Ely, Minnesota - near the Boundary Waters

Sorry it's been awhile...

I'm in Ely, Minnesota. I took a northerly detour to see Bob Dylan's hometown, and take a tour of an old iron ore mine in Soudan.

Along the way, I have met some 'interesting' people. Manohmanohmanohman. After the Mississippi headwaters and the night in Bemidji, I spent the night in Bena.
Bena is on an Indian reservation, and every person that I've mentioned Bena to says 'I can't believe you made it out of there alive!' - I still don't understand what the big danger is, but people seem to think if you spend more than 14 seconds there, you end up dead.

I stopped at the general store that mentioned they had camping. I asked how much, they said $28, and I said 'you do realize that I'm sleeping on the ground. So really I'm paying for the atmosphere around me, the nitrogen and hydrogen and oxygen, the grass, and the wind and the sky and everything. I sail, I'm a sailor! Ahoy! So shouldn't that be a little closer to... Free???'
I left, went across the street and camped in the baseball field. But not before meeting Dinah Minks - I assume that's not her real name. She was the owner of the bar in Bena. I talked to her for a long time, she bought me a few drinks. Well, didn't really 'buy' since she owns the bar, more like gave. As the night went on, her consumption of Absolute and Diet Cokes increased at an alarming rate. She must've had 10 of them. The bartender kept saying 'one more, Dinah?' and she kept saying yes. They must go by factors of 10 there. 1 means 10. And she smoked INCESSANTLY. Gross. Unfortunately I was downwind so her Merit 100s kept wafting in my face. She would leave it there in the ashtray, rotting, as it slowly turned to ashy detritus. Stinky, smelly rot. It was hard to handle. Her two favorite sayings were 'what the piss' and 'piss on that' - she couldn't complete a sentence without using one of the two.
At one point she asked me 'do you think you'll make her?' - I was confused, but finally figured out that 'her' referred to me making it to Maine. I am gradually learning that people use 'her' in place of many things. It's a noun, it's a verb, it's a subject, it's a predicate, it's everything!
Then Dinah tells me that the 18 year old, 300 pound bartender named Kelly thinks I'm hot stuff and wants me to camp in her front yard. Ummmm, I think the baseball field will be fine, thanks. Then! - Dinah's daughter - the bar is a family affair - I've run into that more than once - the daughter and her friends tell me it's time to dance. I begrudgingly join them on the dancefloor as AC/DC's Thunderstruck plays in the background. I say 'are you sure you can dance to Thunderstruck?' They say 'you can dance to anything!'
Pretty soon after that I had had enough and wandered over to the baseball field. Yikes. I left scratching my head and wishing for normal people who like to learn things and acquire knowledge and better themselves in some way. Any way.

Unfortunately, the next day I ran into Shorty and Rhonda. At first, they seemed like nice, friendly people. Shorty inevitably offers to buy me a beer (I need to learn the art of politely declining), we were having a good conversation so I accepted. Of course it's a Natural Ice. That should've been my first hint there! He starts getting philosophical, I was still amused at that point - he's saying things like 'two positives make a negative' and when talking about the ocean, says 'as far as me and the ocean go -- f*** that big blue b!tch!' Rrrright.
Anyway, he invites me back to his place for a BBQ with his brother Rick. At that point it was 5pm and I figured it'd be a decent place to camp and have dinner. I ride over, about 10 miles, getting there before they did. I took a nap on their picnic table because I was afraid to touch anything else. There were at least 2 dogs chained up in back, 1 in the window of the trailer, yapping at me. It was a run-down trailer. There was a very large pile of beer cans in the front yard, an old tractor, an old lawn mower which, by the looks of the lawn, hadn't been used in many years. There were various abandoned pick-up trucks scattered about the property - I'd say at least 5. I learned later that they didn't have electricity or running water, so they had to run over to Rick's when something needed to be refrigerated or rinsed off.
Long story short - these guys were the rednecks of all rednecks. They were purple necks, deeply bruised black and blue necks.
They cooked chicken for dinner, they must've cooked it for at least 2 hours. I have no idea why. I didn't eat any. Rick had a serious tooth-ache and was highly intoxicated 'in order to deal with the pain.' He asked me at least 6 times where I was headed. After awhile I didn't even answer. He kept thinking that Maine was west of Minnesota.
I asked him what was wrong with his tooth - he said 'I dunno. Musta brushed it too hard or got a bristle stuck or sumpthin'. 'Well, have you seen a dentist Rick? Maybe you have a cavity?' - 'No, Shorty is my dentist, he says it's fine.'

