We woke up on time for once, made oatmeal and broke camp. As we were packing up the tent, a man approached us, introduced himself, and asked what we were doing sleeping in his parents' yard. We explained that Bo and Deano had given us permission, which satisfied him, as he is their business partner. We collected his name and address so that we could send the three business owners a postcard from New York City.We coasted down the hill from their place back into town where we refilled on water and set off towards Wasta, South Dakota. We had great tailwinds and a long downhill for the first 20 miles, during which we crossed the state line.
We continued to get great tailwinds along our frontage road into Sundance, South Dakota. There we met one of the owners of the Two Wheeler Dealer, a bicycle shop chain in South Dakota. He was quite interested in our trip and let us know that we were finally out of the mountains. And there was much rejoicing.Along the way to Rapid City, there was a truck in the shoulder with a number of people standing around it. As I rode by I asked if they needed help, not thinking there was much two cyclists could offer. They shouted "It's kaputt!" and then made motions for a cell phone. I turned around to find four Italian tourists with limited English. Through their extremely broken English, Travis' French and my limited Spanish, we were able to ascertain that their car was broken and they needed a ride to the airport. We were able to call a taxi for them and went on our way. It was nice to be able to pay an infintismal part of the hospitality that we have received forward.
Our good deed for the day done, we rolled into Rapid City around 1 o'clock. We found the Subway before being directed to a much needed laundromat, not having done laundry since day 3 with Kate. There we rocked out in our one pair of clean clothes and satisfied the craving we'd been having for chips and salsa.
Being so full from the chips left me feeling sluggish as we pulled out of Rapid City, causing Travis to run into my rear tire and fall. He complained of pain in his side but pushed through it. We were barely outside of Rapid City when Travis flatted. He is really getting close to my number of flats, so I need to step it up a little bit.Our northerly tailwind turned into a crosswind as we changed direction at Rapid City, but we were still able to push past Wasta to Wall, home of the ubiquitously billboarded Wall Drug. Having been there before I knew it wasn't worth the hype, but Travis had to see what the approximately 200 billboards we'd been seeing for the past 75 miles were all about.
Outside of Wall Drug, we met two other cyclists who were also on a cross-country journey. Jason and Luke were wrestlers at Cornell, before deciding to embark on their adventure. They started in Florence, Oregon and have been taking the back roads. We shared many stories and some beer at a bar across from Wall Drug before heading to the local airport to pitch a tent. Hopefully we'll have no problems from police or mosquitoes before morning! Also, I noticed my cycle computer acting up again in Spearfish, so I'm using Travis' data for today.| Time | Trip | Odometer | Average | Max |
| 9:06:37 | 140.5 | 1360 | 15.4 | 39.4 |
