Pedaling Pilgrim Blog Home

Miles to date: 2,142.8

I’ve had several people ask me about the dynamics and personality challenges in our threesome. Certainly we experience some difficulties with one another, but we each care deeply about each other and that overcomes the minor strife that we encounter. It’s also interesting that some days, or even at different moments during a day, you can sense when someone is not feeling completely up to the challenge of continuing to turn the crank. Sometimes that someone is me (probably more than often than my partners). And when that happens, the partners successfully hold back any annoyance and silently coax one another through.

Today, I wasn’t feeling it. At the start of the day, my legs felt tired, I was incensed by the constant headwinds, and the landscape and roadways were uninspiring. I expected challenging winds across the eastern North Dakota plains, but not along the Mississippi River corridor. And, since we picked up the designated Mississippi River Trail (MRT) biking route early in the morning, I was anticipating some scenic beauty, which never seemed to materialize. It was not an easy day physically or mentally, but I kept telling myself, “If it wasn’t hard, you wouldn’t be doing it.”

We did see the Mississippi River a few times on the ride into Minneapolis. It was a nice reminder of my kayak journey from 3 years ago (in fact, it was 3 years and 1 week ago that I was taking a day off from the kayak at Shootman’s house). But, being close to the river manifested a lot of dead turtles on the road. We see a lot of road kill, but today is the first I can recall turtle carcasses. There were a lot, and it made me sad. Somehow the tragic ending of the slow moving cold-blooded reptile affects me more than the many flattened mammals we’ve encountered on the roads.

So… my day on the saddle was physically challenging, mentally grueling, and emotionally taxing. Then after 58 miles we arrived at Pryes Brewery in Minneapolis, and I was relieved.

We had a rest stop 6 miles before Pryes where I caught up on some texts – three from my brother-in-law Shootman that said he was riding out to meet us; that he somehow missed us as we passed him; and that he was now three miles behind us with 8 beers and 4 sandwiches trying to catch up. We told him to meet us at Pryes.

My good friend Mark Biscan met us at Pryes Brewery. I’ve known Biscan since age 10 or so; he’s got a lot of stories on me, some of which were relayed to my pilgrim partners. We had a few pints of recovery ales and played a few games of feather bowling (I’ve only seen feather bowling in Detroit and Pryes Brewery; it’s like bocce with cheese wheels; it’s good fun).a

I didn’t capture many photos or videos today; my partners captured none. So we’re a little light on content today which goes hand in hand with the relatively unexciting day. And, I don’t plan to post anything on our day off tomorrow. We need to get some more inner tubes and fuel for the Jet Boil, but otherwise we plan to catch up on sleep and relax, so I don’t expect much to say about tomorrow. On Wednesday we’ll be back on the bikes traveling to Stockton Village WI. One bridge across the mighty Mississippi and we’ll be out of Minnesota. Day 29: Shootman to Stockton

For the playlist addition tonight, I’m sure there a few turtle related songs out there, but I’m drawing a blank. Instead I’m going with the Leon Russell concert of a Bob Dylan classic: It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. I’m not exactly sure what this title means, but I did vascillate between laughing and crying today. Tonight, I go to bed somewhere in the middle.