Day 14: We definitely saw everything today

Hey y’all - Dustin again. Let me tell you we had a DAY, and it started with Julia and Brian hearing a loud and really unamused groan as my alarm went off. It’s been rough, and yesterday was our longest day of 64 miles - and today was supposed to be even longer (70 miles, emphasis on supposed to be - more on that later).

We started off the day riding in the residential streets of Libby, MT where there was a 60s VW bug we were pretty sure was stalking us because it went up and down the street about 5 times. They eventually went away (we definitely lost them by going a speedy 8 mph). Shortly after we took a 30 minute snack break at the 10 mile mark and we were making pretty good progress! 

After that we kept chugging along seeing some good views

But at the top of one of the so called “hills” I again thought the group needed a morale boost. So I rolled onto the dirt to take a break and promptly fell off my bike AGAIN as the dirt just fell out from under my tire… (I’m okay again btw). It wasn’t Julia’s fault this time - so she doesn’t owe me any more beer … sadly… And also, in a very surprising twist, the guy who has been cycling for a decade has now fallen more than these two chumps who just started biking this year 🤷🏼‍♂️… I would love to see them in clippless peddles though 👀. 

Shortly after that, Brian got a flat which delayed us quite a bit. We were able to change it by patching the tube but it stopped us for probably 45ish minutes.

Since I was hurt we kept of going and did that for another 20 miles or so before we started looking for a place to eat lunch. We planned on eating lunch at the 35 mile mark (half way) but there was no shade around (it was 80something and sunny) so we decided to ride a little longer to find some shade. That turned out to be a bad move because about a mile down the road we saw … drum roll please … another bear!!! And for a bonus, she had two cubs with her! Brian was leading and didn’t see it, so when I saw it first I alerted the others. Brian decided to slam on his brakes again despite me telling him two days ago not to do that, luckily no one hit each other this time. So we got off the bikes and kinda backed away not to appear as a threat to the cubs. The mom was definitely eyeing us, and so I descretely took the safety off my bear spray (arguably a bigger thrill than seeing the bear itself). Also luckily, since you know… we were now basically in a standoff with a mother bear… Julia’s parents happened to be driving by, so they pulled over and we slowly got into the car until the bears went away. Long story short - we lived and hopefully it’ll be third times the charm with brian remembering not to slam on the brakes next time we see a bear. She was kinda cute though!

So if you remember we were trying to find a spot to get lunch - so we rode down the road a little longer (3 ish miles). The. We had a grand lunch - I finally broke out my camp stove and made a double batch of worlds best top ramen (chicken flavor)

 

After lunch Brian may or may have not gotten heat exhaustion (we can’t be sure) but he was really struggling so we packed him up in Julia’s parents’ car and sent him along to Eureka. Julia and I also dropped our bags off in the car because it was 5pm and we were still 25 miles away and we needed to get there FASTER. But let me tell you, after riding up mountains with 50 pounds of gear - to have no weight on the bike was so freeing. It was the best time I’ve had on a bike in a long time. We were cruising up mountains and the speeding down the other side. We probably reached 40 something mph and had the first tailwind of the trip! We were averaging about 20 mph so we were well on our way when it started to thunderstorm, and I mean huge lightning strikes right near us. Soooooo since we were riding a literal piece of metal on the top of a mountain we decided it was safest to hitch a ride for the last 10 miles to town. 

After we got to town we went out with Julia’s parents and I had a elk burger, which is one of the meats I actually haven’t tried before (if you’re curious about what I’ve had you can slide into my DMs). 

So all in all we ended up doing 60 miles of pretty big “hills” (unless you were Brian who did 46) and we saw a bunch of animals (deer, bald eagle, fox, dogs, bears, baby bears, rabbits, and all the other normal small critters). It was a wonderful day - tomorrow is a day of rest - so we’re just hanging out in Eureka - catch the blog tomorrow to see what we did!