Oh ya, you betcha

We're on a road to nowhere/ Come on inside/ Takin that ride to nowhere/ We'll take that ride

-- Talking Heads

The car made it to the Fargo checkpoint at 5:45 p.m. The team was required to stop for 30 minutes; so they just decided to charge and call it a night. Tomorrow morning, we'll all head up to the border with weary eyes on the weather. BTW, it's cool up here. The motel we're staying at hasn't even opened its pool yet. (Apparently the swimming season is in August.)

We assume the first cars to arrive in Fargo were Michigan and Principia. We tried to catch up with them all day in our independent, gas-eating vehicle, but we never found them. They probably went substantially beyond Fargo by the end of the day. The other teams to arrive at the checkpoint as of 5:45 p.m. (in order) were Waterloo, Germany, Minnesota, Calgary and S&T.

We spent most of the day traveling in western Minnesota (which is a state we didn't even know was included on the route). So far, we've passed thousands of square miles of corn and soybeans since Kansas. Surely we can feed and power the world with this much dedicated farmland. Or maybe not.

You can plainly see the impact of receding ice age glaciers up here, smooth rock outcroppings poking up out of fields, lots of lakes left behind, etc. Otherwise, the landscape was very flat today.

We've also been passing lots of wind farms. It seems as though a lot of these high-tech windmills must be going up in these vast fields overnight.

P.S. The next time one of our design teams orders Polo shirts for their official uniforms, we're calling the fashion police. This coming from someone who has been wearing plaid shorts for the entire race.

P.P.S. This morning, back in Sioux Falls, the team was staged very close to a meatpacking plant/slaughterhouse. We heard animals screaming! No kidding. The smell was overwhelming. We're thinking about going on a fish diet for the rest of the trip. Thank God for Canadian walleye.

P.P.P.S. If we don't make a big comeback by Calgary, we're prepared to challenge the field to a race on to northern Alaska. It would be just like Ice Road Truckers, only different. (We're not speaking for the team here.)