"Entry for Sunday, 17 August 1997

Ray at Benson, MN in the Gas and Groceries store. Photo by Kari Ascheman.

Last Modified on 9/23/97 at 17:59:39

Day's Narrative: Perkin's Restaurant was next door to the motel so I went there for my usual breakfast.

After breakfast about 7:00 I went back to the room to get the bicycle and leave, and discovered that the rear tire went flat overnight. OK, I changed the tube. In the process the pump came apart because I forgot to tighten one of the knobs while inflating the tire. In the process of reassembling the pump I lost one of the two small retaining rings holding on the air tube. It seemed to work ok with only one, so I got everything ready again and left the motel.

One mile out of town going south down US 71 toward New Ulm, I discovered the road was barricaded and had a large sign saying ROAD CLOSED. I turned around and went back to the motel room and woke up Connie who let me back into the room. The route to New Ulm had to be redone. So I figured another way of getting there and discussed it with Connie, who was still half asleep. I wasn't sure she understood the new route, so I drew it on the map. She was going back to sleep as I left again. This day was not getting off to a good start.

[Connie] It sounded like the people in the room above us in the motel were "playing basketball" until after midnight, so it was 3 am or later before I finally got to sleep. When Ray was leaving, I was mostly in a fog, way down deep.

[Ray] The new route took me east for 40 miles (60 km), then due south for 60 miles (100 km). The wind was from the northeast so the first part was with a slight headwind and the last was a tailwind.

I stopped in Grove City, MN (pop. 1000) at a convenience store which also serves pizza. The women told me about the new drag strip and race track at the edge of town. Last night the pit crews ordered 37 pizzas from them. They had really been rushed.

Connie usually catches up with me by about 11 am. At 12:30 today she still had not caught up and I began to worry that she was truly asleep when I redid the route this morning. But then a few minutes later she pulled up behind me. We had lunch together in Hutchinson, MN at the Dairy Queen.

[Connie] I took out an hour for a pot of tea and sticky bun at the Perkins, so I didn't even get out of town until 11:00. For the first time this trip, I was truly awake as the drive started. The time for the tea was well worth it.

[Ray] When I got into New Ulm about 4 pm and saw the Super 8 motel, which had the same difficult split-level access as Connie described a few days ago, I knew she wouldn't be there. Sure enough, I found her at the Holiday Inn a little farther on.

My greatest achievement of the last few days is getting two hundred miles farther south, and hopefully out of the frozen north.

SCHEDULE [Ray]

The timing looks pretty good for us arriving in Munfordville, KY around Sept. 4. I have 13 days of bicycling to get there from here in New Ulm, MN, according to the original schedule, and 18 days to do it. Of course, The weather could get really bad and we could miss that. We still plan to leave on September 8 for North Carolina. Both my sons have had trouble getting off work for the entire two weeks and two days that it will take to complete the ride to the beach, so they will meet Steve and me somewhere in Virginia around September 12. Steve may fly directly from Johannesburg to Cincinnati, arriving around September 6, instead of visiting relatives in Philadelphia first. I don't know for sure yet what his plans are.

[Connie] This is the fourth or fifth Motel 8 of this design we've seen. They're on my out-list. The Holiday Inn is very clean, modern, has a helpful staff (as regards my needs for proximity to an outside door, offers of help in hauling stuff, and access to a porter's cart so it can all be hauled at once.) This is the first Holiday Inn I've ever stayed in, they're on my good list now.

Random thoughts while driving through Minnesota. They call it the land of 10,000 lakes. I think they left off a zero. It seems that we've seen all 10,000 in just the small part we've gone through. Maybe what we desert rats call a lake -- just about anything bigger than a stock tank -- doesn't qualify as a lake here.

When I was traveling as a child, you could always tell you were coming to a town by the increasing number of billboards. Since Lady Bird Johnson's roadside beautification program mandating the removal of most of them, one lost that symbol of approaching a town. Now there are small blue signs saying "Adopt a Highway Program, Next 2 miles," followed by the name of a group or person who has "adopted" this section and will keep it trash-free. These areas are remarkably free of trash, too. The signs sometimes start as far out as 12 or more miles.

On entering Hutchinson, I saw a sign at a farm advertising quarter horses. These are western cattle horses, known for their speed in quarter mile races and for working cattle. Just beyond that there was a sign for a rodeo, also a very western thing. My definition of Western, as it applies here is basically west of Kansas.

This area of the country is what they call "Heartland." The images of Victorian style houses, picket fences, grassy, treed lawns with flower gardens and all the things you hear about in the "Martha Stewart" TV programs are here, as well as thousands of acres of corn and soybeans.

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© Ray & Connie Poore, 1997