Not going to repeat the error of the previous morning, I am up early, washed, shaved and powdered waiting for breakfast as it started and on the road at 08h00 sharp.
This is a big distance day, the last such day of the trip. It is onto the US 2 East and the good conditions continue. I make great time and am soon on the US 94 East, a highway I will remain on for the next 335 miles all the way to Minneapolis. My total for the day will be 450 miles.
The farmers are still busy along the US 2 making hay and the bumble bees continue to attack Bonnie. We have had an ongoing war with these Kamikazes, who continue to throw themselves in our way. Bonnie slowly turns yellow for the umpteenth time, I clean her at every gas stop (Poppie, gas is the US word for Petrol) and then again every evening before I cover her up for the night. Every few minute one of these buggers takes me on directly with an attack on the face. It is a war they cannot win and they do not. They are dying in the thousands in this attempt to stop our inexorable movement East.
Then it stops. Maybe the bees have recognised the futility of trying to stop Biker Pilot. More probably it is a function of what is grown along the route, I deduce. The crops have changed from Wheat, Teff, Barley and Sun Flowers to Corn. (Poppie; this is American for Mielies). There may be a drought in the lower states with a huge failure in the US corn crop looming, but in North Dakota and Northern Minnesota, the corn stands proud. I can see that the Corn and Wheat is GM (Genetically Modified) as it no longer stands as tall as the stuff that my father had grown at his farms. All the energy that used to go into growing tall now goes into the kernel and water is saved.
In some areas the crop is off and ploughing is already taking place. The smells of the fresh earth being turned are incredible. Fresh and very earthy. I want some of this in our wines. They plant here in late autumn and then leave the seeds dormant under the frozen earth, only to start germinating in the spring and growing as the earth thaws.
I have been waiting for a Five Guys burger since I left Michigan. I saw none in South Dakota on my way outbound, nor elsewhere in the west, but they appear to have sprung up in my absence. I want to go to Fargo, have done ever since the movie. So I Google Five Guys and plug the address into my Garmin. A few minutes later I am at the Alter of Fast Burgers. People – this is the best there is. This can be confirmed with DD, jealous mother, baby bear daughter, Joss and another connoisseur of burgers, Charles Tasker aka Chuck!
So I gorge on the peanuts as I wait and then my kosher bacon cheese burger with fried onions and mayo arrives. The onions cancel out the bacon and the mayo the cheese so it is definitely kosher! On this basis I have been kosher for years. It is like being in a different area code, it does not count!
Bonnie does Five Guys in Fargo.
It is too delicious to describe. I savour every mouthful. They only serve burgers and fries ( Poppie; dis skyfies of chips in Kroonstad!). Once again I am amazed at the poor physical shape most Americans in the northern areas are in. They may be in better shape in Florida and California, but not here nor in Canada for that matter. At least here they do not appear to be mutilating themselves in the same way the Canadians are.
A really fat chick comes in. She does not disappoint me. The double patty burger with the full house on it is ordered. Big Fries and the largest size soda (Koolie). To give you some idea of how much food this is, DD, Dane and I can only manage a small fries between us. The portions are immense and I only have the single patty burger.
She sits down and demolishes the whole shebang in two ticks. Then goes out, probably to the Dairy Queen for a double thick. Remember those diet shakes?
Later I pull off at Rothsay to adjust something in my gear, you cannot successfully rearrange your underwear when sitting on the bike while riding without entailing great risks. There on my right hand side is the oddest statue I have seen in ages. I rdie around to look at it. It seems that Rothsay is the Prairie Chicken Capital of the World. A prairie chicken is the US version of a cross between a guinea fowl and pheasant. It is known for “booming”. This is what it does to mate and entails puffing up the yellow glands on the side of its neck.
Prairie Chicken Statue at Rothsay, Prairie Chicken Capital of the world
You can read all about “booming”
Nearer to Minneapolis I am feeling very hungry again. I see a sign for the Grand Depot, a gourmet store. I figure that if this is anything like a Whole Foods it will be perfect. I also need a coffee.
When I get there it is a fantastic store but it sells no food to be consumed on site and serves no coffee. As I am entering, two men come over to me and want to know where I have been and where Bonnie and I are going. They are enthralled and want to know more. I have had this interest throughout the trip.
The one insists on taking a photo of Bonnie and I together and then one, with me and his wife, whom he has gone inside to fetch to meet me.
I give him my Môreson card so that he can e-mail the photos to me. He looks in amazement and tells me he is in the wine business. He is an importer and is setting up a wine business in China as well. He has already contacted me via e-mail. Another unreal co-incidence, along the lines of my Walla Walla experience. There must be a message in this for me. I have to continue riding my Bonnie in the US and sell wine for the jealous mother of the twins.
