Day 21 – Montevideo to Norwood Young America, Minnesota

A feature of trans-continental adventure cycling is the need to remain healthy. I have so far been very lucky, so when I woke up at 3am with a sore throat and a cough, it was both a surprise and a concern. What was going on?

A good, long, hot shower sorted me out before I began riding this morning; but I still have a little tickle and it seemed odd. Now I think I know why. Apparently I have been breathing in smoke-filled air from the Canadian wildfires for the last day or more. The air quality in the Dakotas in particular has been low. Or so I am told, and it makes sense. Hopefully that will pass.

Either way I don’t have to cycle tomorrow. I have made it to my half way stopover with old friends who live on a small farm just west of Minneapolis. I was last here something like eighteen years ago. It is a beautiful spot and I’m looking forward to unwinding for a couple of days and formulating a plan for the next chunk of my adventure. I had only really thought it through this far!

My cycling day from the Fiesta City Motel in Montevideo was unremarkable and similar – in landscape terms – to what came before it. Minnesota definitely feels busier and more developed than South Dakota. There is more traffic around, especially trucks, and more roads leading more places. The towns come along more frequently and have more residents. But the same patterns remain: straight roads, fields of crops, big grain elevators and a railroad for company. It has been pretty flat all day, too. So nothing particularly new to report. I kept seeing signs for Minneapolis; but it’s still almost 50 miles away, despite the 108 miles I covered today, mostly eastwards.

To add to yesterday’s collection, a couple of today’s small towns declared themselves capitals of something. First, Renville – home to an enormous sugar beet factory – announced itself as “The Cooperative Capital”; and then Olivia declared itself to be the “Corn Capital”, complete with large ear of corn on the park’s gazebo.

I also passed a few unmissable and memorable religious commandments on roadside billboards and signs outside churches. The Ebenezer Presbyterian Church had a couple of snappy messages at the front of their very rural place of worship. On one side they had “This is your sign to come to church” while on the other it said “We have a prophet sharing plan”. Clever. Another church, close to where I am staying, had the quote “Don’t make me come down there – God”. And then there was a colourful billboard with a very concise quote from the bible (John 3:16) in huge letters that simply said “Jesus…” !

But these uplifting moments were small highlights in an otherwise largely forgettable day of just getting there: covering the final miles in the first half of my crossing of the continent.

Tomorrow I am taking my bike to a bike shop to see what preventative maintenance it requires for the next 2,000 miles. It has been magnificent over the first 1,900 miles and I want to have that peace of mind going forward, too. The nice people at Alpkit sent me away with mostly new moving parts. Wear and tear means that nothing lasts forever. It is time to check. If only I had applied the same attitude to my other bikes over the years! Better late than never.