whoa misSOULa montana

camping in Lincoln was fun. i feel like any of my post about rides are gettng repetitive so i'll keep this short. the morning was cold. the first forty miles were ok and it was nice to be descending but the road/traffic wasn't always great, but it was ok. as a group overall we're still in-and-out of tenseness during rides; no fun. lunch at a roadside reststop. our newly-named 'box-of-fat' was there - a giant cardboard box (no really, it's pretty huge) of mail-dropped cookies et al. the last forty miles got more and more tense, at least for me - it was all on the same road, but traffic picked up and so did a headwind and rumble strips. thanks to katy and theise for riding with me. and for catching me spacing out and almost going on an interstate entrance ramp. oops. traffic entering missoula (not via the interstate) was still sort of hectic since we didn't have real cue sheets since the whole ride previous to that was on one road, montana-200. montana, MT, empty.

missoula is super young and hip and probably the coolest city of all. 80% of stores are bookstores, breweries, coffeeshops, bike shops, or outdoor stores - definitely a bnb oriented town. the population is also bnb-oriented - young, active, outdoorsy, a little funky looking, and let's admit it, predominantly white. i have to say though, i was weirded about by walking through a city/town/really any establishment post-ride, pre-shower, with other bnbers, in my jersey and thrift store retro swim trunks, with a mohawk and crazy tan lines and temp tatts, and not getting weird looks. i almost caught myself wondering what was wrong with them.

adventure cycling (check it out online) is also based in missoula. the small nonprofit serves to facilitate basically everything related to adventurous cycling trips - bike-style traffic and shoulder-width maps, organizing and keping track of the transam route, advising cyclists and giving them free ice cream and talking to them about different aspects of past present future trips, even keeping a bible of houses and churches etc that will allow cyclists to eat, shower, or pitch a tent there. there's a website called warmshowers or something like that that does a similar thing. anyway, we met a bunch of awesome people there. definitely opened my eyes to the scale and variation of potential adventures.

SO MANY CYCLISTS HERE ITS CRAZY ITS AWESOME I THINK I SEE MORE BIKERS THAN CARS. PLEASE PLEASE TRY TO REPLICATE THIS, like, cycling not just becuase it's great, but also practically - to work, to lunch, to a friend's house, to a party, to the doctors, to pick up your kids from school, to buy groceries, on errands, to go get gas (jussssst kidddinggggg) etc

we had a big group grief counselor session with tamarack grief counseling, based in missoula last night, pretty productive. also smaller individual sessions today as needed. i think a bnb alum's parent or something like that donated the money for the services - thank you bnb alum network!

we also had a habitat build day today in a harry potter-street named themed neighborhood. muggle way, hermione ave, diagon i-dont-need-to-say-it, etc. cute houses too. i worked with ben and the anthony's clearing rocks and packing dirt and installing flashing so that a concrete porch and ramp could be installed in a house for a family with a child with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair. we got to use a jumping-jack - a jackhammer with a flat bottom for tamping earth down. really exciting but also nervewracking because it was really powerful - there were a few cuts on our hands after using it, just from how much it shook around. cool though.

man i want to live in missoula.