About 2am this morning a big storm went thru the Aberdeen area. Lots of lightning, thunder and at the motel we lost electricity for about 2 hours. But when the morning sun popped up it was to be a great day for a bicycle trip. I like doing about 50-70 miles a day and finally my last few cities are all 50 miles apart. Redfieldd is to be my destination today. I did a check of the weather for the area as I left the motel and it was to be a tailwind day. Yes! What a neat way to move a bicycle. Tailwinds that is. Well I rode the 44 miles to Redfield in about 2:39 minutes. Way too early in the day to settle in here so I stopped for some lunch only.
And the food was a chef’s seafood salad
Redfield is a small city with a population of 2300. A busy little city with some friendly folks. As I was leaving the restaurant I noticed an older gentleman having a long hard look at my bike. He was pretty impressed with the fact that someone would actually ride a bike this far. He was 95 years young and honestly he didn’t look a day over 75. Now I was impressed with that.
Did I mention that I broke my own land speed record for a flat section of road. I need to mention that it is very flat out here. We have all heard the expression “flat as a pancake”, I gotta tell you a pancake on the road here would be the high spot in the county. So with wind pushing me and me peddling like the crazy retired bicycle rider I am here are the results:
Well I made it to Huron, SD by 5:30. Been to Huron a couple of times in my life. State fair for South Dakota is held here. It has grown a lot and appears to be very busy. The traffic on the highway coming form Redfield to Huron was as busy a stretch of highway I have been on during this trip. Shoulders were poor for most of the way also. I chose to jump off the road 4 times to the gravel shoulder due to being squeezed by trucks today. I had a trucker tell me about a week ago if it comes to hitting another vehicle or squeezing the biker, the biker will lose everytime.
So here are a some pics of this flat country:
And this is how South Dakota makes the scene of a fatal vehicle crash:
Here are the numbers:
96 miles
6:31 hours
14.74 avg. speed
34.02 max speed
956 total miles
84:14 hours total
I have not kept up with the road kills, diaper toss, flying glory, fatal crosses of late. To be honest it is just at times too much data. I have made some observations on things though. South Dakota folks fly the flag more, lots of pheasants were killed in ND. Dumb pheasants? Montana folks just toss the diapers out the car windows and South Dakota has the raccoon record for road kills. Dead rocky’s everywhere.
Stay tuned.
Marlowe
