Day 15 - "Into every life a little rain must fall..."

SUNDAY, JUNE 8, BOZEMAN TO GREYCLIFF
77.7 miles
782 miles to date

Not exactly what we had hoped for weather - rain and low 30's - but we're having to adopt the post office creed: "Neither wind or rain or..." (or something like that). We waited around for a while hoping the rain would let up, then just sucked it up and took off. At the corner of Stucky and Cottonwood, a driver summed up the view of many when he saw us: the twirling finger at the head to indicate "loco". Maybe.

By the time we reached Bear Canyon, we were fairly wet. But once you're there, it doesn't matter anymore so you just keep pedaling. Riding through the next few miles along the interstate to the bottom of the pass wasn't extremely pleasant, and thankfully it didn't last long. Here, we got onto the frontage road. Climbing Bozeman Pass seemed 'dinky' - a little over a mile - after the 6 and 16 mile climbs we've done. It wasn't raining here and our 10+ mile descent on the other side was pleasant, though cold because we were wet.

In Livingston, our friends, Chuck and Susan Kendrick, met us with a warm car, hot chocolate and brownies. Mmmmm, that was a treat! We were able to warm up and dry out a bit. They had originally planned to ride out of Bozeman with us for a few days, but business plans changed that. Then they wanted to at least ride out today, but when they looked at the west winds that were forecast, they decided that riding back 30 miles into a strong headwind wasn't real desirable. Good decision.

When we left them, we cruised from Livingston to Big Timber with that wind pushing us at 20-29 mph. We got to BT in one hour and 45 minutes. No room at the inn there (actually, no room in our budget), so we rode on out another 10 miles to the KOA at the waterslide park. Here we got a kamping kabin for the night. We were able to even relax in a hot tub! Rough, huh?

We also did laundry and got everything dried out for the next day. In this picture, you can see the Alphasmart unit that I'm using to journal on each day. It's basically just a keyboard with a small text screen at the top. It allows me to type all that I want, (faster than trying to write in a notebook) then download it to our flashdrive when we have computer access. It weighs about two pounds, but is still much lighter than our laptop at seven pounds.
As we were riding today, I was thinking about the discussion at Mars Hill (our college/career group) last night on prayer, and the different positions of prayer and what they denote: kneeling-humility, head bowed-listening, sitting-waiting, prostrate-brokenness, walking-as you're going, etc. So...when I pray as we ride, I can assume three positions at once: walking(pedaling), sitting, head bowed. I'm not sure what the point or analogy of that is, other than maybe being on a bike is a sacred place to be?? ;o) What do you think, Bill?