On Sunday morning (6-2), I learned from our dear friend Ralph’s wife Ardith that her husband had passed away the day before, at age 90. Ralph was a fellow runner and member of our church, and we ran together in a number of local running events in the Twin Cities over the years, including the Minnetonka Half Marathon, the Twin Cities Marathon (“TCM”), and the now defunct Minneapolis Marathon. I’ve always admired Ralph for his exceptional self-discipline, good humor, determination, and grit. He was and continues to be an inspiration to me. Here is a photo of Ralph I took last October on Twin Cities Marathon Sunday, when we celebrated our past glories at the TCM.

I decided to dedicate yesterday’s (6-3) 78-mile bike ride, my longest so far on this 2024 installment of my adventure, to Ralph’s memory. He will be missed!

For reasons I’ll explain in a bit, my bike ride yesterday only turned out to be 70 miles long. That is still a pretty long ride for me, and I think Ralph would appreciate the effort it took. I left at 7 a.m. from Jordan for Winnett in a light rain. The route was pretty desolate but beautiful under a gigantic Montana sky that stretched to the horizon in every direction. There would be one small cafe/convenience store on my way at the tiny settlement of Sand Springs (pop. 9) at about mile 30, and a rest stop at about mile 50. The rain let up shortly after I was on the road.

I had a few more antelope sightings this morning but found it hard to capture them in a photo, since they move fast and tend to run off as soon as they see me. Here’s my best:

I also once again crossed the Big Dry Creek, but this time it really was dry.

The road was pretty good, with some stretches that were smooth and others in need of repair. The shoulder ranged from a couple feet wide to almost nothing, but there was very little traffic. There were hills, but not many gut-busting ascents. There were some really exhilarating downhills where I got very close to 30 mph. Here is an example of some of the rougher patches.

And a couple of reminders of the hazards of being on the highway using any mode of transportation, even a car.

The Sand Springs General Store and Cafe is an oasis in the midst of many miles (75.7 to be exact) with “limited services,” according to my map. There I met the store/cafe owner, Tracey, who made me a wonderful tuna salad sandwich for lunch. She referred to it as “mom food.” Tracey bakes her own bread for sandwiches and took a few loaves out of the oven while I was there. In addition to running a store and restaurant, she is also a professional genealogist (including heir tracing), a United Methodist minister, and a pilot.

About 55 miles into my ride, I crossed the Musselshell River. According to the rest stop I landed at just before reaching the river, the area has an interesting history that includes several failed trading center development plans in the latter half of the 19th century and storied tales of a mountain man known as “Liver-Eating” Johnson (or Johnston, depending on the source). According to Wikipedia, Johnson’s wife, who was a member of the Flathead American Indian tribe, was killed by a Crow brave in 1847, leading Johnson to embark on a gruesome vendetta against the Crow Indians which included devouring their livers. Years later, after many Crow deaths at Johnson’s hands, Johnson made peace with the tribe, who became “his brothers.”

To take a step further back in time, the area around the Musselshell also includes fossils from an era, 70 million years ago, when the area was covered by an ocean that divided North America into two subcontinents.

This view depicts what I saw looking back at a rather lengthy hill I had just climbed and shows a landscape mostly under a sunny sky.

Looking forward, however, was a different story. Around 5 p.m., the sky ahead began to look increasingly foreboding.

I began to pedal faster, but it soon appeared I was going to get very wet before I reached the safety of my motel in Winnett.

I began to hear thunder and to see flashes of lightning along the horizon.

The wind, which had been pretty mild all day, became stronger and colder.

I had no real choice but to forge onward, much as I had in the hailstorm the week before. When I was about 70 miles into my ride, only about seven miles east of town, I got hit with a massive downpour and extremely heavy winds that nearly knocked me over. I tried to keep pedaling, but it was almost impossible to keep the bike upright.

There was unfortunately nowhere to hide or find shelter, but I saw a driveway and pieces of a wooden fence that I thought I would stand next to and wait for the storm to pass.

Just then, however, two young men, Cody and Josh, and a boy of about ten, all from Winnett, pulled into the driveway to ask if I’d like a ride into town. Not knowing how long the storm would last, I said yes. These guys had been out “storm chasing,” following the storm on an app on their iPhone. So, we put my bike in the back of their pickup, and they took me to my motel. Of course, they knew exactly where it was because it is the only motel in town. I appreciate their kindness in pulling over for me, just as I had begun to feel the full force of the deluge.

As I was checking in at the Northern Motel, JR, one of the owners, told me he had been out driving in his pickup and the rain was so heavy that he couldn’t see out his windshield. He said his rain gauge showed that 3/10 of an inch of rain had fallen in five minutes. After I checked in, he and I stepped out the front of the motel to see that the heavy rain had stopped, and a rainbow appeared to the east as the sun emerged in the western sky.

After I had dinner last night, I captured this view of the sky overhead. It was hard to believe that such a ferocious storm had dominated that sky just a few hours before.

My plan today, Tues., 6-4, was to rest in Winnett to recover from yesterday’s long ride and to wait out a western wind advisory that would make the next leg of my journey, about 56 miles to Lewistown, MT, very difficult. The winds today are reported as 23 mph, gusting to 40 mph. I was challenged walking around town in a heavy wind like that and can only imagine what it would be like to deal with it on a bike. I learned this morning that these heavy winds, with gusts up to 42 mph, are also expected to continue through tomorrow. Unfortunately, all of the lodging here in Winnett is fully booked (Trudi and I spent the day looking in vain for other possibilities), so it appears waiting here for an extra day for the winds to subside is not going to be an option.