Day 60: Taken in off the Wet, Cold Chinook Streets by Presbyterians

I wake up at 6am and am still in a lousy mood. It rained last night and so I slept under a picnic pavilion, but my tent will not stand up unless it is staked into the dirt, so I braved the mosquitoes and the cold by sleeping atop a picnic table in just a sleeping bag. Luckily I didn’t get bit-up too much, this part of the country is rampant with West Nile Virus. I guess that’s one upside to the freezing weather, not worrying about dying of West Nile Virus. I must start a list of thing to be grateful for, to reflect upon when I’m in a bad mood:

#1 – I will probably not get The West Nile Virus

We load up on snacks and tea at the gas station, and while we are trying to eat more leftover pancake from yesterday, I notice that the predicted tailwinds are actually coming from the wrong direction. Damn… We’re not getting ANY tailwinds today… Where’s that list:

#2 – Sometimes when a day’s ride is easy and I had got plenty of sleep the night before, I have a hard time going to sleep at night. Luckily that won’t be a problem tonight.

About 30 seconds after we get started on the road, we notice another touring cyclist about 50 yards in front of us. We catch up with him, and his name is Sung and he is from Chicago. We ride with him for the day, which pretty fortunate because the headwinds turn out to be pretty ridiculous and it gives us a third person to alternate drafting with.

17 miles down the road, we reach Dodson and take a rest… this headwind is pretty bad. We get back on the bikes, and I quickly notice that my front tire has a slow leak. With some help from Matt and Sung, I take off tire and inspect last night’s patch… but everything looks proper and I can’t seem to find the leak. So I just bust out a new tube and decide to deal with the patched tube later. It’s very frustrating, my patch jobs never hold up on the road, but seem fine upon inspection.

We ride through the Fort Belknap Indian Resrvation with very little incident. We stop at a rest area with a HUGE stuffed Buffalo and an old woman who is VERY insistent that you SIGN THE GUEST REGISTER!

Leaving Fort Belknap the headwinds get ridiculous, but we manage to struggle through it. The last 6 miles are just BRUTAL. When we roll into Chinook (our stopping point for the day) it’s windy as all hell and pretty cold. We rode 64 miles and it felt even more draining than the previous day when we rode double that amount. We grabbed pizza, and decided to explore the idea of getting a motel for the evening. While riding around trying to find a cheap motel, Matt is approached by Roxanne, who offers to let us sleep in the Presbyterian Church down the street. We take her up on the offer and settle in for the evening in the Youth Room.

We find a wifi connection when you press the computer up against the wall of the back hallway. It took lots of searching to find it, but it came in handy. There is a kitchen, and a bathroom, and a fold-out bed… and so tonight turned out pretty great.

#3 – Taken in off the wet, cold Chinook streets by Presbyterians