TravellingStrom

Thurday – Miles City, Montana

I slept in as there was no reason to get up, the Fedex truck would not deliver until after 10am, hopefully my tyres were on board. The online tracking said they were in the delivery truck, so cross fingers! After some breakfast I chatted with Dave, the other Vstrom rider for a while. He had just been up to Prudhoe Bay and said the road was bad going up, but good coming back.

I headed off to the bike shop but stopped on the way at the post office. I had to get rid of some gear and it was time to send some stuff home, a few souvenirs etc. I made some tough decisions, hopefully the correct ones and in the end I ended up with more space for what I needed. Then the bike shop and lucky for me both tyres were there and they worked on it right away. As you can see, I had stuff all tread left on the old rear tyre.

I spent the time in the office area on the laptop, getting mail etc and starting a blog update, but it was not long until the job was done 🙂 It was still 1.30pm though when I headed north east on the interstate, heading for the North Dakota border.

It was extremely windy, at least 40mph over my left shoulder and side and creating a bad wind noise around the helmet, very uncomfortable to ride in. I stopped at a rest stop for a snack and read some interesting items of history.

I had seen a few billboards about the next town, one of which mentioned cheap rooms, under $30, at a place called Miles City. I had planned on riding until at least Sidney, but when I got close to the town, my bike decided to head off the exit ramp, so that is where I went.

I was still not sure about this town, as it seemed full of casinos, but I saw a Radio Shack and decided to go buy a couple of USB flash drives, so I can rescan my documents one day and have two backups! I spoke to a chap called Mark who was interested in my journey, he also mentioned a bar that has not changed much since early last century. I found the motel as advertised, it had no internet and in fact no phones, but everything else seemed OK, so I camped there.

I figured I would go and have a look at this bar, take my laptop and maybe do emails there, but when I got there I was told no internet either, oh well, I had a beer 🙂

I was introduced to an Aussie scientist called Lee and we had a few together, totally bewildering the locals who had no idea what we were saying 🙂 The bar was quaint all right, lots of mounted heads, brass cash register and marble dunnies. There was even a bullet hole in the front entrance, caused by an accident when someone checked their loaded weapon in.

A funny thing happened, Lee has been living here for 20 years and spent 6 years in Minnesota, he told me they are all arseholes and no fun at all. After he left three bikers turned up and I had a few beers with them, nice people, the funny thing was they came from Minnesota, that cracked me and the bar lady up no end 🙂 Here is Happy, Doug and Ray

And another young chap from Rawlins called CJ, he is an archaeologist.

I headed back to the motel after this as I still had the bike, one of CJ’s work mates called Mark followed me and then picked me up and took me to the Yellowhorse bar, just up the road from the motel. We had a couple before he headed off, then I met up with Arnie, a trucker and we had quite a few beers, it looks like I am staying another day in this town to recover 🙂

It was a late night, but very enjoyable, a nice town and nice people 🙂

Day 164 miles and 264 km
Trip – 24,123 miles and 38,822 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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