It was COLD the next morning. Good! There were no mosquitoes. I ate at Fetty’s, the local diner, and talked with Dave, a real life cowboy. He was such a charismatic character. Dave was an individual who seemed to have developed the wisdom of the open range. There was nothing artificial about him. A bright and intelligent gentleman with an 8th grade education. Dave knew a lot more about living than most people with college degrees.

I left Wisdom in good spirits. The weather was hot, but dry. As I zipped down the road to Jackson, I discovered a new insect: the ground bee. I felt a buzzing sound on my forehead, which I assumed to be a fly. Somehow, the insect got trapped under my goggles, and was buzzing around there.

That’s when someone touched a hot match to my left eye. The pain was incredible. Even more incredibly, I didn’t lose control of the bike. On that lonely stretch of road, I had to pull the stinger out of my eyebrow with the tweezers from my Swiss Army knife, and nothing more than my one-inch round helmet mirror.

Coming down from Big Hole pass, I had a 31-mph tailwind. Even though the road was not all that twisty, I had to keep braking to keep control of the bike on the vicious downhill. On my way down, I passed a couple. It took about a hundred yards before I could come to a complete stop and turn around.

Scott and Maria had come from Denver. I felt sorry for them. My tailwind was their headwind. Not to mention the climb that they were soon to face. They were already in their grannies. However, they did have each other, and I was all by my lonesome. Perhaps their situation wasn’t so bad, after all.

big hole pass on montana hwy 278, not to be confused with a pass by the same name in idaho. scott and maria were walking their bikes when i encountered them, according to my journal.

I reached Dillon, MT, where I stayed at the KOA Kampground. My original journal recorded that it was expensive, at $9.88 including room tax. It was not a Kabin; I pitched my tent.