West. Day 30.

July 8, 2016

Fort Benton to Great Falls, Montana

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Steeled for a challenging climb out of the Missouri watershed, I skipped breakfast to get on with it. I grabbed a yogurt from the grocery store on my way out of town. Good fortune. I met Donna and Scott walking their pup, Zoe. From Kansas, they were here visiting their park ranger son and his family.

I think we all wished our chance encounter had been the night before. We became fast friends. In fact, I visited them in their home state during the summer of 2019, long before our Covid-19 shutdown.

Again, the beauty of bicycle touring sometimes means gaining dear friends.

"Nice pup!" I yelled. "Nice bike!" he yelled back. Meeting new friends by the Missouri River. (Photo sent by Donna.)

The day wasn't all climbing. The vastness and other-worldliness of the high plains presented a mental challenge. My mind ranged with the terrain.

At rest.

Looking back.

When a ferruginous hawk screeched from a wood post, tears welled. I didn't believe Dad appeared to me as raptors, but it calmed me to think so. What did it matter? His energy was within me and all around me, as mine will be one day as well.

I remembered my sister-in-law, Liz. During the massages I gave her for months before she died of breast cancer, we once talked about the afterlife.

"I think when I die my energy will dissipate into the universe," she said.

Exactly. Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed. Was universal energy god?

I believe our bodies reverting back to the universe is our eternity.

Eternity.

My original Facebook post:

POSTCARD FROM THE ROAD 7/8/16, posted on 7/9/16

"How are you today?" asked the friendly man behind the counter at Dick's RV Park in Great Falls, MT.

"Glad to finally be here," I said. It was a challenging, windy, hot 58 miles; a 2200-step-push-my-bike-uphill day.

He asked about my MI to Missoula ride. "Ah," he said, "a short ride."

"And back!" I added.

"Well, maybe not so short," he said.

I straggled past rows of air-condition-humming RVs to the very back of the park where tenters are given a bit of grass and two porta-potties (and access to showers).

A couple is sitting at a worn-out picnic table with a round artesian loaf between them, barbecuing a humongous rack of ribs. Behind them is a small tent covered with a green tarp, and two upright bicycles leaning against a privacy fence.

We wave hello and I ask where they are riding to and from.

In a heavy accent, the woman said, "We are from Germany. We're riding from Alaska to Argentina."

They left Fairbanks on May 19 and have a year to reach their destination. The woman said, "We have to be back for our daughter's wedding."

This was their third tour. Four years ago they rode from Germany to China-it took them four months. Before that was a two-month tour from Germany through Austria, Hungary and on to finish in Turkey.

I sighed. When I returned to the office to pay for my site I told the man behind the counter, "Now I know why you said 'short ride!'

German riders on their way to Argentina.