invasion of america - the great plain

Billings to Fargo. 600 miles.

Never has a part of the world been more aptly named than the Great Plain(s) of North America. To say that there is something to see here that could enrich your soul would be nothing short of the most hideous and evil lie of all time. The worst criminal minds should be kept in a prison out here. Just the thought of having to spend any amount of time in this desolate place would scare me out of any crime. Of course, a prison here would be the cruelesy and most unusual punishment and therefore illegal... for white collar criminals.

I never made it to Glendive as I hoped. I got caught up in Billings, Montana talking to friends and the time just got away from me. At that time, I decided that I should just take the trip one step at a time and not worry about how far I need to go or when I need to get someplace. Of course, I could say things like this because this was the first day of the trip and other than some minor forest fire smoke in the air blocking some of the view, the trip has gone relatively according to plan.

Saturday morning.

I woke up early and realized that if I wanted to make it to Montreal by Tuesday that I would need to make up 300 miles that I missed out on by not making it to Glendive. The whole, "no worries" attitude was slowly slipping away from me and a sinking feeling began to crawl into the pit of my stomach.

The winds of Montana were a blowin' at 30 mph - in the shade. It was brutal. I was looking at 600 miles of barren nothingness ahead of me, which also meant that there would be nothing on either side of me to stop the wind from beating the shit out of me every inch of the trip. I really should have taken my pre-trip workouts more seriously. The amount of physical stress that it takes to endure these conditions is relative to that of a full contact kickboxer mixed with an Ironman competitor. Every time you get off the bike you are breathing harder than someone that just ran up Mt. Everest. It's tough. It was no easier on my bike, the new Pony is barely 400 pounds of machinery(not much in the world of motorcycles) and with me on top of it we are basically a huge sail driving down the freeway. That means it has to work twice or three times as hard to keep up the 70 MPH trip speed(this is a generous estimation. When possible I was riding over 100).

The first 150 miles took four long hours and I was basically crawling along to make it that fast. Make no mistake, when you're on a bike, time doesn't just pass the way it does in a car. On a bike, you're very aware of every second that you're on the bike. Sixty seconds actually feels like 120 seconds. In a car, twenty miles is maybe 15 minutes or so and you don't think much of it. No big. On a bike, it can be a half an hour or more, depending on a ton of variables. Wind is one of the worst things that can happen to a motorcycle. Safety wise and mechanically. My gas mileage went from a cock-stiffening 75 mpg to a serious limping - 40 mpg. I was in serious trouble.

I had to stop every thirty minutes just to take a break from the wind beating and with each stop I was losing more and more ground of my ambitious pursuit. The daily goal just seemed like an impossible dream and I was really beginning to lose faith in myself. The temps were dropping rapidly and nothing seemed to be going my way. I was ready to back out and just go home. If the wind didn't physically beat me up, it would financially beat me back to Tacoma. Why am I doing this anyway?

I was at one of the rest stops in nowhere-in-particular, Montana when a car came tearing up the drive and skidded to a stop in a parking stall nearby. The first person out of the car was the driver - an elderly lady that seemed pretty inspired about the drive. "That's it! That fucking cat is out of here or the two of you can walk!!

Next out of the car was the pacificer - the driver's grown daughter that got out from the passenger side. She had the look of a the peace maker in the middle of a drunken girl fight. A sort of glazed over, lost soul look without a prayer in her heart or a hope to cling on to. She just kept trying to calm her mother down and to reassure the backseat passenger - her daughter and the evil doer.

The last out of the car was a young girl, no more than 11 years old. She was crying and holding the culprit in her arms - a small grey bugged eyed cat. That cat looked like it was ready to kill either itself or its traveling companions. I have never seen a more frightened animal in all my life. Cats are not normally good car travelers and that's just for a quick trip to a vet's office. This must be ridiculously true for a long trip such as this. I would imagine that whatever happened didn't happen too long ago and this cat had been the target of some serious assaults by the driver - both physically and verbally. I think that when the cat saw its choices of either returning to the car and more of the same, or living out the rest of its life here at this truck stop, I think the cat had just flipped and was just ready to do something drastic to take matters into its own hands. I should have strapped it to my bike and taken off.

