Month: June 2022

Perfect way to start the trip: I was all excited, ready to go, with my bike all packed up. I got on BART to head to the airport, and casually started checking in to my flight – but it kept rejecting me. That’s when I realized my 11:59pm flight was not for Friday night, but Saturday. Whoops. I skulked back home and hopped online to log into my weekly dungeons and dragons sesh with my college buds, but instead of rolling dice we just spent 3 hours lamenting the terrible state of the world (with a brief side quest contrasting the qualities of Pee-Wee Herman vs Ed Grimly).

It’s all going to work out fine, just instead of a relaxing day bumming around the twin cities, I’m just going to hit the pavement running tomorrow. Bums on!

Well, I made it to the Twin Cities… but my bike did not ☹️ I’m still waiting to find out details, but I’m hoping they just forgot to load it and it will be on the next flight? Here’s hoping this trip doesn’t turn into HikeBums!

Phew! Tatonka the bike thankfully showed up on the next flight from San Francisco. Spent half the day fretting about the bike (Sun Country air offered me no way to track where it was), but the other half was a relaxing tour around Minneapolis with M-swob. Tomorrow, we ride!

We got a great start yesterday. Rolled out of Minneapolis on its amazing bike infrastructure. It was all bike lanes and cycle paths for at least 30 miles. We already ran into other cycle tourists – one guy was in his 60s, going solo from Washington to Maine, and averaging over 70 miles a day! Overall it was just a full day of really pleasant, easy riding. We ended up camping on the Saint Croix River, at a site that would have been perfect except for the crack force of mosquito commandos the patrolled the area. I knew we wouldn’t make it through the north woods without getting a few bites, but I guess I forgot how aggressive Midwestern mosquitos are compared to their western counterparts.

Got some rain last night, but thankfully it didn’t start until we were snug in the tents and stopped just as we got up. We skipped making breakfast given that we would likely eat less than we would be eaten, and instead grabbed some pastries from the bakery in (sugar) Rush City.