This kinda thing went on and on. Rick showed me some rusty old containers in the back that he claimed were used by Al Capone during the bootlegging days. Al Capone made whiskey in my backyard! - he kept insisting.

By the end of the night I had a headache and went to bed. Is all of Minnesota like this?

The next few days got better. I met some nice, normal people at the bike shop in Grand Rapids. Finally! I told them how glad I was that they were normal, they just laughed.

Then I rode the Mesabi Trail - pretty cool bike trail through the woods - up to Hibbing, to Bob Dylan's hometown. I can see why he left! The town seems stuck in 1952.
And there was no museum, or exhibit, or anything saying that Bob Dylan was from there. One person in town said they don't really like him, and refer to him as the 'old Jewish boy with a big nose who broke the school piano' - I guess in high school he performed and they booed him off stage. He prompted busted up the piano.
I stopped at the Greyhound Museum - apparently Hibbing is widely recognized as the birthplace of bus travel. Who knew, right? I asked the old lady there where the Bob Dylan stuff was in town. She said there was no stuff, but I could go by his old house if I wanted to.
'Is there an exhibit there, or things to read?' I asked.
'Oh no, just a painting on the garage. Jimmie Lavine lives there now, he's a delivery boy in town for Frito Lay.' - Oh. Ok.
'Well, what other interesting things are there to see in town?'
'The high school. You MUST visit the high school, you can't miss seeing the auditorium!'

She was serious. I left.

Then the next day I met this fantastic character named Al at the Railroad Museum in the small town of Tower, MN. He was a breath of fresh air. The funniest guy I've come across in some time. I talked to him for about an hour, endlessly laughing. He was cracking me up. He was intelligent too, which was refreshing. He single handedly restored my faith in Minnesotans.
Al sometimes refers to people as white boys or white girls. It sounds funnier when he says it. Everyone is white in Minnesota anyway, which makes it even funnier. Thanks to you Al for being yo bad white boy self! --

Then I went to the oldest and deepest iron ore mine in America, in Soudan, MN. It was very very cool. Took a tiny spooky elevator half a mile down into the earth. It was beyond interesting. I kept thinking, 'wow, we are 27 stories underground, that's a lot'. Fascinating to hear stories of the old mining days. They eventually closed it down in 1962 because people figure out a way to add oxygen to less rich ore. This ore was 70% iron - which is very good I guess - but also very expensive. They would take this rich ore and mix it with less rich ore. This good ore was Fe2O3. The oxygen would react when heated and do something good to the less rich ore. I just don't know what. It's what the French call a certain 'I-don't-know-what'.
Moral of the story is they figured out a different and cheaper way - besides the Bessemer process - to make steel. Something about pumping oxygen into the less rich ore without relying on the chemical release of oxygen from the richer ore. Or something like that.

They also have a multi-million dollar facility there where they shoot neutrinos around and crash them into things, then chart the results on highly sensitive computers. Again, I have very little idea what this does or why they do it, it's way over my head. But it's endlessly interesting.

I spent the night last night in someone's yard in Ely. I asked her where the campground was, she didn't know but said I was welcome to stay in her yard. She didn't mention she had about 14 cats. It was a real live Animal Farm there! Dogs and cats and spiders and skeeters and lions and tigers and bears oh my! I woke up to cats meowing and dogs barking - there was a cobweb on my bike - must've been Charlotte's Web.

And, I had flat tire # 6 and 7 yesterday. Frustrating. I need to buy a new tire because the rear tire has worn thin, but the bike shop in town doesn't have the right size. Hopefully the bike shop in Duluth will.

So that's that! Ahh, Minnesota. I'm looking forward to Route 61 and Duluth. Duluth is supposed to be a cool town. So I hope. As long as Dinah and Shortie aren't there I think I'll be fine.