Ridge the Rockies (Another Excellent Bike Adventure)

Sunday, August 31, 2014
Training / Test Run Ride:  Kalispell, Montana to Glacier National Park (out & back)
74 miles

Art & I have embarked on yet another bicycle adventure with PAC Tour.  This time, its the "Ridge the Rockies" tour, which will take us from Kalispell, Montana all the way to Albuquerque, New Mexico - 1,675 total miles in 16 riding days (with two greatly-appreciated rest days).  There will be plenty of spectacular sights, challenging climbs, and a fantastic group of riders and crew with whom to share it all. 

We arrived in Kalispell yesterday around 5:00 p.m.  We had shipped our bikes (rather than taking them on the plane), which made traveling much, much easier.  After we arrived at the Travelodge in Kalispell and checked into our room, we assemble our bikes.  A bunch of us went to dinner at a pizza place/saloon just a couple of blocks away, which was an interesting experience.  The pizza was outstanding, but the ambiance . . . eh, not so much.  It was a busy, loud, crazy place wherein the floor was covered with peanut shells (just like Wolff's Biergarten in Albany), and if you were lucky enough to find a table, you had to basically be your own waitress, meaning you had to bus the table and clean it (the bartender gladly supplied us with a damp rag), and place your own order with the kitchen.  A real "do-it-yourself" arrangement.  But, we all agreed, the pizza was worth it.

Art at the airport, looking ready to Ridge the Rockies

This morning, we got up nice and early to go for a pre-tour, round-trip bike ride to Glacier National Park with our dinner companions, Ed, Tom, Ernie and Jonathan.  It was a really nice, relatively flat ride that helped wake up our legs and get them used to pedaling again.  We rode through the towns of Evergreen, Columbia Falls and Hungry Horse (where we crossed over Flathead River), Coram and West Glacier, before we finally reached Glacier National Park just before mile 40.  We rode into the park and went to the Visitors Center to look around.  It being Labor Day weekend, the park was loaded with cars and people.  Fortunately, it's much easier to get around when your vehicle is a bike.  We rode to a lookout point near Lake McDonald, along the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which was a spectacular view.  We decided to start heading back as darkish clouds started to form in the sky.  We faced a pretty stiff headwind on the return trip, which wasn't such a big deal - until it started to rain.  As we rode back through Hungry Horse (at which point, I was actually so hungry I could eat a horse because it was lunchtime), the rain started to come down heavier.  That, plus the road spray from all the cars, made for a less-than-pleasant ride for the last 25 miles of the route.  Thankfully, I had my rain jacket with me, only because I checked the weather and knew there was a 40 percent chance of rain.  Apparently, however, I wasn't completely convinced it was going to rain, because I chose not to bring my shoe covers.  Why?  I don't know.  I cannot explain my own irrational thinking. Thus, my shoes got drenched and are now stuffed with newspapers with the hope they will be dry by tomorrow.  So, we got pretty wet and little chilled on the return ride to Kalispell - but we didn't care, because it was a fantastic ride.

Art & me at Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park

When we got back from the ride, we were wet, cold and hungry.  So we showered, warmed up, and ate some lunch - in that order.   The PAC Tour crew had arrived at theTravelodge, along with many of the other riders, so we had a good time saying hello to folks while we cleaned up our bikes.

Tomorrow we'll have an opportunity for one more bike ride in the Kalispell area before we start our tour on Tuesday morning.  I'm so looking forward to spending the next three-or-so weeks riding my bike full-time!