Northwest winds from 15 gusting up to 25 pushed us along Highway 94. It is not illegal to ride on the interstate through North Dakota and so we took advantage of the wind. I was somewhat nervous about the interstate, primarily due to the heavy traffic and average car speeds of 80 mph. But the interstate was amazing. A 7 foot wide shoulder allowed us to not even feel the 100’s of semis and other vehicles fly by us. For most of the way the rubble strip was directly in the center of the shoulder, but left just enough room for our bikes to track on the right side of it. There were a handful of overpasses that we were able to stop and take a break. The wind gusts under the bridges were so strong that at one point, the wind knocked my bike over. I didn’t care, because it was coming from the west and that was all that mattered.
About midday, a cop pulled in front of us with its lights on. We stopped behind it and a police officer got out. He walked up to us and said he got a call from a trucker who thought they might have hit me. He just wanted to make sure we were okay. I had explained that we are forced to ride on the right side of the rubble strip and that the trucks aren’t even close to us on the road. I also told him, that all the truck drivers we’ve experienced have been very courteous and give us plenty of room. They by far are our favorite roadside companions, because they slow down and move over. Matt explained that it could have been another group, since every day we see cyclists out crossing the country. The cop was glad we were okay but took our licenses to make sure we weren’t outlaws. After about 15 minutes the cop returned. I had already busted out a snack and was in the middle of stuffing my face full of trail mix. The cop apologized for the wait, and then went into a story about how when he ran Matt’s license, all sorts of “bells and whistles” went off. He said the algorithm they use assigns each letter in your name a number and so your name has a total. They then look at the first letter of the first name and last letter of the last name and so apparently Matt’s name code matches another guy who has a warrant out. Once the cop heard the “bells and whistles” he dug a little deeper and was able to verify that code from the guy with the warrant was not Matt Keene. Thank God he dug deeper. From the time the cop mentioned “warrant for your arrest” my brain immediately played a scenario in my head that they would cuff him, put him in the car and leave me with the bikes. I also thought about our “mooning the cog” back in 2007 while hiking Mount Washington and the Appalachian Trail and wondering if we were still in the system somehow. I have also been deeply saddened and enraged by all of the shootings that continue to happen throughout the country, and the historical shootings over the past week. I can only imagine that our white privilege sprinkled small amounts of doubt in the officer, thus causing him to “look deeper” and realize that the warrant wasn’t for Matt Keene. I started to suggest to the officer that maybe this coding system wasn’t the most reliable and he agreed that this happened quite frequently targeting the wrong person, but that it was better to have an over reactive alert system then one that might not identify criminals. I thanked him for not arresting Matt and for coming out to check on our safety, but a part of me does regret the 30 minutes of lost time and mileage when the wind is this strong and approaching storms are in the distant. A part of me does still wonder how it might have been different if my or Matt’s skin were a slightly darker color. A part of me does still have concern that an armed trained man can stop me who isn’t armed and has the power and authority to change my life forever, and that every year I pay through my taxes for this system to continue.
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