After serving up a healthy and delicious bowl of hot oatmeal, Paul dropped me off as planned to finish my climb out of the Sheyenne River Valley at the start of my 60-mile ride to Jamestown, N.D. I am happy to say that though it was a jolt to start the ride with some uphill pedaling, I made it the whole way up that hill without needing to rest. Most of my route today was along Hwy 46, which over this segment had very little traffic and a nice shoulder. The weather was perfect, and the wind was at my back. This was biking paradise!

Not far from Kathryn, I crossed one of the U.S. continental divides. This divide, the Laurentian Divide, also called the Northern Divide, separates the Hudson Bay watershed to the north from the Gulf of Mexico watershed to the south.

This is an example of what the roadway looked like for most of the morning.

Some of you may recall my July 18 post, Synchronicity, where I wrote about Marianne, a waitress at a diner in Lebanon, N.H. who prophetically assured me that I would discover lots of amazing synchronicity in the connections I would be making on this trip. How right she was! I am not meeting many cross-country cyclists these days–I think we are too late in the season for that (especially now that I’m crossing the middle of the country)–but this morning I met “Minnesota Mike,” who started on the west coast in August and plans to make it to the east coast sometime next year, after a winter break in Minnesota.

Mike is also from the Twin Cities and, like me, has dreamed of a making a cross-country bike journey since he was young. Also like me, he waited a while to have a good opportunity to do this (he is two years younger than I am). He is heading to a family cabin in Cross Lake, MN, where he will pause his adventure for the season and pick it up from there next year. Amazingly, Mike, a commercial finance lender, at one time worked for the same financial institution I worked for and was hired by a former boss of mine–a legendary leader known for his ability to build teams and businesses. During our 15 to 20-minute conversation, we touched on close to a dozen mutual friends. Who would guess that Mike and I would connect in a remote area of rural North Dakota?

Here is Mike, on his way to Enderlin, N.D., a town I had passed through the day before.

Mike is using the same Adventure Cycling “Northern Tier” map series that I am using. He is also posting updates on his trip on a website at minnesotamikebiketrip.com. In checking out his site, I learned that Mike has dedicated his trip to help support “Baskets From JoJo,” a family non-profit created to honor the life and generous spirit of Mike’s late wife, Nancy Jo, by lifting up cancer patients and their families as they deal with the disease. Mike’s wife passed away six years ago after a 15-month battle with ovarian cancer. I took this photo showing that Mike had the same map I am using in my own handlebar bag.

Here are a few more scenes from my perfect day on the bike. This handyman’s special on the prairie left me wondering about the stories behind this home–when and for whom it was built and how it came to be abandoned.

I love the way so many cloud formations emerge when your view stretches out to the horizon. At one point, I could see a rainstorm off in the distance to the south, but it never came close to me.

Here are a couple of views of the James River, which I crossed early in the afternoon.

My route for the last 18 miles to Jamestown was on a somewhat less peaceful and scenic stretch along U.S. Highway 281, but there was a great shoulder, and I was able to cruise along in high gear at 16 or 17 MPH to make speedy headway to my destination in Jamestown, N.D. (pop. 15,750), where I arrived around 5:30 p.m.