If you’ve seen day 1, make sure you’ve seen all of it, I added some stuff today.

Day 2 – The Bear is doing better, wants to try riding a trail today, so we’re going to ride the Orange trail – a relatively easy trail, according to the guys at the office/store.

I have to give kudos to these guys, the trail was really nice, and for the most part, very well marked. Marked better than 95% of the trails I’ve been on, and I’ve been on a bunch! Great job, folks!

The trail is a bit challenging, some sandy sections (especially fun when it’s on a curve, which happens occasionally) good climbs, nice descents (or should that be “decent descents”?, just to see who’s paying attention). Nice little trail. Had to bail out early as the wrist was really bothering The Bear. We’ll come back to ride the more technical Blue trail some other time.

Anyway, here is a shot of the trail, and a vista from the trail:

Today was an interesting day. No new injuries, so that’s good! I got up pretty early, a rather cool morning (ok, probably 80 degrees, but with the winds here, it feels a LOT cooler). A mite windy here, 22 mph winds, with gusts up to 37. No wonder they have so many windmills everywhere!

Ok, as promised, here are some photos!

In some parts near the park, they use these stones as fence posts. It’s pretty cool!

The park itself from a distance looks like this:

Parts along the trail look like this:

And this:

And at dusk, like this:

The park itself looks like this:

VERY nice place – definitely going back soon!

Sunday! Today, we ride! It was a short ride, but it was fun. Barri’s arm is still hurt, but yesterday we went by a Walgreens and she got a carpal tunnel brace, and that seems to help keep it from getting worse. Cool!
So, the ride today is Potter’s Pasture, just outside of Brady, NE. We decide to do the easy Green loop, since The Bear is injured still. Yup, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it! We got to do a little bit of trail maintenance in the form of signage repair -someone had removed a marker for the green trail, it was undamaged, and its screw still on the post, so I removed the screw and put the little tag back where it belonged. And, in the spirit of “no good deed goes unpunished” there is another place further in the trail where there is no marking for the green trail and we end up on “Potter’s Plunge”, but backwards, so I climb this MONSTER hill, bike in tow, which Barri cannot climb, and it’s obviously the wrong way anyway, so I climb back down, bike in tow. Ah, well, I’m the fitter for it!
So we finish the ride, feeling good, and all is well! I actually remembered to shoot some video today, which I will post … one of these days.
Tomorrow, we head for South Dakota!

Alright, we’re gonna ride today! But first things first – BREAKFAST! Last night was so good, we’ll go see the gal from the bike shop at her second job, as a waitress, at Bully Blends. Well, she comes in later, but we left word to thank her for pointing us to such good places to eat. This place? I had eggs and bacon, with three pancakes. Well, the eggs were PERFECT (over medium, thank-you-very-much), bacon THICK and crisp, and the pancakes. Oh LORDY, these things are the size of dinner plates! I could not finish them, sorry to say. GREAT breakfast!

Oh yeah, the place is Bully Blends, here:

Then, of course, the ride. We decided to keep it close by, so went to the local park to ride “M Hill”. After a false start, we got on the right track, which seemed to be STRAIGHT UP. I was not built for this! My puny flatlander lungs were screaming at me, and we hadn’t gone a quarter mile! Well, after that nice warmup, they actually decided to give in, and the rest of the ride went very well. Why “M Hill”? I wondered that too, but it’s because the hill has a huge “M” on its side, close to the top, with an “S” on the left, and a “D” on the right (both of those smaller than the “M”). I realized it was because of the school in town! I was about to ask one of the locals if Marcel Marceau had ever been a guest lecturer, when It dawned on me this is the South Dakota School of MINES, not mimes. Ooops. Mea Culpa.

On the way down, we got a little lost, did a little trespassing – no one called us on it, so I guess we got away with it. Good ride! Not very long, but we didn’t want to re-injure The Bear’s right paw.

So, what to do in the afternoon? Go to Sturgis! Bike week is coming up, first full week in August, so we just had to stop by. Of course, we had to go by the Harley dealership and get some T-shirts and a cap:

And after that, of course, we had to grab a beer somewhere. One-Eyed Jack’s looked pretty good, so we went in, The Bear had a JD and Coke, and I had a Guinness on tap, and we hoisted our glasses and made a toast to our neighbor Dave, who, sadly, died two weeks ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Dave nearly as well as I wish I had, but I do know he had a Harley that he liked and rode a lot. I don’t know if he ever got to Sturgis, but I do know if he had not yet got there, he’ll be there next month, at least in spirit.

While there, I got a chance to pose with another Bear:

I hope this is as close as I get to a grizzly on this trip (or any other trip, for that matter).

After all this, back to town, dinner at home, and update the blog (somewhat). I found out it’s a lot of work to keep a blog up to date, but it’s worth it for my friends!

Oh, yeah – almost forgot! Since we were out this way, well, we HAD to visit Deadwood. I wish I’d skipped it. One of my favorite TV serieseses is “Deadwood”. It has some really hilarious moments in it, and the people for the most part seem to have been portrayed the way they probably really were – rather coarse, of course. And modern Deadwood I suppose has kept true to its roots – it is a gambling – excuse me, GAMING (I guess they want to make it sound better) – town. And I have no use for gaming/gambling, so it was pretty much a waste. I had hoped they would have kept some of the original (or at least original-style) buildings, but even the architecture for the most art was a bust. Oh, well, lesson learned.