I am now in Minnetonka, a suburb of Minneapolis. Originally I had hoped to have dinner at a Whole Foods, which is a few miles away. However I have cleaned Bonnie, the weather is threatening and as soon as I have posted this I will eat at a nearby joint. Soup and a salad will do.
Some very interesting facts about Minnesota’s watersheds. It has three that feed into different oceans, the only state in the USA to do this.
Before I go I will censor Steekoog’s latest missive and release it. There are definitely some bits that will need to come out.
Tomorrow I have about 320 miles to Milwaukee. I will have lunch at Whole Foods in Madison, the same place at which I stopped on the way up. I sleep at the same hotel in Milwakee, The Iron Horse, mainly because it is only a few minutes from the ferry terminal. My ferry leaves at 06h00 on Monday morning so the shorter the ride the better.
If I get there early enough I may commit the worst of sacrileges and go to the Harley Museum as it is only a few blocks from the hotel.
From Minnetonka Good Night and Good Luck
Copyright 2012
bigplatcool 
Hello Richard
I am sorry you would not let me use the names of some of the people. Reading your blog I can see that you are an excellent story teller. You should know that a story without names is not a story.
Saying that Air Hostess D went down on Captain B just does not sound interesting, because it is not.
I have been going through my little black books and chuckled all day. I had to get my nephew in today to help me with trying to make a gravatar. I had never heard of this. he wanted to know what I needed it for so I showed him your blog. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. He looked at me with either amazement or new respect. Why is it that children never think or believe that the generations ahead off them also were naughty or had fun?
Unfortunately I could not have children. I found this out early on and then made the most of the situation. First of all in the days before the pill I was one of the few girls who did not have to hold back or insist that the men used a condom. So they loved this and so did I. I always hated those things. At the moment that you just wanted to lie back and feel him enter you, or sit on him, you had to stop, open the package and then get it on. Half the older guys would loose their erections in the process and then it was really hard work to get them started again, particularly if they had had a few drinks. Often in this critical moment, if you were doing it, they would think of their wives and then it was all over. Plop. Nothing more useless than a limp one!
I think the pill changed it all, for us girls for sure because we were now on an equal footing. Most of the girls I joined with and then some of the later girls became much more aggressive and the men never knew what hit them. They all think that only men are interested in sex, but it is quite the opposite.
I am not sure if you ever came down to Cabin Services Building. If you had you would have seen all the girls sitting together talking about their trips and affairs. They were not talking about food, I can assure you of that.
So one side benefit of not having had children was and is that my key working areas remained in great shape. By that I mean tight and grippy. I often wondered how the women who had two, three or more children coped. Not having been there I can tell you that the obsession that men have with big schlongs, is not one we share. For me the key thing was girth. Women want to feel full, not have their tonsils battered from the inside.
So give me a man with a thick one who knows what to do with it and I am a happy woman. The big boys invariably think that they have to do nothing and it will all happen of its own accord. The other thing I was never prepared to do was bum jobs. I always told them you can have me anyway you want me, from the front, from the back, me on top, sideways etc but if you want to play in my bum go and find a steward!
So the Captain you call Steekgoog may have told you that I initiated him into the mile high club in a 707 when he was a Boy Pilot. Hardly a boy I might add and very keen when I made him the offer. Had some problems getting him going, I think it was a bit of stage fright and the close proximity of the forward toilet to the cockpit. He had difficulty looking me in the eye for the rest of the flight but then I sorted him out in the hotel and he knew he was onto a good thing. By the end of the trip he was begging me to have him again in the bunk.
I think you need to own up and tell your followers whether or not you re a member of the club. Nothing you did before you got married can count against you. I am not sure Steekoog wants to test this with his Pirouetter.
I really want to tell some stories about the good old days on DC -7’s and our Cocos Island layovers, which were exactly that. All those Captains must be long gone. Those trips were always very exciting because invariably one or more engines had to be shut down enroute. It was an ongoing problem, they ran out of oil. So they would feather the propellor. You will know what this means. All I knew is I would look out of a window and see the propellor standing still and upright, like an erect penis. I would rush into the cockpit and everyone there was sweating. No one had a hard on I can assure you. Once, one of the aircraft landed at Jan Smuts with only two engines left. This was never a good time to go into the cockpit and ask them for anything.
However once on the ground in Mauritius, The Cocos or Perth after one of these shutdowns, I can assure you that their testosterone levels were off the wall. This is where I came into my element.
I will send you my next comment tomorrow.
Have a safe ride.
Dinah