What if?

What if we only spend one night in Livingston?

What if we pick up a spare day by riding Highway 87 instead of Highway 89?

What if we ride from Great Falls to Choteau & ask Willie to come pick us up?

What if we ride the right numbet of miles but skip that little stretch from Choteau to. . .

Stop right there! I am determined to ride a continuous route!

That tire was really pretty bad. Bruce felt strongly that we should not even try to ride our planned route today. There was a high probability of rain; he pictured us standing along the road, 10 miles from the nearest town (meaning food, warmth, and cell service) trying to figure out how to get any farther when it gave out. He was pretty sure it would give out. So we spent a bunch of yesterday evening tossing around ideas. Fortunately, it was easy to grab a ride to Great Falls with the other people leaving the ranch.

We finally decided we would at least do that, then replace the tire with the one I had left in the duffel Aline had dropped off for us here. Then we would look at all sorts of weather forecasts and search deep within ourselves for the perfect answer. Or something.

It didn't rain a drop and it got considerably warmer. I was seriously tempted to ride north. The winds were all wrong, though, and we were excited to meet Willie (our new support crew - she and Aline did it together on the Blue Ridge last year, and they are heroic enough to help us even when they don't have each other's company). There may also have been just the tiniest bit of inertia.

We changed the tire. We decided to check out the Great Falls bike trail that shows on the map the B&B guy gave us. We decided to move all the reservations through Livingston back a day and to spend only one day there. Bruce made all the calls and we found time to talk to Lillian, too.

Do you know what river runs through Great Falls? I should have, but I didn't. So it came as a great surprise to find that the bike trail meanders along the Missouri River. That really feels like a huge landmark.

It is a big river, even this far north. It should not have been much of a surprise to come up on a Great (big water)Falls, either. Riding is strengthening our legs, but apparently not our brains. Anyway, we now understand where this little city got its name, and once we connected with Willie we all spent a couple of hours at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, and we should be seriously embarrassed if we ever feel challenged again by our circumstances.

We saw a short film about their portage past the local falls. There are five; we only rode past one. It took them two weeks to go 18 miles. There was one exhibit that invited us to pull on a rope. There was a meter that went up as you tugged. At the top was 20, which represents the effort those explorers put out hauling their stuff up the hills. I thought I was fairly strong & I could scarcely get it to 6.

Anyhow, we liked the exhibit very well. Bruce managed to identify one of his mystery wildflowers. We got some great history lessons to mull over as we proceed. And we got to ride a great big 12 miles at a pace that felt like doing almost nothing, and we had a nice dinner, and Bruce found a new camera.

Tomorrow we will be driven back to the ranch (uh, Bruce forgot his helmet there) and will get to do the whole day we planned originally - just 24 hours later. It includes some roads I would have been very sorry not to see more closely.