7/17/19  

McDonalds was the breakfast of choice today since it was directly on our route out of town.   We started a climb right as we left town.  On the way up one of our route leaders had a flat which was caused by a piece of a steel belted tire.  It left a very small sliver of steel in her tire and was very hard to remove, in fact she never got it all out so she put a tube repair patch on the tire and hoped for the best.  It worked as far as I know since I saw her riding later in the morning.

This part of Highway 2 was very desolate with few houses and fewer towns.  We made our first stop before a scheduled rest stop at Kremlin where we had a Danish and Gatorade.

When we started riding again we knew we were on route because there was a bike sign in the back yard that told us so.

We rode the whole day on Highway 2 and the only thing of note was the persistent wind which came from every direction except form behind us.

The real action happened when we got to Chester.

We had heard from more than one local resident that we would not want to ride tomorrow.   They had reports that the wind would get up to 30  mph or more with gusts upward to 50 mph.  We had a team meeting to discuss this issue and others.

The leaders also had reports that there were areas in the road that was only dirt due to construction and a lot of areas where there wasn’t any shoulders.  This caused major concerns so the leaders drove ahead to scout out the reports.

Upon return they confirmed the road construction and shoulder issues visually and had also confirmed the high wind and gust issues.

The decision based on safety issue to not ride tomorrow to Cut Bank but instead to load all our bikes on the van and in the trailer and drive there.

I  am in total agreement with the decision.  I hate to ride in the vans but  tomorrow will verify if the decision was correct.