Playing catch up – Day 15

Date: Saturday 21st August 

Route: Twin Bridges, Montana – Ennis, Montana

Distance: 42 miles

Total climb: 2498ft

Net climb: 405ft

After yesterday’s crash, the first port of call this morning was a bike shop and some more repair work on the wheels.  The nearest offering was in West Yellowstone, over 75 miles away.  We needed to get there in the RV, have the work done and go back behind our overnight stay, to start riding again in Twin Bridges.  Not for the first time, a game of catch up lay ahead.

Team Heagney was hugely helpful in doing the round trip to West Yellowstone with the RV and we managed to get the bikes fixed at Freeheel and Wheel, a funky shop in town.

By the time we got back to Twin Bridges, a storm was brewing and it was late.  42 miles faced us, with one climb to above 7,000 feet and a downhill into Ennis to finish – better to get some miles done than write the day off.

We battled hard into the wind to Virginia City (Jay battling even harder before realising he was only using his middle chain ring).  The road wound up alongside great piles of stones left by the gold seekers of the past as they dredged the rivers.  A stop was planned at Virginia City, both of us feeling weak from not eating properly for most of the day.  Banditos provided the location, pie was on the mind.

Having ordered a brownie and ice cream each, we spent a long time admiring the building and sifted through the New Yorker (odd choice of magazine to stock in our location), before we became anxious about timing and our need to move on.  The barman then called over to say the food would arrive in a couple of minutes.  When he brought it over, we were surprised to find that ‘someone at the bar’ had felt sorry for us ordering desserts and had paid for some nachos for us.  This continued the theme of generosity and hospitality for the trip, but left us with a slight issue – the need to eat all the food immediately before a big climb on the bikes, so as not to look ungrateful.

With our appetites, this was fairly straightforward but left us feeling sick as we started the climb.  We were boosted by a cheer from a gathering crowd at a bar on the outskirts of Virginia City (I think they liked the fist pumps and Busi impressions), so breezed past two cyclists on their way up to our campsite from the previous night – we are now back in first in the race.

Climb done, we rolled down towards Ennis overlooking shaded mountains to the right and guided by a sunset of purples, oranges and reds over the peaks to the front.  We arrived in time to see the wild deer taking charge of the roads for the night.

Our challenge for tomorrow is to reach West Yellowstone by pedal power, with the bikes still in good shape.

Loosely noteworthy matters in general:

• Jay and I are now fully settled in our beverage choices for the bottles.  He seems focused on the unnaturally coloured blue Gatorade (mountain berry flavour) and I’m a devotee to the lemon and lime, which tastes not dissimilar to Lemsip by mid-afternoon in the heat.  Sometimes shop shortages leave us regressing to primary school art lessons, as we are forced to mix colours and flavours in the bottles – Jay works the greens and browns well, whilst I’ve been at the other end of the spectrum.
• When trying to look objectively at our daily habits, we’ve also found it amusing that other primary school lessons seem to take place with regularity.  In particular, when the person ‘on the front’ is warning the person ‘on the back’ about upcoming obstacles, it sounds very much like an early science lesson… “wood, stone, glass, metal, wood, glass, metal, badger” – a bit like the ‘animal and mineral’ game. The physical emphasis of the journey is clearly causing our mental capabilities to regress as time goes by.

FP