I rode across the border into North Dakota today. North Dakota is the forty-second state that we’ve been to on The Dream Tour. Only six more states and 2500 miles to go! Immediately after crossing the border, North Dakota had a surprise for me.

I was only about two miles past the border, riding up another of the endless series of hills in this part of the country. Out sunning itself on the wide, blacktop shoulder was a snake. I passed it on its right without much thought. I’ve seen a number of snakes as I’ve travelled through the forty-two states that we’ve visited so far, but usually they’re not looking too good. Most of the time they’ve been a victim of an encounter with an automobile tire. This one, however, looked quite lively.

I thought about whether it was worth stopping and then I slowed, turned around, and rode back to take another look. It was about three feet long. I took some pictures. I thought it was just a plain, ordinary (and harmless) snake until I got just a bit too close. It curled up and made that unmistakable noise of a rattlesnake. OK, time to go, I thought. I didn’t even stop to take one more picture because I didn’t want my phrase “just one more picture” to be added to that long list of “famous last words.”

Besides the rattlesnake, today was nearly a repeat of yesterday. The weather was a few degrees warmer and the wind was out of the north early in the day, but it shifted to the east later on. The terrain was almost identical to yesterday too. More rolling hills through vast areas of treeless prairie. It was very peaceful and quiet. Not very much traffic either. It was beautiful, really, on a nice day like this, but I tried to imagine being here in January when the average high temperature is only 25 degrees and the record cold temperature is -43 degrees (recorded in Bowman, North Dakota in January 1916). It made me think we better finish this tour before too much longer.

Total distance:	44.57 miles
Time:	3:57:20
Average speed:	12.3 mph
Maximum speed:	24.3 mph
Total calories:	2697
Average heart rate:	114 bpm
Maximum heart rate:	147 bpm
Total ascent:	1515 feet
Total descent:	1462 feet
Ride profile:	(click on image to view a larger version)
Ride comments: More headwinds today. Early in the day, the winds were from the north, but around the North Dakota/South Dakota border, they shifted to be from the east.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 at 4:32 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.