Day 26 - Valley City, ND to Moorhead, MN

DAY 26 - VALLEY CITY, ND TO MOORHEAD, MN

63.5 miles

st-3.59.56

15.8 avg

TTD-1561.17

Before I get into the day, I want to clarify something from a couple entries ago. When I mentioned that Brad at Walmart in Bismarck gave us money, he gave it to us for the scholarship endowment fund, not for our personal use. We've sent that money on to the school. We've had a few people give us money for specific things: pizza out, ice cream treats, etc. Anything else goes to the scholarship fund.

We both woke up about 5:30 so decided to just get up. Yesterday, Gerry had been thinking about the phrase "every mountain and hill made low" because of the road becoming so flat. So today we read that passage - 40:1-8. What God impressed on us wasn't the hills being made low, but that men's glory is like the flowers of the field - it falls. We saw again that we can take no glory in this ride because it is glory that will fade and fall away. Any glory for this belongs to God because His word stands forever.

Okay. Today was an easier day. Even though the mileage seems up there, it was easy because it was so flat - the flattest yet. Yay! We left Matt and Celena's at 7:45 and rode into West Fargo at 11:05.

It had rained in the night but the road was dry except for some standing water in the rumble strips. The eight miles of construction was interesting as our flow of traffic was diverted over to the other lane. This meant that we either rode on a three foot shoulder with rumble strip in the middle or go to the other side and ride against traffic on a 12 foot shoulder. We opted for the 12 foot shoulder.

Speaking of rumble strips, it's been interesting to ride the freeway where there are several different kinds. There's the kind that is a solid strip along the edge of the road, leaving the whole shoulder free. That's pretty nice, although when it's pavement, the shoulder part is ususally rougher. When it's concrete, the shoulder part is smoother.

Another kind is the rumble patches. They're in the shoulder itself. One kind is deeper, wider grooves with beveled edges and they're not fun. We have to ride on the outside edge to avoid those. When we hit them, it really jars the teeth. The other kid of patch is the one where the grooves are narrower with straight cut edges, but they run the whole width of the shoulder so we have to ride over them. But it's just a little "prrr" as we go across.

After a stop at Walmart in Fargo for some food items and a couple of lightweight shirts, we rode on to Moorhead where we are this evening at Larry and Karen Seljevold's home. They are very gracious Warmshowers hosts, giving us their guest bedroom and dinner on the deck overlooking the Red River.Larry is a Physical Education teacher and Karen operates a heart/lung machine during surgeries. They have a son out of college and their daughter, Maren, is in junior high. Larry shares a love for bicycling, so we've had lots to talk about. He and his son rode cross country several years ago.

It's 8:30, so it must be almost bedtime! Tomorrow we start into our fifth state.

Some of you have asked us about our packing and cooking. Here are a few pictures that will, hopefully, give you an idea of how we're doing it. This is the first "layer" that we put into Bob. (Looking down)The bottom layer: The gray bag is the tent; the maroon/black sack is our clothes; the black sack is the sleeping bags, pillows and bag liners. The upper right blue item is our cooking pot and utensils; the top center black circle is the Jetboil.The second layer consists of our shoes, "book" bag, toiletries bag, "medical"bag.

The top layer is the Alphasmart, map folder, and other smaller items that can fit into the nooks and crannies.

The Jetboil is pictured below (It looks much bigger here than it is.) We heat 2 cups of water in 90 seconds in the mug.The mug comes off, an adapter goes on and we can now cook in the pot. It's all very simple, very lightweight, very efficient, and is working well for us.In His hand,

Gerry and Pat