Day 17: North Dakota, Here we Are!

Two days ago we had a great ride from Harlem to Wolf Point, MT, a distance of 120 or so miles. We didn't even start our ride until after lunch (Andy had to hitchhike to Havre in the morning to buy a new bicycle tire for our rear wheel), but the wind was with us and we both felt strong. We cruised! We made it into town before sundown with our highest-yet avreage miles-per-hour (17.2).

Today was something of the opposite... with a strong wind in our faces, we spent the majority of the day battling our way from Culberston, MT, to Williston, ND, a mere 47 miles of pedalling. Our day's average speed was the lowest yet (10.5mph), even lower than the day we climbed mount Washington. Oh, we were exhausted, hungry, and grouchy when we rolled into town. Upon parking our bike in the city park, we immediately went into emergency resuscitation mode, which involved forcing graham crackers, chocolate chips, and water down Andy's throat, before taking him to the recreation center (yes, re-creation) for a shower and then hitting up the grocery store for a quart of chocolate milk and two corn dogs. He's in the park, now, rubbing his tummy and boiling brown rice (our real dinner) as I sit in the library across the street, uploading photos.

Let me go back a few days in time...

Last Sunday, just three days ago, we were merrily powering along toward Dodson, our tentative camping spot for the evening. We were in a bit of a hurry, because the sun was falling fast and we still had another 20 or 30 miles to go. As we cruised past Harlem toward the Fort Peck Reservation, Andy noticed a wallet on the side of the road. We went another thirty or forty feet before angling the tandem around and going back to investigate. As we pedalled back on the opposite side of the road, we saw a credit card, which we stopped to pick up. When we opened the wallet, we found several other ID cards with the same name as the credit card. Down the road a little further we found two more credit cards, a Fort Peck Reservation card, and, finally, off in the grass, a social security card.

We put all of the cards back into the wallet and stood by the road wondering what to do. We were already a mile past the town, but we didn't want to carry some stranger's wallet thirty miles before turning it in in the next town. After brief deliberation, we concluded that the only option was to go back and turn it in at the Harlem Police Station.

In town, we found two policemen vaccuuming their car across from the station. They accepted the wallet and told us the owner had reported it missing some months ago. Turning our noses back toward our destination, we pedalled down over the a low curb back onto the road. We hadn't even travelled a block before Andy pulled over. The rear tire looked completely lopsided. We pulled into the city park and Andy took the tire off for closer inspection. He concluded that our tire was worn too thin: when we rode over the curb, the air ballooned out on the side, where the tire was worn through the thinnest. It was too worn to continue using, so we hobbled back over the the police station and pitched our tent in the front yard.

We were fairly discouraged. Examining our maps, we saw that the closest bike shop was in Havre, whiched we'd passed through forty miles earlier. No more bike shops until North Dakota! We were stranded in a town of a few hundred people, and chances of finding a replacement tire in town seemed slim.

We thought we might have to take a few days off, but, as fate would have it, everything worked out in our favor. Andy caught a Fort Peck Reservation shuttle at 6:45am the next morning which delivered him to Havre at 7:45. He found the bike shop, which didn't have regular hours but did have a cell phone number posted on the door. The fellow arrived promptly and sold Andy a tire. The return shuttle to Harlem didn't leave until 11am, so Andy decided to give hitching a try. He stuck out his thumb and waited. After about thirty cars passed, one pulled over and offered him a ride. The two young women in the front seat were registered nurses on their way to a conference in Billings. They settled him into the back seat next to a baby in a carseat and gave him two homemade cinnamon rolls. When they dropped him off in Harlem, they both got out of the car and came over to see the bicycle. I was at the library, so I didn't get to meet them.

Andy fixed the bike and went looking for me. The librarian told him that she'd just given a blonde girl directions to the post office, and that's where he found me. We packed up our things and headed out of town.

Now we're in Williston, ND, preparing for tomorrow's 130 mile jaunt to Minot. Depending on the wind direction, we'll either make it or we won't. We might end up pitching out tent half way there.

Three states down, eleven to go!!!

~April

Day 16

Well, we've concluded our first two weeks on the road. We're in Wolf Point, MT right now, half way through our day--50 miles beyond Glasgow, where we slept last night, and 57 miles away from Culbertson, where we're hoping to sleep tonight. Tomorrow we'll cross the border into North Dakota.

