My longest day yet, 500 miles and then some!

July 27th

With every bad day there is always a lesson to be learned, and to save you the time for reading through every minute thing that happened today which culminated in me staying in a Super Motel rather than the trendy hostel I was slated to stay at I will tell you this. Always make sure you do an equipment check before each days ride, and not just a quick once over but check things like brake lights, and cables, ect ect. Because little things like a tail light being out will snowball into a multitude of other things which leaves one staying in a Super 8, and not the trendy hostel, in the cool part of town. My day officially began at 4:55 am to a cool wet felling of rain on my face. Earlier that evening I had checked the local Interior South Dakota Weather and there was no such report of rain not even close and since it was much warmer in the Badlands than Oregon or Washington State I decided to leave the rain fly to cool me off. Well that did not go as planned due to the unprecedented rain, I hastily jumped out of my tent leaving the door wide open and I rummaged through my things to find the rain fly and stakes. I quickly put the rain fly up only to realize that I did it upside down and I had to un stake and re do the entire thing. I should also add that because of the warmer temperatures I was sleeping without a shirt on so when I got out of the tent to put the rain fly on I neglected the fact that there were swarms of mosquitoes, and I subsequently am itchy all over now, and since I left the door open on my tent I spent the rest of the night, wet, itchy and restless, so between the hours of 5 am and 8 am I did not get much sleep, which is not what I needed the day before a big 500 mile ride I had planned. Of course I was up with the sun well I was already up in reality so I packed up camp and headed to the amazing all you can eat sour dough pancake breakfast I had awaiting for me, which was amazing, I can say one thing about today, the food was excellent. I 4 pancakes total each the size of a plate, so I was full for pretty much the rest of the day. Ok remember how much I was saying how great south Dakota was, well the rest of the state is the complete opposite and consists of miles upon miles of corn farms which are all devoted to ethanol. One pleasant sight along the way was right outside my campsite I followed a route which took me straight through another section of the Badlands National Park which was a good morning sight. So I rode and rode and rode, and rode some more, all the same, lots of haying operations were going on as well. I was on I-90 heading east for about 100 miles and I can honestly say for every one car I counted twenty motorcycles heading west for I assume Sturgis. I met a couple Sturgis bound bikers at a gas station and I assured them that the beer will be cold when they got there, and that all the t-shirt stands are ready and waiting for them. Back on the road and riding, as for this particular 500 mile day I had the privilege of passing into Minnesota for my first time and I also got to see what the western portion of their state has to offer, which is more corn fields and hundreds of windmills.

