By Steven Kopischke and Geoff Boller
Pauline and seven other people went on a bike trip from Fairbault to Mankato. A 100+ mile bike trip. Geoff and I were two of the six young adults on the trip. The beginning of the trip went like this: We arrived at school at 6:30 a.m. which really sucked. Then we packed and left by 7:00 – 7:30. We arrived at the dam and had breakfast. We biked a couple miles and ended up at Pauline’s old school. We biked 5 more miles and then we saw this green chemical layered lake next to a farm. We went a couple miles and Pauline got us lost and tried to cover it up by saying “Chris Wegler led the way.” When Chris didn’t know where to go. We met up again and went on. The coolest part of biking was there were these halfpipes on the side of the road which were actually hills with drain pipes on the ends. We’d get a lot of air off them. We went back and had lunch. Pauline took the van and Karen followed her in her car to the campsite. They said they’d be back in 20 minutes when 4 hours later they came back. We biked to the campsite, set up, ate dinner, and went to bed.
We woke up the next morning and couldn’t find Pauline or Karen. We sat there and waited for four hours when they said it would be half-an-hour. Then they came back and none of us were ready and they took off. We lost them but somehow followed our instincts and found them. We went to Pauline’s friend’s house and ate lunch. We then found out what happens to all the paper that millions of Americans spend time recycling. It is sold to the farmers for a dollar (it being a 5 by 5 ft. bundle and probably weighing 100 pounds.) They use them for blocking air so they can store hay. Then we got back on the road and biked into 30m.p.h. wind towards the campsite. We got there and me (Steve), Pauline, Mike McGinn, and Karen went to the public bathroom to take a shower while the others stayed at the campsite. While we were gone, Chris Wegler spilled the macaroni and cheese, and we were short some food. The worst thing about that campsite was there were millions of mosquitos and we were getting bit every 5 seconds. We ate dinner and went to bed.
The next day we biked to the Dam store on the way. We got to this huge hill and everybody was spread apart. I was way at the end. Once I reached the hill, I went down and to the right of me was Sothik, bending over and fixing his tire. I thought he was just checking it, but apparently he tried jumping the curve, and his tire came off in mid air, he wiped hard core. His helmet was crushed and his lip was hurt. It was really funny at first, then we all went ballistic checking our tires and going slow. Overall, the bike trip was one of those trips that wasn’t bad or good. It was in between.