Bismarck to Billings

Chrome's Immutable Law #7

Headwinds suck.

We landed in Billings around 4:00 local time, after 415 or so miles, and 4 gas stops, counting this morning's top-off before leaving Bismarck. For those of you scoring that little game at home, that means we averaged about 20.75 miles per gallon today, or less than half of what we should be getting, mileage-wise.

We rode into a furious headwind most of the day, making the loaded H-D work hard to maintain the posted speed limit of 75. Not much danger of speeding tickets! Headwinds are better than crosswinds any time. Still, it was tough to deal with because the wind was so steady and tiring.

thought a lot about how hearty the settlers were who came across this same vast stretch of grassland 150 years ago. What we accomplished in one day would have taken them weeks, driving their livestock along with them as they bounced along in a Prairie Schooner. In the National Grasslands area, the tall grass was undulating in waves as gust after gust came out of the west-southwest and buffeted the stalks (and us!).

We had a late lunch in Forsyth, Montana, at a cool little joint called "The Top That Eatery".

There's a whole lot of nothingness between Billings and Bismarck, and I mean that in a good way. If you're going to ride an interstate, it might as well be through beautiful country, and I-94 between these two cities rolls through some great scenery.

There continued to be an amazing number of abandoned homesteads along the way. Large farmhouses, barns, sheds, livestock lots... just sitting there empty, probably for the last 50 years from the looks of many of them, sinking slowly back into the earth, shingle by shingle and board by board. We also saw what I thought was a period (1850-ish) range rider hut. It didn't look accessible from the interstate. I would have loved to have gotten a closer look at it.

The iPhone has been shuffling songs from our new and improved riding list, and today we heard a lot of Robert Earl Keen, Wylie and the Wild West, and Johnny Cash. It all seemed to fit with the landscape and the imagery. Cowboy poetry, outlaw music, and songs about pain and redemption.

Once we got to Billings, we found the UPS Store, which was holding a special lens for us that we've rented for this trip. It's a Zeiss 18mm prime, and I can't wait to use it on some of the vast landscapes we're about to see.

Our hotel, the Riversage Billings Inn, is very nice, and the manager even blocked off several parking spaces out back, and set up a table with rags and soap and buckets for us to wash our bikes.

Our H-D needs that bath in the worst way, and I suspect I'll spend much of tomorrow coaxing the bugs off the windshield. I didn't clean them off since North Carolina in tribute to Wayne "Razz" Rasmussen, who probably still hasn't forgiven me for washing his windshield one fine morning in Rapid City. Evidently it's a "thing" among ST owners to collect bugs on their windshields. I can't do it for the rest of the trip. There's at least 20,000 gut smudges clogging up my view as it is, can't wait any longer to clean 'em!

A few of the other riders will roll in tonight, and the slinging of the bull will commence. With the arrival of everyone else tomorrow, the tales will get taller and the glasses will get emptier.

Even though we'll have a lot of fun, let's not forget the reason we're all doing our various logistics to gather and ride again this year... with our fundraising, we are making a direct impact on people's lives.

And so "the ride to The Ride" comes to a close. We're here, and the real trip is about to begin.

Avoid headwinds,

-=Chrome=-