Hoping for a Tail Wind

“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.

This intensely high level oxygen blends with the tranquil sounds of Deer Creek flowing mere feet from the front door of my Big Agnes bikepacking tent (they also don’t pay me) and a zen nirvana comes over something something. Nah for real, the best things in life are free. Like this National Forest campsite, Janet Jackson. My rear left pannier is now a bear bag hoisted 15 feet up a pine tree — all after we hoist ourselves up over 4,800ish foot Lookout Pass. Railroad grade once again is the shit. I said it, I meant it. Flashbacks of Emory Pass in 2021 mixed with the large loose gravel on the Palouse to Cascade Trail last week had me bugging. Today I climb a steady three percent grade with no motorized vehicles — and the surface was a good 7.7 out of 10. Borax Tunnel detour is now just a set of perfectly graded double switchback for cyclists. I’m pretty sure Chad and I are one of the firsts on it because we were following a map that someone shared just last week of it and the whole thing is different from that guy’s photos indicated. Plus it looked brand new. Fresh dirt and logs. You don’t understand but this Borax Tunnel Detour is a big deal. And I’m putting it out there so others can find this and know.

Miles. Mountain passes. Free federal lands in the Lolo National Forest. I love Montana.

Has there ever been consideration for a time traveling inflatable kayak that one can fold up and carry by bicycle? Like just get to water, punch in a date and time and go to wherever we want. Let’s go from late in the day to the early middle of the day. Right after second breakfast. Right after we meander through the Funky (and closed on Sundays) town of Wallace ID, near the end of this wonderful paved path — and apparently, the center of the universe. Gotta move on. To Montana.

We’re now caught up to me on this goddamn pass. Scorching hot right now. Triple digits again. Just climbing a mountain with a fifty pound bike and 20 pounds of water. A couple hours later and my bike still weighs fifty and my water now weighs one pound. There’s an offseason ski club somethin near the top here. And this creepy and strange monolith in the middle of nothing else.

It’s the border of Idaho and Montana. I ride 3mph over toward the lodge building. This cool cat working the offseason ski whatever is named Wyatt. We chat a bit on Montana and Idaho and he gives me the 411 on the bomb watering hole a few miles up past Taft. Sure enough it’s a few miles later we’ve timespace traveled right to me jumping off big ass rock into about 7 feet of very cold cold water. Twice yo.

Back to now. Whenever that is. Every time I cross a time zone boundary on bicycle I’m reminded that time is not real. Especially after a few days moving across the time zones. Like taking a flight over the North Pole that crosses those tiny slivers of time “zones” faster than they can occur. Even timespace is probably maybe not real at this point in my mind. I cannot tell anymore. The sun sets a full hour later. Or does it? Makes no sense. Either way. Sleepy time. Goodnight from Mountain Time Zone and this wonderful Deer Creek Campground in “Bear Country”

The next morning, I haven’t been eaten by bears, coffee gets jet boiled, a very fine US National Forest Service outhouse gets utilized (extra rolls of toilet paper and a lid-down sign?!) and away we go.

Chad is falling behind, I stop on a one lane bridge. One lane one lane. Pickup slows over it, pulls up about one meter away from me and stops. The drivers has got this gnarly long white beard, deep-set blue gray eyes and I think a handful of teeth. Maybe is in his 70s and looking bad — or in his 90s and looking good. For reasons about to be clear, his name is undoubtedly Skunk Hunter Sonny. Skunk Hunter Sonny — from the seat of his spurting and backfiring rust bucket pickup truck — tells me three things very specifically. One: it’s gonna be a hot one today. Two: he hunts skunks in his town, doesn’t kill them — releases them deep into the wild. I think he stresses deep because he knows that I just camped up the road. AND Three: wildfires are afoot with zero containment (which would explain the cascading gradients I see every along the mountain ridge lines this first two miles). He tells me down near Missoula. That’s southeast of me.

Later, another local in chatting up at one of those all in one “Montana Malls” (that’s what I call them) mentions the fires all across the state, smoke and haze still thick in the sky and truly subtracting from the immensely big sky I’ve previously taken for granted here in Big Sky Country.

So. Yeah. I get some signal. I check. Montana is on fucking fire.

And this is the part where, if you’re following along at home- and you shouldn’t be- I tell you how Day 12 was gonna be its own entry of words about Chad and I pushing hard all day. A cheeseburger for breakfast in St Regis. 73 more miles in 100°+ heat and over 2,300 feet of elevation gain back on the roads at a 5-8% for miles and miles and more straight outta Paradise Montana and through the mountains into an awesome spontaneously-found-this-morning $25 camp spot in Hot Springs Montana —

It’s not though. It’s about the wildfires. Apparently a tire from boat trailer came off a vehicle about 18 miles ahead and caught the grass on fire. 18 miles ahead on our route tomorrow and the only way forward in this vast and open state of the union. The Big Draw Wildfire is right in front of us, and we don’t have any re route options. So we clean up and resolve over ramen to push on out tomorrow morning into the unknown, again. But different this time. So for the first time. Sort of. Ok, just like before but now with wild fires.