I took the next day off and went to one of the visitors centres, which had some films about the park and bears showing in an IMAX cinema. Having nearly dozed off before the films even started and again many times during it, I wandered back to my room to take a nap. Waking up as it got dark, 6 hours later. I ate breakfast the next morning at the same place I’d been to the day before, where the quality and sheer size of the blueberry pancakes was just (and only just) enough to offset the completely disorganised service.
Next came the relatively small town of Ennis, followed by the slightly larger town of Dillon. And this is where the problems really kicked in.
I was carrying three spare inner tubes, which I figured, unless I was really unlucky, would be enough to last me until the next bike shop on my route. Before the ride to Dillon, I’d known for a week or so that my rear tire really needed replacing. By the time I reached Dillon it had about 1,400 miles under it and was, to put it simply, knackered. I was probably being picky by not replacing it earlier, but I was looking for exactly the kind of tire I wanted, which didn’t seem to be that common. I’d only been passed one bike shop I think and the only tires they carried that were the right size were more akin to mountain bike tires (i.e. big and chunky, which slows you down), as opposed to the relatively small amount of tread I wanted on mine.
On the ride to Ennis, I’d had one puncture that required a change of tube. The next morning it was flat again, so I pumped it up and hoped that the puncture was a really really slow one. After less than 10 miles I had to accept it was not and burnt my second tube. I spent about 40 minutes half way up a climb, looking out over a beautiful valley, swapping the tires between front and back to try and minimise the amount of weight on the most in trouble one, but they’re both pretty worn at this point.
Later in the day, I had to change, what was now my front tire, again and somehow it was flat again(!!!!) the next morning. Still, Dillon had a bike shop, so I pumped it up enough to roll round town and headed off to find it. When I arrived there were no signs of life and a sign on the door with the pretty limited opening hours (4pm-7pm Monday and Thursday). This was at 10am Wednesday. I went round a few local stores to see if they could recommend anything, but just left further discouraged after they waxed lyrical about how great the guys who ran the bike shop were only to say that they were also pretty unreliable and there was every chance they might not bother opening the shop the next day.
What followed was one of those chains of events that always leads me to believe I’m an extraordinarily lucky person and probably leads many others to hate me for the exact same reason. I honestly believe that these things happen when you act properly, really have time for completely random people and smile a lot, but there you go. It started with me deciding that my best option was to hitch my way out of town. There was an interstate that passed through, so I found a petrol station near the exit for the town.
As a random aside here, petrol, sorry, gas stations in Montana were amazing. Gambling is legal throughout the entire state and every single gas station seemed to come with an integrated casino.
Before I started hitching, I thought I should go into the gas station to ask their permission to stand on the road outside and try to get their customers to give me a lift. Although I’ve done it before, I also thought I’d get their thoughts on where best to hitch from. That prompted the staff to start chatting and suggest across the road, which was where I was going anyway, but also to suggest a car tire place just round the corner that they thought might have bike tires. I nearly wrote it off but, after 10 minutes of completely fruitless hitching I got bored and went to check the tire place out. With no hope what so ever I walked in to beg for help, where I met the wonderful Cici and for some reason she decided to ignore her own job for a bit and solve all my problems for me. Although they, obviously, didn’t sell bike tires, she started calling round lots of random local stores for me until she found somewhere that might be able to help me. It turned out a couple of kind of “all purpose cheap” stores in town also sold bikes (mainly kids ones), but one of them also sold tires in my wheel size. So I headed off over there, where it turned into goldilocks and the three bears with a rubbish ending, as there was one a little too small and one a little too large, but nothing quite right, so I left before the bears could turn up and eat me. After failing at hitching again for a couple of hours I went back to the tire place to say thank you to Cici and she mentioned that there was a Greyhound bus that passed through town at 4pm. After that it was a simple matter of going back to the shop that we’d found before to get a bike box and finding ‘Jim’s Smoke Shop’, where I could buy a ticket, boxing up the bike, a few hours on the bus and I was in Missoula.
Missoula is one of the biggest cities in Montana and also very much a centre for cycling. Plenty of bike shops around, even if the staff in the one I went to were pretty snobby. Unfortunately, after fixing the bike and one very nice day in town, I managed to catch a pretty nasty stomach bug, which just knocked me completely flat. I hardly managed to leave my room for three days, surviving on a little bit of food that I managed to get on a dash to the supermarket and the kindness of the lovely lady who owned the little motel.
As I’m pretty sure everyone reading this will know, even when you start feeling better, you certainly don’t feel up to doing huge amounts of exercise. Because the trip was getting near the end and I was pressed for time, I wasn’t able to hang around another couple of days just waiting. Instead I had to get back on the bus again. All in all, the buses took me about 350 miles through beautiful countryside that I would dearly love to have ridden, but c’est la vie. No use in holding onto the anger.
The bus took me as far as Kalispell, where I checked into one of the nicer rooms that I’ve had on the trip, ordered pizza, so I had something to nibble on all day and rested up, so I could ride the following morning. From there I rode up to Glacier National Park. Having been ill, I decided at the last minute to book a room in a motel just outside the Park, which already had the most stunning views.
There I had a nice evening with three English guys, two of whom now live in the US, who had got together for a long weekend of hiking. It was fun winding them up with tales of precautions they needed to take against bears.
The road into Glacier Park itself is fairly narrow and steep, so there are quite a few restrictions on when you are allowed to ride bikes on the road. I’d planned to ride up to a pass over the continental divide (for the final time) and bikes weren’t allowed on the last bit of the climb after 11am, which meant starting at first light. Quite a few people had actually told me that the ride is beautiful done at night under a full moon. Unfortunately, although I happened to have arrived at the right time, it was far too cloudy. The motel was good enough to store all my stuff, so I got to do the climb carrying 20kg less weight. Less challenging riding = even more time to enjoy the beautiful views.
The lovely people at the motel then let me have a shower and gave me a ride the train station, which was 25 miles away.
Anyway, I’m now in Seattle (and this blog is almost up to date!!!!!!!!!!!). I’m sat having a quick drink in what is supposedly the original Starbucks, before taking a tour of the Seattle Seahawks stadium and doing some shopping. I’ve spent the last 2½ months with just three t-shirts, but as my cycling is done I can stop caring as much about weight or space for extra food and carry enough t-shirts that I don’t have to do washing twice a week.
(Should add, to avoid confusion that I was in Seattle when I wrote most of this blog. I just haven’t had chance to finish it until now.)