So Minnesota is pretty flat and from the highway you could see windmills disappear into the curvature of earth, that is just how many they have there. So Ethanol and Wind power are rather prevalent forms of alternative energy in the great state of Minnesota, kudos to them. Ethanol is so prevalent that 89 octane gas with ethanol is actually cheaper than 87 octane gas without ethanol! But overall gas is cheap everywhere in Minnesota, which got as low as $3.50 something in some places! As the sun got lower on the horizon I was getting a bit hungrier, and I should have mentioned earlier but I acquired a new found love of fast food on this adventure which is Dairy Queen, recently the Q as I will refer to it has beefed up their menu, no pun intended and they have tons of burgers and such, and they are good, really good. But not all Q’s carry the burgers and it took me 4 tries to find one that had a menu other than icy treats. Much to my surprise at the Q I stopped in at there was a fellow biker by the name of Pat, He was rather curious about my trip and where I had been, Pat is somewhat of an endurance rider and he told me about one Iron butt ride he did and if you’re not familiar with the iron butt association then you should check it out, but for those who don’t have the time its basically like a long distance riding club and if you complete particular rides you can be in the association, an example of one would be to ride 1,000 miles within 24 hours. Ok so Pat was telling me more and more about the association and I got to thinking, what if I did an Iron Butt ride to culminate the end of my adventure, I did some more thinking and I’m going to research some rides later and find out if one suits me. I feel that this would most likely be the best time to try an Iron Butt ride since I have basically been training for marathon riding for the past 2 months and if I was ever in condition to do an endurance ride it would be now. http://ironbutt.com/ here is the website for anyone curious, other examples of rides they have would be Ride all lower 48 states in 10 days, 5,000 miles in 5 days, or Coast to Coast in under 50 hours. So you get the picture. After some delicious dairy queen burgers I was just too full to get the culminating blizzard. Oh I also forgot to mention something along with the amazing food that made the day better was that Margaret Ann officially got back states side today from her UK adventure. I still had almost 100 miles to go to get to my hostel in Minneapolis after eating and I wasn’t in a rush but I couldn’t dilly dally. Well as soon as the sun set and it got dark which I might add I hate to ride in the dark because of all the added dangers i.e., deer, drunk drivers, ect ect. So I was being extra cautions and defensive on my drive when all of a sudden out of nowhere a blaze of blue and red flashing lights illuminates my path behind me, and I had this deep sinking feeling, great a ticket just what I needed that and I wasn’t even close to the Hostel, I hope this wouldn’t take long because I just didn’t want to cut it close, the Hostel closes its doors at 10 pm. I pulled over not really knowing why I was pulled over because for one I don’t speed, I cant actually, Maverick gets best gas mileage while running at 4,000 rpm which carries me at a brisk 65 mph, so speeding was out of the question. The officer comes up then another cruiser arrives oh great more to add to the party. I dismount and hand over my papers, well turns out my rear brake light was out, and a trucker saw it and radioed to the troopers to flag me down and let me know, how nice of him. Well my bulb wasn’t burnt out the light still came on when I squeezed on the brakes just the running light was out, a fuse most likely however I just did not have the time to take off my boxes take off the seat to get to the fuses and figure out which one went.

While the officers were commiserating in their cruisers over my fate a truck came by and whooom, a gust of air blew maverick right off balance and it toppled into the shoulder, ah even better, my highway patrol incident was getting better by the second, not to mention my tank bag was open as usual just like the last time Mav went down, and my coins went all scatter brain over the shoulder along with my wallet and gloves which I had to borrow the cops flash lights to use to find them in the brush. Ok so I got off with a warning and they told me to go to the first gas station and repair my tail light, well I didn’t have much time at all so I raced to the gas station took of the light case and I grabbed some glow sticks out of my bag snapped em and tossed them into the brake light housing screwed the cover back on and magic I had running lights again, and you know what they are still on! So I was pretty impressed with my MacGyver skills and I was back on the road, the Garmin reported that I would arrive at the hostel promptly at 9:59, so with just one minute to spare I made up some time on the freeway and I got closer into Minneapolis I knew I was going to make it I just knew it, however Minneapolis failed to tell me that they were undergoing ridiculous amounts of highway construction and it seemed as though every exit ramp I was suppose to take was either closed or had a detour luckily my Garmin was smart enough to re route me however at each re route there were more closed ramps and soon I was out of options, and it was getting very close to 10 pm, finally I found a back road route to the hostel and I was gunning it, I found the place parked the bike and raced to the door, it was 10:02 and yes they were close, I was so mad, so very very mad. I had come all this way with just 2 minutes between me and a nice comfy and cheap might I add bed! But no, in my anger I made sure I revved my engine extremely loud as I left the hostel in search of other cheap abodes. Something I failed to recognize in my search was that Minneapolis is a pretty pricy city, the first place I called wanted $289 for a room, compared to the measly $27 I would have paid at the Hostel. So I search around some more and I talk to some locals and finally I realized I would have to leave the city if I wanted some cheap digs which brought me to the Super Motel 8 in Roseville. Nice accommodations, internet I might add, I have the privacy of my own room which I wouldn’t have at the hostel and I got a late check out, because in my marathon of a day today I crossed from the mountain time zone to central which I failed to realize and I lost an hour, so an extra hour for checkout helps me out with catching back that hour of sleep! Ok well this has gone on long enough but moral of the story is check your gear in the morning, or just plain check it, because if I had noticed the tail light out earlier I would have remedied the situation with out the assistance of the Minnesota state police. Well it is late and I must get to bed.