It's always a treat to cycle out of a city early in the morning, beating all that traffic you had to fight through the afternoon before when entering. The remains of last night's rain lay in puddles in St. Cloud and the skies are grey with temps in the 60s, another big change from yesterday. A convenient westerly breeze, and I know what to do with that>> sit up tall and straight and float! SR 95 eastward takes us through Duelm, Glendorado, Princeton, Pinebrook, and to Cambridge for lunch, passing more corn and soybean fields, broken only by the occasional small lake and cattail wetland. A bald eagle and young doe look up as I whiz by. The pecan pie slowly disappears as the miles add. I happen upon a bike store in Cambridge and pick up new rear flasher lights and chain lube.
Just east, I meet Raymond and Bryanda, who are heading north to canoe, along the road at a route detour and we get in a serious 40 minute chat, specifcally about declining local animal life in Minnesota, and in general about how disconnected many people are from their environment. On the latter topic, I am in complete agreement; so much reliance on mechanization and power engines, and very little use of the human body, in recreation and in work. I have never seen so many riding lawnmowers as I have seen in Minnesota. Monstrous power boats are hauled long distances to fish small lakes. Bus size RVs pull SUVs which pull more power boats, with a shiny, unused bicycle hanging uselessly on back. Underexercised men in oversized pickup trucks, hauling ATVs, fly by me all day long. On and on, disconnected from their bodies, disconnected from their land. What madness, what desperation!
In a small measure of redemption, and while all vehicular traffic is diverted, I am allowed to run some 6 miles of newly rolled, unlined pavement, and like the proud hound in his master's pickup truk, I ride right down the middle of the smooth, black expanse all alone. Hee-Haw! Taylor Falls on the St. Croix River is reached at 4:30, but not, of course, before the daily choco-redemption-shake. The Pines Motel sits neatly next to the river in this quaint, slightly touristic town. Taylor Falls was an important and strategic stopping point for upriver barges in the late 1800s, and the place where overland travel started in the area due to the upstream rapids. Today the rapids still exist but a hydroelectric dam has been built upstream.
Feeling the heat and the cumulative miles of the last few days, dinner is foregone and Im asleep at 7:30 pm. Passed 2300 miles today.
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