3. Greetings From Missoula

Greetings from Missoula

Wednesday morning in Missoula Montana 6/24

“Ken Burns was here.” Then five miles later, “Ken Burns was here.” That rather silly thought keeps occurring to me as I pedal past all the Lewis & Clark stuff. I keep thinking that someday there’ll be roadside plaques at baseball fields, trails west, civil war sites, jazz spots, the Brooklyn Bridge etc. etc. etc. that read “In 1992, Ken Burns was here…..”

Okay, okay, I know it’s silly, but it’s actually one of my more profound thoughts. I’m becoming truly aware of thinking a lot. There’s really nothing to do except pedal, drink water (except it isn’t p.c. to use the word “drink.” It’s “hydrate.”) see things and think. Oh yes, you can look at your computer on your handlebars (I’d say 50% of us have these) and see how many revolutions you are making a minute (it’s very cool when someone rides by and says “Great spinning.”) And with your computer, you can calculate how far it is to the next pit stop, camp, …anywhere. Home. Boston.

Every morning the crew passes out sheets of paper that on one side has text descriptions of the day’s ride (00 to 1.5 miles, 6% grade up to entrance to Fort Fizzle; 1.5 miles to 5 miles, rolling hills to abandoned mine, etc.). The other side has a graph depiction of the ride. Some days (like yesterday’s when we climbed and descended Lolo Pass) look like really scary electrocardiograms with big spikes. My body and my bike prefer about a 2% grade going up, even more than down or perfectly flat.

Something I hear a lot: “Passing on the left.”

Something I rarely say: “Passing on the left.”

Truth is, I’m settling into my own pace and I think that would put me as about a C if an A means getting into camp first or near and F means getting there at the last possible minute to not be sagged and to maybe get dinner before it closes at 8 if you don’t set up your tent first or shower.

It occurs to me nearing Kooskia that I’m a fifty mile a day woman. That’s what would be absolutely perfect for me, to do this trip in 70 days rather than 45. I could do it all in the morning when I’m at my best, then loll around in the afternoon, reading, staring off, putting my feet in a stream. Rearranging things in daylight.

I’ve been carrying too much stuff on my bicycle (started working on that problem yesterday) plus eating too much breakfast (yesterday I passed up the sausage, eggs, hash browns and had a bowl of oatmeal and brown sugar and a banana. I felt much better.) Ate a granola bar in the morning at a pit stop and wolfed one down that I had squirreled away at a bonafide rest stop while the “cello guy” played behind some trees.

That’s right: Cello guy. There’s a man on the ride who’s pulling a homemade trailer for his cello. Won’t play in front of anyone, but “practices” along the route. I saw him the other day in a field. Reportedly he doesn’t want to play in front of others; he’s just practicing. I truly doubt this. Hard to imagine someone building a trailer for a cello and pulling it across the country behind a bike and stopping to play two or three times a day if one doesn’t want to be noticed or heard. I think it’s that different drummers thing. A desire to be quietly noticed.

There’s also a man who plays his bagpipe every night after dinner. Sort of circles the camp piping away. It’s eerie and quite wonderful.

Yesterday as we rode into Missoula, a young man bought a hikers’ guitar. He was strumming away as we stood in line for our dorm assignments. It looks sort of like a mandolin. But it’s a guitar.

None of the women have exposed their musical talents just yet, at least to me. But with this many people, I’m constantly seeing people I’ve never seen before. And weird things keep unfolding in front of my very eyes.

Three days ago in the blazing sun I came along a group of riders guzzling homemade lemonade from a cooler on the hood of an old car. Two or three kids were there. A youngish man who kept running back and forth into the house for more lemonade. The property was pretty ramshackle, with lots of horse and farm stuff. The young man asked me where I was from. When I said “Connecticut,” he said that was where he used to live. I asked him how long he’d been gone, expecting the answer to be years. He said “about a month.” Turns out he’s from Mystic. A compulsive gambler who’s moved out here (WA actually) away from the CT casinos because he knew this rodeo family who took in troubled kids and who would help him with his problem. I asked him if there was anyone I could call for him. He said his mother. Gave me her number. I’ve been trying to get through to her, but so far, no answer.

The next day some of us were talking about this at breakfast, and one of the riders asked me if I had seen the baby in the cage. I said no, but the rider said that to the side of the house, there was a toddler naked in a chain link dog run.

Flannery O’Conner goes west.

Which somehow reminds me. Another one of the characters on the ride is called “Roadkill.” The back of his vest has a hand lettered sign saying “I stop for all road kill.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him come to a screeching stop and take pictures of, you guessed it, road kill. A couple of days ago at a pit stop near some houses, he was quietly stroking the fur of a sweet white kitty. It gave some of us pause. But we rode on.

Roadkill also hands out yellow printed stickers to riders (for their fanny packs) reading things like “Washington D.C. or Bust” or “Hydrate or Die.”

