This morning was a bit of a shock to our bodies when we woke up to a temperature of 8.5 degrees. The first minor panic came when I was putting my gloves on and discovered I was not wearing my wedding ring. During a panic stricken search of my gear, I found it right where I left it in my toiletry kit. Phew!
We were on the road by 6:03 only to find that the pre-dawn chill brought the temperature down to 6 degrees. But roll we must. Probably still being tired from the previous day made the cold feel worse. I could see a glimmer of light on the east horizon and kept hoping that the sun would pop up and warm the world. Turn on the heated grips. Turn on the heated seat. That helps. In a rare moment on this trip I had turned on the music system. There was a slight moment of silence as the audio computer software randomly selected the next of over 5,000 tunes stored on a memory stick. And then it happened. As we came around a corner Beethoven’s 5th came alive in my helmet. The shadows started to coalesce into lines. The lines blended into forms. The forms were moving and there were hundreds upon hundreds of the moving forms. Antelope everywhere I could see. What an unbelievable moment. I’m half way between Rawlins and Casper Wyoming on a motorcycle, the sun has just broken the horizon, my eyes are filled with hundreds of antelope and Beethoven’s 5th resounding in my helmet. It just doesn’t get much better. Oh yeah, I’m not cold anymore.
A quick fuel and snack break in Casper and gone. On to Buffalo and then through Acme and on to Billings. We decided to depart from our route and do a little exploring of Billings. A left turn here, a right turn there, an intersection missing due to construction, a short cruise through a residential area, another right, a traffic circle and there we are at another fuel stop. Hmmm area looks kind of familiar. Ask the trooper who just happens to be there (honest) and he tells us about a fast food place 3 blocks away. Another group rolls in and are as surprise to us as we were to see them. They took a wrong turn and got lost. Sure glad that didn’t happen to us. They said they would join us for lunch at the place 3 blocks away. We never did see them again until they arrived at the hotel in Great Falls.
Somewhere west of Lavine, we encountered a sign that said ‘pavement ends’ and it did. I had no idea that the Starship Enterprise was built for off-road. Not much choice, so on we plunged. Made it to checkpoint 3 fully intact, muddy as the dickens, but intact.
Everytime we stopped, I was trading text messages with Brian. Remember Brian? I have his event passport and he has mine. Text can be a great thing and we met up right outside the doors of checkpoint 3.
Anyhow, all is well with the world now.
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