Sunday, July 02, 2000

Nancy Crabb met us in Alexandria MN last night. Ron had brought her over with my mother and it was nice to visit with family. We had a room with two beds and we shared the room with her. Today she rode with us from Alexandria MN to Little Falls MN. My tour guides (Mary Kay and Nancy) promised me an easy day of about 55 miles. However, things do not always go as they are planned. First, that new chain that I had installed in Havre MT broke again about 5 miles from the start. It took a while to get it repaired and get restarted on our trip. Then we missed a corner at some point about 5 miles further on and added about 15 miles to the days ride. We ended up going west when we should have been going east. The 55-mile day ended up being a 70-mile day. Finally, to top off everything, we had another flat front tire caused by a rock going through the tire.

The ride to Little Falls was up a valley that was formed by glacier action. For a long distance the land was very flat because it was the bottom of a glacier formed lake. We crossed the Mississippi River today in Little Falls. This far north the river is not very wide. It just looked like a regular river.

After we got to Little Falls, I replaced the rear tire on the bicycle. The tire was becoming worn out (it had 2,050 miles of usage) however it has enough life left that I can use it as a spare. Tomorrow, Joel Crabb, Nancy’s son is going to join us for a couple of days. They will both leave us at the end of the day on July 4th.