Fifteen Minutes from Montana
Dirt-road riding out in the country.
Spend some time as a Bozemanite in rural Montana, and folks are sure to know you ain’t from around there. If your vehicle’s not an immediate giveaway, then it’s the Blundstones, bike shorts, or anything other than black coffee or Copenhagen spit in your thermos. But if you do manage to blend in, you’ll be forced to reveal your origins when asked. Do this often enough, and you’ll start to recognize a handful of standard responses:
“Oh God, the big city?” (usually as the bartender shies away, afraid of absorbing your urban infection through osmosis).
“Boz Angeles, eh?” (with an eyebrow raise).
“Sorry to hear that.” (end of conversation).
Or perhaps the most fitting: “Fifteen minutes from Montana.”
Raleigh bounded next to us, occasionally peeling off to chase an errant pheasant or raven in adjacent fields.
And indeed, it can be easy to get tangled up in the Bozeman lifestyle on an everyday basis, to fall into a routine, to see the mountains on the way to work and think, while tightening the laces on the approach shoes you wear around town, I’ll get out there tomorrow. And then tomorrow rolls around and you think, no really, tomorrow.
That’s the funk I was in last May—the odd limbo time between ski and mountain-bike seasons—when Mike suggested we load up the gravel bikes for a ride after work. It was settled. That afternoon, Mike, Jack, office dog Raleigh, and I piled into Mike’s truck and hit the road for Montana. Not much more than 15 minutes later, we’d arrived: a dirt road framed by the mountains, barns, silos, and fields of alfalfa stubble. We watched localized snow and sleet squalls circling the valley, interspersed with rays of sunshine beaming down in Holy Grail fashion.
With near-endless gravel roads to choose from, we settled on one that curved down a drainage, following the rolling hilly contours, then gaining elevation before looping back around. It was my first time on the bike all season, and the loose gravel took some getting used to. My back wheel fishtailed through the ruts and divots, in and out of control. But I kept ’er pointed straight, fingers off the brakes, and managed a few close calls without ever going down. It wasn’t quite the rush of downhill biking, but it shared a comparable sense of impending doom at any moment.
We made a beeline back to the truck, tossing the bikes on the rack just as water began to trickle down the backs of our necks.
Soon, the dirt smoothed out, and we were cruising through a field of young cattle, skittish and on edge about the two-wheeled intruders. Raleigh bounded next to us, occasionally peeling off to chase an errant pheasant or raven in adjacent fields.
At the bottom of a gulley, Mike and I decided to race up the next hill after some friendly trash talk. Jack posted up on top for what he expected to be a photo finish. But it quickly became apparent that it would be far from such—I cruised to the finish line with a commanding victory, just as the clouds opened up. We made a beeline back to the truck, tossing the bikes on the rack just as water began to trickle down the backs of our necks.
On the ride back to town, we brainstormed other ideas and loops that would be easy to string together. And, per usual, we tossed around more grandiose plans as well... What if we tied in that logging road up and over the pass? But as we pulled into a nearby watering hole to rehydrate, we drifted back to reality, content with our two-hour excursion to Montana. All it took was a 15-minute drive.
