The cowboy era

At least when I was growing up, there was the romantic myth of the West and the cowboys.  In the third grade we sang songs like "Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above --- don't fence me in."  Seeing the Montana countryside at 12 mph (on a good day), there is more than enough time to paint a mental picture of what the era might have been like. 

No fences, no trains, no towns; just wide open ranges and grassland where cattle would pasture and get fat.  When the cattle were ready for market, they would be herded a thousand miles or so towards Salt Lake City or Chicago.

I suppose songs like the one I mentioned go back to the days when farmers arrived on the scene.  Farmers would have wanted well-defined property lines to distinguish their own crops from their neighbor's, and in a similar vein, they would want to raise a few head of cattle for themselves, without letting them roam all over the place.  They needed fences.

The introduction of mechanized farm equipment gave farmers an extra advantage, and the arrival of the railroad put an end to the need for the long cattle drives.  Together these two events spelled the end of the cowboy era.  Funny how you can learn history by combining songs you learned in the third grade and long bicycle tours.

It's not the "Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" anymore

Other than the white line delimiting the road shoulder, the most constant companion on this section of the trip is the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railroad linking Seattle to Chicago.  Someone told me that fifty trains pass everyday, but it seems like more.  On the eastbound trains, you can see the US trade deficit roll by: half the cargo is marked China, the other half bears a Japanese company name.

This northern railway route is known as the "High Line".  Half the businesses in the small towns along US 2 borrow the name: Hi Line Ford, Hi Line Pizza, Hi Line Beauty Salon, and so forth.  The railway was built by a great American entrepreneur, James J. Hill.  Depending on your version of history, he is either the great "Empire Builder" or the "barbed-wire, shaggy-headed, one-eyed old son-of-a-bitch".

He used a workforce of 8,000 men to flatten the topography, and another 650 men to build bridges and lay track.  In six months, he finished the line from Minot, ND, to Havre, MT.  Within a few more years, he extended the line to Puget Sound.  In a classic government-private collaboration, a few Indian treaties were broken and Hill was grant deeded thousands of acres to build his line.

In a stroke of unscrupulous genius, this great American businessman launched an advertising campaign, not only in the East, but also in Europe.  He touted the incredible fertility and productivity of this arid area.  He sold the acreage that he had been grant-deeded by the US government for $2.50 an acre, and charged incredibly low transportation rates (westbound) to develop a market for his new railroad.  People took the bait, and towns appeared overnight.  However, eastbound transportation rates were so high that no one could afford to move back.   It was a one-way trip, or bankruptcy.

His scheme worked for the first few rainy years, but when the rains stopped, the area became a "dust bowl" because there were no longer any native grasses to hold the soil in place.  Over the course of many years and numerous  calamities --- not just drought, but also "locusts" (grasshoppers, actually), low grain prices, and finally, the Great Depression --- the area mostly emptied out and much of it was never planted again.

Montana "Big Sky" country

It seems silly to think that the sky is different here than it would be, say, in New Mexico or Kansas.  The only reasons I can think of to call this "Big Sky" country are (1) there is no pollution, (2) there are few buildings, (3) there are almost no trees (unless a river or creek is nearby), (4) the surrounding hills are only a few hundred feet high, and (5) most of the time there are big cumulous clouds in the sky.  So you can see a long way and there's a lot of sky.

As with so many other things on this trip, having no real knowledge of anything (other than historical markers, a few notes on the ACA maps, my own observations, and third grade songs), I get to make up my own explanation of things and --- bicycling solo --- nobody is around to contradict me.

It's all uphill with no relief in sight

Fifty-nine miles of uphill, and no downhill.  Is that even possible?  You bet it is, if you have 25-30 mph headwinds.  My last full cycling day in Montana was close to being the toughest cycling day of the trip.  Every mile was a struggle. The constant effort made my knees hurt and my thighs ache.  My average speed for the day? A pathetic 9.3 mph, exactly the same as when I climbed up to Logan Pass and crossed the Continental Divide.  Except that the route was mostly flat!

The low point was on a mild downhill.  I saw it coming and rejoiced.  But alas, the wind picked up and I found myself struggling to go 6.4 mph downhill.  It was dreadful.  Almost the whole day, I used nothing but my "granny gears".  ["Granny gears" are the low gears you get with a triple chain ring, where the smallest one delivers very low, hill climbing gears.]

