A Football Day Mostly in Bed

9/10/2006: Day 22, 8.4 miles; Total 774.0 Miles

Today on the first Sunday of NFL football we decided to watch all the games and lay in bed all day. But first I rode 8.4 miles from the west of Butte to the last exit east before the continental divide climb from about 5000 feet up to around 7000 feet. And we found the TB a church, which was just down the road from the stopping point on Continental Drive. So I took off on the bike from the Motel 6 at about 8 AM. Out front I found a woman who was riding her motorcycle to Cody, Wyoming, so I spent 15 minutes talking to her. Of interest they never have a flat tire and rarely any kind of breakdown. She feels comfortable at 65 mph! She doesn’t want to ride in the rain either, and it’s easy to cover 300 miles per day—that’s a week for me. This is a far cry from the bike ride. So now I was late, as I wanted to be picked up before the TB went to 9:30 Mass so I could go off to breakfast. He had his eggs while I was riding.

I-90 was torn up for repairs into Butte and it was the most dangerous 8 miles of the whole trip. I thought on Sunday Morning there would be little traffic and no trucks. I was wrong. The four lane was down to two for bridge repair and one bridge on a downhill when my speed was maximum (27 mph) had no shoulder. So I’m looking in the mirrors trying to judge the trucks coming on and the bridge approaching when I notice rumble strips between the shoulder and the road! The rumble strips can through me off the bike, the truck can flatten me, a fall over the bridge railing is about 30 feet, and there is no smooth section left for me to exit the disappearing shoulder to get back on the road. So the only out was an emergency stop which I executed with about 10 feet to spare before hitting the bridge! Then the trucker who I was avoiding laid on the horn and came as close as he could to put a further scare into me. This was the first time in the entire trip that a trucker tried to deliberately intimidate me; and it worked. I got back on the road and up to 30 mph hoping the jerk was getting off at the exit 1 mile ahead so I could sick the TB on him. He was lucky he didn’t.

As I rode I noticed several of hundreds of wide mouth bottles (mostly Gatorade bottles) that I have seen along the entire trip. They are half full of yellow looking fluid that I found out in Washington is urine. The signs at the road side rest had a picture and showed gallon milk bottles and Gatorade bottles and said, (in three languages) “this is not a urinal,” and asked the truckers not to discard this litter along the road. In my mind any jerk that would do such a thing could most likely have used a regular bottle and would not need the wide mouth!

I was about 15 minutes ahead of church and two miles from my exit when the church attendee went by. I knew I was in trouble for talking to the biker babe too long, so I pedaled hard and got to the exit to see the TB sitting waiting for me. He had not taken the time to find the church. The Stallion and I hopped in and he took off down what I was sure was the wrong road, but within half a mile we found the church with 5 minutes to spare. This was his first church service in three weeks. I went off to a breakfast of French toast at Denny’s.

Back at the room I did not get out of the bed much for the rest of the day and watched three football games, but must admit I don’t know who played or won except for the Manning Bowl. I thought it good that Peyton won the game and Eli won the statistics. It can sit well with them forever.

We decided we would ride over to Bozeman, another 70 miles, either in one record day or two days. That way we could go to our Condo at Big Sky, some 40 miles south of Bozeman for R & R, and then call it quits.