We're both doing well. We go back and forth between feeling strong and fresh and achey and exhausted, depending on how much rest, protein, fat, and sugar we're able to provide ourselves with. Last night we didn't get into town until almost 9pm, so we ended up getting burgers at an empty bar down the street.

We did have some nice adventures on Monday, but I'm too spaced out right now to relate them. Instead, you can just enjoy the new photos below.

Bike Ride

Tennessee to Pennsylvania to Oregon to...

Three weeks have passed since my last update.

Near the late-middle of June, I loaded Honeychild on a trailer and sent her ahead of me to Pennsylvania. My father met her when she arrived in the late night at our neighbor's farm up the road. Honeychild stayed in the paddock for twenty-four hours until I arrived on a bright Sunday morning and led her out into her new slice of heaven: eight acres of rolling, grassy, green hills; a huge spring-fed watering tank; long lines of strong, straight fences; tall stands of shady trees; and the companionship of 23 hair sheep, owned by a local Amishman.

Each successive morning I arrived with a nosebag of oats which I fed to her in the small paddock before turning her loose again. The plan worked, and by the time I left Pennsylvania one week later, she was eagerly waiting at the gate each morning for my mother, father, or Bob (the farm owner) to meet her with oats. I can rest assured she won't go wild in my absence; she loves her oats too much.

I was in Pennsylvania for one week, and I think I spent most of the time in the garden. Or perhaps I spent most of my time in my room, dusting and sorting my things into piles: things that used to be important, and things that were still important. Working in the garden was the more enjoyable of the two tasks. My mom had warned me many times before my arrival that she was behind and that she felt she wasn't keeping up with the garden.

Of course, she exaggerated: the garden was beautiful and I was amazed at how many beds were already full of vegetables and flowers. She must have invested dozens and dozens of hours in the spring. We went to a garden nursury one day and bought some herbs and flowers. Her vegetable garden is impressive enough, but she also has flowerbeds, trellises, fruit trees, and a little stand of beehives. Down at the train station she and my father have window boxes, hanging baskets of flowers, and even six long planters of flowers along the edge of the bridge.

My mother had started a garden for me in the yard of the train station since I'll be living there this fall. While I was home I planted sunflowers, amaranth, and zinnias along the wall of the train station. At the bottom of the porch steps I planted lavendar, basil, parsley, and sage. In the sandy soil along the top of the creekbank I planted sweet potatoes and watermelons. I started some pumpkin seeds to plant there, as well. Just beyond the evening shade of the sycamore I turned a patch of soil just big enough to accomodate three tomato vines my mother had saved for me. I mulched them with the bamboo leaves we'd clipped off the fresh poles we'd cut for trellises. We transplanted big clumps of black-eyed susans to the front of the guard rail leading to the bridge. Over in front of the gazebo I began guiding volunteer trumpet vines up a prexisting metal framwork to form a shady arch. I meant to plant some winter squash for myself before I left but didn't get the seeds started in time. At least my mother will have a crop to share up at the house.

I left Pennsylvania on a Saturday and arrived in Corvallis late at night. The next five days were an exhausting blur of sorting, packing, recycling, distributing, and trashing the entire contents of the house I'd leased for the past year. I had "inherited" the lease from somebody who had "inherited" it from somebody else, and I was left with several year's-worth of at least a dozen different tenants' discarded or forgotten furniture and knick-knacks. The process of cleaning the house was a chore from hell, but it was aided, at least, by Andy, the one remaining subletter. Thankfully, he'd begun getting rid of furniture months beforehand, and had already made several trips to the dump.

On the morning before the landlord came to walk through, I swept every room, wiped down walls and sills, vaccumed the stairs, and hand-mopped every floor on my knees. I scrubbed the refrigerator inside and out until it shone so immaculately white that I felt I was gazing upon something from another world. We swept and dusted the basement, carting out a decade's-worth of dirt and grime. I wiped down the washer and drier and emptied the lint traps. In the kitchen I washed every shelf and every cupboard door. I scoured the stove burners and ran the dishwasher. I scrubbed the bathroom with bleach and polished the mirror.

Once the house was finished, I locked the doors and went into the garden. Andy helped me empty the last of the compost around the roses and then he rolled up the wire and put it away in the garage. I pruned the rose bushes and weeded around the garlic. I swept off the front and back steps, hosed dirt of the side of the house, and raked the yard. I swept the garage and put the few remaining items into their places.

