How To Goof Off In Montana

Killdeer, ND to Miles City, Montana. 320 miles.
In the morning I met Kip, a farmer that came up in an RV with his family to help some more of their family with the harvest. They said they’d work for about a week and then go home. If needed they’d come back later as well. He advised me to ride up 20 or 22 to see the badlands, a rougher area than along the main route and very pretty. I thanked him and said I would.

Rode out from Killdeer. Saw more flatness, just some pretty normal eroded hills and odd slopes. Huge sky. You could see over the horizon and then if the road raised up a little, you could see another horizon behind it. The sky had a certain flatness, below which there was nothing. Above the line were clouds like cotton batting, scattered across a pane of glass. I continued North and then BAM, came around a corner to the incredible badlands scenery you see in all the cowboy movies. Now that’s what I was looking forward to, thanks Kip! He was right as well, I never saw anything like this along the normal route I followed later.

I stopped for gas and saw a nice new pair of deerskin ropers (gloves) to replace my worn-out pair and tried them on. They make an excellent warning to any deer with bright (or dull) ideas on the road. It's kind of the equivalent to a skull and crossbones in deer speak. "Oh my God," one can imagine the deer saying, "is that guy on the motorcycle wearing uncle Larry? Let's get out of here!" I also bought electrical tape to tape across the top of my face shield to act as a sun visor and also to finally fix the throttle lock, which had been causing me a lot of problems because of the fact that my throttle hand was getting more and more aggravated since my injury in Chicago.

I also noticed something odd… near the back of the store past the truck headlights and winch hooks and baling wire was a cooler, with Coca Cola or some other name brand on it. However, inside there was nothing edible for sale—quite the opposite. These were items that you would never want to ingest, but unfortunately most of us ingest them every time we eat any kind of farm raised meat. The cooler held antibiotics and vaccines for various cow maladies, for sale to anyone who wanted to inject them into their stock (or anything else for that matter) at any time. Most of us have to get a doctors prescription before we can take them ourselves, but any farmer with a third grade education can handle them at will, administering them to his property. And then that property can be sold to the general public for our consumption, with no warning or indication of just how much the food we are about to eat has been medicated. I have a new health care solution for anyone that may be interested! Yes, it sucks to have to go the doctor for your problems and co-pay $20 each time you get a cold (or worse, pay the whole bill if you lack insurance), but it’s cheap and easy to go to McDonald’s three times a day for some bovine antibiotics if you catch a sniffle.

I left the store with my new gloves and began working on the throttle lock. A cowpoke with his dog in the back of the pickup pulled up. He walked past and greeted me, and looked past me at a guy filling a souped-up, off-road 4x4, with rusted out wheel wells and a cracked windshield. It was leaking profusely underneath as he filled it.

“What arya leakin?” the dog owner said, one hand holding the door open as he looked back.

“Just gas.” The man said, and then fired up his truck and tore off down the road.

After passing some oil derricks I swung through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I passed the North unit, but actually rode through South unit. The park was fairly deserted and I had the curvy roads to myself. The detour was a nice break from straight boring plains. I saw prairie dogs, wild horses. No bison. So far the only place I'd only seen bison had been outside the Lake Ilo National Wildlife Refuge, near killdeer.

I entered the state of Montana and the scenery seemed to change the second I crossed the border. There were more hills and rolling plains, and less flatness. Montana is called the “big sky country” and it doesn’t disappoint. It has a really, really, HUGE sky. Just went on forever. The sky looked even bigger because the cloud layer seemed to sit higher up. The speed limit was 75, but I could barely maintain it comfortably. And on hills or with a strong headwind I was sometimes going less. In case you were wondering what it feels like to ride a bike like mine around the highways at these speeds, you can try this: go to your local Laundromat with about $10 in quarters and a box full of hammers. Put the hammers in the dryer and pay for 6-8 hours with a one-hour break for lunch. Set the machine on “tumble dry” and have a seat on top of the dryer. Let me know how it works out for you. It’s actually not that bad, and the tingling and numbness will progressively lessen as your body gets used to it. But I was beginning to realize that although my bike was an ideal choice for riding to South America, where many of the roads were so rough that it the KLR’s big suspension and other qualities made it ideal, here on the pristine, level asphalt the US there were few things more annoying to be found on the road than the constant vibration of the motorcycle itself at the higher engine rpms over many hours.

I stopped for more gas at a little station with a very old set of pumps. I didn’t walk right in to pay, and the guy inside came rushing out at me. I think he thought I was going to run off and ran outside to stop me. I looked up at him from my camera—he saw I was just snapping a photo of the pump, and he walked back inside. When I got inside I asked him about it, but he denied it, kind of sheepishly. “We need to go and check the pumps ourselves sometimes, to make sure the numbers are right.”Yeah sure.

I rode along further and passed a sign: “Home on the Range, Exit 7.” So that’s where that is.

Saw a guy riding up and over an eroding badlands hill on an old Honda 500 two stroke. A beast of a bike. For those who don’t know, two strokes are not legal for street riding, because of they have more unclean emissions in their exhaust. Four strokes, which use the same four-step combustion process as cars, are much cleaner, but historically nowhere nearly as powerful. These days the four strokes have come a long way, but until recently a 500cc two stroke could be compared in terms of power to a 900cc four stroke, the 500 came in a much lighter package. Suffice to say this guy was throwing a monster around on the hills.

I turned around to get a better look and take a picture, and the rider came up to meet me. His name was Jim, and he showed me his left arm. His hand was wrapped up with stitches, and the elbow was swollen and messed up from hitting his funny bone. Both injuries were work related; he puts tires on cars. He lamented his financial state. He traded a car for the bike and his wife was mad about it.

“It’s hard to pay the bills around here.” He told me. “You make eight dollars an hour and you’re doing good.” His wife worked as well, they had two kids they supported between them. He blamed his current situation on his past. “I goofed off too much as a kid. Nothing to show for it now.” If he did most of his goofing off by riding around on bikes, seems like time well spent if you ask me.

posted by goat hill dreamer @ 4:39 PM