Day 16: Geyser to Hardin

220 miles

A light breeze rolled over the hills, rushing through the occasional sage brush and dipping down into a gulch. It whispered up the creek bed of Otter Creek and found its way across my exposed face through the open fly of my bivvy. The breeze flitted my eyes open to review the earliest light of day streaming across the sky and lighting up the clouds above me in the most delicate shades of pink and tender shades of blue. I could’ve reached up and grabbed what looked like cotton candy skies for breakfast. Another warm start, as usual now. I was able to pack up and get on my way with only my arm warmers on, no gloves today for the first time this trip. There was considerable cloud cover for the first hour of my ride, but as I pushed up and out of the gully and onto the open plains to the east, I outran the cloud bank to reveal the ever brightening sun. I had left the true plains behind after going through Great Falls, and in the dark hours of the night before I had worked my way into great valleys with toothy peaks on either side. To my south the Little Belt Range jumped up and to my north nameless mountains clawed towards the sky. The great valleys I was in sloped very gently upwards, increasing in grade like an exponential function all the way to vertical at the peaks of the mountains. The valleys were bare safe the waving grass and occasional tumbleweed. At 6000 feet and above coniferous forest covered the amphitheater of mountains. In the early morning light the green masses of trees that clung to the sides of the mountains presented themselves as a homogenous mass of dark blue silhouetting the mountains against the early morning sky. As the sun danced across the sky it lit up the open fields of grass and freshly cut fields of wheat. I was shocked by the beauty and the remote expansiveness of it all. At the bottom of each valley small rivers had left their mark overtime and the great flat valley floors fell away into bluffs crumbling into the waters below. The world seemed so fresh. The air was as clear as can be and the sun shone with the brilliance and confidence of a golden lab puppy running around after its first bath. The sky was a vibrant blue. A color that seemed almost incomprehensibly clear. As if whoever was in charge of painting the sky for the day had accidentally tipped over the entire bucket of sky blue paint. It was like I’d had poor vision my whole life and I just put on glasses for the first time. Like I’ve been watching in 720p and someone had suddenly switched my stream to 4K. The fields of wheat absolutely sparkled, and seemed to emanate their own energy. The light wind on my face and 70° sun made the morning hours some of the most enjoyable riding of this entire trip. I passed through the town of Geyser then Moccasin before working my way up to Judith Gap after a long, low-grade climb. As I crested the gap around noon the light winds began to pick up, perturbed at the warming presence of the sun, and built up speed, slamming into me with renewed vigor, at upwards of 20 miles an hour.

I had another close encounter with an angry driver at around nine in the morning. It wasn’t actually that close since I had plenty of time to react and knew I wasn’t going to get hit, but it was still very frustrating. I was working my way up a hill in a wide-open valley on a road with very little shoulder. What little shoulder there was essentially was just rumble strips, so I was riding on the white line. I wasn’t in the middle of the lane, I was as far over as possible without being in the rumble strips. There was no one coming the opposite direction, so when an RV approach me from behind, I figured for sure they were just take opposite lane and pass me with at least 15 feet of room. Instead, he decided to pass me with a little bit less than a foot of room between us and then he pulled into the shoulder across the rumble strips intentionally as soon as he passed me. He had a huge trailer on the back with an entire glider plane folded up on it. This trailer was at least 30 feet long. Of course when he pulled his RV into my straight line, his trailer also cut over. If I hadn’t moved, his trailer just would’ve hit me. I was forced to go into the rumble strips, and then all the way off the side of the road. Fortunately, since I’d been going up a hill, I had been going very slow and the RV had also been going quite slow, probably 30 miles an hour, so I saw his move coming, and had plenty of time to react. I wasn’t scared at all, but I was pretty frustrated. I’m not a lawyer, but at the very least that seems like a reckless endangerment charge. It quite literally could be considered attempted murder. Not to be dramatic, but he intentionally pulled over knowing his trailer was going to hit me if I didn’t move. I try not to get too mad at these things because I know there are some people out there are just miserable fools like this idiot. And in fact, before he was even out of my sight I kind of found myself feeling bad for the guy—or girl, but probably guy. I can’t imagine walking around all day with so much pent-up anger and animosity towards the world that you feel the need to run a cyclist off the road completely unprovoked. That must be a heavy weight to carry and I can’t imagine that person is very happy in life.

