Day 59: In Montana, No One Can Hear You Scream

In Montana, No one can hear you scream... except Matt P, and I think he’s starting to wonder about all the screaming. It’s completely and thoroughly rural. You can go insanely long stretches without seeing a single home or person. Luckily, today the winds were going to propel us through the negative space and empty sky at 23mph… Couldn’t be more excited.

I wake up at 6:30am to get a jump on the day. I forego a shower, seeing as how I spent an hour in the hot tub the night before. It’s a beautiful morning. We east breakfast and say goodbye to mary and start out the 120 mile day.

Right out of the starting gate, we are flying. It’s a beautiful thing to be gliding along the Montana countryside with the wind at your back. The first 30 miles go by in a flash and we find ourselves at Bergies wolfing down MASSIVE pancakes . Seriously massive. I can’t finish mine, and Matt sure can’t even come close to finishing his (which is probably 24 inches in diameter). We hobble out of the restaurant and vow to ride until Hindsdale (44 miles away). The wind has really picked up and we go flying. My top speed today was 39.5mph, which was on a very fun downhill.

Before we even get to Hindsdale, we are starting to get tired. All the towns we pass through are definitely railroad towns…. Towns that serve only to service trade along the railroad line. Combined with the overcast weather, it makes for a depressing sight. We might to Eastbound Cyclists from Colorado... Sandy and ...Ken?

Hindsdale is a depressing little town, but not nearly so much as Saco (94 of 122 miles). Flies are everywhere, like the town is built out on a large deposit of rotting fruit salad. We get our water bottles refilled at some small smoky bar on the main strip, and set out to finish the day by getting to Malta.

By this time in the day, our tailwind has almost deserted us, and so it was a laborious stretch of hilly terrain. This was my second day of a back-to-back Century Ride (2 days of at least 100 miles each). I am dead tired. But somehow manage to make it to Malta. It’s not exactly a great town. Some locals in a large white pickup belligerently honked at us and gave us the “crazy eye”. The public park was muddy and a little rundown. The downtown is not exactly a bustling metropolis… I am eager to leave this town. The restaurants had mostly shut down by the time we were ready to eat, so we hit up Dairy Queen when it started POURING RAIN. We are stuck inside waiting for the rain to stop, but will be ejected from the restaurant in 30 minutes, and that’s where I am at this moment…. Typing away on this blog.

It was a great day… but I have to admit that mentally I think I pushed myself a little too far. The idea of getting back on the bike tomorrow morning is actually making me a bit nauseous. Today was so draining that the idea of doing it all over tomorrow is just driving me nuts. Tomorrow we have tailwinds from 6am – 9am… so we need to get a VERY early start. The rain, the town, the sore muscles… right now it’s all a bit much. I’m not sure what else to say… I’m just kind of exhausted and not looking forward to getting on the bike tomorrow. I hate that feeling… luckily it doesn’t happen often. But I need a pick me up of some sort tomorrow. Maybe I can buy some Crystal Meth in the next hollowed-out dying railroad town.

PS - We leave the Dairy Queen in the rain to discover that my front tire went flat. Ugh. I hole up in the mens room at the camp and patch it up. Not very confident that my patch will hold.