Big Falls, MN

Last summer, I rode a bicycle from Chicago, IL to Devil's Lake, ND. Since I've never written about the adventure, and since it was a long December as far as temperatures went, I thought January might be a good time to talk about summer 2008. January is Bike Month at the Drawing Board.

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Kimbra the Bartender had to be to work at the country club by 7:00 in the morning. That meant that we had to leave her home by 6:45. Again, this was a shame, as I'm fairly certain I could have slept until Inauguration Day. The morning temperatures were flirting with the 40s, and so we moved as quickly as we could into town to wait for warmth. Again, we found a coffeeshop and enjoyed the free internet they offered. I believe I ate a peach muffin.

We left town earlier than we'd been accustomed; definitely before 9:00. It was a big day to our destination, and there was hardly a town* between us and Big Falls. We'd spend the entire day on one road, riding north, further away from what normal people called civilization.

* Screw that. There was barely a mailbox between us and Big Falls.

We left with a sun that disappeared almost immediately. We acclimated to the cold and rode headlong through a rainy mist that never stopped, but never got too bad either. We stopped at a shack for lunch. It was a shack with a bar and crappy sandwiches. I won't say that the sandwiches tasted any good, but they were definitely the best crappy sandwiches I've ever eaten.

We stopped only once to take cover from the rain, an ill-advised move. Once stopped, the mosquitoes were thicker than any kind of precipitation. The little bloodsuckers ravaged my body and we were quickly gone again.

It got colder and rainier. There wasn't a thing to see. We peed at an intersection. A wolf chased us. We rode bikes for about six hours without stopping, never seeing a home, a mailbox, a person, or a car. Eventually we arrived in Big Falls, MN. We were cold, wet, exhausted, and most of all hungry.

That's when we started to learn a little bit about Big Falls. The first thing we learned was that it was not big. Secondly, it did not have falls. A better name for the town might have been Some Rocks. This was as big and fally as it got.

More importantly, we learned that no place in town served food after about 2:00. It was the most depressing visit to a gas station that anyone has ever made. We found a post office and a liquor store and a closed down restaurant. We found a motel that was constructed by connecting trailers. And we found a bar that didn't have beer on tap, but would sell us a frozen pizza for the low, low cost of $10. What choice did we have?

We took showers at a campground, naked and surrounded by hungry mosquitoes. We ate bratwursts with some potheads on a kayak trip. We fell asleep on a concrete pad as early as our bodies would allow. The next morning, we got out of there just as quick as we could.