Day 9, Flying Along

104 miles (which required a Tour de Parking Lot to be able to get that last .13 miles, I told you Tom does things like that) in 5:16 so a shade under 20mph average with just 2000 feet of climbing. In the interest of complete disclosure there was a 1400 ft drop from starting point to ending point, hence the trip profile was an incline to Bozeman Pass and then a 90 mile shallow descent to the end of the ride, thus the high speed (2.5mph faster average than yesterday) and short day (into hotel at 1:00pm, earliest yet). The route was either on I90 or on frontage roads the whole way, so pretty easy to follow the path.

The next time Tom fusses about "gosh, I don't feel like it was a rest day for me, I'm sort of tired...," which he did yesterday, don't believe him. Between the massage last night and listening to his iPod this morning I had to chase Mr Piss and Vinegar all the way to lunch, he was flying! Not always the best road, unfortunately. The Bozeman Pass on I90 was heavily sanded in winter so the space we ride between the rumble strip (the concrete dents that make noise when you drive on them) and the guard rail was filled with tire fragments and small sand dunes that were very squirrely. Passing another rider was tough too: jump over the rumble strip trying to hang onto handlebars as you get tossed about by the uneven asphalt into the traffic lane (checking first for cars) and then back over the rumble strip to safety like a clown fish darting out from an anemone. We all got through it with only a honk or two, one rider was stopped by state police for crossing the white line into the traffic lanes. Um, how about that truck that couldn't be bothered to inch away from his side of the white line when he passed us? It really isn't that scary, semis are fast and close by, most important thing is to stay steady and straight, they have other things to do. Susan, however, was fired up about the police stop and from then on every siren she heard led to "must be one of those evil bikers again!" At the top of the pass there was a plaque dedicated to Lewis and Clark which noted they were of different temprements but worked very well together to accomplish amazing things. I pointed it out to Tom but he was too busy reprogramming his Garmin to provide a rolling week over week average of his heartrate to notice...

After the pass lots of frontage roads that provided training for South Dakota: dead flat and straight for 14 miles at a time. Livingston and Big Timber (where there are no more timbers) were two of the towns we went through. Livingston is heart of fly fishing in these parts and where I visited Kathy back in 1994 (she was 22, I was 29) during the first summer we dated. That doesn't sound right: I came to visit her and happened to fly fish while here, maybe that's better?

The pass also brought a change from red-brown dirt hills which gave way to grey rock escarpments and stubbier trees, a more desolate and arid climate. The sky is still big though, today was "oh beautiful for spacious skies" day although late in the afternoon it sprinkled just a bit, our first sign of rain. Columbus is a quaint working town, a row of shops and bars on a single road opposite the railroad track, a working grain elevator and small train station in the middle of it all, then a glory of truck stops and fast food shops closer to the highway. We've seen a couple defunct grain elevators and a practical ghost town at Springdale, this was the first one still working.

Also today the group's first attrition: one rider with torn knee ligiments (Janae) and the other just because. Janae will take off a few days and go on, not sure about the other. Which reminds me that last week we saw a video of Lon and Susan setting the cross country record on a tandem in the early 80s and I asked afterwards when he figured out he was a metabolic\oxygen freak of nature. His answer was that he wasn't, he'd done the testing (VO2 Max, muscle fibre composition, etc) and in his mind it was just about determination. He also said that any number of riders over the years have (to his face) said they could do RAAM faster than he did and his answer is always the same, well, you should do it then. And not one of them ever has. One thing to contemplate, another to make the claim, and yet another, much harder to do, to find the motivation to keep the legs moving every day, day after day.

Road kill was plentiful unfortunately. 4 deer, 3 skunks, 2 fox, a couple rabbits, 3 magpies, 2 little yellow warblers and a Mallard Drake. Also saw a live snake (rattler?) and a cute little ferrit hop out of the grass and dodge back in. Dinner was in town, Tom and I rode our bikes in (helmets, cycling shoes, street clothes, a great look) down the front street and ate at a steak house where I enjoyed an imported bottle of beer dated "best by April, 2008". In Montana, drink the draft...