During the night I woke up and heard something that didn’t quite register… a “tapping” sound on the tent. I think I thought something like, “mmmph… falling leaves” and went back to sleep the first time but later realized that I was getting rained on.

I’d been looking at the weather for the past week and had convinced myself that I was pretty much safe from any bad stuff. This was the beginning of my education – I put on my waterproof jacket and set off hoping for the best. I decided that I’d hate myself if I didn’t go check out the beginning of the Mississippi river so my first stop was a couple of miles away in the park.

Apparently there weren’t many people that thought it was a good idea to check out the headwaters that morning. The walk from the parking lot to the actual headwaters seemed to take forever. First you go across a bridge over the river…

…and wind through the trees for a while. It reminded me of a Disney ride line, not sure exactly how much longer it is going to take. There were signs along the way, “800 ft”, “400 ft”, but the walk seemed farther than that. Fake distance signs?

At last, here it was:

Pretty neat to see, especially in light of what it had looked like a couple of days before as I rode past it. After going past all the water in Minnesota I could well imagine that after it traveled for a while would pick up a lot more as it went on its way…

Then I retraced my steps back to the empty parking lot, hopped on the bike and set off. I was lucky that morning – the clouds were threatening rain and I did catch a few sprinkles but for stayed dry. I wasn’t tempting fate and had decided my next stop was nearly all the way across South Dakota so I didn’t make any stops for a while… I’d filled up right before stopping the night before so I had a couple hundred miles to burn.

I went through Fargo, thinking that somehow I’d see something that reminded me of the movie. Nope – it is a fairly small city and there wasn’t anything special about it… seemed kind of dumpy… and with no reason to stop I moved along.

North Dakota went pretty quickly. I had less than 100 miles in the state, cutting from Fargo diagonally into South Dakota. It was right before leaving that I had my one accident… at a gas station I’d filled up and grabbed something to eat and had decided to walk the bike away from the pumps. Bad idea – loaded up it is pretty top heavy and more importantly, plain old heavy. As I was trying to shove it up a slight incline I pushed too far to the side and it went over, falling away from me.

This was the second time I’d dropped my nearly brand new bike and I was quite pissed at myself. A couple of guys ran over real fast and helped me get it upright and there was virtually no damage – the Canyon Cages I’d installed after my first drop did their job. I was clearly upset and one of the guys said something like, “it’s OK, just start again”… and so I did.

I realized that I have a bad habit that simply doesn’t work for riding a motorcycle… I don’t usually eat breakfast. Both times I dropped the bike were in the morning before eating and after riding for a couple of hours. Well, riding isn’t exactly strenuous but it does work the body some when I don’t eat I wind up a bit shaky. As I ate and thought about it I decided that from then on I’d eat before getting on the bike.

The damage was slight – a few minor scratches on one of the side cases, a bit on a mirror and damaged powder coating on the cage bars. Could have been a lot worse – in fact, if I hadn’t had the cages on I expect that in addition to the side case getting mangled that the fairing would have taken some heavy damage as well.

No, I did not take pictures. Not going to, either.

Moving on, I got back on and proceeded into South Dakota. The weather cleared up as the morning went on and the ride through the northeastern part of the state was delightful. The picture at the top of the post is from that part of the ride… really pretty farmland with quite a bit of water. Nice roads with gentle curves and hills made for a great morning and the drop quickly faded.

I was cutting diagonally from northeast corner towards the Badlands in the southeast, taking various highways, turning west and south as I went along. The terrain started to get more brown, more hilly and with fewer curves. It was a long day and somewhere along the line I decided I wasn’t going to camp that night and made a reservation at a hotel. I pulled in to the hotel parking lot right before dark, ate Subway and collapsed.