Wind, hills, wind, hills and heat
Many miles have flown behind us since my last post. We’ve had a number of guest riders come and go, we’ve seen a few more states, been blasted by wind, and have started the rolling hills leading up to the Rocky Mountains and Glacier National Park. We’re currently in Matt and Tricia Jansen’s house in Billings, Montana, eating all their food, getting haircuts and doing major repairs on our bikes.
From the point of my last update in La Crescent, Minnesota, we’ve covered four states and convinced Josh to stay with us until Anacortes. The world-renowned Lucas McLawhorn joined us for the few days to our break in Minneapolis, which meant many a game of basketball was played and even more stories from the 2003, 2005 and 2007 bike trips came out.
We spent two days off in the sanctuary of the Rice Ranch in Andover, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis. Dean Rice and his family stuffed us full of food, showed us around the city and didn’t get mad at how messy their house got. But as is usual with days off there is always so much to do, I couldn’t find time to do anything more than post a few photos.
Leaving Andover was one of the harder things we’ve done this trip. We had beautiful weather during our days off, but the morning we decided to leave the sky seemed about to open up. We spent the next couple days getting out of Minnesota and then hit U.S. 212 and didn’t make a single turn off that until yesterday about 40 miles south of Billings, Montana.
South Dakota was better than I had hoped. Sure, we had our fair share of bad wind. Actually, we had more than our share, but we also had some great tailwinds, great people and one of this country’s most beautiful states. Some days we went 60 miles and averaged 10 miles per hour, and other days we went more than 70 miles at a 17.2-mile per hour pace. We took a day off in Newell, South Dakota, just 40 miles east of the Wyoming border. It just so happened to be July 22: Brian’s birthday. At about 1 a.m. a few of us spent some time wrapping plastic wrap all around Brian’s bike and panniers. He took it well in the morning, but made the mistake of unwrapping everything, then going to breakfast. While he and a couple other guys were at TJ’s Café, the rest of us wrapped everything in his panniers individually, then wrapped the whole bike to a picnic table. He was a good sport about it, again, but probably regretted having his birthday on an off day when we had so much idle time.
The old saying, “All’s well that ends well,” holds quite true on a bike trip. There is something remarkable about ending a hard day with a good tailwind or a downhill. Yesterday, we ended up having to ride about 95 miles from Busby to Billings, Montana. About 60 miles into the day it got into the 90s and a headwind picked up to slow us down even more. We had a 3 or 4 mile climb just outside the city, but then a 5-mile descent into town. A long downhill basically wipes out of your memory, all the hellish climbing, heat and wind of the previous hours turn a close to miserable day into one that is quite pleasant. Weaving our way through town was another hard task, but as serendipity would have it, a sheriff’s deputy noticed us (we’re hard to miss, 16 blue-jerseyed bikers), and, as a fellow biker, escorted us through town, stopping traffic at all the intersections.
It feels like we’ve had an off day here in Billings, but we’ve just spent the last evening and this morning doing everything we need to do. We’ll ride 45 miles or so north out of town and begin the 360 miles to Glacier National Park, where we’ll take 3 days off to enjoy some hiking before the final push to the coast.
As a side note, Preston the beta fish is still kickin’ it on the back of David’s bike. Thanks for keeping up with the blog; I know it’s been a while since anything has been posted. Check my twitter page and the Cycle20Ten website for daily mobile updates and enjoy the rest of July.
