72.63 in 5:18---What a difference a day can make!! Lets just say that it is better to smell a deer carcass after you pass it than it is to smell it before you get to it. Think about that for a minute, then I'll explain. If you can smell a dead animal before you pass it, that means you have a headwind. If you smell it after you pass it, that means you have a tailwind. I use this example because I have seen and smelled a lot of carcasses on this trip. I passed the 8000 mile milestone today, which I thought was worth mentioning. Now back to the wind. The breeze that was smacking us in the face yesterday was at our back today. We were going the same direction, north, it was the wind that changed, thank God. Buddy decided to start out with Pam and they found me in Wilsall, just about 30 miles into the ride, so he did about 42 miles. I started out the trip thinking I was going to have to ride on I-90 for a short time.(that's right---I-90---we aren't in the south any more!). I spoke to a lady at a gas station, and she told to take 'Old Clyde Park Road'. I did that, heading east for about eight miles with a headwind, but as soon as I turned back onto US89, the wind shifted to a tail wind. Because this happened I was able to spend the next 40 miles or so enjoying the Montana-ness of where I was. So many things were so cool, and I was just cruising along enjoying it all, instead of battling into my nemesis. I passed beautiful river scenery, as I was now in the Shield Valley, home of the Shield River. There were tons of Montana beef, beautiful horses, eight turkeys, red tail hawks, ospreys, and two white tail fawns ran right out in front of Buddy and I. There were huge hay rolls, miles of wheat, and all kinds of fields in various stages of being farmed. Giant John Deere combines passed me on the back of eighteen wheelers. Old railroad tracks that had been swallowed by years of disuse ran along the road. Huge mountains with their peaks in the clouds were in the distance on all sides of me. The sky was so big in Big Sky Country that I could see three different rainstorms in three different directions, but I had sun over my head. I stopped in a small town called Clyde Park, which had one gas station, one tavern, and a grocery store called Glens Shopping Center. It was a store with wooden floors and groceries only, with chairs in front of the store for people to sit and talk. I sat there and ate a plum and a chocolate pudding pie. A few miles later is when Bud joined me. We were making great time when those three rain storms I mentioned started to close in on us. We had heavy rain to the right, heavy rain to the left, and heavy rain gaining on us from behind. There was lightning and thunder, and with the tailwinds, we decided to try to outrun all of them. We put the pedal to the metal, and we ended up covering 72 miles in only a half hour longer than it took us to do 52 miles yesterday.
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