RCN 72.32pg - Steve Briggs

slate. It’s a shame he had such ordinary itemsas clothes and food in his bag to waste room.We passed a mountain bike and a BikeE headingthe other direction. I would have chatted,but they only waved. That was the only otherrecumbent I saw on the trail.We were keeping our eyes open for TheGlory Hunter. Our directions were not tooclear. Our original confirmation and the currentday’s itinerary could not even agree onwhich side of the road the gold panning waslocated on, much less the distance. We were20 minutes late. Surely Lew allowed a fewextra minutes for bicycle riders. We did see asign next to an open pit with machinery andbuckets around. No sign of crusty miner types.We continued on down the road, worried abouthaving to retrace our route uphill. By the timewe reached the trailhead at Mystic, we knewthe open pit had been the place. Luis washighly disappointed. The best I could do waspromise to check in with Jesse when wereached Hill City.Luis and I ate lunch in silence sitting in theshade of the shelter at the trailhead. Mosttrailheads had very nice wooden shelters. Othershad only a sign. Some had their benchesplaced outside rather than inside. With the heat,it didn’t make sense to us. We frequently choseto sit inside on the dirt/gravel rather than onthe bench in the heat. Some trailheads hadportable toilets. Most of them were very clean,but the one in Hill City was disgustingly dirty.Some of them were actual portable toilets, butothers were permanent buildings.We were down the trail about two mileswhen Luis discovered he had lost his sunglasses.I was grouchy as we backtracked uphillto our lunch stop. Luis was grouchy aboutthe gold panning. What a pair we were. Nosunglasses—he must have lost them furtherback. Oh, well. We turned around, intent ongetting to the shop and checking on the goldpanning. We rode in silence uphill for sixmiles. I ran over a green garden snake, mortallywounding it. Now our day was really bad.A downhill put it all in perspective. Who wouldhave thought a 2% downgrade could improvelife so much?Luis turned his front wheel too sharply whenstopping and dumped in the sand. Luckily hewasn’t hurt. We stopped next to a beaver pond,and Luis picked up a large chunk of aspen thatthe beaver had been ready to move. I imagineda confused beaver when he came backfor his next log and found it missing. Luis carriedthe log between his Camelbak and his seat.We were close to Hill City when we ran out offilm. We had been averaging a roll of film aday.We rode straight to the bike shop. Jessechecked on the more commercial gold-panningtour in town. The last tour was at 4:30. Good.We would eat and do the tour. Somehow bothLuis and I were confused about the time. As22 Recumbent Cyclist News 72we were finishing our hamburgers at the 16thStreet Diner, we discovered that it was almost5 p.m., not 4 p.m. We had missed the secondgold-mining opportunity. All we could do waslaugh. It seemed that gold panning wasn’t goingto happen for us. Now our evening’s activitieswere all mixed up; we had been planningon dinner at the Alpine Inn and theCrazy Horse Monument is near theMountain Trailhead. We almost missedseeing it as we approached from theback side.evening light show of Mount Rushmore. Wehad just finished eating, so we ended up notbeing hungry for dinner at the Alpine Inn. Thewaiting line was an hour the first night we werein town. This night, we had just eaten. Had werealized the correct hour, we would have goneto the Alpine Inn. Their steaks and desserts arelegendary. No gold panning, no gold-mine tour,no steak. We did go to Mount Rushmore. Entranceis free for people, but cars pay $5 topark. The free parking lot down the hill wasfull. The ranger’s talk and slide show werequite moving given the recent events in theUnited States.Luis and I spent the rest of our evening dryingout our tent and shopping for the next day’ssnacks. I left both bikes with Jesse for tuneups.Our hotel was a Best Western. It was clean,but the walls were paper thin. Luis and I agreedthat we liked the cabin much better. Staying ina cabin seemed to fit the rustic Old West atmosphereof South Dakota. Plus, staying in thecabin we couldn’t hear when our neighborswere peeing . . .Thursday, 5/30—Hill City to Plenty StarRanch (1 mile before Pringle)27.07 miles, 6.75 mph average, 15.9 mphhigh speedWe ate breakfast at the Best Western and droveover to pick up the bikes. Jesse and I had alengthy conversation about why he couldn’tadjust the rear derailleur. He ended up using awasher as a shim. Jesse said the only reasonhe could imagine this would be happening isif the rear hub had magically scooted over.Hmmm, well, actually this isn’t the originalwheelset. I didn’t even think of the newwheelset being the problem. The originalwheels both had unacceptable rim seams (inmy opinion). I don’t like having people stareat me in wonder at the loud thump, thump everytime I use the brakes. I did return thewheelset to RANS. Mark Fischer at RANS toldme he installed the wheelset on his personalbike and felt that the wheels rode fine and Iwas getting a thump from the extreme brakingconditions with the steep downhills in westernColorado. RANS returned the wheelset tome. They are now sitting in my basement, stillin the box. I ended up buying a new wheelsetfrom Joe Young in Texas (830-997-6376,joe@youngwheels.com). Joe’s wheels comewith a lifetime truing warranty. We did wait aconsiderable amount of time for the hubs tocome in from Phil Wood.I also talked to a German fellow who washelping out at the shop. I originally thoughthe was Petra’s brother. It turns out he has bicycled27,000 miles so far on a multi-year/multi- continent cycling journey. He was headingtowards Alaska and had spent the past twomonths in South Dakota. I would have chattedmore, but it was already 9 a.m. and gettinghotter.We had trouble finding the continuation ofthe trail in Hill City, but we were finally onthe road with a nine-mile uphill to start ourday. The grade was very gentle. The vista hadopened up with lots of green meadows andwetlands. Hearing frogs ribbit now reminds meof South Dakota. They were our companionsalong almost the entire trail. We saw old fallendowncabins along many areas of theMickelson. The trail was rougher with smallrocks and patches of sand. My front wheelturned on me twice, but I managed a quick recoveryboth times. We stopped in two differentcement underpasses, pretending they werethe cool tunnels from yesterday.We ate lunch at Heritage Village’s $7.00buffet. They should have charged me extra forall of the ice water I drank. We almost roderight past the Crazy Horse Monument. Luckilywe had stopped to photograph somethingelse and saw the monument behind us.We didn’t stop in Custer (one of the largesttowns on the trail). Luis and I were still fullfrom eating the buffet, and our Camelbakswere full of ice water. We had get-down-theroad-itis and didn’t even stop at the TrailheadBike Shop to see if they had a water bottle formy collection. We continued the slight upgradefor another three miles. Then the trail slopeddown. Down, down, down. We stopped to fixthe battery door of my camera with medicaltape. Down, down, down. Life was sure feel-