Big
Ride Updates...
22. Rapid City, SD 7/9
A rest day. No cycling. "Sue" comes from just north of here. Sue is famous now. She moved to
Chicago about 2 years ago. She began accepting visitors in May this year
at her new residence on the shores of Lake Michigan and is visited by
thousands of people every day. Despite her current notoriety, she was
ignored for the first 65 million years or so that she called South Dakota
her home. In describing her only the "superlative" will do. She is the
biggest; 40 feet long and about 13 feet tall at the hip, and she probably
tipped the scales at about 7 tons. She is the most expensive: 8.36 million
dollars. She is the most complete: 90 percent of her bones have been 
accounted
for. She is the country's most famous fossil. She is a Tyrannosaurus rex
skeleton found by Sue Hendrickson, a field paleontologist for the Black
Hills Institute of Geological Research, and is one of many dinosaur skeletons
unearthed from the plains of South Dakota and Wyoming. She is also the
only thing that is not on display and not for sale in the Black Hills.
What a commercial area: campgrounds, water slides, minature golf, rock
shops, wood carving shops, jewelry, t-shirts, postcards, and most include
the name of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Buffalo Bill or national, international
or exclusive.
Our
"rest" consisted of hoping on a bus for a tour of Mt. Rushmore and the
Crazy Horse Monument, and for some of us it was. (PHOTO: Pete and Vance
on the bus). I had seen the four faces on the mountain when my family
camped across the country in the 50's, and I had read about the efforts
to create a memorial to the famous Indian warrior. One sculpture is complete
and has become an icon. Two million people come here each year including
a Norwegian choir that sang to us. The four Presidients made a striking
backdrop. The choice of the four was controversial in the 
twenties
and the location, on Indian holy ground was unwise. Nevertheless, it remains
a significant accomplishment. The Crazy Horse monument was bewildering.
One Indian tribes' desire to have a monument to their hero seems to have
been "kidnapped" by the sculptor and now by his family. The effort is
private, no governmental support and no native American support was mentioned
in any of the promotional material. If completed, the work will certainly
be monumental, but its purpose seems to have been diverted to personal
aggrandizement.
OK, here it is. The usual "Dad in front of the monument" picture. (PHOTO: Paul)
23. Rapid City to Kadoka, SD 7/10 Miles 103.4 Total 1468.5
Robert
Louis Stevenson in1879 traveling by rail and looking out at the Great
Plains wrote: "What livelihood can repay a human creature for a life spent
in this huge sameness? …A sky full of stars is the most varied spectacle
that he can hope. He may walk five miles and see nothing; ten, and it
is as though he had not moved; twenty, and still he is in the midst of
the same great level, and has approached no nearer to the object within
view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his advance…His eye must
embrace at every glance the whole seeming concave of the visible world;
it quails before so vast an outlook, it is tortured by distance; yet there
is not rest or shelter…" (taken from "Great Plains", by Ian Frazier)
Our
morning and afternoon were spent in this "sameness". Flat lands spread
to a distant horizon and the road disappeared on the far horizon without
once changing its direction. Sometimes we rode through maturing wheat,
but more often we rode through grasslands under an overcast sky leaving
our world in a flat, pale pallet. In between we rode through the "Badlands",
a place tortured by erosion. Bizarre ridges and outcrops that looked like
giant "drip" sandcastles imported from some giant's beach heaved up out
of the ground and dry creek beds between the "castles" wove their way
into the distance. A golden eagle soared overhead, the highlight of my
day.
Tony
is a respiratory therapist from Ashville NC. It's his second career but
cycling has always been a passion for him. We have agreed to discuss cycling
at any time throughout the trip and to restrict our "shop talk"; either
of us can veto the subject if we wish.
24. Kadoka to Pierre, SD 7/11 Miles 94.6 Total 1563.1
The
whole of middle of our continental US is geologically becalmed, stagnant,
and virtually unmolested. Its surface has been altered slightly by wind
and water over thousands of years, but its basement layers are virtually
flat and have not been bent or folded. They have not been volcanically
active nor uplifted and distorted. The sediments on top of that layer
are not so stable. These Great Plains can be flat like a lake (most of
yesterday) or roll and swell, and break like and ocean (this day) making
for long slow climbs and long fast descents. When we rode out this morning,
the valleys were filled with mist. We cycled into the low morning sun
that turned the mists silvery. Roof tops and trees penetrated the it at
long intervals. Riders descending the hill, silhouettes in the light,
disappeared into that pale cloud and on the far side, others emerged.
The morning was windless and cool and wonderful. And then it was my turn
in the fog, a drop temperature and a slight moistness on the skin until,
speed dropping and gears changing, I too rejoined the light.
By
mid morning we were headed north. The swells were mostly grassland interspersed
with "amber waves of grain". The impact of the view was in the expansiveness.
Distances seemed to go on forever, almost as if I could see the curve
of the earth in the distance. The land was green and so many different
greens on closer observation. From the blue end of the green spectrum
to the yellow in the roadside "weeds", and each of these toned from almost
white to the nearly black. The rise and fall of the land and the passing
shadow of clouds over it and the ruffling of the wind animated the whole
canvas. Our final crest of the day brought us in sight of the Missouri
River and a one mile "coast" took us across into the state capital, Pierre,
pronounced "pier".
Yesterday
I might have joined with Stevenson in condemning the "sameness", but not
today. Today I would side with Thomas Hart Benton, who, in 1937 found
the plains to have a different effect: "…there are no limits. The world
goes on indefinitely. The horizon is not seen as the end of a scene. It
carries you on beyond itself into farther and farther spaces…….For me
the great plains have a releasing effect…." (also quoted from "Great Plains"
by Ian Frazier)
Now
I am the "happy camper", entertained by three kestrels playing in the
branches overhead in a tree shaded park on the banks of the mighty river,
watching the diamond sparkle on its rushing surface. Nathan found the
river pleasant also. A fine day in the middle of the country.
--- Paul Fairman, Big Rider #2152.
< pfairman@earthlink.net>