There's certainly a lot more to CANDISC than cycling--hanging out, visiting, meeting new people, eating--but today the cycling aspect became more prevalent than on any of the other days. It was 73 miles from Williston to New Town (1388) cutting across many tributaries of the Missouri's, battling the heat, and battling a 15-25mph headwind. Dad was to ask "Are we having fun?" more than once during the day.

We started out with a combination of rolling hills and six miles of upgrade. Then it was up and down and up and down and up and down some non-trivial hills. My strategy of the Badlands of the Little Missouri wasn't working--crawl up hill and catch Dad going down. I got ahead of him and he wasn't catching up.

The terrain was taking a toll on him (and everyone else too, for that matter). (And speaking of taking a toll, not too far out of Williston we passed a 20-30lb dog that had decided to join the crew! I'm not sure how far it got but I heard that someone was able to tie it up until it could be rescued.) The best news we heard going up a hill twenty miles into the ride was hollered by a farmer near the road that after we reached the top, there were four miles of downgrade. And that would put us at the first rest stop of the day--Lund's Landing.

The little café was ready for us. Several cyclists were eating breakfast, but we had our eye on the pie. I found a piece of Juneberry pie, something I hadn't had in years. (Memories of this precede even Alexander, back when we lived in Drake and would go pick the Juneberries from the row of bushes behind the parsonage.) It was a little pricey, but it sure hit the spot!

We got a break from the hills for a bit as we stayed down in the valley for many miles. We put in the time and eventually came to the lunch rest stop: Tora's Treats. This was really out in the middle of nowhere! But (the very few) locals driving by on the road sure had an unexpected sight!

Yes, CANDISC had been reduced to pedaling over and over and over again, with not much thought on anything else. Oh, I guess there were a few thoughts when the sag wagon drove by us in the vicinity of the big climb out of the White Earth Valley. But it was fully loaded already and we were still going fairly strong (but with concerns for specific body parts here and there).

With twenty miles to go we turned south and got the full force of the wind. There was a rest stop there that I guess sort of became a sag wagon depot as many cyclists bailed out there. Heat, wind, hills, pedaling, over and over again. Average speed was slipping and the estimated time remaining seemed to stand still for a while as a result, hanging at an hour and a half left for quite some time. But, we kept on. There finally came a hill where Dad had to give in and walk up. But, at the top, he found he still had one more gear he could have used. :-) At the top of this hill we got a spectacular view of the lake and surrounding bluffs, and miles and miles of prairie.

We skipped the last rest stop, eight miles out of New Town. We just wanted to get there, plus it was on a downhill stretch and I think we were up to fifteen miles per hour and didn't want to waste it. :-) (With no wind we would have been coasting at probably 25-30). About this time too, I noticed my rear wheel had a wobble to it--probably a broken spoke. :-/ I hoped it'd hold out till we got into town.

We missed the rest stop then, but I'll now take a little break from the trudgery. Besides, there's not much more to say other than that we put in the time and made it. The picture to the right (credit goes to J. Bluemle) is taken from Crow Flies High Butte looking southwest across the lake. A portion of Four Bears Bridge is in the foreground, which has an interesting history. The main portion with the superstructure was located fifty miles (I'm going off long-term memory here) south of the current location, but when Garrison Dam was constructed, the bridge was taken apart and shipped north via barge to its present location. Additional bridging was added on both ends, so the bridge now spans over a mile. Unfortunately, it was built back in the days of smaller vehicles, so is quite narrow. Three years ago the Bike the Badlands CANDISC crossed it on a day with very heavy traffic (big motorhome convention in Minot, and Pow Wow at New Town), and into the wind, and "was quite the experience."

The buttes on the horizon to the left of center in the picture are about twenty miles distance, as the crow flies. On Tuesday we were heading north straight toward them, but turned west toward Watford City. Three years ago we cut through a saddle between two of them on our way to the bridge crossing.

Back to the present. We'd actually made pretty good time getting into New Town compared with the rest of the pack, as there were a lot of bags remaining at the truck. And to our surprise, it had only been a very few miles out of New Town that we'd seen the sag wagon heading back out. The reason? It had blown one set of dual tires out on the road and it needed rescuing!