It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit when I arrived in Laredo. I’d be out for an entirely different logic. It’s something about the gold rush and the frontier. The whole country, it seems, is laid out - and thinks - east to west. It also made sense to begin, not end, in early May in southern Texas where the thermometer by June climbs to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead I charted a reverse course to take advantage of prevailing winds from the south. I originally figured to ride from Canada to Mexico. The Great Plains, particularly in late spring, is the windiest region in the country, a climatologist confirmed. Posters on bike boards warned of 20–25 mph winds, tornadoes, and biblical hail. I’m a “trepid” traveler - mechanically disinclined, socially awkward, terrified of insects. But my muscles were no longer remembering as clearly. I’d be relying on muscle memory from 64 years and 15,000 miles of riding. I ditched my 1980s Panasonic for a shiny new Kona Sutra and booked a flight to Laredo, Texas. “For endless miles in every direction, telephone and power poles provide some of the few signs of life between the highway and the distant horizon,” he wrote. “The route navigates some of the … most aesthetically challenged landscapes in the country, from the yawn-inducing rolling grasslands of the northern Great Plains to … where the hell-am-I agricultural expanses,” wrote Jamie Jensen in Road Trip USA. Along the way there would be plenty of time and space to think - or not think. A chance to take an intimate look at a part of my country that most cycling tourists just speed through. 83 appeared to be just that - an endless string of paved ribbon that’s arguably the bluest of U.S. I’d cast about for a route with the most “throwback” America and the least amount of interstate.

I had this trip on my bucket list long before bucket lists even existed.

At 1,700 miles, it’s the flattest and shortest cross-country route - a virtual straight line up the nation’s gut through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and, if you wish to be politically correct, or simply correct, the Rosebud Sovereign Nation.

83, a single highway between the Mexico and Canada borders. Southern Tier? Northern Tier? TransAmerica Trail? Retirement - finally time to fulfill my dream of cycling cross-country.

Road to nowhere south dakota