Whoa, the comments...

What the heck is going on in here?! Look, I completely understand the desire to maintain your anonymity online, and you don't have to share who you are with the group, but if you are so anonymous that *I* don't even know who you are, then don't be surprised if people get curious. And of course my mom is going to be curious, a well as a bit protective. She's my MOTHER! She has earned that right! We all have mothers, and know how it is. So fine. Be anonymous, say whatever you want to me, tell me I'm a nutjob for doing this, I can take it. But respect each other, and for crying in the night-- do not. Be rude. To my MOM! Everyone on the planet knows that disrespecting someone's mother is the same as asking for a smackdown.

Now, back to our show...

Sunday, while my four plates of breakfast were settling, I got a new bolt for my rack and chatted with some locals. They said not to worry too much about bears if I was near 2, because the black bears only seldom came down from the mountains, and the grizzlies never did. Good to hear.

Big food + little sleep = sluggish, but I don't regret a bite of it. Well maybe the biscuits and gravy, they weren't so good. I soldiered on for a couple hours, then took a nap under a tree. I was still pretty slow when I got back to pedaling, but since I had started early and didn't have to stop to eat (seriously, breakfast lasted all day) I managed to do some decent miles. It was mostly done raining by the time I finished breakfast and errands in Libby, then got kinda sunny-ish after that, but stayed fairly cool. Nice for riding!

I pulled off 2 onto McGinnis Meadows road. It is a national forest access road. My Garmin said there was something here called Pleasant Valley Park, but I didn't really believe it. There is a place called Pleasant Valley several miles NE of here, so it seems like a safe bet that the park would be over there somewhere. Anywho, I didn't find anything that looked like or was labeled as a park, but I did find a bunch of meadows and trees that I decided to camp in. There was a nice little half-circle of Ponderosa Pines (I think) right off the road that had dropped a bunch of needles, so it was a great place for a tent.

Monday: even more sluggish. I must be worn out. Maybe I only have 2.5 days of riding in me, rather than 3. I eke out a few miles that seem to be mostly uphill, then find a campground by McGregor Lake. It is a national forest campground, with toilets and water taps. A good place to spend my mandatory day off, and there's hardly anyone else here, it being Monday and all.

Tuesday: This morning I dreamed I was at a pizza restaurant that had an all you can eat buffet with both pizza and burrito fixings for only two dollars. That may have been the best dream ever.

Last night I started listening to the audiobook of "The Tipping Point," which analyzes what causes social epidemics-- fashion trends, word-of-mouth news, diseases-- to suddenly blow up and become huge in a certain population. I think it was written from a marketing perspective, but it was so interesting I listened for two hours and stayed up too late and had to force myself to pause it and go to bed. Then today I finished it. All 8.5 hours.

The book I have been reading, "The Rise of the Vulcans" by James Mann, is the history of Bush II's war cabinet. It is pretty interesting, if you like history and politics, which I'm not particularily into, but I didn't want to blow through my book in a matter of days and have to be on the hunt for a new one. Did you know Dick Cheney had his first heart attack in June of 1978, at age 37, when running for Congress? Holy moly! I was not quite two at the time. This guy has been having heart attacks for pretty much my entire life, and nearly half of his. (Insert joke here. Can't decide which way to go. Energizer bunny? Timex? Clones? Robot? Frankenstein's monster? Sucks life force from blood of newborn puppies? Purchases new hearts on the black market in third world countries? Too... many... jokes...)

Wednesday: This morning was the coldest, rainiest ride I have had yet, but I'll take that over wind any day! Spurred on by the weather and assisted by the many long downhill portions of the ride, I made record time into Kalispell, where the angelic Susan (from the Tri-Cities, remember her?) has offered to pick me up so I don't have to bike through the city. She is taking me to her daughter's place, outside Columbia Falls, where they have kindly offered to let me camp. It will be nice to converse with people again...