Badlands

Part of the reason I chose to go to the Black Hills that
summer (1978) was an invitation I had from a woman I met in college,
during a January Term I spent at St John's in Collegeville,
MN. (She was a student at St Benedicts, the sister college to
St John's.) We enjoyed the time we spent together there, but
it was strictly a friendly relationship.

She was going to spend the summer working at the State
Game Lodge near Rapid City, and said she could find me free
accomodations there if I visited. Sounded like a great deal
to me! So I took advantage..

It was quite amazing, that on part of the trip to Rapid
City from Minneapolis, I sat right next to a young man from
France. Having just returned from there, I had some ability
to communicate in French, and he was much better than that at
English. Still, my smattering of French helped a lot, and our
respective journeys gave us a good topic of conversation. It
was a long bus ride, none-the-less. About ten hours, I think.

On my arrival in Rapid City, I phoned the Game Lodge, and
she commandeered a pickup truck to come get me. My bike had
made the trip in a bike box in the luggage compartment. The
box was a torn, smashed mess by the time I got it. But my
bike was untouched.

I was put up in a dormitory they had for employees. That
was fine. It reminded me of staying in the hostels in Europe.
The next day she had to work, so I rode my bike around the
park. I saw where they had filmed "How The West Was Won" and
a lot of other westerns, and part of a set- a portion of a
wooden calvary fort- was still there.

I saw wild
donkeys and buffalo. I revelled in the sun and heat, such a
relief, after England. The rugged pinnacles of rock that jut
out of the grassy prairie were exotic geology.

I saw a great view of the Badlands.

Note the water bottle arrangement for later reference

Later, I rode back to the game lodge, and we had a dorm
dinner and then a campfire. It was very nice, with songs and
stories. The woman resisted my mild come-ons, however. I
backed off.

The next day she had off from work, as did some of the
other employees. A bunch of us rode in the pickup to a lake,
to escape the heat. It was in a lower area, down off the edge
of the Black Hills, towards or in Nebraska, as I remember. It
didn't take long to get there. It was a wonderful, relaxing
day, a nice break from the heat.

The next day I decided to head home. I rode past Mt
Rushmore

on my way back to Rapid City, where I planned to
find another box for the return bus trip. Well, the only bike
shops in town didn't have any- the bike-buying season was
apparently over. And the bus company didn't have any either.
So I decided to ride my bike home. About six hundred miles.
No problem, I thought. It was still early in the day
as I left Rapid City. I would be home in a week, I figured.

It was in the nineties and not a cloud in the sky- just
as the other days had been. There was a strong tailwind, as
is normal when riding west to east on the plains.A patrolman
had told me it would be OK, in fact he recommended, to ride
the interstate- the only other choice being gravel roads
across the Badlands reservation.

I had two plastic water
bottles, one underthe frame (the downtube) and one on top.
The towns were far enough apart that I was draining both
bottles between water sources. At one point , I turned into a
sleepy-looking farm house. I braved a snarling dog to ask at
the strangers' house if I could use their outside spigot.
Then at about three in the afternoon, I was approaching the
tourist info center for the Badlands. I had drained the
bottle on top,and rather than stop to exchange bottles, I
reached down and drew the lower bottle out. Careless me. It
caught between the tire and the frame. A hole wore through
the thin plastic before I could stop.

I turned into the cold airconditioned info center. The
pretty girl behind the desk could only offer scotch tape to
my request for repair help for the bottle. I needed both of
those bottles!

A trucker overheard my request, and we went out to his
cab, sitting on the blistering black tar. He was searching in
the side storage compartment for the masking tape he knew was
there, when next thing I knew I was looking up at him from
the pavement. The heat/cold/heat blasts to my system had
taken me down.

I told him as I sipped the proffered cold pop from his
cooler what my plans were- to ride the 550+ miles back to
Minneapolis. "Kind of crazy isn't it?" He said, and I had to
say at that moment, "Yes I guess it is."

We strapped my bike to his cab, and he rescued me from
the wasteland.

We spent a day flying by the yellow-gold
wheatfields and I spent a freezing cold overnight in his cab
in a Sioux Falls truckstop, while he and his wife used the
sleeper. The next day he dropped me in cooler, greener, corn
and sunflower-strewn southern Minnesota.

It was just an
overnight in a campground and a day's pleasant bike ride to
Minneapolis and home.