Lightning strikes twice

Typing this from Big Fork MT, only 140 more miles until my endpoint in Canada. Lots has happened since Butte.

After leaving Butte, Julien started having problems with his luggage rack. Problems as in, screws holding it in place had loosened eventually fell out making the rack impede the rotation of the back tire. With a lot of rope, the remainder of the duct tape and some creativity we fixed the problem. After that, some spokes on his back wheel broke. The bike could still go on, but its never a smart idea to continue with broken spokes.

Thus far, his bike was the only ones having problems, mine was still rock solid, though my brakes were getting very very worn, and every downhill was a concern for me. After a rough downhill, I noticed, or rather heard, my own luggage rack rubbing against the tire. I wasn't too concerned at first because it has done so before when the weight was distributed unevenly or after doing a lot of side to side up a hill. So I stopped, re-arranged the bags, re-centered the rack and continued. Whereas in the past this would have sufficed, I now noticed that the rack kept hitting the tire on one side no matter what I did. There was obviously a problem but I just rode on. By evening, when we stopped for dinner, I noticed that one of the attachements to the frame was completely broken. Not a good thing. In addition, the odometer hadn't been working for a couple days which led to a couple "detours" one of them lasting a good 2 hours.

With both our bikes in serious need of repair, the only feasible option at that point was to head off the trail to Helena, which fortunately was only 20 miles away. Julien's bike was in good enough condition that he could ride it there. Mine wasn't really rideable...so, I reverted to hitching a ride; which this time took a while, because cars only came on the road I was on every 15 minutes or so. I ended up catching a ride a worker in his electrical truck, very nice person. He told me stories about all his hunting expeditions, all the places and jobs he had worked, the history of montana, Butte, Helena, worker unions. He liked to talk; had a montana accent too. When we got to Helena, it was about 10:30pm, he dropped me off in front of the bike shop, told me there was a church nearby where I could camp out for the night. Then he gave me two rolls of electrical tape and a $10 bill and said "hopefully someday you'll also be able to help someone". I was pretty much speechless.

I was able to meet up with Julien and we both got our bikes fixed the next morning. He got a brand new back wheel, a stronger, better one than the previous one. I got a new luggage rack, new odometer, and new brake pads, which apparently I had been in dire need of, as the old pads had been worn so much, that had I kept using them, not only would I have needed new pads, but also new discs as the discs were starting to get damaged.

We left Helena, and apart from a intense rain storm made good progress. The next day started off well but an hour into to ride my back tire started to make noise. I stopped to check it out, and it was going the way of the front tire. It had ripped and the inner tube was leaking out. Before this trip I had never seen a ripped tire; in a period of 2 weeks I incurred 2 of them. Lightning does strike twice. With some electrical tape I was able to fix the tire until the next town which was in 20 miles. At that town I got some duct tape to re-bandage it. So far its held up 130 miles. After I'm done typing this I'm going to re-tape the tire again so it can last another 40 miles to whitefish where I'll be able to get a new tire. I do get a lot of strange looks when people see a third or my backwheel covered in duct tape, but it's done the job so far.

140 miles to the border...keep on pedallin'