It seems that Hannah has been occupying most of this blog so I’ll relieve y’all for a bit.
Here are some facts about Minnesota:
- Pronounced “behg” not “bag” and not “out” but “oot”.
- The state with a thousand lakes. All of which are swarming with mosquitoes.
- State Fish: Walleye. That being said, I intend on finding me a fish fry to hit up.
- State Flower: Pink and White Lady’s Slipper. I’m sure I’ll find Hannah off taking pictures of it.
- Hard to find some high quality H20!
Our entry into the North Star State was a bit more stressful than we had hoped for. In order to get the full jist of how these events came to be I’m going to give you little background info.
For the past few weeks Hannah has experienced four flat tires, two of which were both in the same day. She rides on WTB All-Terrain(asaurus) tires and rode on them her whole trip last summer. She raved and raved about them so of course our whole family had to furnish our bikes with no other tire but the WTB All-Terrains. Since my bike is sport specific the wheel forks are smaller and there wasn’t a size small enough that would fit. So I had to make due with some Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires. They don’t have a lot of grip or aren’t as beefy as the WTB’s (which make gravel roads and any other loose sand/gravel my arch nemesis, as I’m sure you read in the last post). Anyway, after all of these flat tires Hannah has been experiencing, we’ve re-evaluated and decided that little ol’ Schwalbe is a quality tire. There’s more…as a courtesy to riding close together it’s the leaders’ job to point out potholes, glass, metal objects that could make you eat it, etc. So whenever Hannah is leading and points out an object sometimes I just don’t have enough time to move or I’ll just go over it, Schwalbe style. Nothing I know the Schwalbes can’t handle though. Now you’re well informed for me to continue…
We crossed the Red River which is the border of North Dakota and Minnesota. We’re about fifteen miles out of Fargo, riding along this really nice state highway with a great shoulder. Well there were some evenly spaced tiny unavoidable bumps and after about two miles I heard a loud “pop”. This wasn’t the kind of “pop” that I knew my tire made after I just went over a small pebble or a piece of bark it was like an oh fudge “pop”. My back wheel immediately started to wobble but it wasn’t flat. I stopped, unloaded my panniers, and flipped the Phoenix to get a better idea of what was going on. We spun the wheel and it was rubbing against the fork…I had un-trued my wheel. Or so we thought. A quick call and we soon found out that I had a broken spoke but luckily no cracked rim. There are two things that could have made this happen: I’ve been eating way too much ice cream or Schwalbe can’t handle as much as I thought. I don’t know which one I want to believe. I just wanted to keep riding and not turn back but the next bike shop was a good two days ride and the likelihood of breaking another spoke was definitely possible. So we caught a ride back into town by a kind Minnesotan, Dave. He was kind enough to take a detour on his way to go fish (a very popular sport. We’ve found leeches and bait at almost every convenience store) at the lake. As it turns out when I was getting my spoke fixed, Hannah was doing some maintenance work as well…changing her fifth flat.
After all of the running around we picked back up where we left off and celebrated our crossing into a new state the only way we saw fit…a pineapple strawberry old fashioned soda. We then set out for Pelican Rapids which was a very cute town but in order to get there we had to go through a construction area. Just my luck, loose sand and dirt roads for three miles. We got about half a mile in before it got too deep and I was fish-tailing all over the place. We ended up walking/pushing the bikes but were able to get back on once the construction ended. We found a little treasure in Pelican Rapids, besides the world’s largest Pelican, Kettle Corn! Hannah picked up a bag at the grocery store and we ate the whole thing that night. Well Larry’s Market saw us the next day with a bag of Angie’s Kettle Corn in each of our hands (we were asked later “what’s up with the kettle corn?” our response was “it’s sooo good”). We were recommended to take a Rails to Trail route from Fergus Falls to Sauk Centre and then catch back up with our route in Bowlus. We decided to give up the rolling hills we had the day before in exchange for nothing but a…head wind. But we found the local Cafe 116 that made it all worth it. We finally got the delicious sandwiches we were looking for and more…Beignets (ben-YAY! emphasis on the YAY). 
I think we were getting too comfortable with the tail wind we were having all throughout North Dakota because we started our last 60 miles at oh around 4 o’clock. We figured that was plenty of time to crank out some miles. Funny joke. We ended up only going 40 to camp at Chippewa Park in Brandon.
We set out the next morning for Bowlus where we had a warm shower waiting for us with Jan (yawn, German) and Jen. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and instead of making our regular oatmeal we decided to bike 10 miles to Alexandria for breakfast where a cinnamon roll held me over until around 3 o’clock. Once we were done Hannah asked if I needed to fill up my water bottle and I said no. This struck her as odd seeing as how she had already gone through both of hers. Well for one she can drink water like a camel (seriously) and I just have not been a fan of the H2O here. So in order to quench my thirst, honey boo boo gets some of her special juice (i.e. Simply Apple juice, Bolthouse Chocolate Protein, or a crystal light packet when I can’t down the water).
We were so glad we took the Rails to Trail route because we were completely secluded and didn’t have to worry about traffic. Around ten miles before we got to Jan and Jen’s we ran into a couple of cute kittens that we stopped and fed some tuna. They were so cute and we hated leaving them but there wasn’t a whole lot we could do except for strap them on and hope they didn’t jump off. We figured they’d be better off with a bell full of tuna. Jan and Jen met us at the local cafe Jordie’s where they found Hannah and I sharing a lemon meringue pie. I know I know…yes we were eating again but we were told that we had to go there and try their pie! Jan and Jen are avid cyclists and have taken a few week long trips themselves and aspire to one day do a cross-country tour. They even started a bike club here in Central Minnesota that has over 150 members! Very cool. We of course ate the grilled salmon, shrimp, Israeli cous cous, and salad they had waiting for us. It was all soo delicious. We sat and exchanged stories with them and their friends, Jason and Beth. Such a nice end to the day, good company and really good food.
-Chloe (aka Honey Boo Boo Child)
