The Rise Up Ride: Day 58, Up the Eastern Shore of Flathead Lake
Date: 19 June 2021
Start Location: Polson, MT
End Location: Kalispell, MT
Distance: 75.3 km
Time: 4:02
Total elapsed: 6:02
Elevation: 472 m
Andrea was right. That road to Big Fork got busy about an hour before I got there. I should have started earlier.
Andrea and Doug and their many robins were up early. Doug brewed a very respectable cup of coffee and the two of them told tales. Their stories, combined with the coffee and a view of the Missions from their sitting room, provided the perfect excuse for procrastination. But it was Sunday morning and the boaters/fishers/RVers/waterskiers/hunters and assorted recreators were soon to be vehiculating with me up the narrow, undulating road along Flathead Lake up to Big Fork. Andrea had suggested that I get on the road by 5:30 am, which didn't happen due to me being in no hurry to leave their company. Andrea handed me with two of Doug's killer burritos and drove me down the steep, rocky road to the lake, sending me off towards Kalispell.
The highly touted Pocketstone Cafe in Big Fork was packed by the time I pulled off the highway after being passed on the road by the folks busy filling the tables, eating their bacon and eggs. But, after a knowing nod of acknowledgement to my bike, one of the locals directed me across the street to a much friendlier, very hip spot called "Lake Baked." They had the best caramelized sweet rolls and strong dark coffee, which I enhaled on the deck over the rushing Big Fork River.
I call them the "Monteenieans." They are genitally-challenged subspecies of Montana males in pickups who are so threatened by libs on two wheels that they feel the need to exhibit some very bizarre, regionally-specific, juvenile dominance behaviors. Generally I think that I can estimate political affiliation by the room that individual drivers give me while passing. Progressives move a little more to the left (appropriately). But the Monteenieans are the assholes who not only veer to the right but will rev their motor, wave a middle finger and, if equipped with an anti-environmentalist modification called a "coal roller", inject oil into their exhaust system causing a massive belching of black smoke. This, I suspect the Monteenieans believe, may frighten the libs on bicycles, causing them to question their existence and fall into hopeless ennui, rendering us incapable of voting and overwhelmed by the desire to leave Montana and return to our little blue enclaves. Me, I just feel sad.
Tonight it's a cheap motel in Kalispell, just two hours from the Amtrak Station in Whitefish. After five days of riding from Dillon to Wisdom to Darby to Missoula to Polson, I'm safely within striking distance of my second time-bound destination on this trip, the westbound Empire Builder, pulling out of Whitefish for Seattle at 9:00 pm tomorrow night.