Around lunchtime I passed through the town of Judith Gap after climbing a low-grade climb for several miles. The town was up at almost 5000 feet of elevation, and as soon as I passed through the town I entered into a large wind farms. At this point, I was heading south and the wind was coming from the south east, so while not a true block headwind, it was still hampering my progress a considerable amount. The wind was absolutely whipping, and the wind turbines were spinning incredibly fast. I could hear the blades tearing through the wind. They didn’t look like they were spinning that fast from a distance, but up close the tips of the blades were ripping. I did some quick mental calculations and found that the turbine blades are spinning at 135-ish miles an hour at the tip. However, this all hinges on my guesstimation that the windmill blades are about 130 feet in radius. These turbines look to be at least 15 years old and weren’t quite as large as the new turbines so I think 130 feet is a fairly good guess for the blade radius. Little mental calculations like this and mental games can entertain me for hours. In Canada, one of my favorite pastimes was converting all of the signs between kilometers and miles to the hundredth of a unit. I didn’t have much better to do so I ended up counting every single turbine and I came to 89 turbines in the wind farm. That is quite a large wind farm and through my anecdotal evidence, it’s placed in a great spot because the winds absolutely tore me apart through that area of my ride.

I stopped for lunch in Harlowtown and made sure to get plenty of liquids down because it was in the 80s for the first time this trip. I traditionally fare very well in the heat, but only if I am acclimated to it. I need about four or five days to become used to temperatures over 90°. Yesterday’s high was 78° and today I maxed out at 82°. Hopefully over the next several days the high will increase by a couple degrees every day allowing myself time to become adjusted to the heat. By the time I get down into Texas and Mexico, where the temperatures might hit triple digits, hopefully I will be prepared. This summer while biking in Central America I went straight from the 60° weather of New Hampshire to 108° in the Tabasco Desert and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I would consider day three and four of that trip to be rock bottom of my cycling career. You can read all about it in my Central America Blog, or you can spare yourself and just trust me that it was absolutely disastrous for a couple of days. I absolutely want to avoid that, so I am hoping to become acclimatized on my slow march south instead of just being thrown into the deep end. Today I made sure to measure my efforts on the climbs, because this is really where the heat absolutely zapped me in Central America. It doesn’t feel as hot as it is because there is so much wind, even when I am moving slow on the climbs the wind is still whistling by at a minimum of 25 out of miles an hour with wind speed plus my speed. This helps make it feel cooler than it actually is. It’s also incredibly arid here and very sunny out today so all of my sweat is evaporating immediately which is dangerous because I don’t realize how much fluid I’m actually losing. In all, the temperature today was ideal in my quest to become acclimatized. I may be getting unlucky with the wind, but the sun today and the temperatures of the last few days have been very ideal. After leaving Harlowtown I turned onto a new highway and change directions from due south to east southeast. I was met with a block of head wind of 18 miles an hour which I carried with me all the way into the night. The frustrating thing about today’s wind is that yesterday this section would’ve been a strong tailwind, but the winds switched completely overnight. And the section that I rode yesterday that was all headwind yesterday was all tailwind today. But it didn’t matter what was happening on yesterday’s route, it only matters what is happening today. It feels like cruel and usual punishment. Every single day for the past two weeks the wind has just shifted every time I change direction like clockwork. It’s so uncanny it almost is starting to feel funny in a twisted way. It really is testing my resolve. I wanted to scream at the sky and cry to the winds, begging the universe for answers. What have I done to deserve this? Why does it feel as if the world is against me? But my cries are lost to the world, carried away by the winds. The winds that rob me of the power to question, that mute my screams and tangle my confusions in a web of meaningless circles. The clouds carry on overhead, listless to my pain, happy to be pushed around by the winds. The trees wave at me as the winds whistle through their limbs begging me to be quiet. Shhhhhhhh they seem to whisper. The rivers glisten at my confusion, coming to fits in breaking whitecaps. What’s the matter? Having trouble going with the flow? The cows watch the theatrics with amusement in their eyes. What’s the hurry anyways? Sit a while and enjoy the sun. The breeze is quite nice in the heat. So instead of screaming to the heavens I lower my head and continue to pedal circles hoping that one day the wind will tire of this wicked game. And then I resort to complaining on here. But even with the headwind today I couldn’t help but feel happy 90% of the day. I can’t block out the wind anymore, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to block out any headwind over 15 miles an hour, but it’s just there, omnipresent. I forget what it even feels like to ride without headwind anymore. But I have those two hours of tailwind outside of Calgary. He felt a natural. I’m not saying he didn’t feel really really nice, but it felt novel and strange. I really just adapted to it out here. And that’s good because I have a headwind for the foreseeable future. My legs are really finding their form incredibly well. Since day 10 I seem to be getting stronger every day. It’s almost impossible to compare my performances across days since my power meter is not working, but just going off of feel I can tell I am so much stronger than I was even 10 days ago. I came into my final training block in July with such incredible form that I often found myself doubting my power meter. Every week of training since March I have broken through what I thought was my glass ceiling. A year ago I was going to shell of the rider I am today. Literally every weekend this spring and this summer I could feel myself getting so much stronger than I ever thought was possible for my own body. I wasn’t really sure what to expect on this trip. I didn’t know if I had finally plateaued with my final intense training block at the end of July, and I didn’t know if perhaps I would continue getting stronger and stronger throughout this ride. I know that I have physical limits out there somewhere, but every single time I thought, I reached my physical limit over the past six months, I proved myself wrong and continued to get stronger and stronger. It was incredible to watch and so uplifting to experience. On this trip, I know I will eventually hit my limit when my lack of nutrition eventually catches up with me. It’s a discussion I hope to have soon on this blog, but every week I am losing weight quite rapidly. I knew this was happening and bulked up before the ride in anticipation, but I know that at some point whether it be in 20 days from now or 40 days from now,  my weight loss will eventually come to hamper my riding ability. I envision the last couple weeks of my ride. I will be getting weaker by the day as my muscles begin to atrophy. It’s something I’m prepared for, but it’s still one of the more scary things about this ride for me. If I reach Ushuaia at the pace I am currently pushing I expect to be about 25 to 30 pounds lighter than I was in Prudhoe Bay.

