I began by taking my wheel to a bike store to get a new tire and while I was at it I had the guy tighten up the cassette, (the set of gears on the rear wheel) and the rear hub. He had some experience with hubs of this sort and he also rebuilt the bearing that I had abused in Bellingham. The new tire was bulkier than the blown out one and altogether the bike was in pretty good shape from this attention. About noon I set off for West Glacier. There was cloud cover, but only a brief rain squall. There was good shoulder almost all the way and once I remembered to put in my ear plugs to drown out the traffic noise it was quite a nice ride. Got to West Glacier around 4:30 and spent about an hour checking out sleeping possibilities and even rode further up the road a little bit to check it out. For a couple of days I have been aware that the weather is expected to be pretty bad now so as I am finally here at the foot of the pass I have to resolve what I will do. I found a motel that is being brought back to health by some new management which was willing to dicker on the price. The woman running the place has been a sweetheart, happily allowing me to use the business line to call Beth and other kindnesses. I had good calls to both the highway department and the weather office in Missoula where I talked with an actual person, apparently a professional weatherman. I had planned to go over the pass inside the park, but due to all the late snow it will not be open for a couple more weeks so I am faced with going over the divide on Highway 2. Here are the factors. The weather is bad and getting worse. The road features a lot of big trucks and two significant stretches with no shoulder. A wind turbine farm is under construction on the east side of the mountians and because there is insufficient gravel in the area it is being trucked over from the west side. This is creating a seemingly endless stream of dump trucks to share the road with and not all the drivers seem to be good at sharing. Except for one place, it is some sixty miles to get to any significant human habitation. There's a lot of climbing involved and I am uncertain of my capacity relative to the demands of the climbing. There is an inn part way along, but it is mostly serviced by the railroad and I could not find a number to call to see if they have an available room.
Here are some possible courses of action. Wait for better weather. This solves only one of the problems, but it would allow me to play around in the park. Start at dawn to avoid traffic and get at least to the inn, but I'm not sure I could get a room and then what would I do. The weather should worsen with time and elevation gain. I think I could hitch hike from most any place so I could hitch past the first shoulderless section and then bike, or I could bike and then hitch if things got too bad and there was no place to stay. Or I could just try to hitch a ride all the way. I went to bed with these thoughts running through my head.
Scored a crossword puzzle at the grocery store and did a little yoga before retiring.
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