“For what it’s worth” is one of the worst phrases in the history of the English language. Fight me about it. Why would a pre-valuation of one’s own impending statement exist in any dimension? Get on with it. Just do it, Mike. You better wrap that gavel up, B.

For what it’s worth, I start my morning with the most contemporary of jazz standards: coffee, vault toilet deposit, oatmeal, pack up, second bank shot (called it!), pedal out. We’re back on Highway 93 for a bit and I have to say it does win the roadkill award of the year, maybe the decade. This road is littered with the bodies and body parts of wild animals. Maybe several wild animals, Jim Jarmusch. The dead don’t die and as far as shitty roads for cycling in the US&A, 93 is right up there with the worst of them, yet tbh still not as bad as my experience up Highway 19 on the Atlantic Coast. Honorable mention goes to Main Street in Buffalo NY.

8 miles up. A nice stop on our Fantastic Voyage in Lakeside for more coffee and second breakfast; the shop owner lets us know she thinks a lot of these wildfires are set on purpose due to all the money that they bring flowing in. Food and rest services for the firefighters, government and expert contractors, insurance adjusters. The hotels they stay in, the food they by, it’s all an economic bump. This sort of 4th world disaster capitalism maneuver tracks in today’s dog eat dog America, and I joke that as a firefighter from Western New York, I can’t start a blizzard but someone I work with would probably try to if they could, just to get more overtime pay. After the short coffee break, we’re soon on the Great Northern Rail Trail, following it up into Kalispell – the “largest” “city” on this particular long ride. A local beer later and we’re pushing up Whitefish Stage Road. It’s ling and flat and full of nothing. I’ve rode this road back in about 2006, on my first long ride from Missoula to Whitefish. That ride was prior to this website, though I can tell even this road has changed a bit. Gentrified. Commodified. Billionaire-ized. Like a lot of Montana. And the world.

Everyone tells us it’s gonna cool down soon, though it’s still 100°+ as I push up into Whitefish, a rail depot town littered with my family history. Talk about gentrification city. I’ve been coming here every few years my entire life and it hardly looks the same as when I was a kid. Or even the same as the last time I was here, less than a decade ago. Big money has moved in. Dog is eating dog as wealthy white people yuppy up the once grimy dive bars. Shit Casey’s isn’t even open anymore. We stop for a few camp essentials and I realize this town is littered with bike packers on the Great Divide Route. My spidey senses tingling, we make tracks to the state park campground before the hiker bikers sites fill up. Moments after I pop up the palace — it’s a short day so this is the earliest it’s happened — four, then six, then eight cyclists pull up and fill it up. Two more show up late in the night. Glad we got it. Dip in the Whitefish Lake, which means I got an egg and cheesy and a dip in the water today. My dude Daniel Spurio would approve of the daily combination, he damn near requires it on his long rides.

For what it worth, most of Whitefish has changed over the years. Especially the last ten years, locals tell me. They complain that they can’t afford to live here anymore. Sounds like many cities I’ve visited. Makes “tourist” a bad word. I’m transitioning and now plan to die identify as “traveler” instead of “tourist”. Stay in hostels or campgrounds instead of Airbnb. Take a Bikeshare instead of an Uber. I’m glad a few things remain the same here, like the fact that the bicycle path cut-through to the state park involves a stint riding on a live rail line. And I then hear trains on that line all night from my tent — all after a solid couple beers at the still-almost-grimy Great Northern Bar & Grill and witnessing an altercation on stage that nearly comes to fisticuffs over I still have no idea what. For what it’s worth, Whitefish is still Montana as fuck. I’m happy to be in it.