The great Mississippi one night and the massive Missouri river the next!

June 14, 2013

Platte, South Dakota

Distance Traveled: 1415

Well its been two days since visiting the Mississippi river, and now tonight I get the pleasure of staying on the massive Missouri river!  For someone like me very few things could be cooler.  Looking our from my campground site the view is truly breathtaking, almost good enough to help me forget about the long day of travels that I had.

After talking to my dad again from my site that morning in Iowa, he told me that I was only a little over a hundred miles from my cousin studying at the university of South Dakota. So I rang him up and told him I'd be there in a little over two hours, and thankfully I managed to be passing through on one of the few days he wasn't working 12 hour shifts.  I wonder what he must have thought when three hours had rolled around and he still had no word from me.

Halfway to Vermilion, South Dakota the skies did its usual thing of turning real angry real fast.  This time seeing lightning on the distance I again started to get a little nervous after my last encounter with a storm.  Pulling over I quickly I prepped for rain and right on que the skies let loose. 

Ignoring a road closed sign hoping that my bike could make it through some tight construction space surprisingly wasn't my worst move at that point.  But getting to the closed road part under a steady downpour I found that there was no way to get around so I used the handy detour function on my Garmin.  Soon the skies cleared and I thought I was in the clear too surely coming close to the end of the detour.  Oh and if you didn't know (and I don't know why you would as I've never told anyone this before)  I have some strange preference for not using the states given detours as I'm pretty sure they aren't the quickest way.

Then came the next turn with the highway I was looking for a mere 3.7 miles down the road.  Down the gravel/dirt road that is (and don't forget its washed out due to the storm).  Remembering back to a couple of days ago I recalled feeling rather adventurous and good at riding my bike so I turned off the avoid dirt roads function.  Well here was my shot to see just how good I really was, and exactly what Saphira could do. 

I started out cautiously at about 20 mph feeling the bike 's rear tire sliding freely left and right underneath me.  For anyone who hasn't experienced this sensation let me assure you: its really not pleasant!  But I pushed on growing a little bolder when I hit a rather deep pile of stone.  First the back tire struck out wide right, then back to the left side as I overcorrected, and continued doing this  back and forth until I could white knuckled bring her back under control.  From then on I kept it at only a creeping 15 mph.  With 1 mile and some change I could feel that I had almost made and the anticipation of being put off this mess was driving me crazy.  I remembered reading on a blog that dirty bike riders needed to sit straight up and hold the handle bars some what loosely with elbows out so I changed my tactic to this trying to emulate the things I had only seen on TV and read about in forums.  That's when I hit a rut in the road that brought my bike on a given path that I seemed to have no way of getting her off of.  I could get the front tire out, but every time I did the back would stay entrenched in the rut and she would start to sliding sideways.  The second attempt at this brought her front end way out and I was sure I was going to lose it right then and there.  In that terrifying split second I remember looking over at the grass on the side of the road thinking  "Yeah that looks like a good spot to land.". But at the last second Saphira jumped out of the rut realigning herself in the process. 

Finally making it to the end of the road and back to blessed pavement I pulled over, cursed loudly and prophanely from a mixture of fear, adrenaline, and success, and quickly turned on the avoid unpaved roads function.  While I'm certainly an experienced rider,  I'm pretty sure the difference between a motorcycle and a dirty bike is rather important.

After that it was nothing but clear roads. I had a great time reconnecting with my cousin TJ, and I put 280 more miles on Saphira.  Tomorrow: Badlands national park.  I'm pumped to say the least and looking forward to the free campsites as I've been going a little over budget practically every day now.  Not totally sure how I'll fix that, but tomorrow's as good a day as any to figure it out.