Hoping for a Tail Wind

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.

My homie Damon loves discussing self determination and the mental approach around that. Particularly the phrase abundance mindset. Sometimes it’s difficult to have such a mindset when resources get paper thin scarce. Five days of that scarcity is a challenge. Adjust your safety harnesses as we go from scarcity to abundance real real fast. Really fast. On a Saturday no less. 12 paved trail miles out of the campground and its culture shock city for me.

Harrison, Idaho brings a lot of everything all at once. People. Dogs. Coffee. Breakfast potatoes. Ice cream. Beer. Beach. Swim. Park. Chill. Live bands. Bikinis. Sports!!!

Paved asphalt. 0% grade. Lakes. Trees. Water. Wilderness. Trailheads. Zero cell service. Friendly and good looking humans, on bikes. It’s a dream come true.

It’s a whole lotta hyper-normal world after a whole lotta nothing at all. Humanity to a certain extent. Still no cell service. I’m ok with that. My phone doesn’t seem to work even on this cafes wifi. Oh well. Nice $500 paperweight, Apple. Haven’t had a beer in a while, this Irish Death is putting in work though, ask Steve Jobs ghost.

The live concert series is today. A guy my age named Eric E is up there playing the shit out this guitar. So yeah, a theee year old is playing rock covers. Two songs in and he’s all like “pick a year!”, I yell out “1977”. So he plays “Carry On Wayward Son” hard as fuck. I accept it, even though the Kansas album that song is on was released in 76. 77 is when it hit the billboard top whatever. A few more years are called out — 1983: “I’ll be watching you”, 1992: “Tears in heaven”, 1991: “Losing My Religion.” Not bad Eric. After a second 7.8% beer I’m heckling him, yelling future years at him “2134!”. He ignores me as any professional should. 1988 brings Tracey Chapman’s “Fast Car” along with a third beer and I now know it’s time to roll on.

It’s all bikinis and boats and party time on this summer Saturday along this trail and every piece of the landscape contains its appropriate level of beauty. Especially these trees. Abundant trees. So many trees. Cooling us off. Smelling so good. Cleaning the air. These trees are gods. Tree-gods. I would have paid 20 bucks to have magically popped up one of these for an hour at almost any point in the last three days. I might have to hug one… maybe not. I’ll praise them. Like i should. Also. Why do the kids refer to “throwing shade” as something bad? This shade is good. Throw throw throw oh glorious tree gods.

Thirty three miles later and the sun is getting low in the sky. We ain’t got a set place to stop and the one campground I looked at isn’t very communicative. In fact the whole day feels so vacation-esque at this point that I don’t think we care. We push on. There’s no cell service. No ones wifi seems to work either. There is this crew of five young ladies riding, one is rocking a trike hard. She’s definitely got a be named Lindsay. Maybe Lindsey. Not buckingham. She smiles and asks for high way we’re headed. “East”. “Us too. Go to the Snake Pit for dinner, just north of 90”. Hmmmm. We push off. There it is. We stop for Mac and cheese and another beer 14 miles up. Lo and behold Lindsey and her crew arrive 20 minutes behind us. Super friendly smiles and conversations and I can tell this whole area is trying to trap me. Chad says a shotgun wedding is not for him. I tell him to relax, no one makes calendars with high school English teachers in them and I’m not marrying anyone. We bid the ladies on wheels adieu. We roll and the sun is below the mountainous horizon. Eventually we’re in Kellogg and it’s dark. We pop for a hotel room. First night inside and it’s day ten. I like camping but in this case the extra miles, the laundry and the breakfast are all worth it. Oh… and air motherfucking conditioning. Plus they give a discount to firefighters. Comfort!! Abundance. Sleep!