2015-07-01 - MN - Day 35 - Minneapolis to Dalbo
After eating breakfast, reading, and working on my site, I left pretty late from Minneapolis, riding out around 8:40 AM with Svetlana. Before we left, she gave Andy a hug goodbye. I didn't even know he was leaving us. He chose to go back home to work on his alternative education program. Following several (serial) consultations with Google Maps, we finally found our way out of the city and were good to go. We began the ride with about twenty miles on bike trails and on the Mississippi River Trail, which was composed of roads running north along the Mississippi. About seven miles from the first rest stop, Svetlana and I stopped to grab a snack at a nearby gas station. We were both starving, and I knew I would cycle faster with some food in me. There twelve other riders who had all stopped for breakfast caught up to us. We rode together, fourteen strong, to rest stop one in Anoka.
Then, through fields of grain and forests of pine, County Road 7 North and State Highway 47 took us to ride's end at the Dalbo Bike Bunkhouse. A while back, the owner converted his property into a well-stocked bunkhouse for cyclists. He hosted over 200 cyclists last summer and has been letting the BikeTheUSForMS riders stay there for free for years. He won our award for best host last year.
He prepared watermelon and other food to eat and also had cheap snacks for sale like 25-cent Oreos and sodas. The Bunkhouse had one shower outdoors which was solar-powered, and another indoors that eventually ran out of hot water. I played pool with a few people, doing surprisingly well, and we watched Aladdin on tape before going to sleep. I also started reading The Martian, a painstakingly realistic story about a fictional astronaut who has to survive for over a year on Mars before NASA can rescue him. I grew quite addicted to the story. "It's a whole new world!"
He prepared watermelon and other food to eat and also had cheap snacks for sale like 25-cent Oreos and sodas. The Bunkhouse had one shower outdoors which was solar-powered, and another indoors that eventually ran out of hot water. I played pool with a few people, doing surprisingly well, and we watched Aladdin on tape before going to sleep. I also started reading The Martian, a painstakingly realistic story about a fictional astronaut who has to survive for over a year on Mars before NASA can rescue him. I grew quite addicted to the story. "It's a whole new world!"