Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
was riding from his home in Minneapolis to the West Coast. I never was much of a Rush-
die fan, but I did study English at the University of Michigan, another Big Ten school.
He was glad for the company when I sat down with him, and he amused me by saying
he couldn't wait to get to the West, as though he weren't already right in the middle of
it. He meant mountains and the ocean. He asked me to tell him about Glacier with the
hungry optimism of Dorothy putting her faith in Oz.
Sean said he had been averaging seventy-five or eighty miles a day on his
trip—remarkable in my opinion, given the wind about which I've spoken at such length.
I've been averaging about fifty going more often with its help. He spoke cheerily and
thoughtfully about his adventures but seemed a trifle worn and was in a confessional
mode: That day the wind had tired him out and he'd taken a ride from a farmer in
a pickup the last twenty miles or so into Chester. He sounded as if he were guilty of
something, as if he were trying to talk himself out of the feeling that he had cheated. I
assured him he hadn't, that safety is paramount on a trip like this and exhaustion can be
dangerous. When I offered to let him sleep on the floor of my motel room rather than in
the city park, he accepted.
Sean talked for a bit about the rugged time he'd had getting through North Dakota,
from Minot to Williston, where the oil and construction boom has made motel rooms and
even campsites scarce and has rendered the roads dangerous with truck traffic.
“There were literally rows and rows of trucks,” he said. “The traffic was giving me a
tailwind. I was pretty scared.”
I'd heard versions of this report from others, and I took his warning under serious ad-
visement; I'm actively looking for routes to circumvent that part of North Dakota—and
if I can't find an adequate one, I'm prepared to follow my own advice and accept a ride
through the trouble spot.
Sean and I said our farewells after breakfast at Spud's the next morning. He said he'd
text me when he got to Glacier and told me to take care of my cough.
“I'm not usually such a freeloader,” he said. “But it was kind of like running into a
parent.”
Then we pedaled off in opposite directions, and I was sorry we couldn't travel togeth-
er.
