Butte–iful timing

We have just had our first night in a hotel in the town of Butte, which was in fact our first night outside of our tents, and the timing could not have been better. Having not had a hot shower for a full week, our bikes in dire need of TLC, and the salivating prospect of the long awaited Butte Pasty, we had good reasons to look forward to Butte, Montana (the biggest city we pass through on entire trip, an unmistakable mining town of pop. 33 thousand). But by then of yesterdays ride, we were absolutely overjoyed.

The day was supposed to be a fairly straight forward run of 47 miles. An easier day to give our legs a bit of a break. It was not to be. The two mile climb to start the day turned out to be the toughest of the trip to date. When we wern’t trying to pedal our granny gear we were pushing our bikes through and over boulders, ruts, and mud. It was awesome. We thought we had been through the hardest part of the day, but after a great lunch at a Mexican Café in small town Basin (I’m pretty sure the café owner was Forest Gump’s mother), the thunder clouds soon rolled in. For the previous couple of days we had got lucky – skirting around or behind these storms but today we went full frontal. Rain turned into heavier rain, which turned into hail, which turned into bigger, heavier hail. But we pressed on, for Butte was surely to be a haven worth the effort.

But possibly the worst was yet to come. The last three miles into Butte was a speedy downhill run on the interstate – with this section in the process of being resealed. The downpour, combined with the resealing residue, combined to make a spray which ensured we arrived at the bike shops door, bikes covered, trailers covered, clothes covered, and worst of all us covered in this sticky black residue. What hotel owner would let us into their rooms in this state?

Fortunately, with a prior tip and some help which I will cover later, we had arrived at the doorstep of a bike shop called The Outdoorsman, owned by Rob Leipheimer, brother of Levi (I expect that tid-bit to mean zilch for most of you – hint – Tour de France). Fortunately Rob is crazy about bikes and maybe even crazier about great divide riders, and he welcomed us right in, trashed bikes and all. But what about the accommodation? “Well my father owns the hotel right though the other side of the shop here and I can go see what sort of deal I can get for you”. So with our hotel in the same building as the bike shop, hot showers, hot pool, and hot tub, we were set! And after liberal use of the bike shops degreaser we actually resembled human beings of some respectability again, if only for a short while.