And now, the information you’ve all been waiting for: doodle de doo: My butt is practically well. The Flatau’s emergency provisions sent along with me helped (thanks Allison for the advice you gave your mom); Bill Dale’s run to the pharmacy did too. But the real turnaround came after a short viewing of my bottom in the porta-potty with the head nurse. Now besides the fact that no one I know wants to be in a porta-potty at all, let alone squeezed in there showing someone else your blisters and rash, you have some idea of the humiliation I was willing to endure in order to resolve my problem. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m on my way. It does involve some rather complicated doctoring on my part, which usually takes place in a porta-potty and results in some stares for taking too much time from those waiting in line, but hey, when you’ve got to slather on a layer of hydrocortisone, followed by A&D diaper rash cream, followed by Bag Balm, it takes some time. Hopefully, we’ll never discuss this again!

Leaving Kooskia (“Gateway to the Idaho Wilderness”) on the way to Powell early in the morning (I’m awake at 4 am {around 4:15, the air is filled with the sounds of little tiny alarms going off around camp}, have breakfast at 5, usually start riding between 6 and 6:30), there were sounds of a helicopter, you know, like from the opening scenes of MASH or the news reports from Ruby Ridge. I figured, great, now we’re going to get caught in crossfire from some confrontation, but as I rode upon the scene, it was “helicopter logging.” A big helicopter would hover about fifty feet above the trees on the side of the mountain on one side of the river. Someone below would attach two giant trees (already cut down) to a cable. The helicopter would then fly across the river (probably 150 feet wide at this point), trees swinging below. The helicopter then hovers and drops the trees on a big woodpile. There were women traffic controllers stopping traffic as the helicopter and its logs crossed the road. I got some nice video of this operation.

I’m thinking of buying a new tent here in Missoula. I like my tent because it’s small and light. However, it’s so small and shaped just so that I can only sit up at the entrance. This can get a little cramped, but on the other hand, I’m not in there all that much except sleeping so do I really “need” a new one? We’ll see as the day unfolds whether or not I can avoid the camping, hiking, biking stores that populate Missoula. If I get a new tent, I’m going to loan the one I have to this kid on the crew who just sleeps out in the open in his sleeping bag, crawls under a truck when it rains. He and I run into each other in the mornings, brushing our teeth at the edge of camp without going to the shower/lavatory truck. The other morning I brushed my teeth and washed out my mouth and cleaned my toothbrush with cranberry juice, the only thing I had in my water bottle I’d carried from my bike to my tent.

And continuing about tents. Some people, and I’m not yet one of them (but could become one) personalize their living space. So far I haven’t seen any Astroturf, a little portable lawn, at any entrances, but I’m sure I will before the trip is over. But one tent owner has two pink flamingos on either side of the tent door, not the hard plastic kind but blow-up flamingos, portable.

And one scary soul has a blow-up Casper the Ghost, about three feet tall, swinging from a little portable post.

There are several flags.

Wonder what I might do to designate my space. Suggestions?

Bill Dale says he “redecorated the inside” of his tent the other night when he got sick with what the medical folks said was a 24 hour bug. He’s fine now. The last time I saw him was last night when he was headed off to treat one of his crew members who’s leaving the ride (planned) to some ribs and beer. There’s some crew change over here in Missoula with new crew coming in, some old crew leaving for home. Hmmmm. Leaving for home. Interesting thought.

Some riders might be leaving for home earlier than they thought. At least two have been suspended for a day or so for inappropriate behavior, bad riding (like not signaling passing, stopping, hot dogging). Some of the ship is run tight.

Things that mean EVERYTHING.

-Surfaces. Both skin and road. The former has to be slathered with big numbered sun lotion. The latter is sometimes that awful stuff that’s made out of asphalt and big chucks of gravel, like most of the road from Yakima to Kennewick. Hateful, hateful stuff. Like water torture. Or being bitten to death by ducks. Rattle, rattle, rattle, brrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhh.

-Water.

-Oranges that are sliced just so at pit stops.

-Newly cleaned porta-potties.

-Ground soft enough for tent stakes. But not so soft that it won’t hold.

-Skim milk.

-A talk show on the radio at night that’s not Mike Reagan or G. Gordon Liddy. It’s actually easier to pick up a short wave feed of the BBC World Service than an AM signal of someone I can tolerate.

-Hot showers. Even when they’re limited to five minutes.

-Putting on a skirt .I felt like a Miss America contestant yesterday after a long shower here at the dorm. Put some powder on my face in addition to the obligatory eye makeup, which I’ve been known to install using outside car mirrors, contorting myself to get a view of my face. A woman standing next to me last evening was using a hair dryer and was humming a jolly tune, almost dancing. I put on my long gray cotton skirt that folds into the size of my fist and my yellow Eddie Bauer tee shirt and REAL shoes, Soft Aerosoles like Sally taught me to buy for traveling. I pranced into dinner like someone going to Le Cirque.

-Clean, dry clothes (I’m finishing this missive off sitting at a table in the dorm laundry room at 6:15 am and have decided that one of the sweetest sounds on earth is the sound of clothes tumbling dry, a zipper clacking from time to time against the metal drum).

-A phone line.

I love hearing from you by e-mail (on AOL and PBS Express when I’m stationary) and via Bigrider@GTE. net (subject: Sharon Blair #1913) on the road and when I can check my messages at 1-800-683-1899 voice mail extension 1745.

Goodbye for now from Missoula. Off to breakfast. Turn right at the Grizzly Bear, the campus landmark.