Rock My Ride

Going to the sun road was incredible.

Along route 2 in Montana, they have these things called cell phone pullouts every 20 miles or so, it’s just a little pullover with a fact about that location put up on a sign, to give people a safe way to check their phones. Seems like a very smart strategy to deal with the texting and driving epidemic, but I doubt it helps much.

Northern Montana is completely desolate, no farms anywhere. Basically no towns either in the eastern half, aside from some Native American reservations. Gas stations tend to be 50 miles apart. The entire state east of Havre looks like this:

It was exactly what I was hoping for when planning this route, just 400 straight miles from the ND border with gentle hills and undeveloped land, with one house every 10 miles or so just randomly showing up. The rolling hills started about 10 miles east of MT in ND, and the farms immediately stopped once the land was no longer flat. I wonder if that’s why there were so many gigantic farms in ND, or if there’s some kind of financial incentive to farming in ND. Definitely going to google that when I get home.

Havre was a cool little town based around the railroad that runs along route 2. It’s some kind of hub where the trains and cargo containers get repaired and swapped around. There were ancillary businesses that supported the rail workers, such as strip mall casinos, bars, more strip mall casinos, and more bars. I guess some things don’t change even hundreds of years later.

When I encounter other non Harley motorcycle riders, I’ll get the “nice bike” and offer one back, and that’ll be the end of it. Harley riders thought love to tell me about their Harleys when I didn’t ask. It’ll be “nice bike, I have a Road Glide at home and …(5 minutes spent telling me about all the upgrades they put on it, while I’m betting they ride it 500 miles a year, and I’m trying to find a way to interrupt them so I can escape)”. They’re all very nice people, but no one cares about your bike that you aren’t even riding in this perfect weather, leave me alone.

Really looking forward to the mountainous leg of this trip now.

@silvermouse said:
watch out for those old people, Calvin, really.

They’re all… Polite, friendly, and conversational, it’s the worst.

Someone at the hotel I was at in Bozeman had the exact same bike as me.

I stayed inside my room to make sure he didn’t start doing what the Harley guys like to do where he tells me all about the upgrades he put on it.

This was what the ride from Bozeman to West Yellowstone was like most of the way. Just a 2 lane road mostly filled with campers for 80 miles, with some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine.

Leaving Yellowstone and going through Grand Teton into Jackson was also incredible. Every part of this ride is incredible in its own way, but I completely understand why Jackson is becoming billionaire HQ. Imagine this as your back yard every day, while also having no state income tax:

From what I understand about tax law, you have to spend 183 days in a state to claim it as your home state. That would be very easy to do in Jackson if you could have a second house somewhere in the south for the winter. I got a burger there that was incredible, and it was $22 with no sides, which were extra.

Jackson is not an affordable town, I wouldn’t be able to live there comfortably with my income. Downtown is filled with tourist trap types of places, and the prices on everything there are incredible, even gas is $4.21, compared to $3.50 a few hours in any direction. The entire town is filled with expensive cars, and I’d bet less than 10% of the people that were downtown were born in Jackson. It’s like Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons, but instead of being surrounded by ocean it’s surrounded by mountains. It’s not an accurate representation of the area culturally, but it’s absolutely beautiful.

As for Yellowstone itself, it was a miserable experience. The entire drive looked like this:

It was a parking lot disguised as a road even in the sections that weren’t under construction. The turnoffs to the various geysers were backed up for hundreds of feet minimum. I managed to get one half decent picture on the side of the road in a gap between cars.

When I drove past the geysers, everyone there was on their phones taking pictures, no one was actually looking at the geysers themselves, it was through the screen of their phone. I realized that it was less about experiencing nature, and more about being able to tell everyone on Instagram that you did. Then it hit me, why am I here?

I had no interest in going to Yellowstone last year when I first started planning this trip. I had no interest in going a month ago. I had no interest in going yesterday, yet here I am, why? I realized that I had both succumbed to peer pressure, and that I only went so that I could tell people that I went. I have no real interest in watching the earth queèf, so I didn’t even get in any of the hour long lines to go see old faithful, I just passed through Yellowstone for very bad reasons.

I try very hard to march to the beat of my own drum. If I don’t actively evaluate my decisions, and the motives behind them to make sure they’re for the right reasons, I’m going to end up going back to a very bad place in my life, that I never want to see again. I can tend to annoy other forum members as a result of this, because they want to do nice things by giving me cigars for example, or letting me shoot their ammo for free. If I start just accepting them without making it up to them though, then it’ll become a habit instead of an exception. After that, I’ll start dry begging, and soon enough I’ll be telling them I need a couple hundred dollars because my water heater broke, when it didn’t. That’s no longer who I am as a man, but it’s who I used to be, and I’m fighting a battle every day against it.

Letting something as obvious as this Yellowstone ride slip through my decision making process, without me realizing the motives behind it, which was just bragging rights, disturbed me greatly. That is not the type of behavior that allowed me to change my life so drastically, dramatically, and quickly from bad to good. I did that by being very honest with myself, and by really thinking through my decisions, their consequences (both intended and unintended) and the long term patterns a short term decision will set if made repeatedly. I’m glad that this ride really has given me the chance to recenter myself like I hoped it would, because now that I just publicly admitted that I went somewhere only for bragging rights, I can’t really brag about it anymore, can I? The process of being a better person is a never ending ride, so to speak, it’s just one that I have to put more effort into than others, and that’s ok.

See? Going to Yellowstone was the best thing you could do. Congrats on being you.

Edit: you'll have a bomb waiting for you when you get home.

Just when you think you’ve seen everything, you see a dude and his wife taking their toy poodle on the back of their motorcycles with them. What the hell?

I had bought this Neutrogena sunscreen before leaving because it had the highest spf I could find. Didn’t do any research about it. It ran out, so I bought that Banana Boat stuff at a gas station. The Neutrogena had been holding up all day every day after being applied in the morning, aside from when I washed my hands with soap. The Banana Boat came off after like 2 hours, and I started to burn before I realized I was burning. Stopped at a pharmacy and got more of the Neutrogena, they’ve earned a customer for life even though they’re expensive. Shouldn’t take risks with your skin.

Verizon has also greatly impressed me. If the town has a gas station, I have signal, at least so far. I guess the commercials are actually true for once.

Wyoming, or rather the portion I saw along 191, reminded me of a first round draft pick with all the potential who flames out. Just awe inspiring mountain after awe inspiring plateau. The problem is the soil. You can’t grow anything here, it’s too dry and rocky.

Taking an extra day today in Vernal, UT to rest my back, let my burns heal, over hydrate, and do laundry before going into the desert of Navajo Nation tomorrow. That’s going to be intense, I’m excited.

@TNBigfoot68 said:
@CalvinAndHobo the photos have been fantastic, and I have great love admiration for your perspective and commentary. Please keep posting this epic adventure.

What the people want, the people get. I really hope this isn’t a once in a lifetime trip, but if it is, I wanted to document my thoughts on everything so I can pull it up years later and remember not just what I saw, but what I was thinking about. Some of those thoughts are uncomfortable and self critical, but they’re honest, and no one here who knows me is shallow enough to judge me for them. Plus nothing else gets posted in this thread, so if people aren’t interested they don’t have to click on it in fear of missing out on something else, so no harm done by over posting. I plan to download all of this when I get home into a pdf or something like that, just in case this website goes down 10 or 20 years in the future. Would be pretty cool to show people in 30 years, if I’m still around then.