Big Ride Day 10

Photos from Day 10

Another rest day! I was determined to sleep in this morning and made it until 8:30 AM, which is a record for me so far this trip. It's amazing how early I've been getting up, especially for someone who does not like to get up early or be hurried in the morning. I managed to catch the end of the continental breakfast and then took a shower. I met Landon and Tom in camp, and they invited me to come with them to a little event downtown called "Lunch in the Park." I'll describe that later. Landon and I decided to try to hit a place where we could access the Internet on the way down so we took off and found this cool little Internet cafe. We were able to access the Internet and send e-mail. A bunch of riders were there. It's amazing how many people are actually maintaining Web pages during our "adventure."

After the Internet cafe, we headed downtown for "Lunch in the Park." This is a great little celebration that occurs every Wednesday in Missoula with music and food from local restaurants. So many locals turned out for it that I was amazed! It would be great to live in a city relaxed enough to have this kind of a thing in the middle of every week. I'm amazed that so many people could get away from work! The food was great too. I had two lunches -- one Japanese dish which was excellent and one HUGE burrito which weighed about five pounds. Sometimes I wonder where it all goes!

After lunch in the park, we walked around town, looking in various shops. Both Tom and I needed to find a drug store and the amazing thing was that no one could tell us where one was! It was the weirdest thing. Most cities have a million drug stores but not Missoula. We finally located one and they confirmed that they are in fact the only drug store in Missoula. The funny part was that I was buying earplugs to keep from hearing the snoring in camp and tom was buying Breathe Right nasal strips to help him stop snoring. How ironic!

We made it back to camp about 4:30 and I got invited to go to dinner with this guy named Ti. He is a great and friendly older gentleman who I've become good friends with. We had an absolutely wonderful dinner at a Ribs place and then came back to the camp for bed. Tomorrow is a big day of riding!

This page modified November 25, 2000