Little Falls to Minneapolis

Click the map for route details

Rolling home
I was a bit tired this morning, and worried that I would not make the final 120 miles back to the Twin Cities. But then came the wind. Storm is more like it. A brutal, brutal tailwind all day long. Whenever I would sit up, it would angrily push me in the back, urging me to keep going going going. All I had to do was follow the clouds:

I was, however, still quite tired and do not have too much to report from today's ride. I stayed on the Great River Road for most of the day, which was largely enjoyable. Enjoyable, that is, until I entered Hennepin County.

The Great American Exurbs
Hennepin County Road 12 was to take me South, but it was under construction, and the detour along CR 13 had a sign announcing its beginning, but nothing thereafter. And thus began my ride through what I later learned to be the Twin Cities exurbs of Dayton/Maple Grove/Edinburgh/Edinbrook. Of the latter two I am not sure whether they are actual towns or merely developments, but who's to tell the difference anymore anyway?

Much has been said about places like these, and in far more eloquent terms than I could hope to match, so I will not try to fully describe what I saw: the gray paper "luxury country homes," the mega churches, the divided four-lane highways where residential streets should be, the fake ponds and manicured lawns. We have seen these before.

Seeing these exurbs with fresh eyes, coming from a long ride through the beautiful North, however, was a new experience. I saw endless rows of steel surrounding angry drivers, pressing on home, come what may and obstacles be damned. My own reaction was one of anger at first, then disbelief, and finally resignation. I turned completely inward and ceased to take in my surroundings, focused on the road ahead, and finding my way out of the mess became my only concern. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore and I felt empty, then depressed. Because the contrast to the previous parts of my ride was so stark, I went through this range of emotions very quickly. But I think I now understand why depression is such a huge problem in the United States.

A common notion is that if you own a beautiful country home, you have arrived, you are living the American dream. But what really is the American dream? Little (disposable) boxes on the hillside? Is the American dream not the pursuit of happiness? So if you have everything you are led to think you need—and the American consumer can be led to think to need pretty much anything, that much is clear—and the only way to improve your life is to buy perhaps another jet ski or trampoline, what then? An all-inclusive vacation in Cancun, perhaps? And then?

Coming home
Once I found my way to the river, I knew where to go and rode straight home, past downtown Minneapolis with its new and ever-improving Mill City district around the falls of St. Anthony that gave life to the city itself.

"There is nothing of the grandeur or sublimity which the eye aches to behold at Niagara, about the falls of St. Anthony. But in wild and picturesque beauty it is perhaps unequalled. Flowing over a tract of country five hundred miles in extent, the river, here more than half a mile wide, breaks into sheets of foam and rushes to the pitch over a strongly inclined plane. The fall itself is not high, we believe only sixteen feet perpendicular, but is face is broken and irregular. Huge slabs of rock lie scattered below, in wild disorder. Some stand on their edges, leaning against the ledge from which they have been disunited. Some lie piled upon each other in the water, in inimitable confusion. A long, narrow island divides the fall nearly in the middle. Its eastern side is not perpendicular, but broken into three distrinct leaps, below which the twisting and twirling eddies threaten destruction to any living thing that enters them. On the western side, in the boiling rapids below, a few rods from the fall, stands a little island, of a few yards area; rising steep from the waters, and covered with forest trees. [...]
Below, the rapids foam and roar and tumble for half a mile, and then subside into the clear, gentle current that continues unbroken to the Rock River Rapids; and at high water to the Gulf of Mexico. Here too, the high bluffs which enclose the Mississippi commence. Such was the scene at the time of this authentic history, but now it is mended or marred, according to the taste of the spectator, by the works of the sons of Adam."

&mdash William Joseph Snelling

St. Anthony Falls today

Mississippi River Crossings
The river crossing are becoming rarer, soon there will be days without any. Today, I stayed west of the river until I entered the metro area.

Mississippi River Crossing 19

Mississippi River Crossing 20

Road Kill Tally
Skunks are tenaciously maintaining their lead. I realize it is not quite fair to lump all birds together while all the mammals have to fend for themselves, but I do not know enough about birds to separate them all out. Sorry. Should they win, you are welcome to shrug them off and look to the runner-up as the real victor.

1. Skunk: 9
2. Bird: 8
3. Racoon: 6
4. Deer: 4
5. Frog: 4
6. Opossum: 4
7. Cat: 3
8. Snake: 2
9. Mouse: 2
10. Porcupine: 1
11. Turtle: 1
12. Fox: 1