This week's post comes from Wisconsin, in the heart of America's mid-west. It's also known as America's "bread basket" as a lot of food is grown and produced in this area, but as 300 million people live in this country, and a lot of them eat more than the average amount of food, it makes this "bread basket" a bloody big one, and so it takes a long time to get through it!
Notable events of the last week do not really include much to do with the landscape, as all we've really seen are corn fields and flour mills, and the occasional hill. Small town America is also pretty dull with regards to what's there, the usual fast food places and not a lot else, apart from antique stores funnily enough, some towns with a few hundred people in have 2 or 3 of them! We have however discovered the wonders of Dairy Queen ice cream parlours, and also had a return of "Hospitality Friday," as Andy and myself christened it whilst we were in Utah.
With camping options looking limited in the small town of Sleepy Eye and the Friday night closing in, we thought we'd head to a bar to mull our options over a cold beer. Well we bought our first round and from that moment on, we barely had to take our wallets out. People kept coming upto us, obviously recognising the loaded up bikes outside and 2 hairy creatures sat at the bar, they'd put 2 and 2 together, we'd tell them what we're doing and then the offer of a beer couldn't be turned down! A guy called Troy then offered to let us camp in his garden, where we met some of the town's local talent, who invited us to the next bar down the road. The pattern continued, with more beers and even a quadruple shot of Tequila. I woke up in the tent fully clothed at 9am on Saturday morning, not really remembering much of what had gone on.
That night itself was very noteworthy, but Saturday afternoon's happenings were even stranger. Being very hungover we quickly realised our planned 90 mile day wasn't going to materialise, so were taking things rather leisurely, which included a 30 minute or so nap at lunch. We set off again, and a few miles down the road a police car and ambulance pulled up next to us to ask if we were OK and if we'd been by the side of the road earlier. We said we were fine, the guy looked a bit pissed off, and then they drove off. It then dawned on us that a passing car had obviously seen us by the road, not bothered to check if we were OK, but call 911 instead, probably saying, "There appears to be 2 dead cyclists on the side of the road.". I mean, thanks for calling the emergency services to check, but you could have just stopped to ask if we were OK, or maybe think that these 2 dead cyclists have both managed to park their bikes very well considering they've both dropped dead on the spot! Very funny really as it all was because we were hungover, I just hope that ambulance hadn't been diverted from a real emergency.
We've also pretty much left all remnants of tourist activity, Minnesota was all very agricultural, as is Wisconsin really. This means we're encountering less RVs, (basically caravans), and this is a very good thing, as the people that generally drive these things do so, for want of a better phrase, like dickheads. In England when people get old and become a hazard for the majority of road users, I like the way we offer pensioners free bus passes, or encourage them to take the train for cheap so they can still get around. In America, not only would this not be possible as the public transport network is more or less non existent due to the car being king and the size if the place, but the complete opposite happens. It's great that they can travel around and see the country but they're all encouraged to buy these monstrously sized RV things, which are literally the size of commercial coaches in some cases, as in, they could fit 56 people in them but instead there is normally a retired American couple inside.
So, you have people whose senses have seen better days, who already probably can't hear the traffic around them, or see it for that matter, or barely even manoeuvre a milk float, driving something that is about 50 foot long. Oh, and they are usually towing a 4 wheel drive SUV behind for good measure for when their coach doesn't fit through the drive-thru. What a bunch of morons. You might sense that I nearly got killed by one of these blundering idiots and their mobile building the other day as I cycled along about 1m off the road, which meant the RV was probably about 90cm off it. It was probably an RV driver that called 911 yesterday too.
I don't know if these people have to pass a test to drive such ridiculous vehicles, but I presume not as they'd all fail, and then this country would have less people to buy endless amounts of cheap gasoline to help prop up the economy!
Me and Andy have also been fairly shocked by the American TV we see every now and again, generally when we treat ourselves to a motel once a week. There's the "Weather Channel" which should be called "Scare the shit out of you TV", honestly the amount of programs they show which make The Exorcist look tame...death by hurricane, death by lightning, death by freak wave...my God. This week is "Hurricane Week", which again involves showing endless shows about hurricanes all over the world, now I completely understand that people need to be aware of these things, but this is just scare mongering. I'm surprised I've not yet seen "Atomic Bomb Related Weather Week."
And then there's Fox News, which I'm not sure deserves capital letters in its name. Someone once told me that this Murdoch run channel is the only source of news for a third of Americans. That is a scary thought. It speaks to people like they're idiots, which they may well be I suppose, but worse than that, basically just tells people what to think with the most outrageously opinionated presenters just shouting guests down live on TV. If you think Sky News is bad (also Murdoch owned), watch this. Thank our lucky stars we have the BBC back home.
I suppose this point of the trip was inevitable where you get frustrated with certain aspects of the culture and daily goings on in a country, and you could be forgiven for thinking that we're not enjoying ourselves, which thankfully couldn't be further from the truth. The Minnesota landscape may have been a bit drab but we're now doing longer days, we broke our "100 miles in a day" duck last week and have since done 105 miles in a day. This means we're getting some idyllic evening sunsets, and as we cycle off into the east with our outstretched shadows in front of us, there isn't another thing in the world I'd rather be doing, or another place I'd rather be. After crossing the mighty Mississippi river, we stayed with Bob and Kathy from the Warm Showers network for bicycle tourers, a bit like Couch Surfing, and experiencing genuine friendliness and hospitality from people like them makes things such as not shaving for a month and only doing laundry once a week worthwhile. This really is the best way to see a country such as the US in my opinion, allowing us to meet wonderful people and see beautiful places, and it all makes the prospect of going home in just over a month to all the worries of normal life rather daunting in a way.
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