Day 36.5 - People are Good - Charlie

After 7 straight days of riding, averaging 68 miles per day, I was too exhausted to write last night. We arrived in Chadron, NE around 4:30 after a 76 mile day, welcomed by our hosts, Steve and Cheryl. At a population of about 6,000, Chadron is the largest town we’ve seen since Norfolk, 5 days ago. It is home to Chadron State College; it’s always nice to be in a college town, no matter how small the school. There’s usually just a little more livelihood, a little more culture, a little less odious political signage (We saw a really nasty sign about 5 miles east of town. Too revolting to repeat here, and the caricatured illustration really put it over the top).

Our ride yesterday was unremarkable, save the beautiful scenery. We rode for about 15 miles at a time, making one larger pit stop in Gordon at the Antelope Creek Cafe for a bacon cheeseburger. The Sandhills stretched out on either side of us for the majority of the ride. Imagine a sea of gently sloping sand dunes, as far as the eye can see, only most of it is covered in grass. After riding through the area, one can understand Taylor’s desire to never leave such a place. But then you might realize how much else is out there and become curious... more on that later.

Towards the end of the trip we began to see more evergreen trees, thicker grass, and less sand. You could almost feel the mountains of the west creeping up; our transitory period of flat land and easy riding, which has been much shorter than we imagined at the beginning of the trip, is coming to an end. Our elevation has been rising very slowly over the last week; soon it will begin rising much more quickly. Whatever we come across we’ll just have to ride through, so best not to dwell on such otiose thoughts.

Steve and Cheryl welcomed us into their home, accompanied by their dog, Lilo, and their 4 chickens. Back in the 80s and 90s they went on a few small bike tours around the world, no big deal. In fact, they met while they were both touring in Austria! Then they split, but they would write letters to each other to coordinate when they’d reconvene. They explained how back in the 80s they didn’t have cellphones (a foreign concept for Maddie and me), so they would plan out post office drop boxes in advance and direct friends and family to send letters ahead. Well, Steve and Cheryl managed to find each other months later in India, did a bit of biking together from there, and the rest is history. They also took their 2 year old daughter on a European tour, and have biked across the US and Ecuador. Truly awe-inspiring stories.

Steve and Cheryl are environmentalists; they do not own a dryer, since it wastes energy, and their “solar dryer” works just as well. They are also vegetarians; we had an incredible dinner of potato soup with salad and homemade bread. They live simply and get their energy from connecting with people, near and far. As you might imagine based on their bike touring experience, they love to travel. They also believe traveling is important to forming a more well-rounded understanding of all people. As Steve put it “when you travel, you start to realize that people are good”. Sure there are some bad apples out there, but generally people have good intentions. Traveling the world and getting to meet people of other religions and cultures and races helps to break down xenophobic feelings. This is something we’ve noticed just on this trip. We’ve talked a lot about how generous how people have been toward us, across every state we’ve traveled through so far, supporting the thesis: people are good.

After dinner Steve mentioned that he makes wine from chokecherries, a bitter, pitted fruit. In fact, he had a jug downstairs that needed to be bottled! It turns out, he made this batch back in 2009 and had never gotten around to bottling it. Maddie and I were eager to see what the bottling process was like, so we all set to work dusting off bottles and cleaning the supplies. In the basement, we set up the tube running from the jug to an empty bottle and let the wine flow. Over the years the clip used to cut off the stream had disappeared, so we had to use our fingers to pinch off the flow. This was not as easy as you’d think, resulting in a bit of wine spillage. Not to worry, though, there was enough to fill about 12 bottles and then some. When you fill a bottle too high, your only choice is to take a straw and drink the excess. Weirdly enough, a lot of our bottles ended up being filled too high.

We capped off the night with chocolate and more chokecherry wine in their (tv-less!) living room. I slept in a loft built by Steve himself; he is a carpenter by trade. Maddie took the couch, which had been calling her name all evening. Today we will explore Chadron a bit and rest up before continuing on to the Black Hills of South Dakota tomorrow. The climbing begins!

- Charlie