Category: Blog Posts

Some people really “get outta town” when they go somewhere. Like Mexico and Switzerland. Me, I am not much of a world traveler.  I can find what I need in montana. But that dosent mean I dont travel.  In fact I love traveling. And in Montana it is large enough that traveling can take a while.  But is is always worth it. Traveling to hamilton to ride the Coyote Coolie Trail or cruising the back roads between the Crazy Mountain Range and the Bridgers.  Love getting out of town.

I got out of work late and with what remaining sunlight I did have on my “long way home” I thought of a time comming back to the cars after a hike and the sun was setting the same way.  I love how it highlights certain mountain ranges when the sun goes down.  And now the sun has set and I flip on my headlamp.  Immediately I notice something diffrent tonight.  There are little goblins and gouls running around.

So Frog Hollow is coming up and I have decided to stop trying to defend my titles. I mean it is important to me to challenge myself but that is my point.  If I spent most of my time defending what I have won then at some point I will be to busy training and racing to do anything new.  What is it that will be the new thing?  I’ll cross that cattle guard when I come to it. For now … trying to come to terms with not going to Utah.

Sometimes it is  landscape scene.  Sometimes it is form.  And some times it is the color, natural color, that captures my eye.  If I could only capture my experience.

Windows Vista is crap, much like Windows Millennium. But now Windows 8 is out and I need to upgrade.  Two reasons, one being that it is only 40 bucks.  The other is that my old laptop will not upgrade to windows 7 … DVD driver issue.  I’ve tried.  Numerous times.  So this is what I am doing today.  Windows are like weeds that look pretty but attach themselves and make it hard to do laundry.

Riding smooth gravel roads, even though at times they seem extremely rough, are easy. Imagine a time when you bump along the prairie in a wagon. On misdirected line and you break a wheel. No trees in sight. No materials.  Now that is going to be a pain in the ass repair.  Us?  We just pull put a cartridge and a tube. Worst case scenario a multi tool.  Yea … we have it good.

“I think they still use it”

“yea …”

We had been on the road for hours. To be honest I had hoped for dirt sooner. A gravel road headed North and we turned off onto it.

“Which way should we go?”

“Right, towards Bonanza Creek”

Finally on dirt again we felt lucky to just be off the pavement. That is all that mattered…o/o

I just beat her up the hill and I lay down to rest. The sun is shinning through the trees, stunning. My eyelids grow heavy …

Plattsburgh is a cold place. It is also foreign to me. I am from Montana. And now my cheap Schwinn bike is so inadequate.  Why am I on a bike. I wouldn’t normally be on a bike. I mean one day back in Roundup a classmate dared to ride his bike through town.  My young community influenced prejudice, now corrected, thought maybe he was gay. I mean skin tight clothes. Who is Shakespeare anyway? Well, this is all I have to get to work because I lost my drivers license. Maybe this weekend I will re paint my Schwinn. I hate this color.

The Grand Fondo Castle Di Monte was awesome and I couldn’t wait for this year’s installment. Then my partner in crime suggest we do a mountain bike through the Castle Mountains. Or was it my idea?  Don’t know. In any case we started not so early Saturday morning … or was it afternoon.

It all started out like last year. Fall colors, prairies, and lush fields dotted with antelope. And we were warned that it was antelope season as well. We tried every route idea we had but could find no access to the Castles.

We just kept going down the road. The original route. The views were great but we really wanted to get off the road. I just needed to have faith. Faith that we could find dirt.

It was driving us crazy.  every route that we could see on the GOPS didn’t exist in the real world.  In the world of land owners shutting off access to national lands. But I will not go into that topic now. Relief was found when we rolled into Lennep Montana. We found National Forest Service Road 585.

From there we climbed and climbed. We were both in heaven.  Not saying that I condone heaven or even believe in such a place.  And living in Montana is certainly like heaven. But my faith proved to be right and we were finally on dirt.

And it got better from there.  Even a lake, Bonanza Reservoir, which was almost dried up. We went over two passes which netted us some great views.  Encountered snow.  And real cold weather. It was all good.

The route turned out pretty cool. As with most things in life. I guess that is my faith.