Saturday, October 4, 2014.
On this date I biked 76.2 miles from my home in Eagan to our Cabin in Southern Minnesota. The trip was capture by a Go Pro video camera mounted just below the handlebars of my (frankly ghetto) Schwinn Le Tour, circa 1985. All but the last few miles were recorded, alas, since I ran out of video cards.
The link below shows the video condensed multiple times to make many hours of biking a barely tolerable 19 minutes of video. Fell free to skip ahead:
The day was perfect (save for a headwind), and I couldn't have asked for better. I rode through lovely little towns named Rosemount, Farmington, Northfield, and Faribault, and had lunch at a funny little cafe just south of Northfield. But the day wasn't so good for others. If you skip in the video to the 4:30 mark, you'll glimpse a couple of people I met at the Dunn Brother's Coffee Shop in Farmington. We chatted about where we were travelling, and it turned out they were going in the same direction, but all the way to Sioux Falls. The knew the Singing Hills bike trail that I'd pick up when I turned West in Faribault. They had given up biking for a motorcycle, and said that on a day a nice as this one, they were just out enjoying the last of autumn. They departed before me, and as they backed up of their parking spot, I noticed very distinctive leather saddle bags. They waved, and were off.
About 10 miles down the road, emergency vehicles start passing me, sirens on. A few miles more, I came to a road block where the Farmington Police were turning back cars, but they let me pass. After a few minutes, I see a helicopter appear on the horizon, low and so far away it was silent. It circled, then disappeared slowly behind some trees ahead.
If you skip to 8:13 in the video, you'll see where the emergency vehicles and helicopter were converging. The tow truck driver explained that a motorcycle had gone off the road, and both riders were seriously hurt. The bodies were on stretchers being loaded onto the helicopter when I got there, but I could see the Harley -- and those distinctive saddle bags on the back.
I never found anything online in the local police blotters about the accident.
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