Day 8, Thompson Falls to Missoula, 103 miles First century ride of thetrip

Best: Best nights sleep of the trip last night

Worst: Sprinklers came on last night wiping out the outside campers

Most Unexpected: Seeing plane fuselages on a train.

Last night I had a choice of where to sleep, in the gymnasium or outside in my tent on the grass.  I chose the gymnasium, and then moved to a dark hallway when I felt the gym was a little stuffy.  Brilliant move as it turned out.  The lights in the gym never went out all night, and even worse, the sprinklers went off and soaked the outside sleepers.  One sprinkler came up in Lynn and Charlton's vestibule of  their tent, and another tents vent was exactly in line with a sprinklers throw.  This made one of the riders (unnamed for privacy concerns) day even worse.  He had gone down to use the bathroom in the dungeon of the school previously, did his business, and then discovered there was no toilet paper.  Enough said.

For breakfast we had to again bike back to town adding 1.5 miles to the total shown above, and then we got going an hour earlier than yesterday due to the time zone change. 

Great city motto on the sign below.  Good thing we weren't from the east.

We chased the sun as it slowly rose into the azure sky as the dawn slowly matured.  (This last sentence was required to raise the IQ of the reader above the 85 level I usually write.)  It was not as cold as the previous morning and the temperature stayed reasonable for most of the ride.  It did get in the 80's by the end however.  Once again a lot of beautiful scenery.  The shoulders were narrow in places and of course to make it even better, chatter bars line the edge of the road.  These are the depresseions in the pavement that make your teeth rattle in a car, and make the teeth fall out if you are on a bicycle. Logger trucks give absolutely no quarter on the road and will get right on the shoulder stripe if they think you are a possible target.  

We drove through paradise (the town of) today but unfortunately we didn't get to stay.  Shortly therafter we saw a train carrying Boeing 737 fuselages to Redmond to grow wings at that location.  How do I know this you might ask?  I was riding with Jen who just happens to work for Boeing.  The planes were painted an ugly green and I would have thought they were going to the dump, but apparantly they are scheduled to carry you in the future.  Good luck with that. 

We ran into some construction and had to platoon through it with Lynn protecting our rear in her van.  She really didn't need to protect my rear because nobody is going to want it after riding 103 miles.

Most of the ride was fairly flat with some minor fluctuations.  We had a bit of headwind, but nothing I couldn't handle (tucking behind a bigger rider). Towards the end of the ride we had a 4.5 mile climb followed by a descent to the outskirts of Missoula.  Checked into the dorm, and a lady who works here recognized me from two years ago when I previously did this ride.  I can't remember what I did that made her remember me which really has me worried. 

Dinner was at the cafeteria and the main course was .....................CHICKEN.  Fortunately they had other choices such as hamburgers, pizza, salad, etc, and I loaded up on the Berry Cobbler with a super heavy dose of whipping cream.  Terry and I are sharing a room in the dorm.  Terry is a male in case you were wondering. More pictures below. Check out the double stuffed oreo cow.