Miles: 52.7

Total Elevation Gain (ft): 2112.8

Weather: Sunny, Warm

Hillbilly Insults: 0

Roadkill: 7 (1 Cat, 2 Birds, 3 Snakes, 1 Unknown)

Bugs Swallowed: 1

Mean Dogs Chasing: 0


If you ever want to ride a bike across Kansas, but don't like sunflowers or smelly cattle yards, try eastern Montana.  It's got it all.  Prairie, boringly long climbs, nasty headwinds and abandoned farm houses.  It will send the staunchest yokel  running for the city. 


The daily roadkill tally today was the only thing breaking up the monotony of the ride.  A distraction or two to fend off the fixation of festering little aches and pains that accompany me like my hillbilly uncle-in-law making appearances for food on holidays and special events would have been nice. 

I was a mere puppet today, dropped by a velocipedic deus ex machina into the hellmouth of purgatory. I crawled to the truck stop hamlet of Circle, MT. Shellacked by yesterday's winds and dizzied by the revolving scenery--a handsome reticulated periaktoi designed by the Devil--I drank the sweet nectar of soda fountain Dr. Pepper and it was relief beyond an I.V. drip. 


Yeah, this sounds like pretentious James Lipton "Actors Studio" rhetorical horseshit, but the description is apt.  Of course, it's not the way simple folk here would  categorize it.  I heard a big rig man at a rest stop say, "It's a goddamned sumbitch of a gusty day."


Picture
Ah, beautiful support vehicle. Leaving me so soon.

 Without much to report, I started thinking about this blog and my narcissistic histrionics. I wondered how someone might distinguish themselves as supremely selfish in this age of narcissism.  The self-indulgent norm of Facebook, Pinterest and the Twitterverse leaves an enormous obstacle for anyone to reach a vainglorious summit. So, like my previous gift of simple avian classification, I hereby grant the modern operational definition of a narcissist:   Someone whom masturbates to their own sex tape.


I feel better about myself for babbling about how great or how rotten my experiences are, knowing full well that some celebrity producing their obligatory unauthorized porn (Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Screech) is getting rich committing the sin of Onan as their video goes viral.


Almost a month into this venture, I pause to think about the many cyclists visiting the site for good instruction, only to be barraged by tales of the white devil, Vladimir Putin's machismo and bug ingestion counts.  This isn't Pollyanna's travel guide to cycle touring, eh?


I'll make sure that I comment on the landscape in detail in the next post. I want to serve my fellow riders. Just don't expect descriptions you'd find in National Geographic.