Jackie’s avg speed: 8.2 mph
Scott’s avg speed: 10.7
Weather: sunny, 50-70 degrees
Wind: calm at 07:00, easterly 15 mph by 11:00, gusts up to 22mph.

Carpe Diem! The sunny day pulled us outside at 07:30, our earliest start time so far. A cool breeze greeted us, but with the sun it was already 55 degrees. A down day does a body good, but neither of us enjoy languishing, so we were happy to be underway again.

The scenery did not change much from the day before: pump jacks dotting fields as far as the eye could see, and some farm houses off in the distance. I looked off in the distance and wondered how far visibility was in the dry air. I fixed my gaze on a tank and cell phone tower on the horizon line and noted the mileage on my odometer, 36.05. By the time I reached the tank and tower, I had 41.8, or gone 5.75 miles. That’s how far I could see in the distance.

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About 11:00 we got to Ray, where Scott wanted to explore a little. This was where his parents had lived as a young couple with his older sister, then just an infant, and his older brother, about five at the time. His dad was working near New Town on road construction related to the down stream dam on the Missouri. It was brutally cold in the winter of 1953. They could only afford a basement apartment and kept the temperature on the wall heater low to make sure they could pay the bill. The curtains over the small windows with a pattern of watermelon wedges tormented Scott’s brother. He would gaze forlornly at those curtains and ask his mom, “When can we get watermelon again?” 

While we pedaled around the town, we met the sheriff, who looked like he was in his twenties. (Probably older. Everyone looks like a teenager to 60-somethings). We thought some of the farmhouses we passed were vacant. He said that if the owners were there when the oil boom started, they might be away somewhere in the south, since they would not have to farm for their income.  Scott’s parents farmed near Terry, Montana with few vacations and no retirement. We did not find the house where they had lived, but wondered. If they had bought land in Ray, how might that have affected their fortune?

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We got back on the road and passed a memorial on the highway for Dalen, Waylyn, and Tanner. In Montana, crosses on the side of highways denote fatal car accidents, another kind of “historical marker.” While passing them on this trip, I wondered what the stories were. This memorial included names, so Scott could find the answers on the Internet.

Tanner Garman, Dalen Dorval, and Waylyn Mcrae were students and basketball players for Ray High School. On the night of February 23, 2015, a Monday, they were in a pickup truck headed west on Highway 2 when they apparently hit a patch of ice, sending the pickup across the median and into the eastbound lane where an east bound semi-truck struck them, killing the three teenagers. The 33-year-old semi driver had minor injuries. 

Local papers described how the community grieved, and Dalen’s father constructed the memorial. Because the boys liked bright colors, students and basketball fans across the state wore lime green at games and tournaments so people would remember the boys whose lives ended too soon. This historical marker keeps the memory of the boys alive, even among people who never met them but sympathized with the loss suffered by their families and friends. 

Just a few miles west of Tioga, we saw a familiar sight: a compound of mini-trailer houses arrayed neatly in rows, like the temporary embassy housing in Kabul years ago and some U.S. military camps in Afghanistan. Here the camp was deserted, not a vehicle or person in sight. We filed that observation away and checked in at the Microtel in Tioga, located three miles north of Highway 2. 

Scott called the Microtel an upscale man camp because all of our fellow occupants were male oil field workers. Apparently, they had moved to these long-stay motels or apartments that are more congenial than the quasi military camp we had seen on the highway. Signs were posted asking guests to wear protective bags on their boots, but the carpet was stained and the stairwell to the upper floors littered with gravel. The washer and dryer were streaked with grease and tar. Wages are high in the oil and gas fields for people willing to work hard. Being neat and tidy in the rough conditions is not one of the job requirements.

Buildings in Tioga  went up hard and fast to get infrastructure and services in place before the wells started producing. New apartments, new motels, new grocery stores, new liquor stores, tidy streets and curbs. The housing here was similar to the new and cheap townhouse where Scott and I lived Lafayette, Louisiana in 1981 when oil was booming there. He was working as a rough neck on the rigs to make enough money to put aside for university study.

We met one of the oil field workers at The Rig Grill on the northwest side of town. He was maybe 50, about 5’10” and 250 pounds. He saw our bikes parked outside and said he used to do 100-mile rides in his home state of Florida. We asked how he liked the cold climate. He said he loved the work, he had started as a driver and was now a mechanic. He had traveled some in Eastern Europe, mostly in search of female companionship. His first trip was to Ukraine in 1986 to meet “a six foot blond.” Currently he was supporting a girlfriend in the Philippines and saw her a couple times a year. He told an implausible story about discussing this trip with some law enforcement contact and then being recruited by the FBI to deliver a birthday card to someone in Moscow. We nodded politely, then Scott asked for our bill. Scott frowned but did not argue when our bar mate paid our $5.50 tab – happy hour rates for two beers and a club soda with lime. 

We stopped by a “prairie pothole” or freshwater marsh on the way back to the motel so I could listen to the frogs and watch the birds. The wind had died down and mosquitoes were starting to come out. Great for the frogs, less so for us. We had ridden just under 50 miles, but most were against the wind. We were tired and in bed by 20:30.