Day 12 -- Sept 20, 2018

Great Falls, MT to Kalispell, MT

242 Miles

Today started with us, the support crew pretty much forcing Mike like a child, to wear his winter gear. "I'll be fine".. haha yes and then complain to us about being cold. We have learned.

The road the bikers took was "go to the sun road". Mike said that the bike ran like shit up in the mountains, it kept popping. Once he got down into "normal" elevation it ran fine. It was coldish weather in the 40s, but he was dressed warm -- he was almost too warm (go support team!!!) It rained and sleeted on this ride. They even had couple tunnels that they had to go through. There were also these 3 foot blocks down the side of the road that went all the way down the side, and then on the other side of the road the rock went straight up. (I don't know about you guys but I can only picture the straight up cliff).

Mom asked Mike what his favorite parts were about the Motorcycle Cannonball, he  said it was the camaraderie, bonding with your support crew, to say you did it, to go across the country, the experience, the travel, the personal satisfaction and the accomplishment. He also said "to become one with nature," but Mike said it goofy, and we were like...come on lets be serious. Man of many words, Ladies and Gentlemen.

From my view Mike is doing really well. You can tell that he is exhausted. I mean we all are, but he is more. He gets back from riding, if he gets in early enough he will take a nap, which has been a saver at some points. If we have a hosted dinner, we go to that, come back do what we need to do to the bike, then go to bed. Hopefully nothing continues to come up. It definitely is a continuous busy atmosphere here. Once Mike's head hits the pillow, he is out, which is good. But if you all know Mike, a little tiredness isn't going to stop him. Even if he is completely exhausted he won't even complain. I've done a million times more complaining about being tired than he has. Whoops!

Before Mike got to Kalispell, Mom and I got to get our nails done -- well deserved if I do say so myself. We also grabbed some beer with Starry and Mary from a local brewery.

Once Mike got back to the hotel, him and Starry did some regular maintenance on the bike, because it had been popping quite a bit, they looked into that. Mike said that it was running better after they worked on it a little bit, like adjusted the carburetor (I had to ask about that one). So once it cooled off from the long ride and going into higher elevation it was back to normal. Some local people with a young boy were walking around and they got a picture with him on the bike. Who knows, maybe in 18 years we will see him racing the Cannonball.

As we ran to Harley to grab a poker chip (& apparently more apparel) they were very accommodating and had been getting questions about the Cannonball so we were able to answer that, and in return they gave a slight discount -- how awesome!

To save our spot in the parking lot we put cones in the parking area. When mom was getting the cones ready to put in the parking area she decided to impersonate Madonna -- look at Starry's huge smile! Also, please listen and enjoy the wonderful singing of Mary and Mom, they have been very entertaining. Another support crew member from the Ohio group has been joining us to dinner, and Mary likes his muscles and the way he smells, so she was VERY excited when we had to squish into a booth and he was next to her. They had fun making inappropriate comments and gestures together, definitely kept all of us entertained.