Day 31 - 34
It took us a month, but we finally are turning into bikers...sort of. The northwest mountian ranges made it really hard to get a large amount of miles per day. The most we have ridden in one day on this trip is 80 miles. We know this is still a great feat, but we all knew we needed to start picking up miles. Today was the day to complete our first century. Strong tailwinds at 15-20 mph had was anxious to get out of camp and in to the road. The ride its self was pretty uneventful, very flat with not much to look at, but we cant complain coasting at 20 miles per hour. Beau's rear tire attracted staples along the way, stopping around every 20 miles to patch another flat. Luckily Hank's Dad is shipping us tires to replace Beau's and Donald's tires. At the 100 mile mark we rolled into Havre at right at Wallmart. Can't beat cheap food. We stayed at the city park for free once agian. Tired and hungry, made sandwiches before hitting the tents.
Are muscles are sore and stomachs starving. We cant seem to eat enough food. Rolling out to grab breakfast, we found that today greated us with headwinds. The road out of Havre was undergoing construction. Seven miles of dirt roads while trying to create a paceline is not an easy task. Finally hitting decent roads we got a little faster and started a one mile switch paceline. Kane and Hank are given the short straw, cause everyone else is so small we have to bend as low as we can to fit into thier slipstream, leaving no slipstream for the person behind us. Switching the order of persons we soon found a good rotation speed and line. 20 miles into our ride we found a fair at the small town of Chinook. tried of wasting our energy in the winds we called it a day. Pedaling in at around the same time, a older gentleman from Holland stopped to powerup on American gas station hot dogs. Attempting 100 miles a day we knew we wouldnt be seeing him agian. After setting up camp in the local city park for free we headed out to the fair. Not expecting to much from a small town we were not to disappointed. The best attraction were the sheep and pigs. Having more fun playing sack, we went back to our tents and fell asleep, promising ourselves we would rider further than 20 mile tomorrow. During the night we were all woken by load roaring thunder claps and bright lighting illumitnating the inside of our tents. Rushing out the fields to see it we were amazed. No lighting we have seen before has been comparable to this.
Evan had been in contact with the daughter of one of our frequent customers at Lucky Strike. She currently is leading a group of 23 people across the U.S.A via the Northern Tier. Traveling in the oppsite direction than us we figured we would run into them at somepoint. Today it happened. Planning to ride to Malta today, which would but the milage around 70, we had alot of stops due to constant flats. During one of Beau's flats, Hank adjusted his seat, tighting a little to hard he snapped his seat clamp. A van passed us with surly long haul attached the top, and turned around after noticing we were obvisouly searching for something. The driver turned out to be the founder of the company Bike For MS, a non-profit touring company rasing money for multipule sclerosis. Don intruduced himself to us and talked with us for a while. We soon found that the girl Evan had been in contact with was working for Don, and was about 20 miles ahead of us. We could tell he enjoyed hanging out with cyclist who were pulling thier own gear, versues his crew who had S.A.G wagons carriering thier equipment. Taking pictures of Hank gimmy wrigging his seat post, he assured us he would let his group know just how easy they have it. Chatting with him for a while about what we each had ahead of us, we wished eachother luck and headed to the town were we meet the riders of the group. One by one they rolled into town, with sleek racing frames, and 23 c tires, only bags were small seat bags holding a spare tire. Don was right, they have it really easy. Meeting Kathrine, and her friend who were driving the SAG wagon we all talked for a couple of hours, assuring them they were two days out of the flats, and them assuring us that the flats arn't to bad. The heat was increasing and we still had 50 miles to ride, saying our good-byes we remounted and headed towards Malta. On the way we all thought about turning around and riding back to west coast with the cute biker girls we just meet.
Today is hot!!! 105 degrees is pleasurable riding weather. Stripped practially naked, sweating profusly, drinking a liter of water every mintue, and hating Montana, we slowly made our way east. To make matters worse, Beau's tire kept getting staple puntures in his tires. Unfortanly there isnt a bike shop intill Williston, 250 miles away, Hank's Dad had the new tires sent to Stanly, about 100 away. Every time we stopped the bugs ate us alive, swating away gnats, flys and mosquitos who were very attracted to our ears. Rolling into Saco, with the tempeture rising to 110, we called it a day. Grapped a hotel for 40 dollars and all took turns placing our heads in front of the fan. We meet a couple on a tandem, who gave us hope that the tempture was dropping to the high 80's and strong tailwinds we push us to the town for the next three days. They weren't locals so we trusted them. Grapping beer to forget the heat, we set alarms for 3:50 am, planning to get on our bikes by 5 to ride with no heat at all.