Back to Biking

Returning to my arduous journey north, Danny and I had just finished our first full day biking straight into head winds. We were exhausted and dumbfounded at the relentless conditions we were facing, so as we pulled into the little gas station, we began to start talking up the beers and chocolate we were going to buy excitedly.  After a day like that, maybe we’d get a hamburger as well.

We should have known that fresh hamburgers wouldn’t be awaiting us. The gas station appears as though it were built in the 1950s, and perhaps abandoned shortly thereafter.   There are four old fashion pumps sitting out in the open of a wide parking lot.  To the left sit a couple old shacks, one with arrows to a bathroom, which Danny later told me not to even think of using.  The actual station appears like a log-cabin restaurant you might find on a country road off of I65, several hundred miles from any main city. As we head in, we quickly find that our much dreamed of dinner won’t be realized as we had anticipated it.  Walking past a log fire and a man sitting on his computer at the end of a table, we approach the counter—a broken glass sits in front a small collection of candy, diapers, and sanitary pads.  The man stands to take our order.  Fortunately there were beers sitting on the floor behind the counter so we bought two.  We asked about the candy, but the high price was out of our splurge range. 

What followed was an amazing display of hospitality.  I ask the owner if I could use the internet to send an email to my parents, who had only received a quick notice of my sudden decision.  After he and his son tried to make the internet work on my computer, he gave me his computer to use.  He allowed Danny and me to eat our dinner—made of nothing we had purchased from him—inside the lodge and then offered his home’s kitchen to let me clean the dishes.  Inside his home, I chatted with his son and discussed the blizzards in the States with the owner as the news flashed the different reports.  He brought coffee to me and Danny while we were working on various things and offered one of the sheds to serve as a restive from the wind.  All at no profit—or really even gain for him. 

What is most impressive to me about this situation is that this man must do this on a daily basis. Bikers heading the opposite direction had alerted us to the station earlier that day.  I asked him if he had a lot of cyclists—he just laughed and nodded.  While we were inside, a hitchhiker came by and was offered space to set up camp.  This man had taken on hosting us travelers just as part of his life there in the middle of nowhere.