Day 70: Almost Missoula to Missoula

July 19, 2006

greg gets the group photo in his alleyway studio at the Adventure cycling headquarters

Then some individual photos (somehow my individual photo didn't end up on my camera...somebody has it on theirs somewhere)

Then patrick got drafted to hold the big cardboard to block the sun...tough work holding up a piece of cardboard!

A Mike Riscica sighting! Sorry mike, you're going to get taken off the board as soon as a couple more riders come in...

Craig and Sherri were so great, letting me stay in their house long after they'd left for work. I fixed my breakfast, had a Pepsi (!), uploaded more pics, ate some leftovers from the night before, LISTENED TO A GOOD RADIO STATION and headed into Missoula to meet the group at ACA headquarters for lunch. (I was missing music at this point, so the radio station was a great bonus.)

I worked my way into town, found a bike shop and bought some lube, and rolled over to ACA just in time to see Robert and a couple other familiar faces pull up. Got my Polaroid taken for the bulletin board inside, raided the fridge for free drinks, and checked out more maps of the area so I could eventually find the college campus to keep working on uploading pics. The lunch AC put on for the group (and for another group in the area) was really good. Yesterday, Alvin talked to some people about me wanting to do research on ACA's maps for my dissertation, but everyone seemed really busy. I wasn't prepared to articulate exactly what I wanted to do, and they were inundated with work and with people crawling all over their offices, so my brief meetings with people weren't as productive as I'd hoped. I'd exchanged emails with some of them months ago and had hoped to reinstitute that communication, but I don't know if that's going to happen. So I was a little disappointed, but I also realize the timing wasn't so good. I'm thinking about going over again tomorrow after everyone else is gone, but I probably won't since I don't really know what I'm doing yet on that research anyway. I don't want to think about it right now either

After lunch and helping Robbie and Amy make a connection with Tim to get routing info through Canada, I headed to the public library. 30 minutes just isn't enough time to get much done, and I needed to do research on flights and all that fun end of trip stuff, which made me sad because I know the trip is starting to wind down but I still have a lot of miles to go. Alvin came over to the public library, too, and I told him I was going to head over to the college campus to see if I could work online over there. We eventually made it, and they didn't even ask for ID or anything. There's a TON of computers in the library that are free and unrestricted if you're a biker who needs access.

Eventually, Alvin had to head back to camp, so I decided to camp with the group and follow him across town. WAY across town. He almost killed me getting over there, but a campsite was waiting for me, so I couldn't complain too much. I went and grabbed Chocolate milk for us while he worked on some budget stuff that was messed up. I was just tired and sat around doing nothing but talking to Tim and whoever else was in camp. Eventually, after much talking and a visit by Suzanne from AC, I was able to drag Alvin away for dinner. I almost left without him, I was getting so hungry. Tim and Jim left then too and decided they were headed to Fudrucker's for the second time that day. On the way, Jim made an off-hand comment about how I just followed other people around, but I didn't really want Fudrucker's, so when I saw Famous Dave's I said I was going there, with or without those guys. So they followed me. Ha. And it was way better than Fudrucker's. Take that.

Today's ride: 11 miles (18 km)
Total: 3,526 miles (5,675 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	2
Comment on this entry	Comment	0