Andy spent the day running our final errands (good will, recycling, the co-op, the hardware store) and carefully packing all of his belongings into the back of his truck. Once his boxes were packed, he managed to tie our tandem, his commuter bike, and my motobecane onto the top and over the bumper. The resulting sight was something so purely country we were almost embarrassed to drive out of town.

The landlord arrived and took our keys. We showed him the sketchy wiring in the basement and the broken light fixture upstairs. He offered us the roll of aluminum foil we'd left in the pantry cupboard. We admired the mimosa tree in the front yard, he shook our hands, and we headed off to our truck. "Have a nice life," he called after us. "Thanks," we said, as we climbed in.

The truck engine started without complaint and we drove out of town looking straight ahead of ourselves.

Three Photographs

An apple pie I baked for Yellow and Papa Joe last week.


Papa Joe and I went to watch the Music Country Grand Prix in Franklin.


I biked past these signs several weekends without understanding why I should be at risk. Then, one morning on a work day, I biked through while the men were present and understood: they were all dressed in horizontally striped black and white uniforms.

Storm and Sky

Today two storms raged through.

The first hit early this morning while I was cycling back into town with my neighbor. We'd been watching the dark horizon for a good hour, and then suddenly the lightening was overhead and the rain was crashing down and we were totally enveloped. I knew we were inviting danger but I laughed the whole time. We pulled over once we got back into town and waited it out under the awning of a store displaying frilly pink costume dresses for little girls in its windows. We were soaked to the core and were stiff and cold when we got back on our bikes to ride the last several miles to our doors.

The second storm came just after Yellow and Papa Joe and I arrived at the optometrist's office for Papa Joe's appointment. Yellow and I were working on a crossword and I asked her to give me a seven-letter word for "not kosher."
"Look at the rain," she said.

When it was time to head back to the car, we hung back in the doorway. The rain had subsided a bit after the initial downpour, but now it was getting heavier again.
"We'd better wait," said Yellow.
"Can we make it?" asked Papa Joe.
"There's an umbrella in the trunk," I said, "I'll run get it."

"Oh, no," said Yellow, "it's raining too hard."
"Maybe we should sit down and wait ten minutes," said Papa Joe.
"I can get it," I said, "it's not far."
"No, no," said Yellow, "you'll get wet."

"Am I a chauffer or am I a coward?" I roared into the wind as I bolted from the awning toward the car, pressing the open-trunk button on the keychain as I ran. The trunk popped open and I thrust in my hand, blindly seized the golden handle without even a glance, pivoted on my toes, and sprinted back toward the building as I unfurled the umbrella above me--a wind-whipped standard of classic yellow and white pie wedges, like something out of a beach scene.

I put my arm around Yellow's waist and held the umbrella over her head as I led her to her seat. The rain was torrential! Papa Joe braved the water next, clutching his bag of complementary eyedrops to his chest. Finally we all three were safe in the car, gasping and sputtering.

"I've been rained on again," I said, "I'm wet. It's the second time today."
"We'd better wait to go," said Yellow, "until it eases off a little."

********

After dinner we took our walk. The storm had brought a large limb down from our neighbor's tree. "That branch used to brush our heads," said Yellow. The Tulip Poplar leaves all down the street were frozen sideways, as if stubbornly determined to point out the direction the rude wind had blustered off in. The Petunias echoed the leaves, each tiny face turned down pathetically in the same direction, away from the storm's onslaught. I thought of herds of horses in the rain, when they all turn their tails to the wind and bow their heads.

Once Yellow and Papa Joe had settled back into their lawn chairs, I took my second round. Traveling up the block in back I found a sodden birdnest collapsing on the sidewalk beneath a tree. I gathered it and settled it up against the edge of the grass. Just beyond I found fragments of bright blue eggshell, and the greater part of an egg, washed perfectly clean by the heavy rains. I put the shell back into the nest and continued on.

The sky was incomprehensible. I passed a woman with a dog and I said "look how strange the sky is." She turned to look behind her, where I was looking, and said "oh, yes, it's beautiful."

I kept watching the sky and I began to dawn upon the realization that it was verbally indescribable. What could I say? That it was "cherubim?" That it was "layered?" That I saw "pink spires?" That I didn't understand what it was telling me?

