Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
can take it in with one sweep of the eyes—gives of an unlikely whiff of prosperity. The
eponymous butte is off on the southern horizon.
The gas station, small and weather-beaten, with a couple of pumps and a soda ma-
chine under a peaked roof out front and a sign over the door declaring it to be a Grey-
hound bus stop, sits smack in the center of town. It
is
the center of town, actually. As
it turned out, no one was hanging out there when I stopped in—except the owner, Rick
Olson, who is also the mayor. We sat at a card table inside, enjoying the air-condition-
ing on a hot day. A voluble fellow (maybe you'd be, too, if you lived there) with pink
cheeks and a not-quite-walrus mustache who looked to be in his late forties or early
fifties, he explained that the town was flush even though its total collected property
taxes amounted to less than $2,000 a year—“Not even enough to pay the electric bill,”
he said—because it sells water to the oil companies that are exploring much of western
North Dakota these days. Right on cue, two huge tankers rolled past the station, full, on
their way out of town.
Mr. Olson had grown up in Sentinel Butte. He remembered when it was a bigger
town—more than two hundred inhabitants back in the 1960s, he said—and he was hop-
ing it would grow to be that size again. The population is fifty-five, at last count, down
from ninety-four in 2000.
“That's the official census,” he said. “We may have a few more now.”
Later that day, I met Jennifer and Loren Morlock, the owners of Dakota Cyclery in Me-
dora. I stopped in there to solicit some route advice, to shop, at last, for a new saddle,
and to have my chain replaced—it had slipped of a couple of times the previous week
and I suspected, correctly, it had stretched a bit—and while I was there I asked them to
rotate my tires. With the weight of my saddlebags on the back end of the bike, the tread
on the rear one was wearing down. I thought about buying a new set. However, the store
didn't carry the Schwalbes I'm riding on. I didn't want to switch, and they didn't blame
me: I've ridden more than sixteen hundred miles without a flat.
I asked the Morlocks if they had a noseless saddle. They didn't, but they suggested
I try one of their test models—that is, a new design given to them by one of their sup-
pliers but not yet for sale, a status so denoted by a pattern of garish yellow stripes on it.
It wasn't hugely different from my old one—a hair narrower and with a slightly shorter
nose than the one that has had my ass and a variety of other nether parts in more or less
permanent distress—but I took it out for a spin around town and noticed the difference
immediately, just one more reminder of the precise physics of bike riding. There are so
many measurements within your relationship to a bike whose alterations affect your ride
