WATFORD CITY, NORTH DAKOTA: Bakken Crude

August 15, 2017

Let me tell ya a story 'bout a man named Greg,
Bikin' in a place most folks avoid like the plague.
Then one day he was pedalin' on a road,
In a big rural state that struck the motherlode.

Oil that is . . . black gold . . . Texas tea.

Well . . .
First thing he knew he was biker extraordinaire.
His kinfolk said, "Greg, why ya ridin' there?"
"Eastern Utah is where ya oughtta be."
But he cycled off singin' "North Dakota's fine for me!"

***********************

Like any highly dedicated bicycle traveler, I was on the road by 9:10 a.m. SHARP, and it wasn't long before I saw my first oil well. At that point, a famous TV show's theme song came to mind. The song became a persistent irritation for the rest of the day and I fear it will likely continue running through my head tomorrow as well. Knowing the futility of trying to fight an earworm, I accepted it and worked on some alternative lyrics as I rode. The poem above is MY theme song for the day. (And yes, I know it takes a lot of gall to call those words a "poem.") It is the result of five hours of writing and re-writing--entirely on the note pad that is my brain--while cycling in oil country.

As often happens, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's magically go back to 9:10 a.m., shall we?

Highway 2 West out of Williston was closed due to road construction, so I was already facing a detour just minutes into my tour. Normally that would suck. Here is a picture of what I had to endure:

What's this? No potholes? No bumps? No gravel? Just two or three miles of new, car-free concrete? Where's the challenge in THAT?

When the detour rejoined Highway 2, I was pretty amazed at all of the heavy industrial businesses. In fact, that's just about ALL there was on the west side of Williston. I saw so many oilfield supply businesses, energy services, tanker truck outfits, and huge tanks and pipes and valves and specialty equipment. It all had my petro-chemical curiosity truly mesmerized. It continued after I turned south on U.S. 85 too.

Generally, I'm not one to write much about road conditions, but I'm going to make an exception today because, as I wrote yesterday, Adventure Cycling removed Bakken oil country from one of its popular cross-country routes. I'm here to tell you that big road improvements have apparently been made. I'm referring to the wide shoulders that accompanied me all day.

The bad part is that the wide shoulders often had loads of rock and pebbles scattered by trucks entering the highway from the many gravel side roads. And there really IS a lot of heavy truck traffic. Frequently I was tempted to veer off the rocky, pebbly shoulders and onto the smooth roadway, but, even though I'm not very smart, I AM smarter than that.

To conclude the road report, I'd have no problem riding Highway 85 again and you can do it too. I never feared for my life, and the only time I felt unsafe at all was on a one-mile section of bridge construction. The southbound lane was so narrow that no car, much less a tanker truck, could have passed me. Still, I envisioned one of them giving it a try, so I pedaled my ass off because there was no place to turn out to allow the ever-growing line of cars behind me to pass.

It's time to show some pictures before I bore you to death.

A couple of pelicans flying low over a Missouri River backwater.

The Missouri River and the pretty hills that border it

I could have taken a hundred pictures of oil rigs, not because of my petro-chemical fascination, but more due to my appreciation for the wide open spaces, the rolling hills, and the scarcity of view blockers (trees) that surround them.

And trucks, most of which moved over into the far lane for me

Oil drilling is clearly a big thing around here and there is no controversy about that locally. I think it would not be a good idea to protest oil-drilling or fracking too vociferously. You'd be opposing the very life blood of this region's newfound economic wealth and also the employment of many thousands of local workers. Some of those workers are known as "roughnecks." Those are the folks who labor for long hours in greasy conditions at oil rigs, and judging by the name, I have a feeling that roughnecks would not take kindly to environmental protesters.

Three years ago I saw some anti-fracking protesters in Washington D.C. I think they realized that would be a fairly safe distance from which to do one's protesting.

Anyway, I saw plenty of interesting things today that were not related to oil production. Check it out.

There were cows that stared at me just like cows all over the country do. (I know the question you want to ask. "Did you MOO at them? Yes, I did."

There was new housing (mostly trailer homes) for roughnecks and other oil workers. I saw many developments like this. Unlike most of the others, this one was actually in a town.

Williston may be "Boomtown, USA" but Watford City is no slouch in that department. It's population also more than doubled during the Bakken oilfield's heyday. It has transformed from a sleepy nothing-town into a small city with a four-lane thoroughfare and franchised chain stores, restaurants and motels.

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Today's ride: 51 miles (82 km)
Total: 69 miles (111 km)

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