Strangely enough we have not seen very many bicycles along the way. Originally I thought that was because we are on a somewhat unorthodox route. There is also the aspect of flow, which is to say that there may indeed be very many bikes out there, but if they are all going at the same speed in the same direction, separated by small distances, we would never see each other.
Things changed today as we entered Montana. All of a sudden there were "scorchers" everywhere on route 200, dozens of middle-aged men with very fancy bikes, zipping down the road in clutches of 5 or 6. It turns out they are all going cross-country also, but they are all very serious, with their heads down and their jaws set, riding 150 miles per day, from Everett, Washington to West Virginia with Lon Haldeman and his wife Susan. The thought of three weeks of that makes me feel very tired. My immediate reaction was one of some confusion, having all these bikes flitting around. Most of the problem is of my own manufacture, as I am trying to visualize what it is going to be like to be on my own out here. And then these fifty fast bikers descend on our patch of road. And then as quickly as they appeared they were gone off the front, and we were left once again with the beauty of the Clark Fork.
In the bar I met a man who writes a weekly column for the Thompson Falls Ledger. We will meet for breakfast to discuss Babcock and Turner.
And how are they doing... ?
Leaving Wallace we climbed over the divide of the Bitter Root range, 4680 feet high, where we found considerable snow, and indulged in a little winter sport, just to see how it would seem. The railroad makes over the divide by means of a switchback, and in order to save six miles of travel, we crossed from one leg of the switchback to the next. This necessitated climbing by a rough trail up a quarter-mile of a very steep grade. We tried pushing the wheels, but it wouldn't work, and finally in sheer desperation, we put the bicycles over our shoulders, and packed the forty- five pounds of clumsy baggage up to the next track. It took an hour of hard work. Another time we shall take the long way around.
Going down the grade we found the track fairly well ballasted, and reached Saltese, a city consisting of a section house and a combination hotel and saloon. There is a cemetery here, the population of which numbers an even dozen, and not one natural death has occurred in the place; an occasional railroad accident, or dispute between miners has served to make the town more dead than alive.
We shall strike Missoula tomorrow, and at that point the trip will change character again. My friends John and Chris bail out for the bus to Seattle, and I am left to the meat of this project. I anticipate spending a day off in Missoula, as all my body parts are a little weary.
87 miles and 87 degrees. It has good symmetry.
On the road in Thompson Falls, Montana
Dennis