Mileage: 54.8; 2,248 total
Actually, this leg of my trip started about 15 miles east of Pierre: rather than backtracking on my bicycle on Rte 14, which I had taken into Pierre, Leslie gave me a ride back to the point where I had picked up Rte 14 into Pierre. We said our sad farewells, and then Leslie drove back to the airport to catch her flight to NYC, and I headed east.
This was an uneventful ride through fields of corn, wheat, and sunflowers. Unfortunately, none of the fields of sunflowers had actually blossomed fully.
Quite a few motorcyclists passed me, headed home, I guess, after the Sturgis Motorcycle rally. I had a long road-side chat with "Stretch," who had pulled his Harley-Davidson over to the side of the road to take break. He'd gone to Sturgis from Arizona, and is now on his way to NYC on his mission to make his "personal protest" at Ground Zero. He's a bright, sincere guy with a lot of interesting stories, but it was hard for me to tell exactly when his stories crossed the line from truth to fantasy, and I suspect it may be hard for him to tell, also. What I did believe was that he returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968 and then got radicalized by the counter-culture of that era. Anyway, he is protesting Bush's decision (was it Bush's?) not to rebuild the World Trade Center. He claims he has been cleared by the NYC police to have a one-man demonstration at Ground Zero, probably on or about August 27. His demonstration will include, among other things, a chess set (to demonstrate a peaceful type of war?), a bugle (to attract attention), and unloaded firearms (to attract attention?). So if any of you New Yorkers read about this guy, let me know (his last name is Szabo -- if I read this correctly when I saw his license to carry a concealed weapon).
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