Day 12 - Grand Forks to Bismarck 437kms

Another wet and chilly start to the day this morning - and yet another appalling buffet breakfast! This has now become a bit of a pattern over the past few days and is causing a lot of upset in the competitors camp, especially when the previous nights meal was not that good!  - the U.S tourism trade is doing its self no favours here! Cold, green scrambled egg, greasy bacon and a shrivelled finger (sausage) are not the best way to start your day.

Lots more gravel roads today leading us further west, staying in the state of North Dakota for tonight's stop over in Bismarck.

We only had one regularity section to complete today, but with three timing points! this was always going to shake things up a little. Yesterday had turned out a bit of a mess with people's timings all over the shop so again a chance was given for compeditors to recalibrate once more. We were fine so no need for readjustment  to our Brantz.

The Regularity..... 

We started off really well and found ourselves arriving at the first TP - bang on (or so we thought) second TP fantastic! bang on again (or so we thought) then came the navigator Cock-Up!!!!!! - stopped the stop watch at this point so had no time to follow to the final TP some 6kms down the track - we now needed luck on our side!!!!

I was seriously peed off with myself but just had to sit back and hope that Peter could feel his way - I was now,about as much use as a cuckoo clock with out its cuckoo!

We made our way to the end of the regularity where the ideal times had been posted to find we had in fact pulled off a miracle, coming in only 2 seconds adrift on ideal time at the last TP, zeroed the one befor and lost 1 second on the first - 3 seconds in total, not too shabby.

We then had another 160 kms to travel to our over night in Bismark and a boat trip out on the Missoroi river. 

On arrival at our hotel we decided a good walk was required, sitting in the car for hours each day and not having the healthiest of diets, we needed to move. Bismarck would seem to be the medical hub of the area, as we walked around block upon block was filled with medical units for every consevable ailment from pediotary to brain injury.  

After our walk we made the joint decision not to go on the boat trip but stay and have a quiet and early night! this plan soon failed as we decided on one quick drink in the bar would be a nice idea before we retired to our room - fellow crews came and went and we finally left the bar some 4 hours later, so much for our early night!

Checking the notice board before bed we were pleased to have closed our gap on the leaders and now are only 16 seconds behind.