July 27, 2013
Two Good Places to Use Nature's Restroom and a Bad Place to Repair Another Flat
The Kootenai National Forest (Bad Medicine Campground)
It was an almost perfect morning. Highway 200 took me around the north shore of Lake Pend Oreille and I got many great views of what has to be one of the most beautiful big lakes in the northwest. The morning sun was shimmering off the gentle waves. The route, like yesterday's, was generally pretty level and, best of all, the temperature was relatively cool for the first time in six days of riding so far. The previous days have each gotten to at least 92-degrees with nary a cloud in the sky. Here along the lake it is about 75-degrees with some nice fluffy clouds hovering above the mountains.
I hope this doesn't sound too perverse, but I found a couple of awesome places to urinate today. If you have to go, I figure it might as well be in a nice spot and I found two of them. The first one was on a heavily-wooded gravel side road. The branches of the trees formed a tunnel through which almost no sunlight was able to penetrate. The cool shade felt luxurious. The second spot came less than a half-hour later, owing to the fact that I drank three cups of camp coffee before setting out this morning. It overlooked an arm of Lake Pend Oreille and it was teeming with ducks, geese, seagulls, great blue herons, and some other birds I could not identify.
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Soon I was crossing into the State of Montana and riding toward the impressive Cabinet Mountains. There were a few events along the way worth mentioning. First, I was enjoying a nice quite stretch of highway near the Idaho-Montana border when I heard the distant sound of a freight train horn. I guess a pack of coyotes heard the horn too because suddenly there was a cacophony of yelping, barking, and howling. Never have I heard that in the middle of the day.
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Three miles after I turned north on Montana Highway 56, I got another flat tire. I removed the tire from the rim, inspected it, and like yesterday, I could not find the source of the puncture. Again, no big deal. What WAS a big deal this time were the bees and a couple of horseflies the size of small sparrows that tormented me the whole time. Twice it felt like the horseflies took big chunks out of my flesh. Sometimes you get to the point where you just want to throw everything down to the ground, punch something, and say "fuck this shit!" This was one of those times.
Yet, I persevered and I received a few rewards. I saw a very small deer run across the road not 20 yards in front of me. A few miles later, a very large deer ran in front of me. And I got to enjoy some excellent Cabinet Mountain scenery.
I got the very last site available at the Bad Medicine Campground. I liked it a lot. It was a small site nestled on a hillside of pines and cedars--perfect for a lone bike rider.
I gathered some wood and grilled up a couple of pork chops which I had purchased in the town of Clark Fork about five hours ago. I sure hope they've resisted the various bacteria that can attack unrefrigerated meat. I guess I'll find out tomorrow when I'm at the side of the road heaving my ever loving guts out. A bottle of Washington State "Snoqualmie Riesling," also purchased in Clark Fork, accompanied my meal.
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Most of the sites in the campground had bear-proof containers for food storage, but mine did not. Luckily, the campground hosts offered to take my food and store it in their motorhome for the night. I accepted the offer, with the agreement they wouldn't eat the junk food I had accumulated and they would deliver it back to me in the morning.
Today's ride: 59 miles (95 km)
Total: 440 miles (708 km)
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