a bit of bicycling
We began the day with a long climb 12 miles up into the Rockies via the Macdonald Pass. We reached the Continental Divide, which will be the highest point we’ll reach throughout the trip at 6,356 feet. Most anticlimactically, there was no sign indicating the Continental Divide. Of all the possible photos I could take on this trip, that was the one I wanted – me and my bicycle beside a sign saying “Continental Divide”. I’d hoped that the sun would be setting dramatically in the background and that I was hoping to look quite tough. But, there was no sign at all. And it was frigid up there. So I grumbled even more and began the steep descent on the east side of the Rockies shivering all along the way. Most of the other riders blasted down the mountain reaching speeds of over 40 miles per hour, but I hate the feeling of going too fast and being out of control, so I took pride in not going a beat over 30 miles per hour the whole way down (my poor brakes!)
It was still before 9:00 when I reach Helena, the capital of Montana, at the bottom of the mountain. I decided to take a little coffee break – perhaps I’d be better behaved when caffeinated and I had a chance to take a step back and get my act together. Today was one of our shorter days at 61 miles, so I took my time plodding along until I reached the small town of Winston. I stopped to go to the bathroom at a store there and grabbed a Diet Coke to drink when I got to camp. I was still 12 miles away from Townsend, the town we’d be staying in overnight, but at that point, I just decided I was ready to be done for the day and plowed through the remaining miles averaging just under 20 miles per hour, arriving just before 2:00 at Broadwater High School, our boarding location for the evening.
Fortunately, we were allowed to stay inside on the gym floor, so I managed to squeak by without putting up my tent for another night. I really don’t mind doing it at all. The problem is that I never manage to put it up quite right, and I look like an idiot the whole time trying. This is never a good combination. In fact, my friend Kathleen said that if she ever needs comedic material for her blog, she’s just going to put up a video of me assembling my tent. I really must work on this!
As we had a good bit of spare time in the afternoon, several of use went to a café in town. The floors were carpeted, the bathroom signs were labelled ‘Cowboys’ and ‘Cowgirls’, and a large sign feature the face of Osama Bin Laden with the word “JUSTICE” written at the bottom graced the walls. Our waitress' shift was ending as we were leaving, and we saw her getting into a small convertible with a license plate that read “I KANDY”.
We had sandwiches at the high school for dinner, and I think that too much spare time made us turn silly. As we sat cross-legged on the gym floor eating our sandwiches, someone said something funny. And like a domino effect, everyone starting giggling. Even when we’d forgotten the original comment, we carried on giggling because it was so funny how tickled everyone else was. We ended up in stitches rolling laughing on the gym floor. It seems that everyone is really starting to click and to get to know each other well enough to be themselves, which is great. It’s so much nicer to do a difficult thing with a group of friends than with a group of strangers.
I’d really like to try to get a feel for the towns I’m bicycling through rather than just passing through them without interacting with them at all. Most evenings I’m too tired to carry on a reasonable conversation, so I haven’t been out or met too many people along the way. Hopefully I’ll be able to remedy that in the future, but in the meantime I figured checking out the town paper might help to give me a feel for each town. So today I picked up a copy of the local paper, The Townsend Star, and listed a few headlines below.
I also see an invitation to Vacation Bible School with Faith Baptist Church. This year’s theme is “TREASURE QUEST”
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