Day 16 - To Bismark
The Road Out of Steele:
I was up and ready by 8:30 and texted Don to let him know I would be on my way soon. He came out and saw me off with a prayer and a care package of snack foods for the road in a plastic grocery bag. I threw them in the trailer and set off in the cool of the morning.
Quickly I joined highway 10, but I had confirmed with Don that it actually was asphalt all the way into Bismark before setting my route.
Officially I should have had a 4mph headwind but I genuinely didn’t feel much of anything. I was easily making 17mph on the uphill sections and 22 on the down.
Overall it was the same sort of countryside I had become accustomed to, however it was clearly getting drier, hillier and more populous all at once.
In an hour and a half I had made 22 miles on the trail and fully expected to get to Bismark before noon at the pace I was making.
While there were settlements here and there they packed the sort of services that would allow for a lengthy stop. It seems like when a larger town is within about 20 miles the normal services that would exist in these postage stamp communities tend to get subsumed into the nearby city, leaving people without a grocery store or even a gas station. This certainly seemed to be the case in Cleveland the day before with evidence of a loss of different shops forcing inhabitants to go out of their way even to get basic supplies.
I cannot express enough how hostile this is to those without transportation. They are effectively cut off from the entire world. There is an epidemic of Food Deserts in the rural areas of America, where within 6 miles there are not great options for nutitious food options especially fresh fruit and vegetables. I saw this first hand when I arrived in Medina. Even though it had some grocery options when I perused the shelves it consisted of packaged, highly processed food or fatty meats. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if these people wouldn’t want year round tomatoes, broccoli, bananas etc, but the logistics of getting them into these communities profitably is simply not feasible.
The great disequity is that this doesn’t just extend to food, it also extends to healthcare and schooling and likely a myriad of other services. It is a major fault of trusting the invisible hand of the market to magically provide in places where people have needs, but the cost to do so would not garner profits. It’s doubly unfair to me because these good people are the very people that provide a feccund plethora of foods to our plates. Beans. Potatoes. Corn. Wheat. Soy. Beef.
Rural life is absolutely different than urban life, some of its quirks and culture though are directly descended of deprivation. On my first trip I asked if they served BLTs in some small town and the waitress literally said “Oh, we don’t get tomatoes here.” And so the only option was fried food.
This effect was so deep in the early 1900s that a strange disease emerged amongst the sharecroppers of the south and Midwest. Pellagra.
Pellagra was purely a disease caused by malnutrition. Specifically a lack of niacin (vitamin B3) which is an important metabolic catalyst. Lack of vitamin B3 literally makes it more difficult to take usable calories and turn them into energy within the cells. It’s also an important vitamin required for the production of Keratin, the protein in your skin, fingernails, and hair that give it structure.
In 1907 there was an epidemic of Pellagra which had droves of the impoverished share croppers presenting with diarrhea, rashes, at times dementia and even outright death. It took dedicated scientists trying to understand the problem to solve. Notably Joseph Goldberger worked dilligently to run down the “vitamine hypothesis” and eventually proved that Pellagra was a simple lack of a necessary vitamin.
He determined that because the primary source of nutrition for these impoverished sharecroppers was corn, they didn’t have a consistent source of Vitamin B3 in their diet.
The hardest part of determining this was that Goldberger had to understand how some populations of people to whom corn was their staple food were seemingly immune to Pellagra.
Goldberger noted that the American southwest, especially Mexican and Mexican-American families seemed to be resistant to Pellagra, and yet the used maize (corn) in almost every dish they made. Functionally the raw inputs of their nutrition were not any different than those Southern and Midwestern european-americans and african-americans who were stricken with the disease.
What he didn’t understand but is well known now is that an ancient process handed down from the Mayan people is the crucial difference: Nixtamalization.
Nixtamalization is a process by which dried corn is effectively boiled and steeped in an alkaline solution — originally wood ash in water was the source, but modern processes use pure lye (Sodium hydroxide). After grinding the steeped and dried kernels many of the nutrients within the corn are released and made bioavailable. Corn does have niacin within it, but it has to be made digestible by the human gut. That’s what Nixtamalization does. It was the magic sauce that made these people “immune” to Pellagra.
Today we see the fruits of Nixtamalization everywhere: Corn Chips, Tortillas, and so many other Mesoamerican dishes.
Once this was known a country wide project to eliminate these deficiencies of nutrition was undertaken and many of the cereal grains we eat today like wheat are fortified with added niacin. Similarly we fortify other foods with necessary vitamins like putting vitamin D in milk because it’s fat soluable, and milk makes a convenient delivery vehicle due to its high fat content.
My point is this: When there is a political will, there is a way to provide what is ethically and morally correct to those who need it — Damn the profit motive.
