Dickinson, North Dakota

Playing "Apples to Apples" in North Dakota.

I left Billings in the morning to make my first fairly long leg of the trip. The ride to Dickinson, North Dakota was about 320 miles long and took around 5 hours to complete. My aim was to try and push as hard as I could across ND to try and get to the East as quickly as possible. Many people I talked to about this tour tried to convince me to avoid riding through either of the Dakotas, telling me that I'd want to shoot myself with all of the boring scenery and dead flat roads.

Looking back now a couple of weeks later, it don't think I found this particular leg particularly awful. I fairly certain the ride from Fargo to Duluth was more painful due to the slower speeds. At least I could do about 80 MPH without too much trouble on the big ND highways.

Kai lovingly glances my way, Mitch pretends not to notice.

When I finally arrived in Dickinson I met up with my hosts. Jessica (the actual host) and her roommate Mitch lived in a small but modern apartment in the suburbs of Dickinson. Jessica had planned a board game night with their neighbors and a fellow couch surfer who had stayed previous night. He was now staying with the invited friends.

Kai - the couch surfer - was a very well traveled and overall cool dude from Madison, Wisconsin. He was sure to pimp the shit out his home town, convincing me to stop through and stay with his girlfriend (I did, and Madison was really beautiful by the way). Kai was up in Dickinson trying to find work, and was one smart and interesting dude. He also had kick ass facial hair.

Jessica works a front desk manager in a local hotel. She is a super friendly and energetic person who was excited that night to share her made-up juice cocktail drink with guests. I'm not going to lie, it was actually pretty good! Jessica was originally from the South, was known to occasionally Live Action Role Play (LARP), dress up for Cons and was a generally very cool, laid-back chick into geek culture. A very talented seamstress, she had designed and put together quite a number of outfits.

For the uninformed - LARPing (sorry Jess):

Mitch was originally from Arizona and was up in Dickinson for a business opportunity of sorts. He was some sort of self-made entrepreneur and made a living through investing in property... I think... I need to write these blog posts sooner after each place; I'm beginning to forget! He was a super knowledgeable and interesting dude, I enjoyed chatting to him about philosophy (I remember specifically the discussion on determinism, which depressed the shit out of Jess) and the random science shit we knew.

Jessica taking the farm-animal-poker game seriously.
I had no fucking idea what I was doing.

Anyway, after Mitch and I headed down to the local liqueur store so I could buy some beer (Leffe, because it's fucking cheap in the US... apparently I remember beers...) we all sat down and played a word association card game called Apples to Apples. After a few more drinks we then played some sort of farm animal based game similar to Texas Hold-Em. Sounds weird but it was fun!

The next day I was way too buggered to ride all the way to Fargo, so I successfully convinced Jessica to let me stay one more night and managed to push back the day I would be in Fargo. Luckily Jessica had a day off and was heading up to Bismarck for a dentist appointment. So I was able to tag along for the chance to hang out and see another city in ND without having to ride there!

SO LIFELIKE!

After arriving in Bismarck, Jessica and I got breakfast at the local Perkins. Apparently we had to eat there because I had never heard of it, it is a pretty big breakfast food chain in East America. Afterwards I loitered about in Jessica's  dentist's beautiful waiting room (they had a spectacular aquarium there). After the dentist was finished with her we headed to the local cinema to go and see the new Batman movie.

The movie theater was a pretty strange place, called "The Grand" it has some funky Egyptian theme going on. Also strange dioramas of famous movies like the 10 commandments. Oh and Jessica quintessential American snack food, it was a fucking cookie ice cream sandwich. That's right, icecream between 2 choc chip cookies.

God damn that was a long movie.

On the drive back we saw North Dakota's most famous attraction - the big cow.

In all its majesty.