Be-Spoken: Trains, Plains and Autombiles (REVISED/UPDATED)

Revised 6-17-14. If you have already read this post, read it again. It's much more interesting now!
Hopefully pictures later this afternoon.

Tonight I'm in Harlem, Montana, about halfway across the state. I've been on the road for three weeks. The bike odometer reads 1090, about one quarter through my trip.

TRAINS
Up, we got em. Ok, so it seems that the way things happened in this part of the country is that the trains arrived first (we'll ignore the pesky truth about the Native Americans, that is). The railroads then sold land on the cheap to develop towns along the line so that they would have some customers, thus the establishment of towns. Finally, the towns were connected by road, Route Two that is, The road that I am riding. As a result, the trains, and there are plenty of them, are never out of sight of the road and often just a road width or two from Route Two. These trains seem to go on forever and the general setup seem to be two engines in front and one in back. Why? I don't know, do I look like an engineer? I took a few pictures to try to get a sense as to how long these trains are but they may not translate well. [This is one of those additions I promised would be so interesting. Look for the [ ] in the rest of this post for more cool added information. I ended up speaking with a real engineer. He was sidelined waiting for the track to clear in his direction. So, just how long are those trains? His was 6,400 feet long! Up, that's more than a mile. Why the two engiens in the front and one in the back? Federal regulation requires it when the train is above a certain weight. And, a bit of trivia: Those three engiens put out 88,000 horsepower (what do you guys in the Camaros think of that?) What's almost as good as being an engineer? being the best friend of an engineer.

The train cars here don't have nearly the grafitie that they do in the east. I think it's because they dont sit still long enough.]

Anyway, here they are.

And it goes on and on

Where did this come from?

I don't know but I can't get rid of it.

Did I tell you I rode through Idaho?

The towns are spread out about five to ten miles from each other with nothing but plains in between. You can always tell when you are coming up on the next town by the grain silos in the distance.

Here's the silos in the town of Kremlin

When you come from a small town you find whatever you can to brag about

PLAINS
On Tuesday I met Dave who is biking from Michigan to Seattle. His first comment to me was: "Trees. I need to see trees. How far to the trees?"

Wind. Let me tell you about the wind. Seems that it's windy every day on the plains. Maybe it's windy every day everywhere but here on the plains there's no hiding it! So, it's not whether the wind is blowing but rather which way and how hard. And boy does it make a difference! My first day on the plains I had a tail wind and I was Superman. I was passing the cars (well not really, but it felt like I could). The next three days I have had some variant of a head wind and I'm no longer Superman; I'm Underdog. Today it was mostly head on at about 12 miles per hour. It's like riding in cement. It's no fun riding on the flat, down on the drops of my handlebar, in my middle chainring, lowest gear on my cassette struggling to make 6 miles per hour. It's no fun. [Ok, here comes another set of new information: On a bike loaded with four panniers, a handlebar bag, and equipment on the rear rack there's plenty of area to catch the wind. This is a real problem when riding into the wind but it's also a problem when the wind is coming from the side. It pushes the bike sideways, leading me to conclude that the only good wind is a tail wind! The wind was predicted to be out of the west the day I left Harlem. It wasn't. The have a saying in Montana "anyone who tries to predict the weather is a dam fool or new to these parts."]

Yup, she'll straighten back out once the wind stops

AUTOMOBILES
Well, motorists here are quite respectful of bicyclists. Problem is, there's not enough road. Often there is only a foot of shoulder or no shoulder at all. Often when there is a shoulder there's a rumble strip cut right down the middle of it. There's a lot of truck traffic on Route Two and when two of them pass each other where you are riding a bicycle, well, there's not a lot of extra room. Today as I was riding, a semi was headed my way in the oncoming lane when I heard a blast of a horn from behind me. I headed for the ditch! turns out it was the horn of a train right beside me, track only a road width away from the road, false alarm. Oh, and when the sign says wide load ahead in this part of the country it means wide load. Some of this farming equipment that they haul around is as wide as both sides of the road.

SOME OTHER STUFF
A milestone: I hit the 1,000 mile mark.

I broke a shoe cleate two days out from the nearest bike shop. I called ahead and they told me they had them in stock and would hold a pair for me. When I got to the shop I found out that they didn't have the right cleate. The next bike shop is over 400 miles away. Thanks to Scott at Pat's Bike shop and Paul for getting a pair in the mail to me. [I picked up the new cleates in Wolf Point two days ago. It's nice to hear that satisfying "click" as the cleate enters the body of the pedal.]

Saw my first antelope today.