Cross Cont / inental

Made it to Missoula! Glacier Nat Park was spectacular, and yes, I saw some bears. The closest one was standing about 20' away as I pedaled by on my way up to Logan Pass. I might have stopped (at a safe distance) to take a photo but I was in a hurry to complete the climb before 11 am when bikes aren't allowed on that part of the road. Why not? Probably because there's only a semi-crumbling knee-high rock wall between the white line and a million-foot drop off (approximately). There was hardly any traffic as I sped up the windy road at 5-6 mph. It was so quiet and so beautiful, I was amazed that there would be a road there at all. Logan Pass was my favorite mountain climb yet - it was so nice, I did it twice. Once across the continental divide in each direction, that is.

Maybe next time I go to Glacier I'll get around on a motorcycle. A really quiet, biodiesel motorcycle. Or maybe I'll just have to bring my bike again.

So people keep asking me what I'm eating. I'll tell you the same thing I told the guy on the Going-to-the-Sun road who yelled over to me 'How do you do it?' My response: 'a whole lotta peanut butter!' That having been said, a few days ago I started dreaming about hamburgers. I haven't even wanted red meat in many years, but the idea of a hamburger persisted night and day. Yesterday the image of a burger stayed with me during the entire ~50 mile haul before lunch, so I decided to go for it. I stopped at the only restaurant for about 30 miles in either direction. It was a nice, clean little cafe and I got precisely the meal I'd visualized. Yet somehow it was so much better than I had imagined. Kind of like this bike trip... it has all the ingredients I'd pictured, but somehow the reality is even more amazing than I'd hoped.

Okay, that's the first and last meat-bicycle analogy you'll hear from me. ~1236 miles and counting...