CANDISC 2009 - We survived!!

Left on 7/31 to travel to North Dakota for the CANDISC ride. We have done it in 2006 and 2008 also. It is a 7 day 400 - 500 mile bicycle ride. They limit it to 500 riders and they come from everywhere. This year we had 30 states covered, 4 provinces of Canada, Norway, Hungary, Italy, Scotland, and Qatar. It was great to get reacquainted with those we had met on previous rides. Lot of these riders cover the country doing this for fun. We will see several of them in Tennessee next month when we do the BRAT, which is another 7 day 500 mile ride. Saturday afternoon is registration, and orientation. It doesn't count as one of the riding days. Our friends from the Brainerd area (Ron, Kathy, and Larry) arrived about 3 pm. She knew I loved June Berry pie so had gotten up early in the morning before they left and baked one. So after their 6 1/2 hour drive we sat and gorged ourselves on the pie while other bikers waited for the scrapes. The pie was wonderful. We like to grab a motel once in a while to take a break from tenting. This year the towns were quite small so most of the time tenting was the only option. With the bikers and support cadre we more than doubled some of the towns. Good thing a lot of prep goes into making sure meals are catered, etc. This is a big thing for the towns so they go all out in terms of providing entertainment and tours. In terms of support cadre we have: two sag wagons (RV bus pulling a trailer for bikes) for those that breakdown (bikes or people). 3 groups of porta potties that are leap frogged down road. In North Dakota you can go 40 miles before hitting another town. A bike mechanic (Rory owns a bike shop in Minot) who travels with us with equipment to fix anything. A shower trailer in addition to showers in the schools. Two luggage trucks to haul your gear to the next stop. We are given trip booklets which outline each day in terms of miles, elevations changes, rest stops, points of interest, meals, and entertainment. The roads are marked also with identification of where to turn or any hazards on the road. As you can see it takes year around planning for this type of event.

We like it better than RAGBRAI as it is about biking rather than partying. Think the Iowa ride has gotten out of hand with too many riders. Most of the riders we talk to have ridden RAGBRAI once, but rides like CANDISC 8 to 13 times. Told us everything we needed to know.

Picture shows you tent city at one of our stops. Showers are at schools and the shower wagon. One town even opened up homes if you wanted to take a shower in someones house. They drove you there and brought you back.

Second picture is how Ron, Kathy, Larry, Sheila, and I usually camped. There can be a lot of snoring in the big pile of tents. So in this case Sheila went across the street and talked to the Priest about camping by his church next door. He said great and suggested we camp between the church and his house as it had nice trees and grass. Great evening and very quiet. The people of ND are so friendly!

We stayed at Fort Totten one evening. It is the most restored fort in the West. Actually that evening we stayed in a B&B (actually the old officers quarters building) so no tenting. It had 10 rooms. Sheila found it on line a week before we left and got the last room. Had to share a bathroom with one other couple, but she figured that is better than sharing with 500 others like most nights. Great room with old original uniforms and books that contained letters written in that time frame. Picture is the bikers camping in the court yard.

Larry, Kathy, and Ron love music and have been know to bring their instruments on these trips and play at night. Larry brought his harmonicas ( all 12 of them, each in a different key). One night he talked his way into playing with the entertainment provided for us. It was great. Looked like it could rain so Ron put Larry's rainfly on his tent. Larry was to engrossed with playing think he forgot all about his tent. That's the way to live.



Some of the side trips and entertainment available after riding were to a restored one room school house, elk ranch, Apiary (where they produce 750,000 lbs of honey - ND is leading honey producing state), Ethanol plant, Cemetery tours, farming operations, horse and buggy rides, variety show, Camp Grafton military base, old time games and on and on.

We had a great time and our bodies held up well. Only mist the last couple of days, but it was cool for ND. Great for riding, but didn't bring warm clothes for at night. Larry lent us a long sleeved shirt. I wore it in the evening, sheila wore it at night - Double duty. Normally it is hot at that time of year. One morning it was 44 out when we started. Warms up fast however. Last evening of ride we stayed in Sheila's home town of Turtle Lake. We put all our friends up in homes so no tenting. They even wanted to do our laundry.