D’oh!

Vermillion to Pickstown, South Dakota Friday, July 16, 2021

For those of you that don’t know, “D’oh!” is the exclamation Homer Simpson makes when he realizes he has just done something stupid. I had two D’oh! moments this morning. My right pedal had been squeaking, and this morning I saw that the bearings were loose. Sean, who is also a bike shop mechanic, confirmed this, and that special tools are needed to repair it. I said “D’oh!” because I had arrived in Vermilion at 3 PM yesterday, and the only bike shop there is open from 1 to 5 PM. But Sean said it was unlikely that they could’ve helped me anyway. Instead, I ordered new pedals to arrive in Pierre, and be held for me at the post office.

The other D’oh! moment was when I looked more carefully at the Adventure Cycling maps, which I had glanced at yesterday. Always worried about getting reservations for weekend nights, yesterday I confidently reserved a hotel 70 miles away. Looking at the maps more carefully this morning, I realized I had skipped a panel, and at the hotel was actually 112 miles away. I’ve had some long days recently, but nothing that long. The reservation was nonrefundable, so the only alternative was to take highways, which would save me 18 miles, some dirt roads, and some of the hills. Ironic, because I had made a big detour just to be able to take the Adventure Cycling route. Now I was going to have to take the highways anyway. D’oh!

A great breakfast from Sean got me going, and I did have a steady tailwind. Maybe better this way. A southeast wind was really a blessing, and rare this time of year. I had been making meager mileage recently, so it was good to really make tracks. It was grueling to be in the hot sun for 11 hours, but doable, and reassuring that I could put in this kind of mileage if I had to.

25 miles in was Yankton, the old territorial capital of the Dakotas. They had a historic downtown, and an old highway bridge across the Missouri that had been converted to a pedestrian/bicycle walkway. I had seen this only once before, in Poughkeepsie NY, the Walkway over the Hudson, the longest elevated pedestrian walkway in the world. This one was almost as spectacular, gave me a chance to see the Mighty Mo for the first time, and to scoot over and tag Nebraska. I plan to be passing through it later, to do the highpoint, but you never know what might come up. For the appropriate soundtrack, I played Melissa Etheridge’s Nowhere To Go https://youtu.be/Hzr9YdRBqFA, and Pete Seeger’s The Big Muddy. https://youtu.be/24VOo7-ctKU

Anybody who has driven across South Dakota knows the ubiquitous billboards for Wall Drug, you pass dozens on the interstate. I saw only one today, and had to photograph it.

Just my luck, my hotel was at the top the highest hill in the region, I arrived sweaty and exhausted at 8:30 PM. It was a casino run by the Yankton Sioux nation, and did have a nice view.

Distance 94 miles, 3,984 total. Time 11 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,713 feet

©️ 2021 Scott Luria