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Minnesota 10,000 Lakes?

2014-07-14

71 WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EASY MILES FROM SIOUX FALLS SD TO WORTHINGTON MN

Minnesota has always been advertised as the state with 10,000 lakes. I have been in northern MN and it is beautiful. I did not know that central part of the state is agricultural and looks just like eastern SD. No lakes here.

The following riding days are:
Mankato 106 miles
Rochester 99
La Crosse WI 88
Wisonsin Dells 91

An average of 96 per day. So I thought I would take it easy. Until Sebastion came by trailed by 4 of the A team. Off I went. Sebastion eventually drops me and everyone else. However all stop at the Minn state line at 25 miles into the trip except Kurt and myself. Sebastion passes us again before the SAG. I'm third to leave the SAG and try successfully to make it into Worthington before anyone can catch me. Stupid given what we have in front of us.

Yesterday was by far the most dangerous part of this trip. I hailed a taxi to take me back to my hotel from the baseball game. The driver had the same driving skills as my mother but had the added dimension of being the dispatcher for the taxi service and constantly on his cellphone. I kept trying to hit the brake from the back seat as he went through a red light. He had to go pay for gas for another driver and entered an on ramp of a busy seven lane road and stopped so he could go directly across all seven lanes. I thought I was a dead man.

On these long bike trips I have counted golf courses I see along the route. Golf course number one today.

Little know fact:
A curious event took place on Worthington’s very first Fourth of July
celebration. Hearing that there was a keg of beer in the Worthington House Hotel, Professor Humiston entered the hotel, seized the keg, dragged it outside, and destroyed it with an axe. A witness described what happened next:
''Upon seeing this, the young men of the town thought it to be rather an imposition, and collected together, procured the services of the band, and under the direction of a military officer marched to the rear of the hotel, and with a wheelbarrow and shovel took the empty keg that had been broken open, and playing the dead march with flag at half staff marched to the flagpole in front of Humiston’s office where they dug a grave and gave the empty keg a burial with all the honors attending a soldier’s funeral.
They then, with flag at full mast and with lively air, marched back to the ice house, procured a full keg of beer, returning to the grave, resting the keg thereon. Then a general invitation was given to all who desired to partake, which many did until the keg was emptied… In the evening they reassembled, burning Prof. Humiston in effigy about 10 p.m. Thus ended the glorious Fourth at Worthington, Minn. —Sibley Gazette July 5, 1872[9]





The Sioux Falls


I did not know about the agricultural aspect of Minnesota


This is a windy part of the country


When the flag is straight out the wind better not be blowing in the direction you are riding. Today it was mostly a crosswind.

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