Now I know what this means. Today we rode 50 miles into a soul-sucking headwind, to the amazingly forsaken dirt-bag town of Circle, MT. My sister Glenda did some research and she advises that Circle has the distinction of being 192 miles away from the nearest Starbucks, the furthest you can possibly be from a Starbucks in the lower 48 states.
Loyal readers know that we stay in the finest hotel we can find and eat in the finest restaurant. This, I kid you not, is the sign welcoming us to the only surviving hotel in town:
I like to kid around and make jokes but this is where we are. The same level of maintenance that is applied to the sign has been lavished on the rooms. In fairness, it is pretty clean. And it is better than camping. The really cool thing about tonight is the fact that we are here with our dear friend from Harrisonburg VA Cornell. He is on a cross country motorcycle trip and went out of his way to intersect with us, in Circle, of all places. He had cold beer waiting for us when we rolled up.
Also, there happen to be 2 other couples of a certain age who are riding bicycles cross country staying here. They are both going West to East. It figures, only people with no other options would stay here. The nearest motels are 50 and 65 miles away. We ate at the only restaurant that was open today, the Wooden Nickel.
Everything about this town is charming, as you can see.
Do you remember my father quoting Louis Lamour saying many men tell how many miles they have come but none tell what they have seen? Well I now know the reason. If they were riding in Montana, there wasn't much to see. So I made a real effort to record the beauty through which we travelled today.
This is Gina, one of the pitiful MS fundraiser riders who was assigned the impossible task of riding 100 miles today into the 19 mph W headwind. The MS sag wagon ended up picking up many (possibly all) of the riders, because they are on a rigid schedule. I'm grateful we are not. We rode for 6 hours today, with a moving average of 8.5 mph, an all-time low for us. It's impossible for me to describe how relentless the wind was today. We stopped each mile to drink water, and after I emptied a plastic water bottle, the wind made it resonate as if I were blowing across the opening.
It was 25 miles between places where you could get water, but we were ready for that. We now carry 11 bottles.
See what I mean? Not a lot going on here.
Tomorrow we'll do 68 miles to Jordan. Weather calls for "light and variable" winds. That will be a welcome relief!