Several years ago I read an old book called "Finding Your Way on Land or Sea." I think I found this book on a shelf in the train station. One thing the book described was reflections the sea and landmasses cast in the sky, and how you can read reflections in the sky when you are out at sea. This idea changed my perception of the sky. Even though I cannot read a sky, I know that some people can, and even more people probably could a long time ago, when they paid closer attention to such things. I imagine there is a kind of sky language, written in moisture and colors, and it can be read, perhaps, the way one might read animal tracks or ocean waves, seeing trails and signs and possibly predicting what will follow.

I think I don't know the sky well. Maybe I move too much--it is so different in different places. And I think I know why I can't describe it. I can describe an ocean because I've been in one. I've seen it. I've touched it. I've smelled it. I've tasted it. I've heard it. I haven't spent my life next to it, but I've been immersed in it for very short periods of time. And so I have lists of concrete words waiting for me to cast into it from the shore: gray, foamy, rolling, clear, loud, cold.

But the sky... I've spent so much more time with the sky than the sea, really -- I see it every day. Perhaps I could even go so far as to claim it's the only constant sight in my life and even the lives of my ancestors. What else accompanies us day and night? Trees fall down and rot, rivers change course, landscapes change. Mountains may seem constant during our lives, but even they are something we can walk away from: we cannot walk away from the sky, it's with us day and night.

I can't go into the sky. I can fly in an airplane, but I can't fly into it myself. I think if I flew into it, it would recede anyway, like mist. Sky is something we look through, rather than at, I think, anyway. Perhaps we look at clouds, because they stop our eyes from looking beyond them--they are so dense with water.

The sky might come down to us, on occasion, on those autumn mornings we wake up and find ourselves in a wet, white cloud. And on summer evenings when the mist layers a foot off the surface of the fields. It comes down to us when we're floating on our backs in the water or lying out in the grass in a wide open field. We can climb mountains and go into the sky that way, I think, or at least come nearer to it.

But for the most part, it's untouchable. Strange, that it's so distant, when it's always with us. The sky remains; it's inevitable. The sun rises each day; it's inevitable. The stars show up each night; it's inevitable.

Three Weeks and All is Well

Today was beautiful. After dinner Yellow and I pulled Papa Joe outside for a walk around the block.
"We'll eat chocolate muffins when we get back," we told him.

As we headed up the hill, we saw our neighbors Mark and Patti coming out with their golden retriever to go for a walk as well. We called hello across the street and they waved back.

A little further along we passed a man mowing his grass with one of those muscle-powered, engineless, whirring machines.
"You have such a nice lawn mower," I told him, and Papa Joe and Yellow paused with me to watch. He stopped at the end of a row and wiped his brow.
"I have a very small yard," he said.
"It makes a lovely sound," I said. He smiled.
"And I don't have to walk behind in the gas," he said. "Some guys in a big SUV stopped to watch me a few weeks ago; I think they thought I was crazy."
"Well I think it's a pleasure to see," I said as we started walking again, "I appreciate it."

A few houses beyond we paused again to see how the oriental lily buds were coming.
"Just another day or two," Yellow said.
"Maybe tomorrow," I said.
"I'll have to come snatch it," Yellow said.
"Oh no you won't!" Said Papa Joe, "you've got to leave off at that!"
"Every time I see petunias for sale," I tell Yellow, "I almost buy a pot because I figure if I plant them in our front yard, maybe you'll stop going next door to pick the neighbors' flowers." Yellow chuckles and Papa Joe shakes his head.

Across the street we see a father carrying his son around on his hip. His son is probably six or seven. The father calls out to us:
"I don't usually carry him around like this--he just wants to see what it looks like from this high up!" We laugh.
"That's great!" I yell, remembering all of the times I've climbed onto tables and into trees to find a new perspective, "it makes a big difference."
"He can see the tops of the bushes from up here," the father yells back, "he's never seen them before."

When we get to the corner, Yellow and Papa Joe congratulate each other on making it to the top of the hill. We turn and cross to begin our descent along the southwest side of the block. I look over to the white house opposite to see if the dogs are in the upstairs window. Every time I pass I see two little dogs in the window, peering down. The shutters are closed. The owners of the house are sitting in lawn chairs outside their garage.
"Your dogs," I call, "they aren't in their window! I always see them in the window!" The woman hops up and looks up at the window, too.
"Oh, the shutters are closed," she says, "but they're in there." She waves and we continue.

As we round the third corner and see our garage peeking around the curve in the distance, Papa Joe shuffles a little faster.
"Almost home," he says.
"Chocolate muffins," I say.
"Yummy for the tummy," Yellow says.

