June 7, 2005

We made ourselves some oatmeal in the kitchen downstairs from the church. It was warm and comfortable last night at The Simms Community Church.

We were on the road at 6:45, our earliest start yet. The winds were with us again this morning for our first leg, a 30-mile ride to Great Falls, MT. We had some errands to do. Nick had to make a stop at an outfitter store for a camping item that got left behind most likely in Ovando. I needed to get a more suitable rear tire as the one I have been using is taking a beating. I needed to get online to send a couple of postings to Jason. We needed to stop for a second breakfast.

1,000 Mile Mark

We made great time to Great falls and even after all the stops we were on the road again by around 11:00. There is one big and fairly steep hill going north on US 87 just as you go over the Missouri River bridge. Fortunately the stiff tail wind made it fairly easy. When we reached the top the terrain generally had a slight downhill and with the tail winds I joked “Well its all down hill now to Fort Benton.”, our planned destination for the day. We just sat in the saddle and probably only pedaled 1,000 pedal strokes the first eight miles while cruising along at around eighteen to twenty-four MPH. At that point I said to Nick, "We should stop screwing around!". We started pedaling in earnest which brought our speeds to the upper twenties to low thirties. At that pace we would reach Fort Benton by around 2:30, which we did.

Why They Call It Big Sky Country

At some point we decided to really take advantage of the winds and push on to Havre, which is another eighty-seven miles from Fort Benton. We were flying. The smile on Nick’s face was an inspiration as he was having as much fun as I was. Without really working hard we were cruising along. I joked, “This is almost like cheating.”

It was cool and overcast in the morning but now it was mostly sunny and although it was still cool there was no wind chill to speak of as we were going only slightly faster than the winds. At the rate we were going we could reach Havre by 6:00, no sweat.

A Montana Ranch

We should have learned that things can change in big sky country as the winds shifted from coming out of the southwest to the west which gave us a cross to tail as opposed to the tail to cross that we had most of the day. Also US 87 turned slightly to the north making it a stiff mostly cross wind. This brought our cruising speed down to ten to fifteen MPH. We watched the skies closely as a result of the experience two days earlier. There were some showers that we could see about thirty miles to the northeast but the western sky where the winds were coming from were clear so we pressed on, but it was hard work.

We made a stop at Loma to get some snacks and had a nice chat with the shopkeeper. Nick commented when we were back on the road again how people out here that you don’t know tell you a lot of personal things about themselves and their families. This was an astute observation.

We reached Havre about 8:15. Nick commented that if “we ate out we would be setting up in the dark.” I checked the GPS for the sunset at our location this far north and it said 9:48. We treated ourselves to a steak dinner, and camped across the street at the Good Neighbor Sam campground.

We hit the 1,000-mile mark today. It was a huge day mileage wise at 153.46. It wasn’t cheating.

Jim

Cycledog (Ride the extra mile!!)

© 2005 - JNS