Day 15 (93 miles)
Trip Start
Jun 13, 2008
1
16
36
Trip End
Aug 09, 2008
Hingham,
Montana,
United States
Monday, June 30, 2008
for this first longer ride, the weather forecast was calling for high temperatures--up to the mid 90s by 3pm. to make sure that everyone would arrive to camp before the worst of the heat, the alarm clocks went off at 5. julie, brad, and i found ourselves feeling like zombies, though, and we spent a lot of time staring into space instead of getting ready. even though we woke up an hour earlier, we didn't get off until our normal hour of 8, and it took a while for our legs to spin up
like this for miles...
. we were already getting a little bit draggy from the constant morning alarm clocks, and there was already tension between the late risers (i.e. everyone under 30) and the early risers (everyone else), so at one of our eating breaks, we worked on devising new plans to allow us to sleep in and let everyone else get up and leave by the crack of dawn (literally).riding through the plains was already feeling quite different. the day's directions were: get on highway 2, ride 92 miles to hingham, go to the city park. in between, there were lots of fields, lots of grass, and the occasional stretch of rolling hills. the scenery was pretty, but in a very different way from the mountains. honestly, we were getting a bit spoiled by the constant majestic beauty. riding without dan was also quite different. he is such a beast on the bicycle that i was always pushing really hard to keep up with him. working so hard was quite tiring for the first couple of days, but i definitely felt myself becoming a stronger cyclist quite quickly. starting today, julie and brad became my buddies, so we got at a slower pace now and take a lot more breaks.
oddly enough, the day's campground was a city park (using the term "city" a bit loosely because there were only 150 inhabitants and no paved roads)
random dinosaur!
. in this stretch of montana, most of the towns are really small and don't offer hotels or campgrounds, so we were actually going to be staying at a bunch of parks. this park was really nice...it had nice swing sets, running water, and even some wireless internet to "borrow". the grass was perfect for pitching tents on as well...springy and soft. hopefully the rest are just like this one.once settled down in the park, i suddenly found myself doing my own bike maintenance and a couple of other folk's. although i still know hardly anything about working on a bike, i'm finding it strangely enjoyable and calming. it was fun working on the other bikes, but hopefully it doesn't become a trend. one of the things that i did on my bike was to install a set of aerobars--those funny things on the handlebars that allow the rider to lean really far forward. george and maxine (the tandem riders) had a spare set that they weren't using, so i put them on my bike because they really help to get in an aerodynamic position for windy days.
also today, we finally met a group that we'd been hearing about for some time. when we crossed washington pass on our third day, we met a guy coming up the other side who had been pedaling the same route with his sister, brother-in-law, and his 9 year old niece, but he had to cut out early. he told us his group was interesting because the brother-in-law was pedaling a hybrid tandem (half upright, half recumbent) with the niece on the front. we finally met them in one of the small towns in route, and they camped in the same park with us. they're pretty fun folks, and they're planning on staying at some of the same places we're going to visit.
