It began to rain at 11:30 PM last night and it is still raining this morning when I get up. The lean-to works great and by keeping it strung up until the end I'm able to pack away all my gear and still keep things fairly dry. I'm back on the road at 6:35 AM.

I ride along through the rain and at 8:00 AM, I feel my rear tire go soft. I ride up to a wide pull-out, flip the bike over and get to work on the tire. I can't find the cause of the flat, which is a little bothersome since it means I can't find the spot to patch it and the cause of problem may still be embedded in the tire somewhere. But I look carefully at the tire and feel all around inside and I can't find anything. I use one of my three spare tubes and the rear tire looks like it's holding air. I'm just about ready to flip the bike over when I notice the front tire is flat as well. The front tire is tight on the rim and I break one of my tire levers getting the tire free but I do find the cause of this flat: a spiraled Michelin wire has poked a couple of micro holes in the tire and tube. I pull out the offending wire and use yet another of my spare tubes. The rear flat was probably also caused by those evil wires. I know it's futile to try patching tiny holes in the rain, so I pack away the holey tubes for later repair and roll on down the rainy road.

At 9:30 AM, I pull into Libby. It's still raining but I see a local fellow riding his bike and I ask him if there's a bike shop in town. It turns out he's headed right by there so he has me follow him downtown. Unfortunately the bike shop isn't open yet but I figure I shouldn't have too long a wait. I thank my guide and he rolls off. The store is a general outdoor kind of place called the Snowshoe Sport Shop and while it doesn't list it's hours of business, I'm guessing it'll open up around 10:00 AM. I head back to Hwy 2, find a pay phone and place a call to my folks back in Minnesota. In addition to keeping Christine updated, I'd promised my parents I'd call them a few times.

After chatting with my folks and assuring them that I was wet but fine, I go to the Libby McDonald's and have a Deluxe Big Breakfast. A bit after 10:00 I go back downtown and buy two of the skinniest presta tubes in stock at the Snowshoe Sport Shop. These are heavy 700*28 tubes that look like they'll just fit into my tires. I also buy another tire lever to replace the one I'd snapped earlier this morning. The guy at the shop is very helpful but I'm pretty sure his regular customers run fatter tires than the 70*28 Continentals that I use. Continentals run narrow so a 28 mm Conti is about the same size as a 25 mm Michelin but I figure the tubes will work out. At 10:30 AM, I'm back on the road. It's still raining.

It mostly keeps raining all day but at 3:00 PM I stop for a snack at the McGregor Lake Resort and I actually see a bit of sun. The road conditions have been mixed; in places there's not much shoulder and there are a lot of logging trucks. I finish up my milk and chocolate and head back out on the road.

The thunderstorm hits at 4:00 PM and it hits hard. I see the flash and I don't have time to count the seconds before the boom hits. The mountains had hidden the big storm clouds and now I'm in the midst of some really nasty stuff. The hail is mixed with rain and the temperature has dropped at least ten degrees. Visibility is almost zero and the shoulder is very narrow here. I pull over and turn on my lights and flashers. There's no real cover here and I head back onto the road. It occurs to me that this is some really, really wicked weather but if I can make it Kalispell I can find someplace to get out of the rain. Until now I've avoided motels but while the comforts of a motel might make me weak, a lightning strike, hypothermia or a logging truck could make me dead. Weak is much better than dead.

The good thing about severe weather is that it doesn't last forever and the worst of the storm is over in less than an hour. The sky is still a big sheet of gray when I pull into Kalispell. A lot of the businesses here have names like "Mountainview Motors" but I'm not seeing any mountain vistas. All I see is a wall of rock rising east of town and the gray stone merges seamlessly into the dark sky. At 5:25 PM, I check into the Glacier Gateway Motel. The room costs $52.00 and it's worth every penny. I've covered just under 200 kilometers today but that's enough.

I get a pizza at the local Pizza Hut, flip the TV to the Weather Channel and make phone calls to both Christine and Mark. Mark will relay the information back to the SIR website. The weather isn't supposed to clear until around noon tomorrow, so I plan on leaving later than usual in the morning. I'm close to Glacier Park now but one of the tricky scheduling issues of this trip is Going To The Sun Highway over Logan Pass. They don't allow cyclists on that road between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM so I figure tomorrow I'll cover the fairly short distance to the park, camp at the base of the climb and then start at 3:00 AM on Thursday. This will get me over the pass around dawn and then I'll roll out for a long day in the high plains. At least that's the theory.

I spend the rest of the evening patching my tubes, rinsing out my clothes and watching TV. I know I should get some sleep but I wind up tuning into a terrific movie on cable, a SciFi/Film-Noir kind of thing called "Dark City" and I get caught up in it. It's the kind of movie Christine calls a What-The-Heck-Is-Going-On? movie and I have to stick with it until the end. I go to sleep around midnight.

Forward to June 19, 2002 -- Kalispell MT to Cutbank MT

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