{"id":267,"date":"2018-07-09T23:08:01","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T03:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/?p=267"},"modified":"2018-07-10T20:00:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T00:00:35","slug":"day_11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/zagorsky\/2018\/07\/09\/day_11\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 11: Lincoln, Montana to Great Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biking long distances is clearly more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge.\u00a0 Last night, I stayed in the Three Bears Motel.\u00a0 The bed was comfortable.\u00a0 The room smelled fine.\u00a0 The neighbors were not particularly noisy.\u00a0 With all these advantages I didn’t sleep a wink.\u00a0 This morning I wanted to rename the motel the “Princess and the Pea,” after the princess who could not sleep because a pea was placed under her mattress to test her.<\/p>\n

What was the problem?\u00a0 I lay in bed stressing about today’s ride.\u00a0 Today I needed to bike up Roger’s Pass on Montana’s Route 200.\u00a0 Roger’s Pass, as the picture shows, is where I cross the continental divide.\u00a0 All water dropped on the ground to the west of the divide sooner or later ends up in the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 All water to the east of the divide ends up in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\"Rogers<\/p>\n

For those of you interested in history, Roger’s Pass is famous for having the lowest recorded temperature in the contiguous 48 states.\u00a0 In 1954 at a mining camp on the pass the temperature hit minus 70 degrees.\u00a0 You can read about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The last time I biked across the country I did eleven different continental divide crossings.\u00a0 I was young and a wee bit stupid.\u00a0 Instead of crossing the Rockies once, I went up the backbone of the Rockies.\u00a0 This time would be different.\u00a0 Just one crossing, not multiple.<\/p>\n

Most continental divide crossings are a physical challenge so I wanted to know what to expect.\u00a0 Google Map and Earth tell you a lot, but local experience today still beats looking at computer images.\u00a0 I asked four different people where I was staying in Lincoln what the pass was like.\u00a0 Three out of four said they had never been up the pass and the fourth had done it a long time ago.<\/p>\n

This was shocking to me because Roger’s Pass is a bit over 18 miles from Lincoln and the town of Lincoln has only one main road, that goes directly to the pass.\u00a0 If these people had not done the pass, there must be a reason.\u00a0 My brain went into hyperactive mode all night thinking of all the reasons why locals wouldn’t go there.<\/p>\n