Day 34 – July 16, 2015
Forsyth MT to Miles City MT – 46.5 miles
Bubble Bee – Audrey:
It’s the road. It’s the scenery. It’s the feeling of going places. It is all of that. Traveling by bicycle is special. It is hard. It is hot. But we do it anyway.
Today was a tough day. Not because of the many hills we climbed, but the heat and, for me the changing landscape. We moved into the vastness that we imagined but didn’t really understand. We moved into the badlands, a desert like landscape that is harsh, barren, tough. That all translated into a tough day for us. We almost ran out of water today for the first time since our 56 mile trek in the Idaho Wilderness. But we persevered, we push ourselves and we made it.
In the vastness. I saw beauty. I tried, in order to keep sane. I saw the beauty of the flowers that lined our path. It sort of felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Yes, our path was lined with flowers if you just looked closely, you would seen them. I did and I stopped.
We stopped in Rosebud on our way, at another of our favorite things, a small town watering hole. There we met Morgan a recent graduate of the local High School in Forsyth. She will be going to Dickinson State in North Dakota in August. Yep, she is all of 18 years old and she was serving us at the bar. Now, there was absolutely nothing but a bar in this little whistle stop town. But we had a great conversation with this astute ambitious young lady. She wants to study Business Administration and Accounting and start her own business. She told us about her life as a young person here. The Meth problems, and how her HS Homecoming parade was rudely interrupted by a DEA raid on a Meth house. She told us how this place is changing with the oil and gas boom.
The oil and gas boom. Yes, I have been here. I have been here twice. My job brought me to North Dakota to cover this boom. Williston ND. That is all I have to say. I am back here and I cannot believe I am here on my on pedal power. How did I get here? Really? Morgan told us about the teacher in Sydney MT, who I read about, that was kidnapped and killed by some guys looking for oil jobs. Morgan knows her daughter. How strange. Here I am again, in this world of hope and despair. I recognize it so well. Our motel in Miles City is filled with oil workers trucks. The prices in this town are artificially high for where we are, nowhere USA.
But yet there is something totally ironic about what we are doing, our pedal power clashing with this industry that is promoting consumption, continued consumption, continuing the exploitation of resources at this cost of planetary global warming and destruction of ecological systems. Yes it is ironic, because what we are doing is getting places one our own power, with a little help from the wind, but really pedal power. How great is that! So there you silly oil and gas companies. We can do this without your help!
So we are tired tonight. Heat and hills. Tomorrow we will try to go 75 miles. Climbing the Badlands hills and pedaling and pedaling until we get to Glendive, a dive, but there are dinosaur museums! and a day off after 7 days of non stop riding.
auchandgrog
Gregg ~ Bear here,
I am sure she does and that is the problem these small towns can’t solve. Will these small towns even exist when the old four finger guys die off. Will the Saloons still exit. Some of the houses are nice and might survive if they are close enough to jobs. I read some years ago that parts of North Dakota (or South Dakota) were going back to the Buffalo. The farms were too marginal to survive, the young people moved on and the oldsters died off. Farming seem to be thriving along Hwy 94, but only towns like Miles and Glendive are growing due to the oil boom. When the oil boom ends, these towns may also shrink back to their pre-oil boom selfs.
Mike Williams
I wonder if Morgan plans to stay in Rosebud ND or move to someplace where she might want to raise a family? Someplace with good schools, a library, a movie theater, a church, men with lie interest.