Day 30 Cooperstown to Fargo

96/1793/2260 Early start with a coffee stop at the Cooperstown gas station/market. The good ole boys forecast no rain today but the newspaper says 40% chance, hope the good ole boys are right. Headwind again but not as strong as yesterday. Weave through wheat fields and see the first long fields of corn and soybean. So lots of turns through the back roads, so I see wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat, farmhouse, wheat, wheat, corn, wheat, soybeans , wheat then a sign for Missile silo : November 33 ! Right off the road, picture above, not expecting to see a missile silo, marked right off the road in the middle of a wheat field. Well, after all that wheat, anything would surprise me! Almost expecting to see peanut butter and jelly fields to go with all that bread. Ride to Arthur, ND for a great lunch at Kelly's cafe, Suz meets me there , she passes me 1.5 miles before there. Whilst we eat, the skies open and it rains hard with some lightning. I start out again with jacket on, but it stops almost immediately and off with the jacket. Lots of turns with more rain threatening. There is some construction on County 4 and I end up taking the road in the wrong direction, the east/west are not marked. So I go 11 miles out of my way. Skirt the thunderstorms and don't get wet. Suz comes and picks me up at the end into Fargo just as the skies open up. After Fargo we head South to Stillwater in Minnesota, a four day trek but looks like more places to stop in the 80-90 mile per day range. At 80 miles per day, we have 28 more days to go.

Day 29 Lakota to Cooperstown

54/1697/2356 Cool morning start with a headwind. Wind gets stronger as the morning ages, and it is 46 miles until I turn away from the headwind. Lots of wheat again and small lakes interspersed in the wheat fields. It is Sunday morning, so not a lot of traffic, but lots of pick up trucks with boats in tow. The lakes are sometimes invisible in the rolling fields , first discernible by the darker cat tails that surround the low lying areas around the lakes. Saw an interesting site, a farmer had created a bridge across a shallow lake using old cars, trucks and farm equipment. Looked pretty nasty, lots of rust and old metal. Finally turned onto route 200 into Cooperstown with a tailwind for the last 8 miles. Quaint town and quiet on Sunday afternoon. The cafe at the motel just closed at 1:30 p so we have a choice of pizza place or getting some groceries. Looked at the pizza place and it seems to be the popular place on Sunday afternoon, lots of families doing pizza and wings after church. We decide to try the market and get a roasted chicken and veggies for the micro- microwave in the motel room. We have a easy night of cards and old movies, Urban Cowboy ( surprise) and then a Robert Ludlum thriller, Bourne Supremacy. Since we don't watch commercials at home due to TIVO, we are finding all kinds of neat stuff that we need to buy that we did not know we needed before.. Chop-0-matic, window cleaners and if we see the Lipitor heart attack guy again, he may not live much longer. There are pills getting commercials for conditions that I did not know existed, I think some conditions were developed by the drug companies because 10% of everyone watching this prime time commercial is going to think they have this condition. Tomorrow on to Fargo, last stop before Minesotta.

Day 28 Rugby to Lakota ND

84/1644/2723 Original plan was to ride to Devils Lake but all the motels and campgrounds are full due to a Cabala's fishing tournament. So we see another town up the road and sleuth Suzanne gets a motel room with Wifi , only one of two left. Stop in Devils Lake and have a sub, no sights different today, lots of farmland with wheat and hay. Have a nice easy ride, tailwind but just 8 mph today at the back, few hills and good shoulder on the roads. I average today 16.74 mph vs 12 mph in the mountains. Gold Wing Bob from last nights campground passes me around mile 73 , he must have slept in and had a big breakfast! Interesting motel here in Lakota, ND. Sign on the door says $ 300 fine for cleaning game birds in your room and towels are available in the lobby to clean your gun or dog, don't use the bathroom towels or you'll be charged extra! We aim to make your stay enjoyable! There is a restaurant and bar here so we will try it for dinner, maybe they will have game birds? Nice to talk with the sibs and Mom for her Birthday lunch. Takes a long time to update the blog when we get so many days behind........now to the maps to recalculate distances 2 go....tomorrow I'll do a long ride between here and Fargo. There are no good places to stay, so I'll ride till I'm tired then Suzanne will come pick me up and take us to Fargo. Then I'll start at the stop point and cycle through Fargo and stay in Minnesota somewhere on Fargo's East side. If we get comfortable with this method, we can up the mileage with Suzanne shuttling between start and stop places, increasing the daily mileage as we will not be constrained by motel/camp availability. We'll see how it goes. I expect to find more frequent stop points as we get into Minnesota and less desolate areas. Perfect would be motels every 20 miles or so as you find them along the interstates.

