July 17th Afternoon

This is maybe my longest day of the tour. After the interview in Red Wing with Roger, I headed to Jackson Minnesota, another 3 hours away. I waited for a few minutes at Rogers to check the weather, because it had started to storm outside. I realized it wasn’t going to clear up anytime soon, so I meandered into the garage and put on rain pants, rain jacket, different gloves and covered my pack on the back of the bike with a rain cover. I sat on the bike fully rain protected, except my feet. But I have another pair of shoes and planned to switch them out once the rain stopped. I tapped the kickstand up and rolled backwards out of the garage. The sound of water drops began to surround me, echoing in my ears under the helmet. I pulled onto highway 61 towards 19. Lightning lit up the grey skies. I was straining to see through the wet windshield and my wet visor on the helmet. I could only comfortably go 50 mph. I pushed on. I could feel the option of going home because I was close enough to Minneapolis and sever thunderstorms where coming through. I decided to slowly keep heading forward.

The rain eventually cleared up. I chased to sunlight to the West, until finally I was no longer under rain clouds. I pulled into a town and looked for a café. I changed out of my rain gear, had some lunch and coffee and decided to head south.

I drove through back roads, corn and soybean fields all the time watching the sky hoping the rain would hold. Going South I knew I was possibly heading into the thunderstorm again. Eventually I caught up with Interstate 90. I had two hours before I had to be in Jackson. Enough time to find a parallel back road to take along 90, rather than get on the four-lane 75mph highway. I looked at the map and found a road. I gassed up and headed toward it.

I turned onto the road running along the highway. The sun was bright now and the road was smooth curving and beautiful. I few miles down the road, a sign “Pavement Ends” arrived in front of me. Well… I figured, I got time; I can go slowly for a mile or two on gravel. I slowed down and crossed the line from tar to gravel. I saw more and more gravel and no crossing roads. I could only go about 10-15 mph without losing control of the bike. I could see highway 90 to my left. At the next crossing road I turned left to hook up to 90 and give up the side roads for now. There was no on ramp. At the next right, I took it, hoping that in a couple miles I may get a chance to hook up with 90 again. This road was very wet sand and my back wheel kept slipping around under me. I was only able to go about 7mph. The road turned and grooves in the sand kept grabbing my wheels. I could feel my bike want to slip onto its side in the middle of a sandy road between soybean fields. My spine was straight and with every slip of the wheel my hand would grip the handle bar and my abs, back and arm muscles would quickly compensate for the redirected momentum. I could almost feel the moments my adrenal glands would release that magic chemical that makes the human body ultra aware.

There was no end to the road in sight. I was remembering Roger’s interview. He had talked about accepting what is and not having fear about what you cannot control. I decided to try this idea out. I breathed and accepted the moment. I began to enjoy my time, even as I was sure I would lose control of the bike. I passed a heard of grazing cattle as I was slowly struggling up a sandy hill. I wanted to stop for a picture, but there was no way I could get my bike moving again on this hill. Inching forward at 4 mph, I climbed the hill. At the top I stopped my bike in the tall grass on the side, the only place that would hold my bike. I got my camera and walked back down the hill for a photo with the bulls. I was sure I was on some private farmer’s road.

After taking some photos and realized I had now spent 45 minutes traveling about 6 miles, I was only focused on staying upright until I could find pavement again. A couple miles later I did reach tar. I found my way on to Interstate 90 and headed towards Jackson hoping to make my dinner plans for 6pm with Harold and Jan Handevidt.