Breaking out of the Gulag, Take 2

So today definitely rivaled Washington Pass in the Cascade Mountains for the worst day of my life and was much more appropriate for the breaking out of the gulag analogy. First off the setting was much more appropriate - rolling, brown, sun baked hills of Alberta and Montana. Our arch enemy, the devil the sky - the sun, was back with a vengance and so were the near record highs of 40 C in Alberta and 100 F in Montana. Take the hills, incredible heat, no shade what so ever and add a 20 mph head wind, bike for 12 hours in those conditions and you have hell on earth.

I can't begin to explain how intensely terrible it was. About 20 miles out of Cut Bank, MT, I all but stopped sweating. Salt crystals covered my body like sand and my black bike shorts were white with my own salt. My heat throbbed, my legs and knees ached, and my whole body was baking from the unbearable heat. And I wasn't going anywhere because of that aweful headwind!

For those of you who know me well, you've probably noticed that I sweat a lot. I drank over 10 Liters of water today and still couldn't keep up with my sweating and still became extremely dehidrated. 7 miles out of Cut Bank, I figured I had an 80% chance of not making it there. 3 miles out, the distance of a 5K race, I put my odds of failure at 95%. Less than one mile to go, will a hill in front of me, I was convinced I would collapse over into the ditch and die, which some how seemed better than biking for 5 more minutes.

Some how we made it to Cut Bank and we ate a ton of food and drank a ton of water at a family restaurant. But we weren't finished for the day - we still needed to make it to Shelby, MT, where we were going stay the night with a ralative of Eric's friend, Erik, which was still 25 more aweful miles away.

After a long break, we headed out again in the heat. After about 15 miles, the food and water started kicking in and I felt that I would at least make it. Thankfuly, due to the grace of God, we both made it and have been enjoying the wonderful hospitality of Erik's (second?) cousin, Cindy. She made us an amazing Spaghetti dinner and we got to take showers!!!

Tomorrow we're going to shoot for Havre, MT, and pray for a tail wind!