I slowly opened up my eyes and lay quietly in my sleeping bag, staring at the gray ceiling of my tent. Puzzled and a little displeased at my newly awakened state, I rolled over, prepared to go back to sleep. Then, I remembered that today was a special day. Today was the day that the Cycle the Rockies students had all been waiting for. D-day, and a day of reckoning. Today, I thought, a smile spreading across my face, we ride.
Our third and final morning staying at the KOA in Billings was filled with excited and frenzied packing. Putting clothes and food into my bags I felt overwhelmed by the amount of gear I would need to sustain me and my bicycle for the next month. Every item weighed heavy in my hands. I eyed the Tom Robbins book I had decided to bring with acute suspicion. After we finished breaking camp, and had a thorough bike safety talk from Dave and Nicky, we practiced riding with all of our gear, getting a feel for pulling pounds of extra weight by bike. Weaving in and out of camp-sites, our trailers and rear panniers wobbling in our wakes, we made our final adjustments and headed out.
We road the short distance from the KOA into Billings to gorge ourselves on our recently acquired bounty from the the Good Earth Market (Billings’ food co-op) in the sunny side-yard of Ed Gulick. After lunch, we followed Ed on our way out of the city, and to our first riding challenge of the trip; cycling up a long and steep incline toward the Rimrocks and the bike path that would lead us to the ranch of Jeanne and Steve Charter, our final destination for the day. As cycled up the hill, I quickly found the need to down shift into my lowest gear. My thighs skipped the burn and went straight to cramping with the the effort of pushing myself up the steep incline. What am I getting myself into? I moaned to myself as the handful of M & Ms that I had eaten at lunch threatened to make a reappearance.
But my fears of inadequate physical conditioning soon abated, as I was entranced by the view of the city from the Rimrocks. Amid merrily waving grasses and prickly pear cactus, Billings lay spread before me like a visual capstone of the activities from the past few days. Picking out the sites we had visited during our stay, I tried to wrap my head around the whirlwind of coal, oil and green-building issues that I had discovered in my short stay here. Soon, it was time to get on the road again. We officially said farewell to Billings and headed north.
Highway 87, our path to the Charter ranch, gave us our first taste for the open road. Riding in two groups paced a couple minutes apart so that the over-sized rigs and semi-trucks whipping past at 80 miles a hour could pass us with relative safety, we cycled through grassy plains; the sun breaking through the gray cloud-cover made the landscape glow and shimmer.
Twenty-five (surprisingly) quick miles later, we took a left off of the highway into the Charter driveway. After setting up our tents in a pasture behind the Charter house and a delicious dinner, we basked in the warm red glow of the Charter’s living room and chatted with Steve, Jeanne, and Anne (or Grandma Green, as she introduced herself as), Steve’s mother. Our topics ranged far and wide, covering time-controlled grazing, fighting coal mining in Eastern Montana, the creation of the Northern Plains Resource Council, and the relocalization of energy production and food systems.
As the hour got later the conversation slowed everyone headed off for bed. My muscles were a little sore, my mind a little tired, but I was beginning to figure out what I was getting myself into, and I was happy about it too.
Leora Stein, Whitman College
