Day 57: Goodbye Steph, Hello Thomas

Steph and I woke up, got ready, and made use of the hotel's free breakfast while waiting for the shuttle. It didn't show up on time so she called them and they had apparently lost the reservation made yesterday. Either way it came soon after, too soon. The past week plus has been so fantastic, not only having a riding partner but having so much fun with Steph and getting to share the experience of a lifetime with her. We hugged, both getting a little misty in the eyes, and she boarded the shuttle and took off.

I sulked back to finish my food and packed up. The hill going back out of town wasn't as bad as I expected and soon I had made the 35 miles back to I-90 and headed east. I had thought that at least one benefit to riding solo again would be not having grasshoppers on me that Steph scared into jumping my way. Instead I had a cross wind and they would jump up and fly right onto me. It was pretty gross and hopefully they'll be gone as I move through SD. I still felt great riding until I snacked at length in Presho. This was about the 50 mile mark and I started to drag a bit after. At one point I was riding down Hwy 16, which is a great frontage road, when I saw a massive piece of farm machinery coming towards me. I buckled down for the ultimate game of chicken but lucky for him he turned down a side road before we met. After that the headwinds picked up a little but I eventually made it into Oacoma, just across the Missouri from Chamberlain. When I rolled in I noticed another bike and sure enough the cashier informed me that another tourer, from Germany, was camping there for the night. I set up, fixed some food, and we began to talk.

Thomas is 28 and is biking from Napa to Boston so it was fun to chat with him. We compared gear and the overall trip before agreeing to try riding together to Mitchell which was both of our destinations already. He seems to be going about the same pace as myself so hopefully we can ride comfortably together and not have any pressure from one or the other. Although we have similar start and end points, our trips are much different. He's riding as straight as possible, covering 3100 miles, whereas I'm zig-zagging all over and doing much more exploring, having already ridden over 3100 miles and expecting to finish around 5000. He has a lightweight bike with a gear trailer versus my heavier duty bike and more compact pannier setup.

It will be interesting to ride with a stranger and try and accommodate a potentially different style of riding and overall schedule, but I'm definitely excited to have someone to ride with through sometimes boring South Dakota now that Steph is gone.

I finished eating and headed over to Al's Oasis, which is kind of like a mini Wall Drug, and had a slice of warm apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. It was great to finally eat a good slice of pie after the past few failures. Tomorrow I'll wake up a little earlier to make sure I'm not holding Thomas up and get a good start on the day.