At the town of Brockton, I considered calling it quits.  I looked carefully, but there is nothing but a few run down houses in the town of Brockton.  I saw one shuttered bar & grill, but no other businesses and especially no place to stay.  On the edge of town, a dog started chasing me.  I kept yelling at him to get off the road, not that he listened.  I think he was just looking for a new friend, because he didn't bark.  With the headwinds, he didn't have too much trouble keeping up with me --- an ego-deflating situation to be sure.  After five miles or so, when I finally came to a stop to take a breather and a sip of water, he came over and nestled at my feet.  I think he would really have liked to go to Bar Harbor, too.  But I already have a laptop, a PDA, a GPS, a camera, a stove, and enough other gear, so I can't carry a 20-lb bag of kibble as well.

Towards the end of the day, the "virtual" hills turned into real hills.  Oh great.  The real hills did not mean that the virtual hills came to an abrupt stop.  Going uphill with a headwind slowed me to about 4 mph (7 km/hr), but at least the downhills were steep enough to raise my speed to 12 mph (20 km/hr) for a couple of minutes.  I should have arrived in Culbertson around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, but I kept checking how late it was: it was already after 7:00 pm.  All I wanted was for the cycling day to come to an end and to get some dinner.  For the last 12 miles of the day, I'd continually do the math in my head: at 4 mph, it's going to take me another three hours.  (Mood sinks.)  Ten minutes later, going downhill at 12 mph, I'd recalculate.  Thank God, probably less than an hour now.  (Mood improves.)

When I finally arrived in Culbertson, not too much later than 8:00 pm actually, I checked out the camping possibilities at the city park.  A really nice park, but no place to clean up.  On to Plan B. There were two motels, a nice one and a complete dump.  The nice one didn't have any vacancies, but the dump had nothing but.  The motel owner sized up the situation pretty well and wanted $50 for a room (a rip-off price for Culbertson and especially for what you get).  When I balked, he decided he'd take $35 but only if I paid cash.  At least I got a hot shower and washed my cycling clothes.  Dinner was beer and pizza across the street.

It's a VERY small world

As the crow flies, I'm about 1600 miles from home in San Francisco, but I just finished breakfast with my neighbor, Lester, who lives three blocks from me.  Lester grew up on a farm in Tioga, North Dakota, and has brothers and sisters, as well as a slew of nieces and nephews who still live here.  This year he drove from San Francisco to Tioga for his 50-year high school reunion and was still in town as I pulled into Williston.  Before leaving home, we had talked about the possibility of him driving down to Williston to meet me for dinner, but instead, his sister Ilene and brother-in-law Lyle invited me to Tioga for a couple of days of R&R.  So Lester drove the 45 miles to pick up me and Rusty (and the 65 pounds of gear) to drive me back to Tioga.  On the way, we drove by the family farm where they used to raise cattle and grow wheat; now they grow flax, canola, peas, a few oil wells, and a Verizon wireless tower.  Hey, it's the 21st century.

Culture and society (part two)

Especially with my "big city" background, I am often astounded at the openness and trust that people show one another here.   Maybe the reason isn't that it's eastern Montana, but rather that it's small town vs. big metropolis.  One way or another, it's really something.

A case in point: in Harlem, MT, I camped in the city park.  Although it's a town of only 850 people, they have a nice, new municipal swimming pool next to the park.  They let bicycle tourists come in and use the showers for free.  That's generous enough in itself, but their hospitality doesn't end there.  The swimming pool complex also includes City Hall: the police station, the municipal clerk's office, and the council room.  If they know someone is camping in the park (and I was there at the beginning of the holiday weekend), they get out the keys and leave the door to City Hall open all night long so that the campers can use the bathroom whenever they need to.  Can you see that happening in San Francisco, Oakland, or San Jose?

After a week or two of practice, I have mastered The Wave and, quite frankly, I'm looking pretty damn cool, especially with a helmet and sunglasses.  Unfortunately, Montana blows the whole "cool" thing.  It's back to the enthusiastic wave.  In fact, some people wave at me before I wave at them (remember, I don't have much to do during the day except pedal and wave).  They extend all five fingers and actually move their hand.  Just for the hell of it, sometimes I wave at the Burlington Northern engineers, and they even toot the locomotive's horn to return the greeting.

Now that I think about it, I suppose the Montana wave (all but indistinguishable from the California wave, but for God's sake, don't tell them) is maybe the norm.  In a big Hollywood flick, can you imagine the scene where the great passenger liner pulls away from the dock, and to bid farewell to their friends and family, all they do to wave goodbye is to raise their forearms no more than horizontal and extend two fingers?  That would not go over big at the box office.

My own box office, free admission, but no popcorn --- enter here.