Day 17-20: Highway 200

The Pack River Delta

After parting ways again with Mary in Sandpoint, I had hoped to pick up the pace and start my days earlier, to avoid getting stuck on the road past dark. Unfortunately, the prevailing winds were against me from the day I left Ione, so I effectively spent another week climbing, only now against wind instead of gravity.



I've been keeping a log, which has shown me that I spend about as much time during the day resting as cycling. With rest time, my mileage averages out to about 5mph, which means that 60 miles takes me 12 hours, give or take. That's right, if I hit the road at 9am, I don't stop until 9pm. I pray for the wind to stop. Meanwhile the days between days, the interstitial days, slide by one into the next.



I've found Idaho and Montana drivers to be generally more courteous of me than Washington drivers. They usually pass with a full lane's width, and often even slow down to pass. Honkers are fewer; with exceptions such as the driver of an enormous recreational vehicle towing an enormous power boat who was just too enormous to share the road with me; and the piece of shit brown haired asswipe driving an oncoming small gray convertible who thought it was funny to swerve into my lane and lean on the horn in a mock game of chicken. If I'd been carrying a gun, I guarantee there would have been an incident of bicycle-on-motorist violence. It's at moments like that when I wish for James Bondian defenses such as tacks or oil slicks or rocket launchers. Apart from such moments, I've grown somewhat more inured to honkers.


Good drivers.

The scenery has not disappointed. Leaving Sandpoint, Highway 200 swings north around Pend Oreille Lake, through the Pack River Delta, and then follows the Clark Fork River on a southeasterly course for Missoula.



Train tracks hug the entire length of the river bed, and freight cars were my frequent companions.



Because the tracks are laid flatter than the road, I often wished for an attachment that would let me mount my bike to the rails. In fact, I spotted a Chevy pickup truck with just such a device, riding along the tracks. I assume it was an official vehicle, and not merely a clever opportunist.



I passed into Montana on the morning of day 18, just 5 or 10 miles from where I'd stayed at the Clark Fork Inn. Almost immediately, Big Country's "In a Big Country" bubbled up to my conscious mind, and the three or four lines of it that I know repeated in an endless loop. Two days later, I would hear it playing on an 80s radio station at a diner in Plains.



Shortly after entering Montana I stopped at a riverside state park to stretch and urinate. When I exited the restroom I noticed a parked car, about 50 feet away, that I'd not seen on arrival. I was sure it couldn't have driven past while I was in the john - all the park restrooms I've seen in this region are small concrete bunkers placed over pit toilets, that echo ferociously. I noticed that the car's trunk was ajar. A lifetime of crime drama has taught me beyond any shadow of a doubt that a car parked in a remote location with its trunk ajar can mean only one thing. I considered this, and wondered if I had cell reception. I examined the car again. The trunk was still ajar. I was unwilling to approach the crime scene in my mind, though common sense began to dawn. State park, riverside, Montana, early Sunday morning. Surely, someone was fishing. I kept my distance from the car, but moved down toward the riverbank. Further down the bank I saw a man in a yellow cap with a fishing rod. I resolved to keep my grim imagination at bay.



As the big country opened wide its arms to welcome me, so did the Montana tourism industry. Each small town's "Made in Montana" pennants proved that Montana is savvy to tourism, and hotel prices climbed accordingly. The high prices shed new light on the would-be growth of Ione, Washington, which shares similar natural beauty. I imagine the entrepreneurs of Ione looking with jealous eyes to their neighbors to the east and asking, "Whatta they got that we don't got?" (For some reason I imagine Al Pacino in the role, bombastically explaining the situation to his underlings: "They got trees. We got trees. They got lakes and rivers. We got lakes and rivers. What the FUCK does it take to bring in las touristas?")


The Public Dock at Trout Creek

I stopped on day 18 at Thompson Falls, Montana. Tucked away behind the town is a hydroelectric dam that spans two sides of a small island. A quaint wooden foot bridge invites strollers to walk the island, where info plaques explain the hydroelectric process.


The bridge to Terabithia... er... Thompson Falls.

I stayed at the Falls Inn, just a block away from the bridge mouth. The motel has recently changed hands, and appears to be run quite well by its new owners, but the pure classic 70s decor remains intact. I imagine that it was quite the swingers lounge back in the day. I am only sorry that I failed to get a photo of the marlin hanging on the faux stone wall above the sculpted hot tub in the spa room.


I wonder if the guys who made Myst visited here.

Speaking of accommodations, I was pleasantly surprised by the availability of vegetarian options at restaurants along highway 200. I wondered if they sought to cater to the high number of Seventh Day Adventist churches in the area.

Surprising in another sense is the apparent lack of motorcycle helmet laws in Idaho and Montana. I saw few helmets at all in Sandpoint; about 50/50 on the roads of Montana, and I suspect that most of the helmeted riders were Canadians. I realize that Idaho and Montana are hard fightin' live free or die tryin' kind of states, but it surprised me to see riders so cavalier about it, especially after the accident I witnessed (Canadian, by the way, and wearing a helmet).



