It's been nearly a year since I've ridden a 70-mile day, so it's no wonder I was in my sleeping bag so early last night.  After a few pages of Hemingway, I dozed off into a deep, paralytic sleep . . . until something made contact with my head.  I bolted upright while swatting my head and instinctively yelling "GET AWAY!"

It was gone by the time I regained my senses, so I don't know if it was a chipmunk (most likely) or a raccoon or a bear.  Whatever it was, it's snout made contact with the top of my head with only the screen of my tent between us.  

The weirdest thing is that I thought it was early morning because there was a hint of light out there.  In my stupor, I believed I had been sleeping for 12 hours.  In reality, it was still the same day and I had only been out for about an hour.  

I rolled over, promptly fell back into a deep sleep, and didn't wake up until it really was the next morning -- this morning.

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It was a nice morning to be riding a bike.  Three miles back to Almelund, then a couple of miles on Highway 95 to Highway 9 which took me to the tiny town of Sunrise.  Sunrise has a welcome sign at the edge of town that reads: "SUNRISE: Boyhood home of Hollywood star Richard Widmark."  I know who that is, but just barely.  I bet 90% of motorists who pass that sign can't say the same.

I had to wonder how long the town will keep that sign up, clinging to its single claim to fame.  I also had to wonder if anybody has ever seen that sign, turned to their spouse, and said "Look honey, it's the hometown of Richard Widmark!  Let's stop here and check it out!"  I've seen many similar signs in my travels.  Sometimes the signs honor a high school athlete who went on to the Olympics, or somebody who became a weekend news anchor at a TV station in a medium-sized city.  It seems sort of desperate to me.

I dropped down into a little river valley while thinking such thoughts, rose back out of it, and the town of Sunrise was history.

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The next several miles were all farmland.  I didn't see much of interest in the town of Harris, so I pushed on to Rush City, which had a charming historic hotel called the Grant House.  I had breakfast at the hotel's restaurant.  The very, very overweight cook prepared two HUGE pancakes for me, as well as two perfect over-easy eggs and fried homemade sausage.  This was not the first time I have noticed that a hard bike ride makes pretty average food seem like a gourmet meal.

Since it was slightly past the the internationally-recognized-no-alcohol-hour of 10:00 a.m., I felt no guilt about enjoying a beer with breakfast before heading back out into the heat and wind.

At the north end of the next town, Pine City, I stopped at the city park to drink some water under the roof of a picnic pavilion.  Within minutes I was joined by a chatty woman who ate a tossed salad at the table next to mine.  "Chatty" is an understatement.  She rambled on and on and on.  I nodded politely for a while, but the heat and humidity affected my ability to put up with such a one-sided conversation.  I excused myself and moved on.

Heart

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In Hinckley I visited my first real grocery store so far.  I bought a New York strip steak, which I stuffed into my pannier for the fifteen-mile trip to Banning State Park.   I also bought a container of cold watermelon chunks, which I gobbled down enthusiastically on the shady curb outside the store.  I was kind of grossed out by the big puddle of tobacco juice that some Hincklian had spit on the sidewalk behind me.  But then, who am I to criticize?  The locals could just as easily have been disgusted by me shoving watermelon into my mouth while the juice ran down my chin and onto my shirt.

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I liked Banning State Park.  The variety of trees, including some tall pines, gave it the feel of finally being "up north."  There was only one problem.  The campground was separated from the visitor center by a mile of gravel which, again, I feared would shred my skinny tires or else would cause me to wipe out.  I took my chances.

There were no problems at first.  "Perhaps," I thought, "you don't need mountain bike tires to ride on gravel."  I was feeling pretty cocky about that realization until I almost took a dive at the entrance to the campground.  ALMOST!  I kept my right foot unclipped at all times in case I had to save myself from a fall. [1]

My site, selected for me by the ranger at the visitor center, was perfect.  I set up my tent, drank my last two Brickhouse Beers, listened to some tunes on my iPod (Pavement) and then a nice soothing rain began to fall.  I stayed fairly dry by standing under a tree with my rain jacket on.  When it ended, the rain-cooled air felt great.

However, the rain did present a different challenge.  The sticks I had gathered for cooking my steak got wet.  Getting a fire started required a lot of ingenuity and hard work.  Failure would mean a wasted $11.00 New York Strip.  Therefore I did whatever was necessary to save it.  In this case, necessity required me to grab about half of a roll of toilet paper from the nearby outhouse, set it on fire, and hope that it burned long enough to catch a few small twigs on fire.  It worked, and fifteen minutes later my steak was on the grill.

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[1]  That's a technique I've learned from many years of wintertime cycling on the ice and snow of Minnesota.