July 3 - May the Road Drop Out Beneath You

[Brock]

We rose sort of early, but not early in any appreciable sense. I woke to the dawning light, but after a trip to the outhouse, I slipped back into the tent until the sun was well above the high horizon that the hills surrounding Bannack State Park form. The previous night we had reveled in the luck we had happened upon to pitch our tent quite literally on the edge of the beautiful and babbling Grasshopper Creek, even if it had cost us $23 USD for the privilege. Montana is the only state I've noticed in which the camping fees are higher for nonresidents than for Montana's own citizens. I recall cycle tourist par excellence Matt Picio's observation that this is a high sum for one lone cyclist to pay for their own patch of ground, but I believe he and I agree that the cost of admission is well worth the beauty of the natural setting, pit toilet and tap water access, and, hey, ghost town to explore.

As we packed up, our friendly and drawling campground host Paul offered us a cup of coffee before we departed. He did so with the same warmth and genuine care as his check in with us the night before as we arrived, telling us to knock on the trailer door if we needed anything. Adele asked for cream and sugar in her coffee, and I, assuming by our host's age and our location deep in rural Montana that the coffee would be of the instant variety, requested the same, although I usually drink my strong brewed french press black. The warm beverages turned out to be quite tasty and of a good quality, and I chastised myself silently for a foolish assumption as we accepted the to-go cups with thanks.

A brief turn through the ghost town followed; even though we had been through it once, a combination of real fascination and wanting to get our money's worth drove us to take one more exploratory stroll down the wooden sidewalks and into the unlocked doors of buildings that had once housed revelry, riot, and rampage before aging to dusty noir as they sit today.

The climb back to the desolate highway was four miles of gradual uphill, and we rode it slowly as the green oasis of the park fell behind us and the prosperous sagebrush farms passed behind miles of barbed wire fencing. When we reached the highway we received our allotment of pain for the day early in another over-thousand foot climb to the top of Badger Pass. Luckily, this morning provided a tailwind in stark contrast to the battle we had waged in the same direction against an easterly. While the gentle breeze buoyed us up the incline, we passed a real-life, honest-to-gosh cowboy who was driving a herd of black cattle away from passing vehicles on the pavement. I hadn't been on the open range with bovines since 2009 when we encountered a lazy herd ambling about the steep hillsides of Sonoma County in northern California, and wondered how they would react to our presence. Fortunately they acted as they always do when we pass, fence or no, in a lazy curiosity combined with what could be imagined as annoyance by the grizzled Montanan on horseback behind them. I greeted the old timer as we passed, and he nodded a silent but not unfriendly reply.

The climb was brutal and deceiving as they tend to be when you're not surrounded by trees and rushing water, but, after a toiling stretch of uphill where the sweat beaded on my brow and slipped into my eyes despite my attempts to brush it away, we reached the summit and felt the wind howling strongly at our backs.

Wind is a funny thing; when it's against you, there's no possibility of ignoring it. It rages against your efforts at progress and is constantly whispering discouraging nothings into your ears, coaxing you to give up now and go back to where you came from. If you're going uphill on a bicycle, the siren song is nearly irresistible. However, wind at your back is barely noticeable until you come to a halt, and then it is the one to feel disappointment, tugging at your shoulders and teasing your hair onward. At the top of Badger Pass, this was the temperament the wind took. Feeling obliging, I decided to cooperate.

The first bit of level ground at the top of a hill is intoxicating, since you feel empowered to movement for the first time in a good long while. The rushing wind becomes less an adversary than a mischievous companion making sport of your sluggish pace. Then, as you begin to keep pace with the air you discover an eerie calm, like the eye of a deadly storm, where nothing seems to be moving except the scenery around you and you can hear all of the tiny noises close to you: the beat of your heart pumping blood through your ears, the creak of your bicycle's components, the nagging tick that's been complaining from somewhere in your drivetrain. If you've been working hard, the absence of breeze leads to a resurgence of your body's temperature and another erarnt trickle of sweat passes your eyes. Then, with an unspeakable rush, gravity and the elements take over and your legs cease to find traction as you begin the long descent.

I noticed the wind as almost a hand on my back at this point, encouraging me to defy physics. Rolling downhill went from leisurely to grippingly exciting. I knew that I had not, until this point on our trip, achieved this kind of speed and the dopamine centers in my brain fired with gusto.

The Beaverhead Valley opened up before me like a panoramic photograph, widening from the edges of the road into a vista that couldn't be contained. This was a good example of why Montana is called "Big Sky Country." I surrendered to the pull of the earth and resisted the urge to apply my brakes, knowing that this might be my closest experience to flying without wings in life. As I rounded the wide curves of the highway into even vaster expanse, the view went from unbelievable to unreal, the road dipping out of ordinary slope and whisking me through absolutely barren hillsides of remarkable earth-toned color.

The wind at my back was joined by small gusts from the side as the landscape opened ahead, and the exhilarating rush of the ride was mingled with small doses of terror each time I suspected that these gusts from the side would pull my steed out from underneath me. I imagined the fatal mistake that would send my handlebars just the slightest bit errant, grounding my luggage and steel frame as I hurtled forward, headfirst into pavement.

At least I was wearing a helmet.

I resolved to steer curbward if my doom appeared near. Strangely, no thoughts of my life flickered in the theater of the mind. Either I wasn't close to death, or that's just not what happens in reality.

Small seams in the pavement felt like earth-shaking tremors as my rubber thudded over them.

After the descent passed through multiple false endings and my white knuckles begged for relief, the road straightened out into a long, unbroken ribbon toward the valley that our lunchtime city of Dillon rested in. An eternity of relaxed coasting with the ever present wind carrying me on relaxed my mind into a state of nirvana and I hung, in midair, in stasis of mind and soul.

We had a similar benefit of tailwind on our way to Twin Bridges, the city with an established Cyclists' Camp in its only park; the open-air structure is screened to ward off insects and sits on the banks of the river that wends through town. Showers and restrooms accompany the facility and we did our laundry in its outdoor sink, making use of a drying line in the still gusting wind. The man that built this, now deceased, is a saint and a hero to touring bicyclists, and we are grateful to his pioneering foresight.

Now the wind has died down and we prepare to sleep inside the structure before continuing toward Yellowstone National Park tomorrow. We dream of downhill runs.