Day 25: Rain Rain Go Away, Team-mate Tim, Pfffffsssstt, The Beach!

Day 25: Monday June 30th, 2014.
Circle, MT to Beach, ND.  89.9 miles

I awoke to steady raindrops on my tent. Assuming it was a passing thunderstorm (a 50% chance in the forecast), I figured I would sleep in and wait it out. But, it didn't stop, and there wasn't any lightning.  I had to see what was going on, so I crawled out of my tent only to find grey soggy skies for as far as the eye could see. It wasn't going to let up anytime soon. So, reluctant to pack up a soggy tent, I decided I would go into town for breakfast to wait out the weather. But, when I rounded the corner of the laundromat in the middle of the campground, headed for the bathroom, there in front of me was another touring cyclist, packing up his tent, ambitiously intending to forage ahead. 

Tim was his name.  He was headed to Iowa to catch the start of RAGBRAI (the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa). In it's 42nd year, the annual 7-day ride across the state is the oldest, largest (by attendance), and longest (of its kind) bicycle touring event in the world. Tim was gearing up to head East. "Yeah, it's raining, but it is supposed to all day, and the winds are still out of the West.", he said as he folded up his tent under the laundromat awning.  Realizing that I was standing next to a laundromat, I decided to throw my soggy tent in a dryer while packing up my other things, and join him.  We headed to a cafe in Circle for some breakfast.

Tim, a retired city administrator for a small town in central Illinois, was off to explore the U.S. while doing what he loved to do; ride a bicycle. The bicycle accident that almost cost him his leg a decade ago near his home didn't deter him a bit from his trip across the U.S.  The docs were able to save his leg, minus several inches. So, all of his left shoes are custom-built with risers to compensate, including his clip-in bike shoes he was wearing when I met him. 

On a day like this one, it was good to have a riding partner for encouragement. I'm not sure I would have started out as early as I did if it wasn't for Tim.  Later that day, he told me the same thing.  We set our sites on Glendive, a little over 50 miles away.

Despite the rain, the tail-winds were helping move us along. We were about 4 miles out of town, climbing up a hill when I seemed to lose some momentum. I looked down and noticed my back tire was very low.  With my attention now focused on it, I could hear a faint sound.  Pfffffsssstt. I had a flat!  I immediately pulled off the shoulder and into the grass, jumped off my bike, and flopped the bike onto it's side with two panniers inbetween the frame and the ground. I jumped to my knees, put my ear an inch from the tire, and slowly rotated it, listening for the "Pfffffsssstt". There it was. I found the leak, and the foreign object that prodruded through my tire. It was a small pebble, the size of your pinky finger nail, shaped like an arrowhead. By this time, Tim pulled up and jumped off his bike to help. We flipped the bike upside down with the seat and handlebars against the ground. He held the bike steady while I removed the rear tire, pulled out the punctured tube, and put in a new one. The whole ordeal probably took 10-15 minutes. I was glad to have help, especially with the weather conditions as they where.

We made great time to Glendive. Entering the town, our route took us to the old bridge, now a pedestrian-only crossing, over the Little Missouri River. 

The river did not appear to be so little. I heard in the news the night before that downstream of all these nearby tributaries, as they and others merge with the Missouri across other states, flooding was occurring. I could now imagine why, as ever since I crossed the continental divide East of Missoula, all the water I passed and more was combining. 

Tim and I had lunch in Glendive.  Then, with lots of time left in the day, and winds helping us to make good time, we decided to go 25 miles further to Wibaux, MT. The rain was persistent. My shoes were waterlogged and my socks were wet. We finally made it to Wibaux, agreeing to split a hotel room to dry out in. There was one hotel in town. The receptionist, in response to our inquiry for a room, said, "There's only one left, and it's $99."  In a town with a population of 589 people, we were a bit surprised at the price (relative to what I have paid in other small towns), and the fact that there was only one room left, with an empty hotel parking lot outside. As I figured out later, we had entered the land of the Bakken oil field, where a gold rush in oil was happening. It was the epicenter of fracking. We decided to confer.  

With not much in the way of dinner options in town, we reluctantly agreed to ride 11 miles further to a town with double the population. Beach, ND was the new destination.  I told Tim, "And you thought there wasn't a beach in North Dakota."  We forged ahead, wet and tired. Then, we crossed the state line a few miles outside of Beach. I was energized with my sense of accomplishment having completed a bicycle ride across the state of Montana, the long way. For some reason, it felt more significant than the entirety of my ride thus far. 

We celebrated our long, challenging day (Tim's longest ride of his trip), and our cheap hotel in Beach, with a beer and a satisfying warm meal. 

Even in the small town of Beach, ND, which is quite a bit South of the epicenter of the hydraulic fracturing oil boom of Williston, the effects were taking their toll on this and other small communities. A notice in the National Park Service newspaper(relative to the nearby Theodore Roosevelt National Park), entitled, "What's Going On Around Here", summed up the situation well:

Surprised by the amount of truck traffic in the area?  Unable to get a hotel reservation?  Can't find the sleepy cowboy towns you remember?  The reason for the incredible changes this area is experiencing lies 2 miles below the surface of Western North Dakota: a formation called the Bakken. The Bakken formation is a rock layer rich with oil reserves. Until recently, the oil was not extractable. A new and controversial technique - hydraulic fracturing, or "Fracking"- has allowed oil companies to more than quadruple their daily oil production in the last five years. The huge influx of activity has brought tens of thousands of new jobs to the area. In a national economy where jobs are scarce, North Dakota has become the land of opportunity for many. All three ND national parks are experiencing serious issues due to the oil boom. New wells are going in every month; many can be seen from inside park boundaries. Each new well means another drill rig, well pad, pumpjack, debris pit, flare pit, storage tanks, and access road on the landscape. Each new well requires 2000 "trucking events" to complete its setup and to begin pumping oil. Noise and dust from heavy truck traffic and pumping equipment is constant. Numerous flares can be seen in the formerly dark night sky as excess natural gas is burned off. Socioeconomic impacts are altering local communities. A multifaceted topic to be sure, the oil boom begs a difficult question: how can we develop our resources while still protecting our parks and communities?

Back to the hotel, I had to do everything I could to get my shoes and gear dried out for the next day. My bicycle became my drying rack.