ChasingClouds

Day 23: Hingham to Chinook, MT--61 miles

We woke up bleary-eyed from spending the night in a Fraser/Tabernash flashback: way too close to the railroad crossing. Whistles all night! And then, some kind of loading process occurred in the middle of the night that made it sound like we were in the bottom of a metal trash can with gravel pouring in!

We got a slow start--I had yet another flat tire! We felt lucky that this one happened before we left camp--but not before I loaded my bike up. Oh, well. David (bike mechanic extraordinaire) took care of the problem. This saves lots of time because he has change SO many flats in his life!

David has become a convert to a product called "Brave Soldier" which is a lubricant for friction zones that sporting people (or maybe even soldiers) get (wherever that may be). Our good Doctor friend Hugh McKinnon (who we used to cycle with in VA) calls this "Butt Cream" because that's the technical term. It works! No more saddle sores for us.

The ride was relatively easy for about 29 miles. The sky was filled with these little puffy clouds and they were moving along from west to east. At one point David wanted to stop for a snack and I said "let's stop in the shade right up here." Well, I pedaled and pedaled, and finally realized that I was chasing a cloud that was moving faster than I could! So we had our snack in the sun. We left the Sweet Grass Hills behind and found the Bear Paw Mountains--a small group of mountains that come up toward Rt. 2 from the south near Havre. We rode all day through Hill County (which I had hoped was named after somebody named "Hill"). But no! We had gradual hills all day, but they weren't much bother. We found a few steep hills right before Havre.

We had been warned about Havre. A cyclist who had a very bad experience there said we should just skip the town altogether. But we decided to suspend our judgment until we experienced it ourselves. I was having visions of dual-ies everywhere, but that's not the way it turned out. Our first experience was stopping off at a golf course that advertised "RESTAURANT" for lunch. Turns out that restaurant has been closed for 2 years. After chatting with some guys in the parking lot, they offered to buy us lunch at the local Subway. How nice is that??? The traffic was very respectful and the people were very helpful. We didn't eat at the Subway, but had a great lunch at a place called 5th Avenue Grind, and appeased David's latte fix for the day at the same time! I'm glad we didn't listen to that cyclist because we would have missed a great town!

I faltered after Havre--with 22 miles to go to Chinook. The town seemed to move away from me as fast as those clouds earlier in the day! And then in the last 10 minutes, a big black cloud seemed to be chasing me, but I couldn't move fast enough to get away. Lucky for me, it didn't rain, and we found a place to stay in Chinook. It's a neat little town with a great neon bar sign David really liked. We'll post that one later too!

We have a few more days in Montana: Malta on Friday, Glasgow on Saturday, and one more night somewhere in the middle of nowhere before we break the border of North Dakota! That'll be a celebration, indeed! David mentioned that when you're 400 miles into Colorado, you're almost across the state. In Montana, that only gets you about half way.

Tomorrow's the big birthday--my 45th. We hope it will be a good one for cycling!