As the day wore on the sky began to tire, worn out by its brilliant display in the morning, and the wind brought in a little bit of haze. The sun that had once been so illustrious and bright now felt faded. Instead of gifting me with rays of warmth that had been so welcomed in the morning, it suddenly seemed as if the sun had grown tired of my presence and began showering me in filtered pockets of opaque light that burned up my skin. My feeble attempts to fight the sun through the application of sunscreen felt futile, as my pale skin turned red like a lobster cooked alive. The great mountains of the morning disappeared and I was peddling through much flatter areas now. It was incredibly arid, but the road dropped down into a ravine and followed a river as it wound its way down towards the Yellowstone River. In a land almost devoid of trees, it was refreshing to dip down into the gully and find a little bit of solace in the large Cottonwoods growing on the river’s edge. The great big leaves flapped in the wind and thousands of cows reveled in the shade. The stream, which originally ran clear, slowly took on a more greenish turquoise color as the effects of the seemingly endless ranches of cattle took their toll on the water quality. The riding was quite difficult for me after lunch. I let the headwind get under my skin a little bit too much and for the first time this trip I truly began to feel hot. I haven’t been in the 80s in well over a month. My body handled it okay, but it wasn’t comfortable. I almost ran out of fluids and was grateful when I reached a small service station where I was able to refill and grab a little bit of ice cream for the road. I pressed on towards Billings. As I climbed out of the riverbed, I was greeted with perhaps the flattest road I have been on this entire trip. For 20 miles I had 4 feet of elevation gain. There wasn’t much to look at. I was amazed how quickly my day had gone from such beautiful landscapes in the morning to my afternoon being filled with one vast expanse of open grass. Montana seems to be a land of extremes. I find a beauty in that, but I’d much rather spend my time in the mountains than the plaines, so I was happy when I finally got to Billings and had a little bit more to look at in the flat grasses. As I neared Billings, my road took a sharp turn to the east and I found myself on top of a tall bluff, peering down into the city. I’ve driven through Billings once before, but I had forgotten that the entire city is sunk down in the flatlands around the Yellowstone river. As the sun set I cycled east above the city, watching the sky fade to dark as the lights of the city begin to twinkle. From above, the city looks so green and beautiful. I don’t know anything about Billings, and the land around certainly is pretty boring, but the town looked incredibly inviting in the warm evening air. I think part of it is that the entire city is filled with trees, the first expansive trees I’ve seen up close in several days. The one thing that I could see very clearly from way above was what looked to be oil or gas, refineries and tanks. The tall metal spires were lit up by thousands of little lights, and gave the appearance of an otherworldly design, almost like each metal tower was a miniature skyscraper with a whole world tucked away inside. It’s pretty hard to romanticize an oil refinery, but from far away in the dark it had an incredibly dystopian draw. I dropped into the city and stopped at a convenience store to grab some dinner for the road. By the time I was rolling out of town it was pitch black and my trusty little blinky light was working overtime to protect me from behind as my front light guided me through the busy roads on the east side of Billings. Speaking of busy roads, I immediately found myself on the on-ramp to Interstate 90 East. Riding on Interstate 15 in northern Montana was one thing, but Interstate 90 is one of America’s