Today I rode a bike on the shoulder of an interstate highway (I-94) for the first time in my life. North Dakota is I believe the only state where this is legal, and so it is definitely an anomaly, but even the Adventure Cycling map series makes some use of the shoulder on I-94 west of Dickinson, N.D., and so it seemed to be a safe and reasonable thing to do during my time here. On my ride today, I-94 was the only direct route to get from Jamestown (pop. 15,750) to Steele, N.D. (pop. 665), which was one of the few towns where there was a motel on my way to Bismarck. And so, my route was about 63 miles, almost entirely on the shoulder of the interstate. About half of this route was just fine–it was on a wide, smooth shoulder that kept me comfortably distant from the fast-moving traffic on the interstate. As I’ll describe in further detail below, however, riding along the remainder of it was probably the most dangerous thing I’ve ever had to do.

But let’s start at the beginning of the day. Breakfast at the Holiday Inn in Jamestown was an interesting experience. I was glad I arrived when I did. Shortly after I got there, the soccer team for Hastings College (a private Presbyterian college in Hastings, Nebraska) showed up, and the dining room was soon so crowded that a number of the players had to eat standing up. It appeared I was the only person in the room having breakfast who wasn’t on the team. I subsequently looked up the team on the internet and learned that a late goal that day gave the team, known as the Broncos, a 2 to 1 victory over the University of Jamestown team, known as the Jimmies. Maybe that breakfast was just what the Broncos needed to help them trounce the Jimmies that day, and perhaps having breakfast with a winning team did me some good as well.

Unlike so many of the towns I’ve been through on this trip, which are named after cities in Great Britain and Europe, Jamestown, N.D., founded in 1883, was named after a city in the U.S.–Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607. But Jamestown, VA, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was named after King James I, so I guess there are nevertheless some Old World antecedents in the name.

Jamestown, N.D. was the birthplace of the novelist and short story writer Louis L’Amour, who at the time of his death in 1988 had written 89 novels, 14 short-story collections, and two full-length works of nonfiction. L’Amour was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 and was the first novelist to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.

I couldn’t leave Jamestown without a 3-mile detour to visit the world’s largest buffalo statue, and the route there took me along a stretch of Louis L’Amour Lane.

The world’s largest buffalo statue is indeed quite large. You can get a sense of its size relative to my bike, which I propped against one of its hooves for the photo below. The buffalo was having its belly repainted, I assume in preparation for winter.

OK, so now we get to the part of my day on the bike that, unlike yesterday, was not so perfect. As I mentioned, I rode along the shoulder of I-94, where the speed limit was 75 MPH. Traffic was not heavy, but there were a number of large trucks in the mix.

One of the most annoying aspects of the shoulder along I-94, beginning about 10 miles into my ride, were deep-groove “rumble strips” placed every fifty feet across the entire width of the shoulder. They required me either to slow down to navigate the strips on road bike tires, or to veer out onto the highway lane after checking carefully to make sure no vehicles were coming up behind me at 75 or 80 MPH. I’ve encountered other rumble strips, both on other stretches of I-94 and other roads, where the strips do not span the entire shoulder, allowing a bike to get around them on smooth pavement. This was not the case for most of the route between Jamestown and Steele, however. You can see the rumble strips in this photo.

The following photo shows a much narrower rumble strip that is much more friendly to someone on a bike.

The most annoying and indeed very precarious part of today’s ride along the interstate shoulder, however, were sections of highway that were under construction, which in several instances were reduced to a single lane for traffic with no shoulder at all. Following is a photo of a hazard like this, which I believe was the most dangerous situation I have ever encountered on a bike. There was no room for error, and I worried that a large truck simply might not have the space to navigate around me.

This is not to say that truck drivers are bad people or careless drivers–I think the great majority of them are some of the most courteous drivers on the road. I stopped at a rest stop and had a conversation with Nick, a truck driver who lives in Sacramento but is originally from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. We talked about where he was from, and he said Americans often think when he says he is from Georgia that he is from the State of Georgia in the U.S. I told him I knew where the Republic of Georgia was, and that this was also where Stalin was from. As I said that, he looked at me and smiled, but didn’t say anything. I can only imagine what he might have been thinking.

Nick’s English was challenging, but he was very kind and friendly–he filled my water bottle from a fresh bottle of spring water he had, and also offered me food. After I took his photo, he asked if he could shoot a short video of me. I obliged, and as he filmed, again answered his questions about my trip, which included his query about how old I was. Afterward, he gave me a warm handshake and wished me a safe and happy ride.

Nick left the diesel engine running on his truck while he was at the rest stop. It was a long truck, and I wasn’t standing back far enough to capture the whole thing in the photo depicted below. I left before he did but knew he would be passing me soon. When you hear honking from a vehicle when you are on a bike, you are often not 100% sure what it means. In Nick’s case, as his truck passed me a short time later, I was sure I correctly interpreted the international horn language of the two short blasts from his truck to mean, “farewell, my friend, and best of luck on your journey.”

I didn’t accept Nick’s food, in part because I had just eaten about a half hour beforehand at Cafe Home Cookin’ in Medina, N.D. (pop. 270).

I thought it was interesting that the whiteboard at the restaurant correctly spelled “Knoephla,” the soup of the day, but erred in its spelling of caramel. I didn’t know what Knoephla soup was but Googled it and learned that it is a thick chicken and potato soup that is particularly common in the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Wikipedia also informed me that in North Dakota, the soup typically contains just potatoes and dumplings.

Sure enough, when my soup arrived, it contained only potatoes and dumplings, but it was quite good.

Thankfully, I made it safely to Steele, N.D. by about 6 p.m. and checked in at the Cobblestone Inn. I preferred to be on the main floor rather than the second since the motel didn’t have an elevator, which would mean that I would have to carry my bike upstairs to bring it to my room. However, the desk clerk told me that if I wanted to get a good night’s sleep, I should be on the second floor, because there were a bunch of potato farmers staying there, and I wouldn’t want to be on the floor underneath them when they are “clomping around” at all hours. I took the second-floor room and had a good night’s sleep.

Speaking of potatoes, I found a couple fine-looking spuds along the shoulder of I-94 today. Among the many road hazards I was facing that day, it hadn’t occurred to me until later that I also could have been struck by an errant potato flung off the back of a potato truck barreling down the road at 75 MPH.

Not every day on a bike is a day in paradise. If my mom were still alive and knew about the risks I had been taking today, I am sure that at a minimum I would receive a very stern lecture. Thankfully, everything turned out fine, but the day’s events were a reminder that unexpected risks can and will confront us from time to time and we need to do what we can to be prepared to deal with them or avoid them whenever possible. Heading west from Steele, there happens to be a good alternative to continuing to ride along I-94 as I head west to Bismarck, and this is what I intend to take tomorrow.