are-we-still-doing-in-the-Middle-East, we-should-learn-to-be-more-self-sufficient...) though there were still some big disagreements (when-all-else-fails-follow-the-ten-commandments, why-can't-those-damn-indians-just-leave-the-past-behind, those sorts of things).
It was about an hour into the debate that Mountain Mike asked us what the hell we were doing in Caputa, and we told him about our bike trip. He then proceeded to tell us all about his past, how he used to be a prosperous business man in the twin cities, had a wife that was a whore (his words), tried to convince him she wasn't a whore, then went off whoring around with the deputy sheriff. Well he decided he needed to leave that life behind so he packed up a few essential possessions on his horse and spent the next 2 years traveling through the west, sleeping in ditches and killing rabbits for food. He somehow landed in Caputa, married his third wife Linda (a sweet lady who had lived her entire life in that town and who only wanted to see the ocean before she died), and now spent his time trying to life off the grid as much as possible. Which is why the townspeople called him Mountain Mike. He spent a lot of time that night trying to convince us to come out to his place, but we declined on account of the numerous dixie cups of wine and ginormous beers Ricky had been serving us all night.
The next morning we decided we wanted to say goodbye to Mike and Linda, so we followed his directions out to his place. We found a delapited trailer covered in sheets of wood, some rusted out vintage trucks, a chicken coop, a huge garden and a horse yard. Ben started up towards the door, and a little cat poked its head out. "Oh, cute, a kitty!" I said. He took two more steps and a tidal wave made up of at least 20 cats exploded from the front stoop, descending on Ben with menacing hisses. There were kittens, young cats, old cats, cats with gooey infected eyes and cats with torn up ears. We waited for the tidal wave to disperse enough to reach the door, but just then Linda and Mike burst out into the sunshine, wearing the same clothes as the night before.
We spent the next hour getting the full tour of their place. Mountain Mike was just glowing (Linda explained they didn't get much company) and immediately divided us up by gender, sending me off with Linda to harvest some veggies while he dragged Ben off to explain the finer details of fixing antique tractors by hand. The cats just stood by and watched, licking themselves and fighting over a dead bird.
By the time we left, Mike and Linda had given us 5 pounds of freshly harvested potatoes and carrots, several stalks of horseradish, a jar of pickled beets, two ginormous cucumbers, a 3 pound bag of dried pinto beans and a bag of 5 pickled eggs. I think we were so stupified we forgot to tell them there was no way we could possible carry all that with us. Mountain Mike got all misty eyed as he shook our hands and sent us on our way, telling us he hoped their life was an inspiration to live off the grid more than depressing. He told us he had never slept so well at night knowing he could provide most of what he needed for himself. His parting words to Ben were..."I just wanna know one thing, son. How in the HELL did you convince a pretty lady to come with you? All the women I know would NEVER go on such an adventure." I think he forgot for a moment that we were bicycle tourists instead of run-aways on horseback sleeping in ditches and eating rabbits, but I still took it as a compliment.
And that's all I have time to share for today. Hope you enjoyed hearing about some Great Faces we've run into here in South Dakota. Happy Revolutions!
Ben and I made it to Pierre last night after our loooongest day yet...88 miles. They say South Dakota is flat, but I'm starting to think that's all part of a big joke aimed to confuse bicycle tourists. This state is not flat by any definition I regularly use. Yesterday we had the pleasure of biking 88 miles over some pretty significant "slow rollers," on Highway 14. It was a fairly cool day...only 92 degrees...and we were on the "scenic byway," which basically meant there was some variety to the amber fields of grain lining the highway (hay, afalfa, hay, hay, afalfa, sunflowers, corn, corn, afalfa, hay). But somehow we made it, crossed over the Missouri River as well as a time zone early last night, and collapsed into an actual BED, courtesy of our lovely Warm Showers hosts, Tom and Ellen.
When we crossed over the Wyoming/South Dakota border a few days ago, we were met by a huge picture of Mt. Rushmore with the state's slogan, "Great Faces, Great Places." scrawled underneath. I'm happy to say we've experienced a little bit of both those things, yet we purposefully avoided Mt. Rushmore, thinking we'd seek out our own Great Faces. We spent our first South Dakotan night in a campground in Deadwood (luxurious!), and the next day spent a considerable amount of time climbing through the winding, hilly roads of the Black Hills. We hit up Rapid City, an adorable little town with several bike shops and a tempting water park, and made it 20 miles east of Rapid City to the general store in Caputa, where we didn't mean to spend the night.
We meant to just re-fill on water and ask some locals about different roads in the general store (which is, along with a handful of houses, all that Caputa consists of). Entering the store, we were immediately met by Ricky, the genuinely helpful owner of the store. He gave us a little history about the town (railroad pick-up point for sugar beets, the store had been in his family for 3 generations) and pointed us to the back of the store where they were having a little wine tasting. I'm never too proud to refuse free wine, so Ben and I helped ourselves to the dixie cups full of various wines and delicious spread of cheese and crackers layed out.
