day 31: on cheating

We've cheated twice so far. What I mean by that is there have been two occasions on which we loaded our bikes, our bags, and our selves into a vehicle and had it drive us up the road a piece. This first happened when my spokes broke about a week ago. As I mentioned in my last Best/Worst of Mootis post, we were riding our bikes slowly into Mitchell, attempting to avoid the catastrophic failure, and a woman with a large pickup truck and her four grandchildren in tow came along. Riding the last ten miles with her enabled us to get to the bike shop before it closed.

The second time we cheated was just a few days ago when we were headed from Wall toward Rapid City. We were on I-90 (yes, *that* I-90 -- bikes are allowed on it out here) and after enjoying a wide shoulder for many miles, the road (er, interstate) narrowed considerably over the Cheyenne River. After contemplating whether it would be collasally stupid to cross on the shoulderless bridge as RVs and tractor tralers whizzed by, we backtracked to the rest stop a few hundred feet back, ran into a couple drving a large pick up, and asked if they'd mind schlepping us and our stuff over the river. (Okay, Aaron did all the talking. I just lingered in the background worrying that we were asking too much of complete strangers.) But, they obliged and wound up driving us about 10 miles to the next exit. They offered to take us all the way into Rapid City, but we declined.

So, all told, we've got about 20 cheater miles on record so far. Feel free to stop reading this blog now if you feel deceived. The other touring cyclists we've met seem fine with this occasional gap in the route. The people we met from the UK got a lift their first night of their trip when it became clear that the last five miles of their day were to be on a road made of deep, unpacked sand. The second pair of cyclists we met have gotten several lifts, including one from a restaurant to a campground due to food coma from giant burgers. But purists exist, apparently. I just haven't met any yet.

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