It is a moral wound to me that places like Idaho have “Maternity care deserts” — In other words there are almost no care options in some localities for pregnant and postpartum women, all because it’s not profitable.
I’m of the mindset that all of our populace deserve a minimum quality of life. We eradicated Pellagra, Polio and Malaria in the US at great cost because it was the moral and ethical thing to do.
So when I see a field of rapeseed (Canola) that is grown by these good people, and that bounty directly serves us as vegetable oil found across the world, I find it a deep disequity that they can’t get fresh tomatoes, let alone quality healthcare nearby.
To some these areas are “Fly over” country, but the people who live here are resilient, kind and just as worthy of having a grocer, a post office, high speed internet, and a clinic in their own town.
So… Bismark:
Look, this is my platform and sometimes I have thoughts. There is a lot of lonesome time to think, to observe, to exist and to ponder.
The road to Bismark was not terribly remarkable in any of its difference from days previous. That and I was driven to make miles quickly because, quite frankly, it felt good to go fast after the previous day’s toil. So there aren’t many pictures from the day because I didn’t stop very often.
That includes Bismark itself. I can say with some fairness, Bismark is not a city that I love. I found the fact that it was, firstly, situated on multiple hills, but secondly, the street layout largely ignored the contours of the land and stuck to a rigid grid to be frustrating from the persepective of a biker.
In fact when I stopped on the edge of Bismark, I was able to charge my bike back up while resting at a Subway to around 50% charge. In making the four miles to the coffee shop adjacent to the church I would be staying in, I drained it to less than 10%. Frequently finding myself going up a hill just to go down it again to then take a turn and go back up. In most places the roads follow ridgelines or gulleys — paths of least resistance. I am absolutely sure that whoever designed 43rd street SE in Bismark has no understanding whatsoever about contour lines on a map. I looked up this enormous hill and just said “Why?” As the road forged up it in a stubbornly straight line.
Whatever. I made it.
I contacted pastor Cory from Legacy UMC (situated on the highest hill) and let him know I would do some blogging and would arrive at 5pm.
After blogging I pulled into the front of the church and he greeted me. Now what I expected to happen was to be given a smallish fellowship hall with some access to a shower and that’s it. What he showed me was an expansive church all connected by one central atrium with branches in different directions. I was told that I would have full run of the church after people left at around 8:30. He showed me the laundry, kitchen area, and the showers and then he departed for the evening.
Another staff (or volunteer?) was startled by my presence and then we talked for a bit. Joann offered her fob to me so that I could go out and get some food as the pizza she had thought was in the fridge was now gone. I was happy to have it, as Cory had suggested just leaving the door unlocked, or contacting him to remotely open it. I told her I would leave her fob on the front information desk for her to retrieve in the morning before she left.
I settled in doing some laundry and taking a shower. At this point it was around 8:30 and I was quite hungry. So I decided I was going to get some food and settled on China Food Perfect. I rode over at full assist, feeling more like motorcyclist than a bicyclist, arrived and ordered a large plate.
Maeying and Chuck were the proprietors and after some back and forth, I decided to go with Maeying’s suggestion for certain dishes: In particular the curry chicken.
While paying, in passing, I told Chuck that I was cycling across the US, and he seemed to be quite interested. Later he asked me a few questions, and so when I went up to get a bike appropriate container for my leftovers I left him with the blog details, and complimented the suggestion for the curry chicken. In response to this compliment, Maeying (wife of Chuck and the culinary powerhouse of the operation) decided she would fill me up with extra portions!
It was a simple gesture, but it meant quite a bit to me given my need for calories.
In short, if you’re up for Chinese in Bismark, and you would prefer something that is more traditional and less Americanized, I highly suggest China Food Perfect… not that I really expect any but perhaps three of you to ever make it out to Bismark.
Ending the day:
When I got back to the church I fobbed in without issue and then poked around a few of the TVs in a meeting room which I had been told had some access to channels while I finished my blog. I didn't know the parental code to get to much of the content, but I spotted a few movies that were “recently viewed” and picked one. You guess from the picture which. Ill give you a hint: David Bowie in a codpiece, with muppets.
After finishing up my lengthy blog from yesterday I settled in on the only couch I could find. It was perfectly comfortable, except that the outdoor lights shine through the window making it impossible to sleep. That is until I put my cycling shorts on my head as a makeshift sleep mask. Voila. I’ve Bear Gryllsed it again.
Tomorrow is on to Glen Ullin (pronounced Uh-lin)
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As I’ve described on previous days there are always unexpected expenses, and while I feel like I’ve hit a stride where equipment is finally working I would still be open to any financial help you might be willing to give. Mainly this is to offset the costs of future equipment I may need, or occasional hotel stays (like tonight) which are necessary from time to time. At the end of the trip I will try to donate any unused excess funds to charities like UMCOR to be used for disaster relief.
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