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dipping along the shores of rushing rivers and majestic lakes. In such a setting, a lone
cyclist feels awfully small—and though that kind of humbling can be a thrill, I admit it
can make me feel vulnerable, too, especially in the early morning when the air is crisp
and chilly and the silence on the highway is broken by a rumbling double-trailer truck
speeding past at seventy miles an hour. It isn't cheering that the Montana roadsides are
dotted with white crosses, some wreathed in flowers, denoting highway deaths.
Putting yourself out in that environment at the beginning of each day takes some self-
persuasion and some nervously applied self-discipline; it's easier if you have company. I
realize this is a kind of conditioning; your will has to get in shape for a venture like this
as much as your legs and your lungs.
I'm pretty sure I went through this nagging melancholy the last time, too, but I'd for-
gotten. My memories of the last trip are mostly from late afternoons, when I was finish-
ing a day's ride in exhausted glory, when the morning trepidation had been banished by
hours of good, satisfying exercise and sightseeing and the anticipation of primal appet-
ites being slaked with food, drink, and sleep.
Monday I rode a pretty long day, nearly seventy miles, starting north up the Idaho pan-
handle from Sandpoint to Bonners Ferry, where a waitress advised me as she set down my
French toast that if I were heading into Montana, I should stop at the swinging bridge
just before I got to Libby, her hometown.
As a bike route, the Sandpoint to Bonners Ferry leg, where two U.S. highways over-
lap, is less than ideal, and I was agitated most of the morning, finally crossing the
Kootenai River on a wind-whipped bridge and climbing out of town on a four-lane hill
noisy with tractor-trailers and motorcycles. At the top, U.S. 95 continues north, and U.S.
2, which I planned to follow, turns east. I stopped at a truck stop for lunch and left my
phone and wallet in a toilet stall. Happily—amazingly!—they were still there when I
circled back after half a mile and pedaled like crazy to retrieve them.
The rest of the day was better. A few miles in from Bonners Ferry, U.S. 2 bends to
the southeast, entering Kootenai National Forest and beginning a meandering path to-
ward and then through the Rockies before it straightens out for hundreds of miles across
the plains of Montana and North Dakota. It's a well-traveled road for cyclists, and I was
thinking I'd be on it for a couple of weeks, so the thirty-some-odd miles I spent on it
Monday were encouraging.
Traffic was light, the hills not especially disheartening (though the mountains were
out there waiting), the temperature moderate (though it got warmer in the late after-
noon), and the scenery engaging. The landscape was different again, with an envelop-
