Diary

Mileage:  101 miles

Elevation Change:  4000 feet

Weather:  cool in morning, hot in afternoon, lots of sun

Morale:  feeling stronger every day

Incidents:  only one flat tire!

Daily Summary:

We got to sleep in today as we left an hour later due to the relatively short distance—”only” 100 miles!  It was quite chilly in Butte this morning, but we warmed up quickly with a steep climb up Pipestone Pass.  As you can see on our elevation profile, there was a lot more down than up, so we went screaming down into Whitehall on what seemed like an endless descent.  It really couldn’t have been a more beautiful day.  The weather was perfect, the roads were great, the traffic was light, and the scenery was beautiful.  We got into several good groups for some fast and intense riding.  It’s hard to take pictures in situations like that, so we didn’t take as many as the scenery merited.  Lunch was along the Madison River watching the rafts float by.    We stopped at a bike shop on the way into Bozeman and bought Raymond a new helmet, as his old one was cracking and no longer safe.  We also bought a few more tubes and CO2 cartridges as we have been going through a lot of them lately!  My rear tire went flat about a mile from the hotel, but we pumped it up instead of changing it by the side of the road and made it back in one piece.  The tire repair will be a project for tonight.  I had a long conversation with biketiresdirect to see if there is anything better on the market that we could be using, but they didn’t come up with anything.  I might try lining the tires with a tire liner if the problems continue.  In a few minutes we are meeting with a realtor to go up to our lot.  We haven’t seen it in 14 years so we need to take advantage of being here.  We both feel really great and seem to be getting stronger every day.  We’ve come over 380 miles in 3 days, so are very happy with the way it’s going.  Tomorrow is our shortest day yet at 90 miles.  We are going to take it very easy all day and treat it as a recovery day so we can be sure and pace ourselves a bit.  There are no rest days on this trip!

 

Below are Raymond and Joel (a composer from LA) climbing past some beautiful scenery.  Next is Raymond wearing the trip jersey powering towards the horizon.  Lunch was along the Madison River.  Finally, Lil is all smiles on such a glorious day.