It Ain't Easy Turning 45!!!

Day 25 (and Day 26 day off): Malta to Glasgow--72 miles

Nobody said it would be easy, but this is ridiculous!!! The day started OK. We had a slight headwind, but the morning was pretty and the scenery was interesting. We noticed that we were predominately moving uphill, but were still having fun. Along the way, we kept disturbing these nesting birds (plovers or sandpipers of some kind) and they chased us up the highway squawking!

We also startled a deer in a wheat field. I thought the wheat was only about a foot tall until the deer started leaping through it. It was about three feet high, and after about 3 leaps through, the deer just took a dive into the wheat and hid from us. it completely disappeared! Amazing, and something I haven't seen before...

On we went for 42 miles to Hinsdale. It was a tough ride! The headwind made it feel like 42 miles uphill! We stopped for a little rest and a bite to eat at a quick stop in Hinsdale and the woman there said "Watch out. I hear there's a big storm coming." After that warning, we decided to get going because the wind seemed to be getting stronger and we had about 30 miles to do!

David continued to pull us along, trying to let me ride in his draft. This was difficult because the crosswind was coming at a weird angle. The only way I could take advantage of it was if my front pannier was touching David's back pannier! That was a difficult position to maintain because the wind was blowing us around a lot. Anyway, we were both tired today, and having comfort issues--not able to find any comfortable position on the bikes! We had to take several "butt breaks" just to get off the bikes. The good news was that the strong wind made it impossible for the mosquitos to hang on!

Today was also Tom Maddox's birthday. We had a commemorative stop at mile 66 because Tom would have been 66 today. We had a toast with our water bottles, and later a more proper toast at dinner. Tom would have made today's ride easier, for sure! We miss him so much--and I especially miss that he always managed to call me to wish me Happy Birthday before I called him every year!

The wind got stronger and stronger. Behind us, we could see storm clouds getting orgnized and looking like those classic pictures you see on the weather channel! Since we had such a strong easterly wind, we thought the storm would stay west of us. But by the time we got to the outskirts of Glasgow, the black clouds were directly overhead.

As we rode into town, as truck stopped and the driver yelled "Take shelter when you get to town--there's a big storm coming." This was great incentive to ride as fast as we could--and we did! But it wasn't very fast because we were both pooped out! By the time we got to town, there were gusts of 30-40 mph that just stopped us in our tracks. We had targeted a hotel on the other side of town, but decided to duck into the center of town after we started getting buffeted by dirt and gravel that the wind whipped up. We had nicks in all our exposed skin, and dirt in our teeth! What a nightmare...

We pulled into the Campbell Lodge and checked in quickly. I started having an allergy attack while doing that from all the wind and dust. So as soon as we went to the room, I jumped into the shower to see if I could get rid of the allergens. About 30 seconds later, we heard something like gravel being thrown at our roof (but we were on the first floor!). David went to check it out, and it was the worst hail storm this area has seen in the last 80 years or so! The hail was the size of 50-cent pieces--and then got smaller and harder over the 30 minutes it came down. Many of the west-facing windows in town were broken--glass everywhere on the sidewalks. The hail was knee-deep in places, and there was not a flower or tree top left in town. We figured my big birthday present was NOT being out in that storm!!!

It took about an hour for the flooding in the streets to subside, and then we found a great restaurant for my birthday dinner and shared a bottle of wine to toast our good and not-so-good experiences of the day! Nobody promised this trip would be EASY, did they?

We decided that we were beaten up enough to take the day off after my birthday, and we had a lovely day--doing laundry, taking it easy, exploring the town, and seeing Spiderman 3 (the local option). We had a nice Father's Day dinner out and are feeling much more rested and ready for tomorrow's ride into the Fort Peck Reservation.