For real for real is now fr fr. And fr fr, for the second time in my life (shoutout to first time — in the year of 2016), I time travel around the Earf in three short weeks on a series of one way flights in and don’t publish anything for my annual Top Ten Travels 2024. What in tar nation? It’s down right racist… against a superior race of creative writing expressed toward the goal of increased mental wellness. Can you feel me now? Do you smell what I’m stepping in?
Athens, again. Istanbul (fka Constantinople and now know as LITstanbul) for the third time in three years. Cambodia for the first time everrrrr, and… Groundhog Day, Ghostbustin ass, Bill Murray Lost in Translation tallest-guy-on-the-train location of Nippon, usually referred to as Japan. Probably my fave place and my first time back since the Panda. The latter two Asian nations come with the wonderful experience of returning to hip hop touring. Actually doing the touring too.
So yeah. I didn’t write much about any of it. Except one entry I call Khmer Things. That and a bunch of photos will have to suffice until I get back on the bicicleta, back to my writing. But to not dying a slow and quiet death.
Khmer Things
Riding shotgun in a tuktuk through the streets of Phnom Penh is what might one might call Final Boss Level Shit. File it alongside 75 cent beer, literally sold to me at 75 cents. Cambodia takes the actual US Dollar everywhere, wildly giving me change in a mix of US doll hairs and Cambodia Riels. Our good old homie Colin-Izashun all up in this motherfucker. No choice but to take it as a win, I walk the streets around the Central Market.
Like when taxis stop to refuel at a gas station on the way to the airport with you in the car. I’m sure there’s a better way to grade that in English, mine is lacking by now. Right now. Fr fr. There’s a Starbucks here. In the gas station. I’m avoiding them. Why four dolla holla when I get the same $1.50. In American dollars. Southeast Asia is a lot. I can dig PP. Cambodia has a unique texture and mouthfeel.
“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.
Flathead County. Flathead Lake. Flathead Reservation. Flathead River. Someone important must have had a really really flat head to get all this named in their honor and likeness. I’m here in Flathead State Park, West Shore Unit Campground. This is before I pass out in tent before the sun sets. This is before I feast on most of the rest of the food I’m carrying. This is just after I bath and cool off in the refreshing waters of Flathead Lake at the day use area. Day Use Deus. These parks are gods amongst us mere mortals. Petra and I float along in the waves of lake, more substantial than normal as there’s a solid wind from the east. This is after we fight that wind for miles and miles in another 100° scorcher of a day. Let’s jump to somewhere in the middle of all this.
Chad tells me his daily ride synopsis every evening. Like I care. Like he’s looking for validation on what happened. He’s waiting on my co-sign to ensure this is what happened? And this synopsis is after he sounds it out loud word by word, sounding like some sort of childish retard telling me his day. I’d have more patience for the short bus kid than I do with Chad, a 50 year old high school ENGLISH teacher who right now sounds like an idiot who can’t read or speak. Rode… To… Had… Lunch… Camped… At… You might be offended that I use the “r” word; I’m offended that you’re reading this and are actually offend-able by anyone’s words; I’m also kinda offended at Chad for thinking I wanna hear him figure his daily diary out loud. Enjoy the silence.Stick and stones.
So a la Steal this Book or Steal this Movie or Steal this Album, I’m stealing his points for this one to show than no idea is original and seeking the approval of others is a waste of goddamn time.
1 Chatted with Angela, owner of Circle Saw Campground. She took over the camp when she lost two brothers within ten months. Side note: She knows my family in whitefish, and clearly has had some good times with some of them. I don’t implore too much because if I know some of my Montana cousins, I might not wanna really find out much more.
2 The Big Draw wildfire ends up as not a problem for us. Side note: It had been cleared with expedience, we sweat having to turn back for 18-20 miles (aka 2-3 hours) before seeing that our path forward is clear, though many more fires abound and the skies remain hazy as fuck today. Side side note: Shoutout to the wildland firefighters of Montana busting ass right now so I can be on vacation. Maybe one day I’ll repay the favor and pull one of them from a burning hotel room in Lackawanna. While fire is fire, fighting a fire in the wild and one in a structure is very different. Yin meet Yang.
3 Lunch at Chuck Wagon Bar & Grill with a Seattle to Whitefish randonneur cyclist, a few of them are doing it in 5 days. Side note: these guys are cool and all, but they are just weekend warriors with longer weekends. Typically just wealthier guys carrying nothing but water bottles on their lightweight bikes, their partners following them in SAG cars, pushing 100+ miles a day and sleeping in hotels. I got love for them, but it’s not even close to the same thing that we’re doing, other than the bicycling itself. Side side Note: dude was from Cleveland, went to Ohio State and worked for Boening straight out of college. Without any prompting or prodding he gets all defensive player of the year over airplane safety. Side side side note: it’s Taco Tuesday here and the fish tacos are slammin like the Iron Sheik in the 80’s. Allah u taco-bar.
4 Highway 93 is a rough stretch of road riding with large trucks and fast moving vehicles. Side note: we spent about a third of our mileage on this road today. This is Chad’s first time in Montana so I originally wasn’t gonna say it but: no shit Sherlock. Everyone knows folks drive crazy on 93 between Missoula and Kalispell. Like everyone. Even last night’s camp host Angela makes a mention of the drivers in this road before we leave. Trucks. Bigger trucks. Trailers. RVs. Sport Utility wagons. Shit, did I almost just get brushed off by a goddamn golf cart going 90 mph on this highway?!
Chad has a fifth point about this campground and omits the lake bath. Which earlier today he was loving. So yeah, his synopsis kinda sucks for leaving that out. And it sucks in general. Stymying my creative process and ruining my vibe as the kids might say. Nonetheless, I started 752 miles away in Astoria Oregon and now I’m here. Now I’m motherfucking here: Flathead fa sho. One more day of riding and we arrive into Whitefish one day before the rest of my family and two days before the actual reunion weekend. While not on the level of the tree gods it spoke gods, over the last two weeks in state parks and national forests we (yes even Chad) are nothing but gods in our own right. Day Use Deus.
“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. Better to idle through one park in two weeks than try to race through a dozen in the same amount of time. Those who are familiar with both modes of travel know from experience that this is true; the rest have only to make the experiment to discover the same truth for themselves.”
Hoping for a Tail Wind 