October 7: Day Eighty Seven

Missoula, MT

What a glorious day!
I biked out early to Good Foods to get the rest of my groceries bought and covered, then headed back to the house where I met up with Chris and we set out to climb the “M” mountain, which is the mountain right in town with the concrete “M” slabbed on it. We climbed it barefoot, regretfully because of the consistent gravel that gave us the most trouble on the downhill. But it was still nice to “earth” for a few hours. The views of the river, train tracks and station, the university, the city, and the mountains across the way were a lovely sight to see.

We tried not to hurry back down the mountain, but we were on a bit of a time constraint; I was meeting up with Kate, who rode by me on her bike the other day while I was playing ukulele, and then swung by to say hello.

She knows Oliver and Alexander, who are two cyclists who had been two days behind me since early Kentucky. They’d been following my progress, unbenounced to me, via cycle logs and word of mouth from locals and east-bound cyclists. I didn’t find out about them until Lander, Wyoming, where I figured they’d catch up with me at some point because I was bound to slow down. Well, I did slow down in the Tetons, but apparently for one too many days, because they surpassed me without our knowing. They made it to Missoula, Montana about three days before me, cycling with Eric (who I met in Yellowstone National Park and who I know as EpicTour), who told them that I was now behind them. All three of them were staying with Oliver’s friend from college, Kate (the girl who found me on the street).
When we met, Kate told me that she was told to look out for a girl on a bike with a ukulele. Well, she found me.
She told me that Oliver and Alexander, having heard from Eric that I’m vegan, made a vegan chocolate mousse cake and wrote me a letter and they were both waiting happily at her house for me to pick them up.
So here I was, excitedly stepping as quickly and as carefully as I could down the steep mountain with Chris, on my way to enjoy pie with Kate and the shadows of Oliver and Alexander.
Kate had a meeting she had to attend shortly after our arrival, so we weren’t able to spend much time together, but it was a friendly and warmhearted visit nonetheless.
I didn’t read the letter until I got back home. It made me want to skip.
To top off the day, Chris and I headed out to a discounted movie at the Wilma, which is a beautiful theater and cinema right in town. We saw A Most Wanted Man, which is Phillip Seamour Hauffman’s last film. It was subtly intense and raised a lot of questions (Hauffman spoke in a low, mumbled, German accent the whole time and was often difficult to understand). When we got home, Chris and I spent a while researching the film and discussing the cloudy areas.