Dances with bikes

After entering the big prairies I felt reminded on the sweet joy of watching wild-west-movies. And indeed – my todays campground is situated next to “1880 Town”. This is an artificial “Western-Town” consisting of original but moved buildings from the 1880s up to the 1920s. Since I started rolling today early I had enough time to take the tour. All buildings are furnished and accessible and it was very pleasant for me to smell the old wooden structures and watch all the old pictures and requisites that are exposed there. Besides the buildings there is a hall with even more old pictures and newspapers out of “the old days”.

Their biggest pride are requisites from the movie “Dances with wolfs” which was shot here and between here and the Badlands National Park. I always liked that movie very much. And as I am now on my bicycle – like Lt. John Dunbar – very exposed to the rough environment of the prairies (sun, heat and wind) it gives me a real flashback into that movie and the stresses and strains that are shown in it. But also to the breathtaking beauty of the country that made that movie so special to me.

Talking about strains and stresses. The heat and the winds of the past two days hit me hard. Yesterday I had to check in to a Motel at noon in order to prevent total exhaustion. Even if the wind blows not completely into my face but comes mainly from south – it is that strong and puffy that I barely made 7 miles per hour as an average. Today the same. But this morning I started really early to avoid the heat at least for a few hours. Imagine you start riding at 4:50 a.m., it is a sunday morning, in the prairies … would you believe that I did not see a single car until 7:30? (but a looooot of deer!)

After the first 30 miles I reached the townlimits of Murdo and all my thoughts were “Pancakes and eggs in a Diner!” (Hi Cindi!) when I saw a thing that seems to originate in a fragile eggshell mind (… who knows the quoted song?).

The “thing” was guarded by a dog that started hugging and trying to kiss me. He accompanied me to the diner and stayed outside in front of the door for a while. During my breakfast I learned that a chronically resistant inhabitant of town created that thing in order to avoid “cleaning” his lawn from trash as dictated by the towns ordinance. It is art now and weighs several tons …

Temperatures here went up to 102° today. For tomorrow less wind is predicted – I should reach the Badlands …

4 thoughts on “Dances with bikes”

  1. Dear Georg,

    Just to let you know: there are regular followers of your entries on the other side of the big ocean – always appreciating the good reads! But you know how it goes with things that are regularly consumed: they become commodity 😉 That’s why I thought about things I would also like to know and read within your posts. So here is my wish list for you, maybe you can add something of it in the future:

    – I like the stats very much so it would be nice to have your posts starting with some kind of ‘status report’ like just a short line with your mileage/mileage since last post, location (GPS coordinates?), or something similar to pick up your readers where you are while writing the actual post

    – I noticed a huge improvement in your language skills and vocabulary so I wonder if you couldn’t share something of it with your German readers in a category like ‘phrase of the day’ or ‘word of the day’. I guess you came upon some really nice phrases you’ve never heard before and that would enrich our language as well (and I’m not only talking about swear words here ;- )

    – Apart from this I would also like to read some details with regards to the ‘challenges’ of your everyday life. What are you eating for breakfast?, do you still consume beans and rice every night?, what about your equipment – do have something in your bag that proved to be really useless? Is there an item that you are missing? …just food for thought

    Here your next post! 😉
    Max

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    1. Dear Max, thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! I put your stated user-needs to my bucket-list. Some of those things I already had in mind – as for example a detailed description of “a day in life” on road. As the weather conditions have been rough (hot’n windy) during last days I used all my power to survive and to make some miles … there were not much leftovers for writing once I arrived my destinations.

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      1. In my opinion, Georg ist doing that journey for himself and not for his readers. I wouldn’t want him to worry about good stuff to present to his readers. Instead I want him to enjoy his ride, let his mind wander where it wants and at the end of the day, I am grateful for whatever he writes. Besides, I only look at the pictures anyway! Just kidding!

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