8:1

Before I start on the title subject, I have to say that Mother Nature is incredibly fickle!  The wonderful tail wind we experienced Sunday turned into a head wind two days ago and yesterday and we had one of our worst biking days ever.  Up hills were made doubly difficult and we had to peddle down hill, which is super frustrating.  We came this close to accepting an offer from a kind woman to throw our bikes into her pickup for a ride to Glasgow, our destination for the day, 30 miles down the road.  But, we soldiered on and arrived in Glasgow a couple hours later than anticipated, but under our own power.  Yay!  That said, Charles was very discouraged and was not in the mood for much of a ride today and our cheeks (not the ones on our faces) literally have dents in them from the saddles! So we cut the ride short–48 miles–and have been spending the afternoon resting and catching up on emails, ordering various things on line for delivery at future warm shower hosts, etc.

Speaking of warm shower hosts… You have heard some from Charles about our most recent stays.  I cannot say enough kind things about them.  They go out of their way to welcome us into their homes, often treating us to dinner and/or breakfast.  We learn so much from them about the local communities through which we’re traveling and have without exception had very interesting conversations.  These are all people we would be proud to have as friends.  The day before yesterday we spent the night with a young man (a year older than Brady) who shared his almost unfurnished home with us.  He had recently moved to Malta, MT and had yet to acquire much furniture.  We slept on the floor of his empty guest bedroom.  As Charles mentioned, he fixed dinner for us, invited a friend over to share it with us, lent me a sleeping pad since mine had mysteriously disappeared, and shared his knowledge of alternative biking routes and local lore.  I hope his parents know what a wonderful young man he is!  Yesterday we stayed with a wonderful couple in Glasgow, whom Charles has also described.  Again, they went out of their way to make us feel welcome–picking us up from town and chauffeuring us and our bikes to their place, making us a great dinner and breakfast, but most of all, entertaining us with wonderful conversation.  We learned so much from them about cattle and breeding (one tidbit of info: the difference between a steer and a bull is that a bull still has all of its moving parts, if you get my drift), the various towns we’re riding through, the travels they’ve done, their kids and the great things they’re doing…  I could go on and on.  We have been truly lucky to meet these fine people and look forward to meeting our future warm shower hosts.

Not everyone we have met has been a paragon of human virtue…  Yesterday, as we were struggling up one of the larger hills of the day with significant headwinds, a fellow rider going the other direction and benefitting from a huge tailwind, crossed over to our side of the road and stopped us, basically to gloat about how wonderful it was to ride with a tailwind.  Not only was this bad form to stop a biker on the way up a hill, but also bad etiquette to gloat.  We didn’t stop long to chat.

Our aches and pains were aggravated by the last couple of days of tough riding.  The knots in my left shoulder are so painful that I can’t look over my left shoulder, which means I always have to ask Charles if the road is clear whenever I want to turn left.  The shoulder also hurts non-stop when I’m riding and is all but unbearable.  I’m hoping to get a birthday massage in Bismarck where we will be taking a day off.  Derrière pain is also a constant.  Charles’ hands continue to bother him and the weather we’ve had over the past several days has resulted in him feeling his knees as well as other old injuries that he hasn’t felt in years.  But, I guess all of these pains give us something to think about during our long rides.  Ha ha…

Anyway, if there’s one message I want to leave all of you with, it’s that there are a lot of really wonderful people out there.  We’ve been enjoying getting to know them, whether over dinner or just at rest stops.  It’s been a really unexpected pleasure of our ride.