Day 29: Sloth

There was a winter storm and flood warning in effect, so I took the last 2 days off.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day lying in bed eating cookies and PopTarts and watching YouTube videos. From 10 a.m. until 2 a.m., non-stop, 16 hours passed in 2.5 minute mildly interesting increments.

Strangely, all I remember from that time are the differences between brown and black bears, and some technical information about electronic cigarettes.

It was incredibly satisfying.

Here's a neat picture of Beaverhead rock, where the Lewis and Clark expedition miraculously found Sacagawea's brother's tribe, who gave them some horses, which allowed them to cross the mountains before winter arrived, instead of perishing on Montana's vast frozen plains.

Odds and Ends

Some stuff I wanted to remember, but couldn't fit earlier.

On the way up the steep side of one mountain, I startled a herd of big-horn sheep. I startle a lot of animals because the bike is nearly silent, which allows me to see a lot of animals, albeit only in startled form.

The sheep jumped up over the guardrail of the highway, maybe 20 feet in front of me. Close enough to smell. They crossed the road and climbed up the other side, except for one sheep who stopped climbing and stood staring at me curiously, maybe 40 feet away. I pulled my bicycle to the shoulder and sang to him for a couple minutes.

I've been singing to animals since there aren't any people to talk to. There's a song for dogs, and one for horses, and a really silly one for cows that has an extra verse if they moo while I'm singing it.

The big-horn listened for a while, then hurried off to catch up with the other ones. There's a picture of them below.

Animals I've seen on this trip but hadn't seen before:

Badger
Elk
Big Horn Sheep

Day 26: Like a mouse

After the scary, freezing mountain climb the other day I had to take a break, both because it was snowing, and to de-scare-ify myself. I hid in a little wooden cabin for 2 days, listening to the wind whip the snow around and eating beef, trying to put some hair on my chest. There was a huge swimming pool there, fed by a hot spring, where I did some swimming.

This part of Montana has an elevation between 5000 and 7000 feet. It's cold and intimidating.

This morning, I crept out of my hidey-hole like a little mouse, with about 30 plastic bags wrapped around my feet, and rode 50 miles to Dillon, MT.

Day 24: Holy crap!

Every time I think I've become a cycling stud, with the miles giving themselves up readily under my muscular thighs (haha), some new geological/meteorological horror arises like a vengeful God, smiting me for my prideful ways.

Yesterday, I got smited real good.

There was a loooong climb up over the Continental Divide, 4000 feet of climbing to the summit, 7500 feet. It was raining and chilly, about 45 degrees at the bottom, freezing cold and snowy at the top.

I'd been riding for 8 days straight, so I was kind of tired, and there was supposed to be a restaurant near the top of the mountain but it was closed, so I was very hungry.

Whenever you read those stories about people dying in the wilderness - like the family that takes a drive into the mountains and gets lost, then the car gets stuck so dad heads off into the snow to find help, but dies 2 miles from Texaco - they all start with some minor thing going wrong, which causes other small things to fail, which eventually leads to a cascade of screwups, leading to the Ultimate Failure.

Yesterday was like that. Since I don't have the right clothing for prolonged exposure to cold, it's important that minor things don't fail, initiating that scary cascade of screwups.

But...because I hadn't taken a break in 8 days, I was slow. And since I relied on that closed restaurant for food, I was hungry - which made me slower. The rain eventually soaked through everything, making me cold, which made me slower still, which kept me on the mountain longer, which got colder the higher I went, sapping all my energy, slower and colder, with each passing minute.

I panicked. I thought that I'd been on the mountain for so long that I must have missed a turn. I turned on the GPS and misread the direction. The turn was a couple miles ahead, but I thought it said behind, so I turned around and headed downhill like a total idiot.

Eventually I realized the mistake and turned around, reclimbing the same cursed patch of road until finally, some foggy white and frozen amount of time later, I reached the summit. It was all downhill from there.

A word from our sponsor.

I stayed in a great place in Darby, MT last night - The Mountain Spirit Inn.

Darby is a neat little frontier town with all kinds of cool things to do, and is the perfect distance from Missoula to pause, for cyclists on the Trams-Am route.

I promised the friendly couple that ran the motel that I'd plug them in my blog, so if any 6 of you reading go to Montana, you should stay there.

Day 21: Picture dump pt. 2

Day 21: Picture dump

Just arrived in Missoula, MT. That's 2 states I've crossed now: Oregon and Idaho. Yay me!

The weather has been remarkably pleasant in the past couple days, warm and clear, only occasionally tossing a playful bucket of ice and water, like a mischevious old friend.

I've taken advantage of the nice weather by spending a lot of time lollygagging in the woods. Camping and poking around in the bushes and chucking rocks in streams.

I haven't been bathing much, so I smell a lot like a piece of cheese that's been stored in a sock.

To remedy that, I'm off to the shower, but here are some pictures, backlogged from the Land Without Wifi.