Days 69, 70, 71, + 72 – Montana Pt. 4

Day 69 – Butte, MT

I got caught this morning.

Talking to cows.

I am embarassed to say that I am not joking when I say I talk to the cows when I bike. They are curious creatures that almost always give me their full attention.

I saw a big field of cows coming out of Whitehall on an empty road in the middle of nowhere Montana. I said to the cows, “Moo, moo. Moo! Mooooo, moo moo mooOoOoO.” I spoke to them with the dynamics and intonation of the English language, but used Moo as my primary word. It was entertaining.

I looked around to make sure no one was watching. When I looked to my write, there was a man, less than 10 yards away, starting at me!

It was a fellow cyclist who had pitched a tent on the side of the road. He forgave me.

I crossed the Western Continental Divide that day. The water splits here, water west of the divide flows to the Pacific, and water east of the divide flows to the Mississippi. It was hard and tough climb along a windy road littered with white crosses at each blind curve, one of which had a bicycle on it, marking the points of death along the way. It was quite terrifying.

After reaching the peak, I cruised without pedaling about 10 miles down into Butte. I felt lucky to be alive by the end of the day.

My host for the night, John Babcock is a host extraordinaire who has had hundreds of cyclists in his home as it is along the Great Divide Mountain Biking Route (GDMBR). I enjoyed hearing stories of his time being a cook and now being a hydrologist. We broke bread with two other cyclists that night.

Day 70 – Drummond, MT

Another heat wave rolled through. This time the temperatures were supposed to hit the high 90’s and maybe even triple digits over the next three days. But for some reason having cycled in 105F armed me a sense of confidence to tackle anything. Plus, I had spent the last week climbing up the continental divide, each day behind an uphill. It was finally all downhill from here.

I had 79 miles ahead of me with temperatures reaching 97F.

I stopped a Chinese restaurant in Deer Lodge. It’s always refreshing to flex my broken Chinese and eat food that isn’t just burger and fries. It made me feel like I was home a bit more.

I think there is something so beautiful about the stories behind the Chinese immigrants who start these restaurants in the middle of the American countryside. More often than not, they work for decades in New York to save up enough money to start a restaurant, move out to a town where there aren’t any Chinese folks or Chinese food, and prop up a restaurant.

They have an incredible work ethic and entreprenuerial spirit, and are always excited to see someone who speaks Chinese.

I spent most of the day with my head in the handlebars, fighting a headwind and squeezing out as much aerodynamic juice I could out of my bike to get out of the brutal heat as quickly as possible. The chocolate donuts I stored in an old Pringles jar melted into an inedible mess, and my water quickly turned hot.

At the campground that night, I was welcomed by some English folks who were RV-ing around the country, and broke bread with Johann and Henriette, some South-African Australians who shared their stir fry dinner with me. They told me stories of getting married after just two weeks of meeting eachother in Namibia (?), and sailing from South Africa to the Carribean.

They were grand adventurers. Their current mission? To suck the marrow out of life in the little time they thought they might have left.

Day 71 – Missoula, MT

Before I left Drummond, I put down a gas station breakfast sandwich and swapped my water from the campground with fresh, presumably filtered water from the gas station. I was in a rush and didn’t think to sample it before I left. Big mistake.

Some 10 miles out, I took a sip of water and it tasted beyond awful. It undoubtedly had notes of fecal matter inside. It reeked and tasted like nothing I had put in my mouth before.

At first, I thought that someone at the gas station (some folks were giving me unkind glances) had put something in my water. But I no longer think this is the case as my hard-to-access bottle hidden on my downtube was also contaminated.

My going theory now is that rats or mice got into the soda machine and had to go number two.

The next stop was in 30 or so miles and I had a few drops of uncontaminated water in my spare bottle that I hadn’t swapped out at the gas station.

I stopped on the side of the road to assess the situation and take of my cold-weather clothes. (The mornings here start in the 50’s and somehow by noon it is in the 90’s). I put my long pants, jacket, and gloves away as a man in a UTV sort of vehicle passed by me.

“What can I do for you?” he said, with a smile.

“Um, nothing, just riding my bicycle.” I smiled back.

He rode off. Darnit, I thought. I should’ve asked for water! Why didn’t I think of that.

I sat there, wallowing in my stupidity until a few minutes later he came driving back around. I waved him down — “Do you have any water?”

I left their with four bottles of cold water and some good conversation. Farmer/rancher Joe came from Lancaster, PA and settled down here.

Later that day, I had some ridiculously good and cheap food from the Clinton Market, and rode into Missoula, sometimes on the interstate shoulder.

Local forest fires turned the sky into an orange inferno — my eyes dried out cycling through the smoke. It felt apocolyptic — I even saw an escaped horse trotting down the frontage road beside me.

I spent the night with hosts Bill, Annette, and their dog, Finn.