Day 27 Minot to Rugby ND

65/1557/2807 Will update the mileage logs with the maps sometime around Fargo when we are in a motel with good Internet so I can check some distances online. Think that the 2go figure is too large, have to splice some distances from different maps and check them online. Little BIG project that you don't always feel like doing after a long ride...Last nights was a good nights sleep and had a good continental breakfast at the Days Inn. They had the waffle irons so had a good waffle and the newspaper. Spoke with Tom Z and he and John are doing good, they are about 500 miles behind us now if my Math is correct. Robert King made it home to Arizona ok on the bus, his bronchitis getting the better of him. He'll have to finish on his Harley next year. I ride out on Rte 2 and after 10 miles come upon two touring ladies. They are from Seattle and are on their way to Portland. One is older so this may be a mother daughter team, but I don't ask.....we're both headed to Rugby for the night. They claim to have done one 100 mile day with a tailwind, once in a lifetime ride! We get to Rugby around noon and have lunch at the Geographical center of North America cafe. Great lunch for the money and the locals are very colorful and politically vocal. Conservative country with an opinion about everything. NO MOTELS due to construction workers, so we get into an RV park with CONSTRUCTION workers in their rv's and lots of Motor Bikers. Have a long chat with Bob from Colorado who is here on his Gold Wing and pop up trailer. He grew up here many a year ago and says that the town is divided between Catholics and Protestants, a regular Ireland with the Catholics in the bullying majority. They even control the majority of the town cemetery! We get some internet wifi but the digital tv gets no signal so I can't update blogs. Since it is Friday, the construction workers leave for the local bar and come home loudly throughout the night, so we get poor sleep tonight. Supposed to be cool again tonight.

Day 26 New Town to Minot, ND

69/1492/2872

Late start from the RV park. Sign posted on the bathroom says closed 7-730 a for cleaning, so we are slowed in our morning routine. Of course, no one cleaned the bathrooms at 7a.....finally ready and the camp host chats for a long time about the ride and wishes us well. 2 miles back to the route and it is cold this morning, low 40's and I have jacket and gloves on......for first two hours, windy so wind chill might be into the high 30's. Some small hills all the way to SR 83 over farmland and lots more wheat and hay. Turn toward Minot for last 16 miles into gigantic headwind that knocks speed down to 11 mph tops and less working up the hills. Make my way to Days Inn where the room is not ready, and Suz tells me the wind picked up the driver door and bent it and buckled the front fender. So....we look in the yellow pages and find an auto body shop close by. Drive over and the owner ( Hutchinson Auto Body) is a Harley Biker and tells us it will be a cash only deal, so I cringe and wait for the hit. Then he says it will be anywhere from 30 to 60 dollars to get the door functional again, so I say go for it. We walk Beau and come back and he is almost done with the pry bar and pneumatic wrenches, he shows me the stress fracture and we chat about the ride and he only charges us $20 for 30 minutes work and we are on our way. Get back to the motel and our room is ready! Tonight we dine at the local wings place, but I am disappointed as I thought I could get a good salad, but they only have the standard fried food. Back to the motel and get and update on Tour de France, Lance is in #3 spot. TV and rest tonight.

Day 25 Williston to New Town

73/1423/2941 Late start after loading van for Suz. Rough road with no shoulder and lots of trucks. I watch my rear view mirror as much as looking forward, just in case. Some deer and lots of wheat fields and hay . I pass a heard of horses all laying down, maybe the wind chill? Windy today with 25mph steady and gusts to 40. Suz has a near miss with a deer crossing the road, she saw it bounding through the grass at the last moment before it crossed the road. No motel rooms available in New Town so we find a rv spot outside of town on lake Sacajawea. Nice little general store and a restaurant up on the main route for dinner. Scenic 23 is the local bar and restaurant and has decent food. I have the local Walleye fish dinner and it is good. Suz is not hungry and has soup. Interesting locals and lots of construction workers and truckers stop here. We return for a master rummy game and suz beats me on the very last hand.....Supposed to get cold tonight, into the 40's again. Tomorrow a short ride to Minot, big city.........

Day 24 Culberston to Williston

45/1350/3014 Nasty thunderstorms from 3a on and heavy wind keep us from getting a good nights sleep. Wind was strong enough to rock the van and t storms were right over us, very noisy. Breakfast at the western cafe was good and even the special was a lot of food. 15 mph tailwind makes for an easy ride with a few hills. No animals to be seen but again a lot of wheat fields swaying like waves in the wind. At Bainesville we hit road construction and Suz comes back for me as there is a two mile section that is not paved and they are blasting. We get through with no problem and I continue to ride into Williston. No motels have rooms but we find one at the international motel but have to wait, so we do laundry and check out the route out of town in the morning. Visit to Walmart for groceries and a bathroom scale, want to see what we weigh after 3 months on the road. It is raining on an off, but did not get wet on the bike. Finally get into our room and decide to just order pizza which we make quick business of. Good nights sleep tonight as there are no windows in this motel, so Beau cannot see the early morning light.