(Copied from FB) "Interesting morning so far. I left the hotel around 8:30 or so and rode through a sweet little neighborhood on the river. Found a small park and stopped to do my chi gung. Remy and I were just getting on the main drag out of town when I got a phone call from Joy Chapman, the wonderful woman who has helped me get and keep my Marketplace subsidy and my Priority insurance. Apparently, the Marketplace people didn't receive my evidence of employment early enough and were about to cancel my subsidy, and Priority had not yet registered my auto payment, so my May payment was missing, and they had notified her that they were going to cancel me. [Did I mention I was on a street corner in Glendive, MT?!]
I sought out a coffee shop with WiFi, got a coffee, and found the email with my Marketplace password and forwarded it to Joy. Then I called Priority to make the May payment and find out what's going on with the auto deduct.
Priority can't take card info for payments, so I hung up from the first call and called LMCU. That helpful person told me how to find my account numbers on my mobile app. I called Priority back and took care of the payment. BUT I have to remember to check with them on June 1 to make sure auto pay is happening, AND I still have to contact Social Security and have them send evidence of the payments I'll be receiving starting in July either to me (via Chris Creek , who is getting my mail) or (if only it were possible!) directly to the Marketplace. Otherwise, we'll be on this Merry-go-round again in a couple of months.
Coffee finished. I'm ready to go, nearly two hours later."
I didn't even leave after I posted that. Instead, I struck up a conversation with an elderly (can I even use that term at this point?) man who was sitting alone. I ended up sitting down with him and conversing for 20-30 minutes at the Press Coffee Cafe, which was delightful, by the way. It is combined with a flower nursery, and the indoor tables overlook the flowering plants.
This gentleman, Paul, sounds like he was probably born in the UK (No, I didn't ask. Not sure why.) He reported having lived on the island of Malta, in Colorado, and in Montana, but there may have been other places, as well. His 7 children are spread all over the US. His wife is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's. I liked him. I really enjoyed talking to him. He had a very positive attitude, which I benefited from. It made my day.
Remy and I finally got on our way about 11 a.m. We followed West 200S out of Glendive. We saw this on our way:
"You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big, bright Texaco star!"
The wind was not particularly strong (compared to what I've been encountering), but it was from behind, so riding was pretty easy. I hope, as I ride more, that I will be able to go further and further before the first stop. it's sort of like having to go to the bathroom and waiting and waiting, but once you go, you have to keep making stops to go ... if you know what I mean. I stopped within about 5 miles of leaving Glendive, and I don't think I made it more than 5 miles again after that without a stop.
Fortunately, the shoulders were great. Where a rumble strip came in for a while, the shoulder widened so it was easy to stay to the right of the strip. When the shoulder narrowed again, the strip disappeared. Circle, MT, tonight's destination, was 47 miles from Glendive (by GPS search, not including getting to the route or the extra riding around I did looking for the coffee shop). I made it 29.1 miles to Lindsay, a town with only one business, a fuel station with some snacks and farm necessities. Surprisingly, Lindsay has full-town WiFi.
By the time I got there, I had made a number of stops closer and closer together. Remy and I chilled on a bench (well, not really chill, as it was in the 80s), drank water, and waited for Tayler to come along. She had had a hike in the Makoshika State Park in Glendive and was ready to drive out to Circle, so it was easy to get us today. No backtracking.
We drove on to Circle, where the Traveler's Inn awaited us. We have a nice, clean room in a place that doesn't look like much from the street. A couple of restaurants were recommended, but we're eating groceries again. We'll probably visit the grocery store in Circle in the morning for breakfast. This is working out a lot better for my digestion than most of the restaurants we've tried.
Now, here's the next bump in the road. My back wheel keeps coming loose. Ever since I added the cart, I've been having problems keeping the wheel on. The piece that the cart hooks into is threaded onto the back axle between the frame and the right side piece. In Medora, the wonderful Jennifer added some small spacers to enable the cart piece to rest more smoothly along the frame. It may be a matter of just making sure everything is screwed in tightly every time I get on the bike, or perhaps a bike shop could put a slightly longer axle piece in (bike friends, is this likely?) or figure something else out to keep it tightly attached. It is pretty disturbing to ride nearly 30 miles, then pick the bike up to put it on the car and have the back wheel come off.
Because Tayler has friends in Bozeman, and because that is one of only a few bicycling shops in Montana (almost all of which are in the south and west, and none of which are near where we are), we are planning to drive to Bozeman tomorrow and maybe spend the weekend. We talked about driving all the way back up to the Northern Tier, but it doesn't really make sense, since we'll be driving back to Great Falls from Havre a few days hence, anyway. So, unless someone who reads this has some suggestions for fixing the wheel problem, we'll head to Bozeman by car tomorrow and then drive to Great Falls to continue the bike trip in a day or two.
I am much happier about all the bumps in the road these days. Without the insurance stuff, I wouldn't have met Paul and enjoyed his company. Who knows what developments driving to Bozeman will bring? I rode 29.1 miles, and I feel good about it. C'est la vie!
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