major arteries and it felt a lot different to be riding on I-90 than I-15. I’m kind of surprised it is legal to be honest. The shoulder is nice and wide, so I never felt personally in danger, but I think there’s something to be said from my presence potentially being a distraction to drivers. Especially at night. If I were driving on I-90 I would not be expecting a cyclist to be on the road with me. I’ve driven 90 through Billings before and if you told me then, four years ago, that I would be riding my bike on the same road at 10 o’clock at night I think I would’ve laughed at you and told you that was a stupid idea. But again, I never felt unsafe, and there was a certain air of excitement I got from riding on the shoulder of the storied road. I passed by two State Troopers setting up a speed trap in the middle of the road. I wish I could’ve captured the looks on their faces. They knew they couldn’t do anything to stop me from what I was doing, but they were absolutely bewildered at the sight of me on the road and I think they were worried about receiving a call in the near future that they were going have to come scrape my flattened body off the road. Out of Billings I had quite a substantial climb on the interstate before losing all the elevation I had gained in an immediate descent, which then kicked back up into another climb. The riding most of the day had been really flat, so I was surprised to have a lot of climbing, especially on the interstate. I wanted to get to around Hardin, Montana for the night, so I pressed on but the hills significantly slowed my pace from what I had expected. When I came to the top of the climb, I was battered by the strongest one of the of the day, even though it was 9:30 at night. The wind must’ve been 30 miles an hour over this pass. Luckily, the worst of the wind didn’t last for long and the road soon mellowed out into long rolling climbs like the ones that I’ve grown acustom to. The moon was out again tonight. Every night it gets a little bit bigger. There’s  just a sliver missing from the left side right now. I figure it will be full in a couple days. The sky was totally clear so the moon really lit up the world. I love riding at night because it feels like an alien landscape at times. Here in the prairie at night I feel like I’m riding across the moon There are small little lumpy hills all around covered in grass and in the moonlight the grass shines a very silvery white, and I could almost envision myself on the dark side of the moon. It feels so alien to be riding in the dark with a headlight. I can kind of space out and let my head fill-in what my eyes can’t discern in the dark. The imagination can really run wild and it’s a beautiful thing if you can control it correctly. There’s also a beauty to riding in the dark in that it can feel incredibly empowering in a lonely sense. The world’s so quiet and still there still life all around. But it all manifests itself in different ways and in different creatures. Sometimes riding the dark can be incredibly frustrating and drawn out and other times it’s absolutely lovely. Tonight it was absolutely lovely.

15 miles outside of Hardin I was able to get off I-90 and jump on an access road that ran into town. It was so very peaceful and the air was still warm. I pulled over and leaned my bike up against a fence for the night. I set up camp without any artificial light, opting to take advantage of the moonlight instead. I laid out my bivvy in the grass, but instead of setting it up I simply put my ground pad on top of it and slept out in the open. It was incredible to be out in the open and still be warm. It was a little below 55°, perfect sleeping weather. I changed out of my bike clothes on and stood there completely naked staring at the sky for a minute. I did my stretching under the moonlight and crawled into my sleeping bag. The wind had relented to a soft breeze that carried me off to sleep.