I didn't stick around long enough to find out how things turned out for those four weary travelers, but I do know that the cat did pee in the car and I could only imagine what the rest of the trip was going to be like for those girls. It was going to be a long, long time - probably days, before this trip was over and there is no way to mask "cat". I hope they all make it in one piece.

I hate wind. I really, really hate wind. I started to hate wind so much that I started cursing the wind; and the world; and the cold that comes with wind; and Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel. And when that didn't work and I needed a focus for my hatred, I started hating the people of Montana that lived here. The way I saw it, they were only encouraging the wind by living here and it was there fault that I was suffering so much. Don't they know?! They can leave here! The wind is one of the way that the Gods try to remove you from where you are. And when they take the time to deal with you directly, they mean it. So go!

I tried to pacificy my rage with my Ipod feeling that the music would distract me and take the howling wind noise out of my helmet. It died in less than thirty minutes, twenty of which I used to rig my helmet so I could hear it. Now I was cursing the people of Apple and I began to write letters of disgust to everyone that had ever wronged me. In my mind.

I had all but given up hope when I saw a canyon.

Somewhere in the mind of Mother Nature there is a sense of justice and a belief in equality and balance. She knew that many a weary traveler would have seen their early demise on the horizon and without some intervention on her part, they would have taken that final step. If that canyon hadn't appeared, you would be reading a different kind of post today.

Out here in the farthest reaches of space; a canyon lives. A wide, vast canyon that is really just deep cracks in the prairie surface that are simply amazing to gaze upon. At the bottom of each canyon was a small creek crawling along. Now that I think back on it, that creek wasn't really flowing anywhere in particular and it almost looked fake. Like one of those man-made creeks at a water park that just flows in a circle just for effect. Perhaps Mother Nature hired some of those people to make this place. What ever the reasons, my empty cup of optimism was suddenly overflowing again, and I suddenly remembered, "This is why".

I decided to camp in Mandan, North Dakota for the night. It was 600 miles away from where I was supposed to be, but so what, this is the way it is and I needed rest badly.

Ft. Lincoln is just south of Mandan and it sits perfectly on the banks of the Missouri river. This is the Fort where Custer spent the last years of his life before he rode off into the Montana winds and decided to take his own life at the hands of a million screaming Indians. Apparently, that sounded like a better deal to him. (wow, now I get it!) Sadly, he never got to return to this place and it really does call you back. It's a hidden secret in all this doom and gloom. It's glorious.

The campground sits on the picturesque banks of the Missouri river, which is a huge departure from the ugly and uninviting Missouri of my childhood in Kansas City. This river was glossy, clear and quiet and you wanted to dive in and drink it up. It was so peaceful here. Made more so due in no small part to the contrast to the past nine hours of howling winds that I had just endured. The sun was setting rather quickly and everything was soooo still. No wind; no cold; no nothing. Just peacefulness. Again, "This is why".

The Custer household sits just above the campground and has a perfect view of the small valley that cradles the Missouri. From any room in his house, Custer would have seen beauty that would have called to him in the dark hours of travel that would make up his last fateful campaign. I think this vista is why we know Custer to this day.

Upon hearing of her husband's death, Mrs. Custer didn't break down or lose her composure. Instead she packed up her beautiful home and spent the rest of her life extolling the virtues of her husband's heroics to anyone who would listen anywhere in the world. It's because of her that we remember Custer at all. There were other generals and soldiers that died at the hands of Indians, but none of them had the foresight to take their wives to such a beautiful place so filled with romantic beauty and then, at the height of the emotional impact - die. Custer's folly is all we remember to this day. Sadly, his love for his wife or the life he shared with her is lost to history. But not on me. This oasis speaks of his love for her and her's for him.

The next morning, everything was covered with frost. The skies were dark. The winds had returned. I was wearing everything I owned and I was still cold. By the time I got to Valley City, North Dakota and stopped just to take a break. I had been beaten. I was done. I couldn't do any more. It was just too much for me.

I don't remember anything until Fargo.

The sun came out, it warmed up and for a moment, it appeared that the winds had died. I was able to take off my layers of coats and I was so filled with accomplishment that I didn't care which direction I went in. If I went home, then I would have still conquered the Great Plain of America and that in and of itself is a huge achievement.

Things were only about to get worse.