I left Bowman, North Dakota, headed for Baker, Montana, around 6pm on Wednesday, just after my last post. It was still another 46 miles to go. Luckily my uncle John in Great Falls, where I’m headed toward now, is a Lutheran pastor and is able to set me up with the Lutheran churches and pastors as I travel through the state. So I had a place to stay all lined up already in Baker.

As the sun was going down, I found myself getting into some really interesting scenery. I don’t know if it’s the badlands or not, but it was pretty amazing- small canyons and little plateaus all over the place. In the light of the setting sun, I felt like I was in a different world. I was hoping to see the cliche image of a coyote howling from atop one of the precepices, silhouetted against a pink sky and the vanishing sun. No dice. Plenty of deer, though. And those darn things sure would startle me. I wouldn’t notice them until I would be about 10 feet away, then all of a sudden they would take off running through the grass.

The ride that night was nice, although a little creepy at times. Once the sun went down, there was about 40 minutes of dusk, where I could still see relatively well. By 7:30, it was really dark, and I was waiting for the moon to show her face, as she should still be fairly large, having been full just a couple days prior. Well, the moon was shy. She started to peek her face over the horizon sometime around eight, glowing red through some haze. I was glad to see her, and I told her she looked good in red. She blushed. But with hilly terrain, I found myself constantly losing her over the hills behind me. She was slow to rise. Even by the time she was up high enough to not be masked by hills, it was still so dark that I needed my headlight. I could see where I needed to go on the road, but I couldn’t see much more than 10 feet in front into the dark night, and I was afraid a deer might be in the road. If I smacked into one of those, it would be bad news for me and my bike.

The ride to Baker took about three hours. Not bad, considering the hills and no more tailwind. When I arrived, pastors Bruce and Reba were at home and welcomed me right in. They said I could sleep in their guest room. They fed me a delicious hamburger and we talked. They were very good listeners, which was great. I told them about my trip and talked about my mother and brother. It really was wonderful to have some good ears to talk to. I am grateful to have stopped through there, and I really loved that they expressed how grateful they were to have me stay.

The next morning I got on the internet to figure out the rest of my route, distances, etc. I ended up getting a much later start than I had planned. I was headed to Miles City, about 82 miles to the west. I thought I was going to be okay because the morning saw little in the way of winds. I figured I could make good time. When I started rolling out of town around 1pm, however, the winds had picked up. Headwinds again. And even though there is a net elevation loss going to Miles City, it seemed like the first 40 miles was nothing but uphill. It was exhausting. I was frustrated. Here I was trying to make good time, not have to ride in the dark again, and the damn headwinds were doing nothing but slowing me down. Actually, I was angry. Then at five, I heard a strange noise coming from my rear wheel. It sounded like some brush or grass was caught in the spokes. Nope. Turned out to be air rushing out of my tire. Must have hit some glass.

Well, so here I was on highway 12, out in the middle of nowhere, 40 miles from any kind of town. I would have to patch the tube, but there was really no space to do it. The shoulder on the highway is only about a foot and a half wide, and although there wasn’t too much traffic, there were cars coming by about every five to ten minutes. I didn’t want to be right on the highway changing a flat. So I walked a good half mile or more until I found a driveway to a ranch that was partly paved. It would do. I thought about trying to hitch my way to Miles City from there, but I decided I better go ahead and fix my tube first. So I worked fairly quickly, removing all the bags, flipping the bike over, patching the tube. I got that all done and started putting everything back together, proud of making good time. Then another problem arose. Let me explain.

My bike is a three speed. Unlike most bikes you see, it is internally geared, meaning that the gears are not on the outside of the wheel, but are inside the hub. I don’t have a derailleur. Mounted under my seat I have my shifter. It’s a grip shift with a handle that you turn to change gears. Turning the handles tightens and releases a cable that runs down to a module that is mounted on the axle. Within this module is a paddle that is moved by the tension of the cable. The paddle compresses and releases a spring that goes into the axle. This spring changes the gears. I don’t know the exact mechanics of what is inside the wheel, but the spring moves some kind of sprocket, I guess, among the three gears. Well, the module with the paddle, that pushes the spring, it mounts onto the axle over one of the axle nuts. To keep it on there, there is a bolt you tighten that presses on the axle nut. Well, when I went to put that module back on and tighten the bolt, I found that it would turn, but it wasn’t getting tight against the nut. If I pulled, it would come right off. I played around with it for a bit and realized that the threads had been stripped inside. I don’t know if that was something I did, or if it defective from the factory, but basically the bolt would not tighten against the nut, and I could not keep the module on. If I tried to shift to a higher gear, the tension of the spring would push it right off.

I figured there wasn’t much I could do to fix it at the moment, so I thought I would just try to get it into second gear, my usual gear, and just ride it the rest of the way into town. So I put all my bags back on and began to ride out. Without the spring in the axle, however, the hub didn’t stay in second gear; instead it went down into first gear, a really low gear. So I was pedalling like mad, spinning and spinning, and hardly going anywhere. On slight downhills, I couldn’t even spin fast enough to get any power to the wheels. This wouldn’t work. At the pace this gear allowed, it would take me 8 more hours to get to Miles City. Something had to be done. So I put the spring back in the axle and put the module on. I shifted into third gear, my hardest gear. Then I was able to keep the module on the nut by securing the cable against the bike frame. Somehow that created enough friction between the module and nut, put it at a bit of an angle, so that it wouldn’t pop off. I figured I would have to ride the rest of the way in third gear, however. I was afraid that if I shifted down and then shifted back up, the tension of the spring would cause the module to pop off.
Luckily the wind had pretty much died off by this point, but going up hills would be tough. Still, at least I would be able to get some speed on the flats and downhills. So off I set again, ever wary that the module might pop off, that I might lose the spring somewhere in the desert on the side of the road. It was now an hour and a half since I got the flat tire. 6:30. The sun would be down in about an hour, and I was still 40 miles from Miles City. I would have to make haste.

I took off, pedalling hard. I knew I would have a place to sleep if I made it there, probably a good meal. There was nothing in between, no towns, maybe just a ranch or two. I would push for it. Oh boy, it was tough. There were some mean uphills. I wasn’t going to walk, and I was afraid to shift down, so I pushed really hard, with all my strength, to make it up in my hardest gear. One hills was well over a mile long, and very steep. The sun went down and it got completely dark. It was a nice night, and I put my ipod on to keep my spirits up. I wasn’t sure how long the battery would last, but I decided I would let Mason Jennings carry me the rest of the way into Miles City.

Of course, this whole time as I was riding, I would have in a heartbeat called the pastor in Miles City and asked if he could come pick me up. Unfortunately, I was in the barren wastelands of Montana, and there is no cell service. Not until I got to within 10 miles of the city was I able to pick up a signal. As soon as I realized that, well, I called right away. It was already after nine, and I at least wanted to let him know I was still coming. He said he could come pick me up. I pedalled on, and we met down the road. He gave me a ride back to his place, where I got a shower and he cooked up some steaks. Then he brought me over to the church, where I spent the night.

Today, I am exhausted. I’m not sure how far I will make it. I had planned on doing 80 again today, but I might cut it down to 40. There is a city that far away, then after that it is a whole lot of nothing for another 100 miles. Just a few tiny towns, if you can call them that. So I may just take a short day today, ride 40 miles, then rest up a night and ride a long day tomorrow, 100 miles. We’ll see if I’m up for it. I know that I am really pushing myself too hard, that I’m asking way too much of my body, but I do it all in the vain of knowing I have a place to rest in just a few days. That’s what keeps me going for now. Hopefully my body can keep up a little longer.