“If I had to ride that thing, the seat would be so far up my booty that I couldn’t find it.”

July 17, 2016

Day Forty-Seven: Gettysburg, South Dakota to Ipswitch, South Dakota

It was Sunday morning. I was tired and didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I believe that just getting up, getting ready, and getting on the bike morning after morning is maybe the hardest thing about bike touring. I’m almost always happy once I’m actually outside, riding.

There was a cool wind out of the north, and it must have rained in the night, because water filled the indentations made by the rumble strips in the road.

After 5.5 miles riding east, we stopped for the first break of the morning. Joy informed me that she did not want to ride 50 miles into a headwind in order to reach the town of Eureka, which had been our very tentative plan last night. I was agreeable, so we abandoned that plan, and continued riding east.

After a while I rode one mile north to visit the tiny community of Lebanon (no population listed), only because we live in Lebanon, Illinois, and I thought it might be faintly amusing to have a picture of my bike in front of the town sign. Joy didn’t think it was worth riding even one mile into the headwind to visit The Other Lebanon, so she continued riding east on the highway.

I saw few signs of life in Lebanon so early on Sunday morning. There was a small town park that contained bathrooms with actual flush toilets, some playground equipment, a few trees, and a long-abandoned swimming pool. It’s hard to believe this tiny place had its own swimming pool at one point. Even the Lebanon where we live doesn’t have a swimming pool, and more than 4,000 people live there. That’s because the town is run by annoying old fogies who don’t like newfangled ideas like swimming pools.

After taking a few pictures, I got back on the highway and rode about as fast as I’m capable of riding on the heavy bike, in order to catch up with Joy, who proclaimed that she did not like South Dakota. “Why”? I asked (I’m pretty much OK with South Dakota, myself). Apparently the wind in South Dakota is just too unpredictable for my wife.

I rode off our route again to visit another little town, Seneca, which had more going on than Lebanon. But not a lot more.

It was hot by the time we reached Faulkton (population 736). We first stopped at a burger place, but the presence of misbehaving children caused us to leave before ordering. My tolerance for annoying children has never been lower. We rode down the street to a quieter, more appealing gas station, where we sat inside for more than an hour, escaping the heat and eating the kind of snacks and fried food usually found in these places.

We decided we needed to head north, despite the wind from that direction, so we got out our maps and phones, and soon determined that the town of Ipswich might work. It contained an odd establishment called the “Hospitality Hotel”, which, based on photos I found on the internet, was clearly once a hospital. I asked the woman working at the gas station if she’d heard of the place, and she told me that her sister had been born there.

We continued to sit at our table in the gas station, eating soft-serve ice cream and delaying our return to the heat and sun. An older lady came in and talked to us for a while. She was from Seneca, one of the little towns I’d visited this morning, and as she listed the many people who had moved away, and the businesses and churches that had closed in her lifetime, she grew teary. I tried changing the subject by telling her about our planned stay in the Hospitality Hotel, and she said “My daddy died there.”

On that slightly downbeat note, we got back on our bikes and headed north on a gravel road, where there wasn’t a lot to see except for some abandoned old farmhouses. I’ve seen a lot of those in South Dakota. I was stopped along the road waiting for Joy when she pulled in behind me, and after I ignored her for a few seconds as I fiddled with my phone, I looked over my shoulder to find that a snake had somehow had appeared on my rear panniers. I was understandably startled until I realized that it was a rubber snake that Joy had found on the road a few miles back.

The gravel section was a long, hot, slog, so we (especially Joy) were happy to get on pavement for the rest of the ride to Ipswich. Not long after leaving the gravel, as we were stopped along the road, a friendly old couple pulled up beside us and gave us bananas, which were cool and delicious.

We decided that I should ride ahead to Ipswich (population 954) and check into the Hospitality Hotel. When I arrived at what was clearly very recently a hospital, I saw a group of burly men out front, grilling and drinking beer. As I approached them, I prepared myself for the comments that a grown man riding a heavily-laden bicycle would likely provoke.

Sure enough, the men, who were all pipeline workers from Louisiana and Mississippi, and who were living at the Hospitality Hotel, had many questions and comments for me as I waited for the lady to arrive and check me into the “hotel.” The most vocal of the men, a large, self-described “fat boy” from Louisiana, started off by saying “If I had to ride that thing, the seat would be so far up my booty that I couldn’t find it.” As he made other comments about the small seat and his “booty” (while I began to wonder if perhaps his butt fixation just might be indicative of some, uh, buried desires that he had not yet come to terms with), the guy grilling hamburgers kept up a steady stream of patter about how there are bikes with motors, and (after I explained that we were on a vacation), how it’s possible to go on a vacation in car, etc. etc. Another guy told me that he’d been “watching some of that Tour de France” recently.

Before I could find out what the guy thought about Le Tour, the lady running the Hospitality Hotel showed up to check us in, then Joy arrived, and was questioned by the pipeline workers about her mileage for the day (I had earlier told them I’d ridden 80 miles today, but Joy told them 78, and they wanted her to explain this inconsistency).

We went in and examined our home for the night. The people who had purchased the hospital had done the absolute minimum amount of work to convert into a “hotel”: They had carpeted each hospital room. It was otherwise unchanged in every way, and felt exactly like staying in a hospital. After showering and changing clothes we walked outside, talked to the pipeline workers some more, gave the rubber snake to the little boy of one of the workers, then walked a few blocks and had dinner at Subway.

Today's ride: 80 miles (129 km)
Total: 1,985 miles (3,195 km)

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