Day 19 was the day the salt left my body. It stained my clothes, my bike seat, and the strap of my shoulder bag with white rime. Astute readers of The Destroyer series, featuring Remo Williams, may recall this as a sign of puberty among practitioners of the ancient Korean art of Sinanju, of which all other martial arts are merely a shadow. It has been known to happen to adults who have undertaken the rigorous training of Sinanju, though such adults are rare. I can only conclude that fighting the winds of western Montana is at least as rigorous an undertaking.

The towns slowly rolled past: Plains, Paradise, Parma, Dixon, Ravalli, Arlee. The 60 mile stretch between Plains and Arlee was devoid of all services, with not a single motel nor campground to be had.


I like barns.

Past Paradise, I found a crazy person's rest stop. Someone had spray painted "REST STOP" in garish orange spray paint on a boulder, with an arrow pointed off the road. Other stones had also been marked in a crazy quilt of messages. Bits of orange and green vinyl ribbon were tied to stones and twigs, showing a trail down to the river. A rambling sign was taped to a tree, proclaiming "welcome to the waters edge AT YOUR RISK" and "this is how we do things in Montana" and signed by "A GOOD VET".



I followed the markers off the road. They bent away from the water, and instead lead to a one foot deep hole in the ground, which was described by surrounding marker stones as "OUT HOUSE". I wondered if this was all some crazy vet's Rambo fantasy, a macabre trap for the unwitting, then reminded myself to curb my imagination.



I did not use the "OUT HOUSE", or enter the river, though I did find a more civilized access point just down the road, where I took a dip and met an eagle.

Shortly after my swim, I stopped for an unplanned dinner break when my body demanded it. I sat and ate with my back to a chiseled cliff wall, watching the sun go down over the river. I contemplated how odd I must look to passing drivers, sitting by the side of the road, miles from any town.


Supper time.

I stopped for another break on a piece of Kalispel/Flathead Indian land that was open to non-motorized traffic, and considered camping there. As I walked through the stubs of dried grass and cattle dung, yellow grasshoppers flung themselves crazily from my path, like cartoon roaches scattering from an exterminator. Though I considered the notion romantic, I found the land too inhospitable for my soft city body.


Conservation land.

I ran out of steam at Dixon, a dying bedroom community (bedroom of what, I couldn't tell - probably Missoula). The only businesses in town had been boarded up. I passed people winding down their day, their dogs always barking at me. I circled the town looking for a likely place to camp, and settled on an unmanned firehouse with a big back yard. The sun was still up, but close to setting. I was in full view of the neighborhood and didn't want to unroll my sleeping gear until dark, so I sat at a picnic table and had another dinner. Shortly after I settled in, I was reminded of the ever present railway. I slept beneath the stars, interrupted by the occasional freight train. In the morning, I climbed through the broken window of an abandoned house opposite the firehouse, to use its restroom. I left Dixon without talking to a single soul.


Dixon's finest accommodations.

I rolled into Ravalli on the morning of Day 20. I'd expected a bigger town with services, but found more boarded windows. I did manage to find a sole survivor - a small shop run by a woman who made doughnuts and sandwiches, and sold fruit and handmade knickknacks from local orchards and area craftsmen. The coffee was weak, but the doughnuts were amazing. I had one just out of the fryer, still hot with grease and freshly applied sugar glaze. I purchased some fresh fruit and two sandwiches to carry me to Missoula, as I expected nothing between here and there.

I was surprised when Arlee, the next town, had services after all, and I stopped for another breakfast. By then it was nearly noon and the heat of the day was upon me. The ten miles out of Arlee was among the worst patches of road I have ridden, with heavy commuter traffic and no shoulder, and a climb that looks at first like an illusory descent. For bad experiences, it ranked with Washington 97 through the Yakama reservation.



An hour out of Arlee I was despondent. After a week of fighting the wind, I'd begun to wonder if the constant struggle was actually my strength giving out on me, or if maybe my wheels were seizing up with grit or my brakes dragging. The steel pads in my disc brakes had been squeaking since Mazama, and now they were singing like a chorus of angry crickets performing an experimental Russian symphony, which was slowly driving me mad.

And then, the wind changed.

I found myself really rolling downhill for the first time in a week. I was rolling down off a mountain, and my speed jumped up to 35mph, but my nerves were shot from heat and traffic. The wind was coming from behind my left ear, pushing me downhill, but also laterally, and I was hit with a severe wobble. I unclipped my feet to use my legs for balance while I slowed my descent, still wobbling at 20, at 15. I clutched the brakes and slid downhill at 10mph, happy to be moving forward without effort at any speed, as I rode down into a new valley.

The steep descent dropped me off at a truckstop at the busy junction of SR 200 and Interstate 90. I stopped there, bought a frozen coffee, and ate one of the sandwiches I'd bought at the little shop in Ravalli. I was just a short hop away from Missoula.