This story begins back on Friday during our ride from Midland to Pierre, a distance of 61 miles or so without any services or anywhere to get water. The road ran north for some 20-odd miles and then turned due east into Pierre. I got to the turn ahead of Roger and waited for him to see how he was doing on water.

There was a big older guy standing at the intersection next to his motorcycle when I rolled up. We got to talking, and I realized that I had seen him pass me several miles back. His name was Charles, and he was down on his luck.

He said he’d lost his job working on oil rigs in the Gulf as things had pretty much slowed down there in the aftermath of Katrina. But he’d decided to take a trip out west and was having a good time until his bike needed major repairs that had left him close to broke in Missoula, Montana. So he had written up a sign about being an “oil seaman needing a $ or 2” and had taken to setting up at intersections to raise money until he could at least pay for a tank of gas before moving on and heading east toward home.

He seemed a decent sort, and I did not take his picture because everybody deserves their dignity. But there was a moment early on, after we introduced ourselves and shook hands, when I was struck by how big and built he was, and how quickly he moved in grasping up my hand, that made me wonder what he was capable of. He had told me that only about one in a hundred people going by stopped to give him a little money. We were in the middle of nowhere and all alone and, though I did not have a bad vibe about him, a question nonetheless ran through my mind – does someone in his situation ever get desperate or angry enough to get violent and should I be concerned about that possibility?

I kept an eye on him and we kept talking and it was all good. I couldn’t decide if I was paranoid or prudent or both; in the end I gave him a little money because it seemed the right thing to do. Soon after, Roger came up, and he and I headed east to Pierre.

A fair bit later, Charles overtook me and gave me a big wave as he went by. I was happy for him because it meant that he had raised enough money to leave his corner of purgatory and advance a little bit further on to where he was trying to go.

And there’s a nice coda to this tale as yesterday while I was biking from Miller to De Smet a motorcycle roared by and a big long arm was raised in a wildly waving salute as Charles headed on down the highway. It was surprisingly poignant to see him again, and though he could not know it, I wished him well. There’s a funny sort of loose association that unites travelers out on the road even though their encounter is short-lived; to run into someone again is an unanticipated delight.

As we move eastward across South Dakota, new species are being added to the toll cars take on the local wildlife. I’m seeing way fewer deer (although I still see deer in the fields almost every day) and a lot more raccoons, especially today. I still don’t know what to make of it, but over the last four or five days, small and medium-sized birds have been a constant still presence, and the last couple of days have brought a progression from snakes to frogs and now turtles.

I see very few carrion eaters, and the stench and the condition of the animal remains is ghastly. It is a perspective that is uniquely the purview of the cyclist I’m afraid, and it is an unfortunate part of the trip.

So Roger and I are on different paths to Minneapolis; he is going a more direct route and I am taking a short detour to Mankato, MN, to see an old friend from Cincinnati, Dan Vance.

While Roger rested in Pierre yesterday, I pushed on to Miller, where on the advice of Sara, the motelier who is living proof that the punk look has finally made it to the steppes of South Dakota, I went down to check out the scene at Redneck’s Paradise:

which is where I met Euretta:

She was in town for six weeks to help her dad round up and heat sense cattle and then bring them in to be artificially inseminated. The two of them live in a camper out in a field with their horses some 10 miles out of town. They work from about 7 until 10 in the morning and from 6 until about 9 in the evening, and yesterday, she decided to change out of her work clothes and come into town in the early afternoon.

Euretta is a 29-year-old, never-married single mother with two boys, and when her summer job is done, she’ll go back to her home in Gering, Nebraska, to finish up nursing school. She has lived in a few small towns in Nebraska and South Dakota and has been to Denver once.

Euretta and I had a delightful conversation as neither of us had ever met anyone quite like the other. While talking with her in the bar, it was a bit hard to picture her on horseback herding cattle and whatnot, but she certainly seemed to love the life. Her dad also raises and sells horses, and Euretta has been helping out with that since she was eight years old.

She has a horse named Bourbon that she’s had since he was born, but Euretta said they don’t start training horses until they are three years old so their bodies and minds are more developed. She explained how to scotch a young horse by roping up one of its legs so it won’t fight you when you need to trim its hooves – might try that on Toffee next time I need to trim her nails!

Euretta had been in the bar earlier in the week when she’d come in straight from the fields so on the day I was in some of the old fellers didn’t recognize her. But she certainly got everyone’s attention, and after she left, one guy lamented, “now all we have to look at is each other.”

Today’s ride from Pierre to Miller was 72 miles of battling 18-mph winds out of the SSE. Most of the route was due east so at least the winds were not hitting me head on; instead I was frequently buffeted by swirling gusts that threatened to push me to the left off the (intermittently crappy) shoulder. Fortunately traffic was fairly light and cars could see me from quite a way aways; kudos to all the courteous drivers out there today.

This was the longest ride I have had to make while contending with wind, and I learned a few things – primarily a resigned patience. It does no good to fight a sustained wind on a long ride as it is just too exhausting. So instead, I stared at my bike computer with fascination and horror as my speed drifted to an ever lower level and then continually recalculated in my head how long it would take to ride the remaining miles if I couldn’t go any faster.

It was slow going, but I learned to adjust myself to the wind – even sustained winds let up or die down a bit or change direction. So I would speed up when I could and slow down when I had to. I saw damn near every one of the 72 miles click over on the bike computer even though I tried to force myself not to look.

All in all, it was a very engaged and mindful ride; not a favorite by any means but an instructive lesson in patience and concentration.

Somewhere down this road, I rode the 2000th mile of this trip!