I always enjoyed Paul Simon’s Slip Slidin’ Away. Beautiful song, but paralyzingly sad, depending on your POV. I’d wake my son and tell him. You could look it up. Hell. I probably have.

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

I don’t live that way. Refuse to. If I am gliding down the highway, I’ll enjoy it. No need to seek Desolation, Angels.

Well I know that it can’t last
Someday this ride will stall
Rubber on the road & the blood inside
‘Cause even mighty mountains
Someday might crumble & fall
Keep the rubber on the road & the blood inside

Ketch the Midnight Ghost, people! We haven’t stalled yet!

Anyway, I started on a beeayyyooouuuteeeful, but cold and windy North Dakota morn.

I mostly refuse Interstates. With the exception of Randy Rogers/Sean McConnell’s song, Interstates suck the life out of time. They get you there faster, but every smell, most vistas, and seemingly all drama and surprise are sacrificed.

Day 12’s ride was truly epic. Gorgeous left-right-left-right navigation from Devil’s Lake to Spearfish, SD with some Black Hills riding thrown in. McCovey and I rode 19W to 281 to 19W to 14 to I-94 to 6 to 21 to 31 to 12 to 65 to 212 to 85 to Alt14 to Deadwood and the Black Hills. I had no map of the Dakotas, so I studied Google Maps and made my own. 14 through Anamoose was desperately needed. 31, 12 and 65 were stunning.

Even on a cold and windy morning, the battle is small and the rewards huge. Yes, the wind buffets you some. Approaching 18 wheelers on country roads happen, probably 5-6 times an hour, and depending on the rig, you can get buffeted pretty aggressively. Closed tankers are smooth sail-bys. Biggest buffets come from cattle cars with all of those openings. They won’t do anything to you and the bike, it’s like getting hit by a very light pillow from directions you can’t see. No big deal.

I could see the edge of the clouds running east to west. The temperature was 50 degrees, which at 80 mph is COLD. The clouds lasted for maybe 120 miles and seemed like a ceiling just a couple of hundred feet up to the opaque grey. But eventually I could see the end stretching as far as I could see, east and west. And when the sun hit, all that was left was the pure two lane ride party.

And it was a party, with one significant exception — 23 needed miles into Bismarck on Interstate 94. And that, my friends, is a battle. Because not only do you lose the smells, the drama, the vistas and any possibility of surprise…. You join the battle. On I-94, all the colors faded, all the smells disappeared but that oily one. All the interest waned. Except for the battle. This is the land of the 18 wheeler going in YOUR direction, one after another or side by side. The turbulence still creates light pillow whacks. But there are a LOT more of them. It’s like breaking tackles against a team of midgets. You are being fought, and you can’t fight back.

But it was only for 23 miles. Color and wonder returned after a coffee-and-waffle Bismarck specialty shop and a return to the REAL road.

I don’t listen to anything on the road – I think it is more important to get into that zen mode of searching for every bad thing that could happen, particularly driveways and deer. So I play music in my head as I mentioned early on.

THREE TIMES on this trip, this stay-in-your-head, zen ethic has paid off on deer alone. OK, really only two. Twice I saw, slowed/stopped in time to avoid either a deer or their family member  — the third was in a hollow down to my right in the Black Hills – she never hopped up on the road. Big eye contact, though. Phew!

OK, where was I? Oh yes. Interstates SUCK.

So here’s my song:

Zig Zaggin’ away
Zig Zaggin’ away
You know the more you’re on the Interstaaaate,
The more you mourn Zig Zaggin’ away

Sang it for hours. It’s the little things.

I headed out VERY early so I could do a little Black Hills riding, too. Great roads, great rides. The Sturgis rally of a week ago brought up to SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND people to a state that only has 8. Not at all my thing. They had been here, but they were all gone. Traffic was light, riding was free. I rode through Deadwood and Lead down to Buckhorn, WY, then back up through gorgeous Spearfish Canyon to Spearfish and my AirBnB with Brad and Lynn Larson.

This was also a special day for McCovey. No one else has ridden that bike since the fabled Bob Berg sold it to me with about 1500 miles on it. If I had to guess, I’d say it was 1550, but it might have been 1450. Either way, McCovey past 21450 and 21550 on this ride, making our team 20,000 miles to the good. I don’t know if he earned his stripes or I did, but either way, I’m proud of us.

Check it out! What an AirBnB and what hospitality! Lynn and Brad invited me to Crow Peak Brewery for beers and we talked music, Dick Termes’ art and family. Brad and Lynn MAY even join a future Braun Brothers Reunion. And if you have some interest, check out the Termesphere Gallery and what Dick is up to! Brad told me the best Oly and Sven joke I’ve heard, and yes, I returned serve with Oly & Leena. Oh, the huMANity!

Lynn works at Termesphere Gallery. Dick Termes is a fascinating artist known by the M.C. Escher family and at MIT for his unique approach to perspective. Check out the video HERE at his online gallery.

Twice now this trip I have had wonderful AirBnB experiences. I feel like I made new friends with Brad and Lynn Larson. Thankfully, Lynn had recently sold both of Dick’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” spheres of Wrigley Field! Whew, that was a close one.

So today I learned that I will be unable to attend the Lost Creek Dude Ranch in Jackson with Lynn and friends due to remodel issues and the like. I expect to be on the Interstate from about the Wyoming-Utah border to home. That’s a lot of broken tackles and a lot of buffetings. It is tiiiimmmee for hommmmee!

I’ll leave you with our friend Willy Braun of Reckless Kelly talking about a wild ride HE once had. Here’s Mona!

From this point forward and forevermore, I’ll be calling I-80 through Nevada “Mona!” It’s what I’m gonna do! See what I did there?