RAA II

Day 15

Bismarck to Jamestown, ND

106 miles / 3,542 feet of elevation

When we woke up this morning it did not feel like the official "end of summer” was two days away. Outside it was a “wet cold.” We rolled out of Bismarck on “bike trails” to avoid the Monday morning commute on the city’s street. After warming up, our pace was quick which heightened the cold. One way to describe this early morning cold is to think of that cold when you tuck your chin under your jacket collar to avoid the cold on your face – that’s the kind of cold we started with and it didn’t really warm all day.

We traveled on bike trails past St. Mary’s College on the very outskirts of Bismarck and then we transitioned to country frontage roads where the only motorized vehicles we saw all day were pickup trucks and farm equipment. These drivers seemed perfectly at ease with three guys on bikes in the far-right lane.

Later in the morning, the cold temperatures best friends, side and head winds, joined our ride. For the last 70 miles we had stiff side winds, 10-15 mph, with gusts to 20 mph to contend with. The gusts on some of our descents nearly blew us over and when a gust would subside, our "overcorrecting" for the wind nearly had us toppling ourselves. About three quarters into the day, Joe asked me, "Carl, do you see the road all the way out to the horizon?" "Yes," I said. Joe then remarked, "Well we are going two and a half times that horizon before our next break ..." Thrilling riding! We did get to see some thrilling cloud formations today and wicked cool "dinosaur artwork" made from old thresher machines placed on a hill's ridge.

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/north-dakota/threshing-machine-graveyard-nd/

From a distance, if you squinted, it looked like a heard of Brontosaurus walking along the top edge of the hill.

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