I was in the process of loading up yet another cheese/salami/cracker sandwich when someone came up behind me and asked if that was "thermophile or mesophile...." or something along those lines. I quickly found out he was referring to the cheese platter, and that he had assumed that since I was hovering over it so nurturingly, I must have made the cheese myself. I told him I had no idea, but that I liked his shirt (neon fishes with some obscure beer logo). I then found myself deeply engrossed in a conversation with him about the intricacies of producing raw milk cheese, and why the bleeping government won't let us sell it, etc., etc. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just entered into a lengthy interaction with Mountain Mike, a local oddity with scraggly long hair, fierce brown eyes and an enormous round belly that he kept rubbing like an expectant mother.
At this point Ricky-the-friendly-shop-owner had already offered us a place to camp (in the grassy spot behind the shop), we had already had several dixie cups of free wine and were eyeing the fat tire on tap, and the conversation with Mountain Mike was just getting more interesting, so we decided to stay in Caputa.
Somehow the conversation turned from raw milk cheese to politics (as these things often do) and Ben and I both bristled when Mike said something completely racist about how the Indians outta be grateful that white people came here and "gave" them industrialization. Normally we've been trying to avoid politcal discussions in our travels across rural America, but this was an outrage impossible to ignore, so we took the bait and ended up having a several hour long conversation about everything from immigrants to pioneerism to the government to welfare to the war in Afghanistan. As it turned out, Mountain Mike and Ben and I agreed on more than it seemed at first (what-the-hell-are-we-still-doing-in-the-Middle-East, we-should-learn-to-be-more-self-sufficient...) though there were still some big disagreements (when-all-else-fails-follow-the-ten-commandments, why-can't-those-damn-indians-just-leave-the-past-behind, those sorts of things).
It was about an hour into the debate that Mountain Mike asked us what the hell we were doing in Caputa, and we told him about our bike trip. He then proceeded to tell us all about his past, how he used to be a prosperous business man in the twin cities, had a wife that was a whore (his words), tried to convince him she wasn't a whore, then went off whoring around with the deputy sheriff. Well he decided he needed to leave that life behind so he packed up a few essential possessions on his horse and spent the next 2 years traveling through the west, sleeping in ditches and killing rabbits for food. He somehow landed in Caputa, married his third wife Linda (a sweet lady who had lived her entire life in that town and who only wanted to see the ocean before she died), and now spent his time trying to life off the grid as much as possible. Which is why the townspeople called him Mountain Mike. He spent a lot of time that night trying to convince us to come out to his place, but we declined on account of the numerous dixie cups of wine and ginormous beers Ricky had been serving us all night.
The next morning we decided we wanted to say goodbye to Mike and Linda, so we followed his directions out to his place. We found a delapited trailer covered in sheets of wood, some rusted out vintage trucks, a chicken coop, a huge garden and a horse yard. Ben started up towards the door, and a little cat poked its head out. "Oh, cute, a kitty!" I said. He took two more steps and a tidal wave made up of at least 20 cats exploded from the front stoop, descending on Ben with menacing hisses. There were kittens, young cats, old cats, cats with gooey infected eyes and cats with torn up ears. We waited for the tidal wave to disperse enough to reach the door, but just then Linda and Mike burst out into the sunshine, wearing the same clothes as the night before.
We spent the next hour getting the full tour of their place. Mountain Mike was just glowing (Linda explained they didn't get much company) and immediately divided us up by gender, sending me off with Linda to harvest some veggies while he dragged Ben off to explain the finer details of fixing antique tractors by hand. The cats just stood by and watched, licking themselves and fighting over a dead bird.
By the time we left, Mike and Linda had given us 5 pounds of freshly harvested potatoes and carrots, several stalks of horseradish, a jar of pickled beets, two ginormous cucumbers, a 3 pound bag of dried pinto beans and a bag of 5 pickled eggs. I think we were so stupified we forgot to tell them there was no way we could possible carry all that with us. Mountain Mike got all misty eyed as he shook our hands and sent us on our way, telling us he hoped their life was an inspiration to live off the grid more than depressing. He told us he had never slept so well at night knowing he could provide most of what he needed for himself. His parting words to Ben were..."I just wanna know one thing, son. How in the HELL did you convince a pretty lady to come with you? All the women I know would NEVER go on such an adventure." I think he forgot for a moment that we were bicycle tourists instead of run-aways on horseback sleeping in ditches and eating rabbits, but I still took it as a compliment.
And that's all I have time to share for today. Hope you enjoyed hearing about some Great Faces we've run into here in South Dakota. Happy Revolutions!
Sarah and Ben,
ReplyDeleteSarah, your postings about the trip are fantastic! Wish somehow you guys could have met up with Matt who is in Torrington, WY ... but that is too far south of your route.
Oh, btw, I am Olin's mom. I will be in WY in a few weeks.
Keep up the spirits and bike safe!
Teri