I gasp.

"Hey guys, I'm pretty sure I saw a container of cool whip in the freezer. I think we should put it on our chocolate muffins tonight."
"Ooh," says Yellow, nodding.
"Unless," I say abruptly, "the container is actually full of tomatoes." Papa Joe doesn't like tomatoes, and he often laments the dozens of little containers and baggies of frozen homegrown tomatoes that have been (for years) taking up freezer space.
"It probably is," says Yellow bursting out laughing. Papa Joe and I laugh too, and since our collective balance isn't that good, we all sway a little and weave as we shuffle along.
"I bet we look pretty pickled," I think to myself, using a new descriptive I've learned from my grandmother.

We pass a driveway full of bikes and rollerskates.
"A four-bike family," says Yellow. Some neighbors poke their heads of of their garage to say hi.
"We might need to borrow a bicycle," calls Papa Joe, "we're not sure if we can make it home or not."
"No bother," says the lady, "just jump in the back of my car and I'll drive you."
We wave goodbye and keep moving. We're getting pretty close now. We cross the street, walk across the driveway, and Yellow sits down in a lawnchair at the edge of the garage.
"I think I'll sit here a little while, Joe," she says, looking across the lawn.
"Don't forget we have those muffins to eat," says Papa Joe, leaning against the car.
"Look at that moon," says Yellow, "it's full!"
"Not yet," says Papa Joe, "it's still got a lump on one side."
"Fireflies!" I exclaim, seeing one rise off the lawn. "The first fireflies!"

I tell Yellow and Papa Joe how Andy has never seen fireflies and how I was trying to describe them to him one day and discovered that he didn't know they blinked. I guess he thought they kept their lights on all of the time. "No no," I had explained to him, "they blink. Usually they flash while they're rising up in the air. It's really beautiful when they're really dense over a field, because all of the blinks are rising up, and you can almost confuse them with stars."

A woman comes hurrying across the darkening street. She's carrying a magnolia branch with an enormous white blossom nestling in the waxy green leaves. She bends down to Yellow in her chair and hands it to her.
"Cut the stem off and put this in a bowl of water; it will open tomorrow. It smells fantastic. I'm Carolyn," she says, looking at me and offering her hand. "I'm from next door."
"I've heard lots about you," I tell her, "especially how much you--"
"--love gardening," she finishes, cutting me off. "Yep, I love it."
"I'm April," I say.
"She's our granddaughter," says Yellow.
"Nice to meet you," says Carolyn, "we love Joe and Ann. Great neighbors." She hurries off to finish pruning.

I see the neighbors are putting out the trash cans, so I walk around the corner to get ours just as I hear a fellow call out: "You guys have trash this week? Need a hand?"
This is Carolyn's husband, Randall, and he comes over and introduces himself and then he and Papa Joe tease each other for a while until he heads off to pile more brush along the curb for Carolyn.

"Ann," Papa Joe says, "you can keep sitting there, but April and I are going to go inside to eat our chocolate muffins. You can watch us if you want, but we won't make you move."
"I'm coming," says Yellow, "I'm coming."

************
I put a muffin and a scoop of whipped cream on each plate and put the plates on the table. Papa Joe is in the bathroom, so Yellow and I dig in.
"I don't know what I was thinking," I say after a bite of spongy cool whip. "Why did I scoop out cool whip when we have ice cream in the freezer?"
Yellow looks at me.
"We have ice cream?"
"Yup."
"What kind?"
"Chocolate chip and strawberry."
"That sure would be good," she says.
"Yes, it would," I agree.
We pause and look at each other.

"Umm... do you want some?" I ask. She gives a Yellow giggle.
"Yes," she says, nodding, "I think I would."

I'm just opening the lids when Papa Joe arrives at the table.
"Which flavor?" I ask Yellow, "or do you want a little of each?"
"I'll take both," she says.
Papa Joe decides he'll have both flavors, too.
I figure I may as well join the majority.

*******

This afternoon we went to a doctor's appointment and all three of us sat down to fill out paperwork. Yellow looked over at us.
"What is today's date?" she asked.
"The twenty-fifth," said Papa Joe.
She hesitated, and kept watching us.
A moment later, she asked again, "What is today's date?"
"May twenty-fifth," I said.
She looked at me with a rogueish twinkle in her eye before clarifying, slowly and deliberately, "what year?"