Day 36: All the Pretty Horses

The grasslands continued to roll, and there were in fact horses (see pics to be uploaded in next real town), but mostly just grassy undulation. The sky was blue. There was one road - as if there were ever any more than one - and it went west. When the wind blew through the tall grass on slopes in the middle distance, it looked like a great migration of manatees. Prairie Manatees. We rode for about 75 miles, and during the latter half long buttes and headlands began to rise out of the previously dimensionless expanse to our south. It turns out we could see a long, long way.

Towns here are about 11 miles apart because of the logistical demands of the abandoned railroad we've been following. That doesn't mean there's necesarily anything IN the towns, but there's pretty reliably a gas station in 2 of every 3. This is important in terms of muffin and Hot Pocket procurement, and convenient in terms of sanctioned mituration. You know you're coming to a town about 5 miles out when you see its water tower rising out of a sooty patch of horizon that will eventually resolve into trees. The water tower then hovers there like a fata morgana, willing you on and taunting you at the same time - once in a while the road will turn away from the tower and in such cases you feel more acutely than ever that you are bound to the fickle will of this sizzling, roadkill-stained strip of blacktop (or chipseal, or concrete block).

Today we were in a diner for lunch in some awful tourist trap of a town (Murdo, I think, which claims to have a world-famous car show. I wouldn't know.) when we struck up a conversation with a really cool young family from Minnesota. Dad had done about 20 triathlons, and one of the kids tells me that he's done "about 5 or 6."
"One," says dad. "You've done one triathlon."
"Well, there was green lake..."
"Right," says mom. "One."
"OK, maybe it was like 2 or 3 then," concedes the kid. Behind his back, dad is holding up his index finger and mouthing the word "one" at me. Mom isn't going to let this go, and assures me that son has only done one triathlon.
"Yeah," says the kid, "but there was also that long run."

Still, he's done more than I have (that's about one or two, approximately). I think I would get demolished in the swimming part. I did race a freight train the other day though, if that counts for anything.

Tomorrow: wicked hot ride through the Badlands. We're on mountain time as of tonight, so that should help us get an early start. Ride on.