Our son Billy will be driving with me to Bismarck, N.D. tomorrow (Mon., May 20), where I will be reunited with my bike at Lance’s Cyclery. From there, Billy will head home in the car, and I will head west on the bike.

I’ve been spending a lot of time yesterday and today getting packed up and trying to make lodging arrangements in several small towns in western North Dakota. This is more challenging than you might think. For example, the only hotel in Hebron, N.D. (pop. 747), the Brick City Motel and Campground, is completely booked with road construction crews. It looks like I will need to prepare for some road construction, too.

Although I never had need for a tent on my travels last summer, I had one with me that I needed to return to a friend at the end of the summer. Our son Joe gave me a new tent that he got as a gift from a friend, and Trudi and I set it up in the basement last night to make sure everything was in order. It was, and so I will be prepared in case I can’t find a more civilized place to stay. Hopefully I will be able to pitch it without her help.

Last summer, I rode 2,375 miles from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Bismarck, and I estimate I have about 1,500 miles left to get to Anacortes, WA. I went back to look at my blog entry from 6-26-23, “Why am I Doing This?”, and my reasons for the trip remain the same: achieving a longstanding goal, tackling a physical and mental challenge, having time to reflect, slowing down to get a better look at the world, and finding something interesting to write about. I met and wrote about 114 people (not including relatives) on my journey from Bar Harbor last summer, and I look forward to experiencing more people and places as I continue to head west. I’m looking forward to being outside and on the bike and am reminded of William Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much with Us. Here’s the first stanza:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
–Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!