"Entry for Friday, 15 August 1997

Convenience store in Hillsboro, ND where Darla Klassen works (see Day 21).

Last Modified on 9/3/97 at 6:31:55

Day's Narrative: We are laying over today here in Fergus Falls to let the weather clear at little. It's also a good time for us to was clothes and rest a bit. When we made our decision to lay over last night, the forecast was for cloudy and windy conditions with west winds later today gusting above 25 mph. There's a low pressure system moving through the area. Those kinds of winds can almost blow me off the road since I'm traveling almost due south for the next day or so. I see that today's forecast has the winds moving to the southwest, and dropping in intensity somewhat. The forecast for tomorrow is for sunny weather with tailwinds from the northwest.

Gee it's been cold. At noon yesterday I had to put my jacket back on because the temperature dropped below 60 (16C) and the headwinds made the phrase "wind chill factor" have real meaning. According to the weather forecast it will stay like this up here for the next week or so. I've become highly motivated to get down south.

I'm really impressed at how accurate the TV weather channel is. Having it on TV in the motel each night really helps plan the trip.

We are getting close enough to Kentucky now to begin making some speculations about the schedule. According to the original travel plans, we need 15 bicycling days to get there. There are 19 days until September 4. That's a little tighter timing than I would like, but it's an achievable schedule. I was hoping to arrive before September 4, but I doubt if that will happen.

We have had remarkably good weather so far. So good, in fact, that it makes me wonder if all the bad weather will concentrate in the remainder of the trip.

A few days a go I got something in my eye. At least, it felt like that. It has been bothering me for several days. Since Neville was a dentist, a man of medicine, I asked him to look and see if he could find anything. He did and couldn't see anything. However, he said it wasn't his field.

Today, being a day off, it was still bothering me so I looked in the Yellow Pages and found the Fergus Falls Medical Group, a clinic consisting of about 30 or so doctors. I went in and saw Dr. Dolan, an ophthalmologist, who looked in my eye with his magnifying apparatus. He couldn't find anything either -- even after a lengthy look complete with dye to make foreign things show up. However, he did find places where something had been. His suspicion is that whatever it was is gone, and that the irritation is all that's left. So I now have drops to put in my eye four times a day.

The day started out cloudy, but with hardly any wind. However, a light rain has been falling for a while now. There is a forecast for a cloudy day tomorrow with a 50% chance of showers. Tomorrow I'm going to try for Willmar, MN -- about 95 miles (153 km) -- if I don't have a headwind.

We have moved to another motel today because the other one had one of those old telephone systems that doesn't give a dial tone to a modem. Last night I used the fax line in the motel office to get email and update the web page.

[Connie] After having eaten "out" for some many days now, I have some observations .We try to eat "ethnic" food wherever we go. In the parts of the U.S. we've been in so far that has translated to basically tasteless, highly salted food brought in by the restaurant supplier, Sysco. Hence, it's pretty much the same bland "offend nobody with spices or herbs" food everywhere, except for the Applebee's chain which makes it's own products and tasty ones at that. Any Chinese food restaurant also has tasty food.

The other observation comes about from living in Los Alamos, which is virtually a smoke-free community as far as restaurants and public buildings go. We are in the rest of the world now. While traveling with Neville, any prospective dinner place got the "sniff test" before deciding to eat there. One Chinese food restaurant in Glasgow passed the test by having a "smoke-free environment" sign on the door. The subsequent sniffs were most nice, since they were of good, tasty, spicy food.

Since Ray is sweaty and in need of a shower at the end of a day, we have switched our morning showers to afternoon or evening. Showering in the evening also helps me get loaded up and on the road faster in the morning. I'm trying to make an outfit last through two days of travel, and I hate for my clean clothing for the next cycle to begin the two days by smelling of cigarette smoke from a restaurant, so I refuse to get all cleaned up and put on fresh clothing until after dinner. Any eating establishment owners out there should take notice, we don't like our clothing to be stunk up by others.

The same goes for motel rooms. On more than one occasion, I have told motel managers who had only smoking rooms left that they were 'not acceptable' and I would go on to the next motel. [end of tirade here.]

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© Ray & Connie Poore, 1997