O Montana

The little dinger part of my bicycle bell broke off when I was in Whitefish, which meant I couldn't just ring the bell when I wanted to - for example, at exciting landscapes, deer along the road, or fields of flowers. So instead I just sort of yelled out, "Ding ding!" Yeah, the subtitle of my blog could be, "Dork on a Bike," but those bell-ringing moments are sort of why I ride, so I just had to make do...

Part of it was needing an outlet for the raucous level of joy I felt - I found myself saying out loud, "THIS is what I came here for!" Ringing the bell was such a satisfying way to express that, though yelling out "Ding ding" was pretty fun too.

I feel like this riding in a lot of places closer to SF, but there's something truly special about riding along quiet roads with mountains on the horizon, all that sky, sudden patches of flowers and fields of mustard... The joy of being in that overcame the minor hassles of mountain-sized mosquito bites, the almost-daily thunderstorms (around 6pm) and having to be creative about where to store my food away from bears (usually in the campground bathhouse or laundry room).

I still don't like packing up a wet tent, but I kind of made my peace with it so I could get on the road at a decent time in the morning -and usually by lunchtime I'd find an open patch of hot, sunny ground to spread it out to dry.

Monday as I rode towards Missoula I kept wondering why I felt so wilted by the heat, though I was having a great ride. That whole day I was following different rivers: the Clearwater, Blackfoot, and Clark Fork. In the afternoon, about 25 miles out of Missoula I decided to pull off onto a little side road (marked as a "Fishermen's Access" point) and stick my feet in the river to cool off.

Once again I had amazing luck - I found a spot with a sandy patch, a log to sit on - and some really nice people, who even offered me a cold beer and took my picture.

Oh - and once I got to town I found bank signs showing the temperature being in the range of 97-102 degrees! It made me feel better about feeling the heat on the road (ie, I'm only kind of a wus, not a total one).

Now about this Stoney's cow (steer or bull maybe - it was anatomically vague) - I actually saw this last year, when I was riding w/the Cycle America group. This is at the junction of two highways and we were going in the opposite direction, so I was delighted to find it. Though honestly, he/it doesn't look very happy... and actually, the truck stop it's advertising was pretty unhappy too (grimy, slim selection of decent juice & snacks, and sort of cranky people). It was still worth a bell - or, well, you know.

Since it's so hard for me to do written justice to the amazing sense of Place I felt so much (and why I went to Montana in the first place) here's a little video I shot standing astride my bike, with the mountains all around... (They were the Bob Marshall Wilderness, at the beginning of the video, then panning over to the Mission Mountain range, from Hwy 83 that runs north/south down from the eastern side of Flathead Lake.)