Sun's hot early today, and I'm off in a T-shirt at 7 am (normally T-shirt time is 9 am). Early fishermen wandering around Starbuck with bait pails at the ready. Take SR 55 southeast into a breeze thru Sedan and to Brooten, where I NEED to stop and eat. I happen into the Prairie Porches Cafe, and upon entering this quaintly adorned (reminds me of my Granny's kitchen) and fine aroma-ed (what's that- good coffee?), there are 2 ladies in the kitchen doing the final spicing on vats of potato salad and macaroni salad. "Can I have a taste?" , I blurted out. Well, sampling turns into bowls of and then into lunch (crabmeat on croissant with rhubarb cobbler) and then into 2 hours of across-the-board, good-natured chatting with proprieter Debbie P , all washed down with 3 cups of soul rejuvenating (yes, good) coffee. Debbie has lived locally for 18 years, and we talked of many things as if we were longtime friends; associations with disfunctional friends, the struggling local economy from undercutting by "bigbox" stores, our rural childhoods, and international struggles about which we have strong opinions yet feel helpless to affect.
Well, it's 12:30, getting hot and I need to move on. Thank you, Debbie, for the very enjoyable visit. It's folks like you that have made this trip wonderfull. And thank you for lunch! 7 miles later in Belgrade, The Red Onion Ice Cream stand stops me and forces me to down a choco shake. As I turn NE on SR 23 in Paynesville, I spy a lovely table of homemade baked goods being (wo)manned by Neva Miller. Unfortuneately, she only has whole pies, thus I am forced to purchase an entire pecan pie and devour half as we chat. (I now firmly believe that every long distance biker needs to keep an emergency fruit pie in one panier (or would that be pie-nier?)
It's gotta be 90 degrees by now as I pass thru Roscoe and stop at Cold Springs. The weekend traffic is building as I approach St. Cloud. As I down a (sodium free) Gatorade outside a convenience store, Dan, a local carpenter taking his family of 10 (!) out to a friend's farm for the weekend, strolls over and we shoptalk and triptalk a bit and he wishes me luck. As we part, I think I hear another person yearning to ride a bike on such a journey someday. At least he would have many options for persons to drive the sagwag!
To avoid traffic, we take the quieter Rte. 2 north to St. Joseph before the final sprint on SR 75 into busy St. Cloud. A handfull of grapes save me from "bonking" and the (big green, neon fish) logo of Super8 (they have now employed me for direct endorsing) welcomes me.
Hot day today!
Ankles shrinking!
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