Day 38 - Detroit Lakes, MN to Fargo, ND

Mileage of the day: 61

Total mileage to date: 1878

I woke up nice and early in my comfy B&B to the smell of freshly baked blueberry muffins. Maureen and Jack made a delicious breakfast. After a leisurely breakfast I departed for my next adventure towards Fargo.

My couchsurfing host, Tyler, from Fargo planned to meet me halfway and bike about 25 miles. He rallied some friends and by 12:00 I saw a pack of 4 guys on their bikes heading in my direction. I felt overwhelmed with excitement and I even had a tear of joy to have fellow cyclists along for the ride. It felt good riding in a pack and they blocked the wind for me too!

After arriving to the house and getting settled in we took my bike to the local bike shop for some much needed TLC and walked to eat an early dinner. The guys told me it was the best weather day Fargo had seen all year. We walked to the town park and it seemed like everyone in the town of Fargo was outside enjoying the sunshine. We laid around in the park, played some tennis and then walked back downtown. The 3 couchsurfing hosts, (Tyler, Matt and Matt), all graduated from architecture school that week and had a good stretch of celebrating. They took me to all of their favorite college hot spots. At one of the many local bars they had free food, popcorn and peanuts on Monday nights. We stopped in for a few drinks and some free grub. We went back to the house to relax once more and then the adventure came!

The night adventure: There is a local beer called Grain Belt beer and the guys saw an advertisement for a small town bar 15 miles outside of Fargo. On the outside of the bar one sign stated, "Grain Belt Beer on Tap." The guys have talked about biking to this bar for nearly one year to see if they actually have this beer on tap. With only slight encouragement from Tyler and I, we put our bike clothes back on and headed out for a night ride. Fighting against the 30+mph wind we were only 10 miles down the road and then one of the Matt's got a flat tire. We had a CO2 cartridge to air the tire up, but it failed. By that time it was 45 degrees and pitch black. The boys were not as well dressed as me lacking gloves, hats and even long pants. They called their friends in Fargo and within 20 minutes our savior Zach rolled up in his van. To complete our mission Zach drove us the rest of the way to discover if Grain Belt was truly on tap. We showed up around 10:30 in this small town bar with our helmets and bike clothes and received some interesting looks. With excitement we asked, "Do you have Grain Belt on tap?" Darcy the bartender laughed and said, "We have nothing on tap." Apparently the sign was simply an antique decor. We settled for one round of grain belt in bottles. We had one more task to tackle in order to complete our entire mission. At one of the popular college diners they have two for one milkshakes on Mondays. We downed our one beer and cruised back to Fargo and slid in the door at 11:58 just in time to put our order in.

We went back to the house and I packed up my bags. The boys walked me to the Amtrak train station at 2:00am. They helped me break down Charlie and put it in a cardboard box. It was an action packed 14 hours with those amazing college grads! I am super appreciative of everything they did for me!