Day 58 - Battle Tested - Charlie

There are some days where the sun is shining and the breeze is soft and you feel like everything is going your way. Today was not one of those days. Today threw the kitchen sink at us, and sometimes it felt like we were only just hanging on. But first I’ll start with yesterday.

We rested in Missoula, the second largest city in Montana at about 75,000 people. It has a really neat downtown with lots of bars and shopping and coffee shops. It’s also located in Montana, which means everyone hikes and bikes and canoes and fishes and it’s just a very active city. The biking infrastructure is awesome; there were bike lanes and bike signs everywhere.

In the morning we went to the farmers’ market. We met up with a fellow Princeton classmate of ours, Shelby Kinch, who is a Missoula native. Our longtime mentor and supporter, Jess Deutsch, went to school with Shelby’s mom, Amy, and helped get us in touch. Shelby showed us around, bringing us to a popular coffee shop, then leading us through the farmers’ markets Missoula had to offer. That’s right there were two markets! Farmers’ markets never fail to raise your spirits, with the colorful produce and lively atmosphere and somehow the weather is almost always beautiful; rain and clouds know not to mess with the beatific vibes of a farmers’ market. We got some donuts and kombucha and beet juice and left feeling jazzed.

Afterwards, Maddie and I shot around a bit at a local park. We’re both eager to get back to working hard on our games. The layer of rust covering our skills is becoming a bit thick for our likings. For the rest of the afternoon we hung out at the house with Mark, eating homemade sandwiches and watching some corny Rear Window knock-off starring Amy Adams. That evening we headed out to the Missoula Paddleheads game. We’ve been searching for a minor league baseball game to attend for a while now, and this was the first opportunity we had! The Paddleheads are an Independent team in the Pioneer league, and they’re really good. They are first in the division, and their opponents were the Boise Hawks, last in the division. The teams decided to put on a show for us; the score after the second inning was 9-5. Zack Almond was The Beer Batter, which meant that every time he got a hit, beer would be half-off for 10 minutes. Zack went 3 for 4 on the night and quickly became a fan favorite. We had great fun joining in on the Charge! cheers and clapping along to the baseball game sound effects. The best part of the night may have been bumping into another friend from Princeton, Rylie Pease. Rylie is working as an intern at the stadium this summer, so she was at the game. We must have been staring at her for 15 seconds, trying to figure out if it was really her under her mask, before all 3 of us started laughing and hugging each other. It was such a crazy coincidence. The Paddleheads ended up winning 16-8, and I got a t-shirt to commemorate the experience. We went to sleep ready to take on the start of the final leg of our trip.

It was chillier today than it had been in a while: about 45 degrees to start the day, and never higher than mid-60s. We cruised over flat terrain on I-90 for the first 22 miles. It always feels good to get out to a fast start with no kinks, makes the ride just feel so much more manageable. We stopped at a bench on the side of the road to snack and rest before picking up where we left off. Things quickly started to go downhill. Our bad fortune began when our route crossed a river. For some reason this section of 90 eliminated the shoulder as it crossed over bodies of water. We came flying down a hill onto the bridge only to find that our shoulder had disappeared. We were caught completely off guard, so we continued forward. RVs blared their horns at us and swerved into the left lane. We were only on the bridge for all of 15 seconds but it was terrifying. Then, not 3 miles later, the same thing occurred. Equally as terrifying. After that we were shaken, so we decided to exit the interstate and take frontage roads the rest of the way. The frontage roads often aren’t as direct of a route, and take on a bit more elevation, but they are less busy and more peaceful. Google maps showed that we could parallel 90 on these roads, basically the whole way to Superior, so we decided to go with Google’s route. It started off well, but quickly took a turn for the worse. After less than 10 miles we ended up on a gravel road. Never fear, Google had us turning off just a quarter mile up the road. Unfortunately it had us turning off onto a bike trail that looked like it hadn’t been maintained in 50 years. It was more like a clearing through the trees atop the hill than a true bike path. But the thing about bike touring is - retreating is the worst feeling. You’d rather hold on tight to your bike and swim across a river than double back on a path you’ve already traveled. It’s so demoralizing to know you spent time and energy and are nowhere nearer to your destination. So we rode on this “trail” for about a mile, until we came to a tunnel who’s entrance was completely blocked by a pile of enormous rocks about our height. With no way through the tunnel or over the rocks, we walked our bikes around the hill on a path that looked like it had been used before. On the other side of the hill we were greeted by barbed wire and a sign that read “Private Property”. There was no going forward. We considered all options, including hopping the fence, taking everything off our bikes, handing them across, then handing our bikes over the fence, and continuing. We really couldn’t hop this fence though, with how rickety it was along with the threat of the barbed wire. Thus, we grumpily decided to turn around and retreat. On the ride back to the interstate entrance we saw a deer, which made me realize, there were probably bears and/or mountain lions in the area. The looming threat of a stalker propelled me forward, fast enough that I nearly wasn’t able to avoid a snake slithering in the path.

With nowhere left to turn we returned to the interstate, hoping against all hope that there wouldn’t be any more river crossings. Thankfully there weren’t, at first. Instead there was just a construction area which ate up the shoulder. Luckily the left lane was completely open, as the cones were directing cars to the right lane and shoulder. We waited for a gap in the traffic, then ran our bikes over to the left lane and biked there for a bit, before scurrying back to the shoulder when it opened back up. The nice thing about these highways is that they’re full of many long straight stretches that make it easy to see the traffic approaching. Just as we were getting in a groove again we came to another river, again with no shoulder. We deemed it too unsafe to cross, so we turned around and rode the wrong way in the shoulder back to the last entrance ramp. There we got on an old highway for about 6 miles, until that road turned into gravel. Google maps showed a turn we could make onto a road that looped around a massive park, but the road turned out to be rockier than the faux-path we were stuck on earlier. For the 3rd time today we were forced to backtrack, this time our only option being to ride the wrong way on the eastbound interstate until we could cross to the westbound interstate. It was a total mess, as I’m sure you’re thinking.

For the 2nd time today Maddie and I ran across the highway, back to the correct shoulder. Thankfully the map showed no rivers between where we were and the next exit. We were able to get to the exit and hop back onto a frontage road that brought us into Superior with no further complications. We ate a nice large dinner at Durango’s here in town, and befriended the waitress who offered us a spot to camp in her mother’s backyard, which is a stones throw from the restaurant. The restaurant doubles as a bar and casino, so Maddie and I tried our hands at the slots after dinner. The machines took our money quickly, but we managed to escape with 15 cents.

The ride today was scary, frustrating, painful at times, delightful at others, and overall just a tremendous challenge. We are expecting to be at the coast in no more than two weeks. I think we’re both eager to reach our destination and complete the objective we’ve set forth, but it certainly won’t come easy. From here on out we’ll be taking it one day at a time, just like we were at the start of the trip. Though we are experienced bike tourers by this point, that doesn’t mean things will automatically be easy for us. And really, we wouldn’t want them to be. Tomorrow will be a big day for us - a new state, a new time zone, and one enormous mountain! Hopefully we can ferret out a legitimate route. Until then...

- Charlie