Company Has Arrived

Bismarck, ND is unlikely to be on anyone’s Top 10 Destinations. With my plan to rent a car and go to Nebraska scuttled by the lack of rental cars, I essentially ended up with 3 days here. I figured I would be industrious yesterday and look for things to do in town. On my Google search, the first thing that came up rattled off the zoo, the mall, the theater (open only on weekends, not Wednesdays) and some religious gatherings at the event center. The second thing that came up was “Call the Suicide Hotline”. Fortunately for me, relief arrived this morning in the form of my daughter, Claire. After spending 8 weeks in Europe, she flew back to Vancouver on Monday, did some gear shopping, then boarded a plane at PDX at 12:45am just so she could fly to North Dakota and spend the next 9 days riding with her old man across some of the most empty territory this country has to offer. We got her bike reassembled with a couple minor hiccups, stopped and had some lunch in town and then rode out to the western suburb of Mandan just to get a bit of a head start on tomorrow’s ride. It was only 12 miles from the airport so barely worth tracking, but since Claire was riding in the clothes she wore on the plane, it was a fine way just to get a bit of saddle time after the past few days. With a bit of riding luck, we’ll be in Bozeman, Montana next weekend. We’ve shortened the daily rides from the original plan due to the forecast temperatures in the 90’s and 100’s. It’s actually very pleasant in the mornings so we hope to get most of our miles in each day before lunch so we can avoid the worst of it. We’ll have some more pictures again with tomorrow’s post.

This is all I have today. Bike assembly at the Bismarck airport. Stefan, this should look vaguely familiar. It seems we did this in the Boise airport about 40 years ago! Tom, if I recall, we did this outside the Greyhound station in Warrenton, OR in 1988 as well.