Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
blame on the distant disruption of Hurricane Irene on the East Coast—so instead of rid-
ing the wind, I've been negotiating it. I kept calculating in my head: “If I'm going twelve
miles per hour in a crosswind, I'd be going sixteen or seventeen with a tailwind.”
And “If this wind were behind me, I'd be ten miles down the road already” and “If
I'd passed through here on another day, I'd be having much more fun.”
The floods unleashed by Irene, by the way, were spoken of with grave sympathy for
Northeasterners by every North Dakotan I met. The waters that leveled farmers' fields
here in June and July are still receding, and as I headed north from I-94, through a
countryside where small lakes that once were meadows now exist between larger lakes,
I waded through a couple of stretches of road that were still underwater. Ducks swam
within inches of the pavement and skittered fearfully away from me along the water's
surface as I approached. Frogs hopped out of my path. It was exciting, actually.
And that's also the point of perseverance. As any cyclist knows, you keep pedaling
because you don't know what's next. Uncertainty is not a hindrance but a spur, so you
pedal toward it. Conditions change often. Things can get worse, yes, but just as often
they get better. A pitted road gives way to a newly repaved one. At the top of the seem-
ingly endless hill is a break in the sky and a perfectly articulated rainbow. Unexpectedly,
the wind shifts, or the rain stops, or a herd of dark, handsome cattle comes into view
grazing amid a field of dandelions, or a flock of geese settles with noisy grace on a flat
pond that perhaps didn't exist a week ago.
There are degrees of risk and reward, of course, but this is how you have adventures.
1
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Actually, in 2011, more rain than usual (not while I was there, happily) caused a drastic tumble in sunflower
production in the state, and North Dakota's annual production dipped slightly below South Dakota's for the
first time.
