Day 13 – The wide Montana sky.

Harlowton, Montana to Billings, Montana

As it turned out, the youth center was a little too stuffy and a little too crowded for the relaxing night that Ane and I wanted, so we ended up setting up our tent on the football field with those brave souls. Then the wind began to blow, and blow, and blow. It was nuts. A storm was a brewin’ and we sure weren’t sleeping. We heard Michael outside struggling with his tent, and by the time we got out of ours, his tent had collapsed around him and his creaky cot. Tom’s little head was popped out of the top of his tent, Ane was running around her underwear and a make-shift skirt (a floofy little girls’ swim suit top), and Scott was up on top of the hill with his arms crossed just chuckling at the sight of us. All five of us were out there that night (minus Justine who remained in her tent so it didn’t blow away) helping Michael in the blowing wind pack up his tent. It was such a fun night, we were laughing so hard at the chaos around us that my tummy hurt, and Tom and I were snorting up a storm.



Once we got back into our tent the storm must have blown over quickly, or maybe it was just Michael’s cot keeping us up before :), but I got a great night’s sleep after that. About breakfast time we were really glad we had slept outside, because I guess some people were stirring, up and dressed by 4 a.m. Good God, breakfast wasn’t even supposed to be until 5:30. So Ane and I were grateful that we got to sleep in this morning. We got off to a nice start this morning, and made good stops through Montana at small little towns, including the home of the Testicle Festival. What a claim of fame, but unfortunately they weren’t serving the Rocky Mountain Oysters (a.k.a. bull balls) at 8 a.m. in the morning.



I was pretty tired today, for some reason, but for the most part, and for most of the riders, today was an easy 90 miles. We all got in during the early afternoon, and the terrain was pretty flat. I had two major highlights of the day: (1) Ben and I bought a cream soda around mile 50, and (2) Kelly finished the ENTIRE route today on her hand-cranked bike. Inspiring. What a strong woman.

I lied, there’s a third highlight of the day: tofu steak. Beyond Basil came to cook us our meal again tonight, and set it up around the park picnic tables. Holy moly. I can’t even begin to describe how fancy schmancy and delicious the dinner was, but for the meat eaters there was even grilled swordfish. Swordfish! Honestly.

As if it could have gotten any better, the sky just erupted at the end of dinner. A handful of us sat outside on the balcony watching it, and I swear that it was better than ANY fireworks we could have gotten at the fourth of July. It had been a long time since I’ve been able to sit and watch lightning like that, and what a show it was. Beautiful. And someone had told us that it never rained in Montana.