Day 20 - To Glendive & Rest

Well I coulda got there sooner…

I left out of Wibaux at around 11am, knowing that today would be brief riding day with only 32 miles to cover to get to Glendive. My plan was to take this and the next day as a rest after 6 days of continuous riding, and two of those big stretches for me (70+ mile days).

Glendive is situated at where Interstate 94 meets the Yellowstone river for the first time. Given that the only continuously paved road to get there was I-94, I opted to simply ride the shoulder.

Here’s the problem with highway miles: There is a bounty of tire destroying refuse on the side of the road. Sharp rocks, weird little pieces of metal, bolts, screws, and my nemesis — shredded tires.

Of all the hazards shredded tires are the absolute worst. They are a menace because while all the other hazards generally are singular and discrete, shredded tires leave a minefield of waste in their wake.

Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don’t.

But Tires are made of rubber you may say. Soft, forgiving rubber. Nonsense. They are filled with thousands of little pokey wires that when shredded stick out in all conceivable directions like caltrops of old, just waiting to hobble the unaware.

I knew I was cooked when I had to ride through a section that made me feel like Luke Skywalker doing the Deathstar run, juking and jiving around little black strips of death as best I could. The problem is there is just so much of it, and I just can’t get all four wheels winding through it seamlessly.

And so casualties resulted, forcing me to stop under the only available shade as my front tire went soft:

Thankfully getting the tires on and off of the rims with four inchers is quite easy. It doesn’t even require tire levers, just pull it off and you’re good to go.

So I pulled out the tube and inspected it for leaks and found a tiny pinhole. The next step is to swipe my hand across the entire interior of the tire because often times what caused the puncture is still embedded in the tire itself. This time I was surprised. It wasn’t a tire wire, it was a sharp little rock that had worked its way into a divot in the tread, and then gradually through the tire. It was quickly removed and everything reseated.

The next 20 minutes required that I use an ill suited pump to inject a mouse breath’s worth of air into a symphony hall sized space until it was filled and pressurized. Now look at that pump… Imagine how it works. Now imagine me sitting with it effectively between my legs pulling and pushing as quickly as my arm could go. Now imagine what that would look like from the road…

I need a new pump. Not just because of the optics, but because it is comically undersized. Clearly size matters.

Eventually the tire was inflated enough to ride and so ride I did.

What is there to say, except that as I rode through the countryside it became progressively more like a savannah than the prairies I had been crossing for a week.

I could bore you with the details, but it was just riding at 20+ mph on the shoulder, stopping to take occasional pictures. It was basically just travel.

Granted some of the Buttes were shockingly gorgeous but by comparison to what I had seen the days before, they were nothing particularly unique.

All the same, both the flora and fauna have begun to substantially change. You can see that within the pictures I took a long the way above. Cacti and rattlesnake evidence being a new sight.

After about two hours I arrived in Glendive.

It was too early to check into the motel I had booked for the long rest, and so I opted to tour some of the roadside museums. One billed itself as the Glendive Dinosaur Museum. Cool. Let’s do that.

Upon entering I was told that the exhibits were presented from the viewpoint of biblical history. I had a moment where I considered leaving, but I decided I was here and had time to spend, so why not just give it a look out of curiosity. So I paid my $6 and entered.

Two things struck me about the exhibits within:

The first was that the skeletons were remarkably well presented and from all over, not just Montana. They alone were worth the entry fee.

The second thing that struck me was that even though these exhibits were presented from an aspect of Biblical History there wasn’t any shying away from confronting empirical science. They explained DNA, Cells, comparitive anatomy, the layering of soils, formation of fossils over time, etc. It wasn’t so much that the science was “Christian” in any way, just that it was cherry picked to fit with a predetermined narrative. In some senses I appreciated that they didn’t present dinosaurs as “Jesus ponies” or some ridiculous things, but on the other hand as a Christian I find it a condemnation of faith to try and constrain a creation narrative onto the world.

If God created the universe, who am I to try and say how it must have happened? In what way should my existence being the end result of billions of years of natural processes he set in motion, or through direct formation from dirt in any way effect my faith? To me, as both a Christian and a Scientist, the two can absolutely coincide. I don’t need to have a set story of creation, one that involves a garden of Eden, or a flood, etc that rigidly conform to biblical stories to undergird my faith. My faith comes in part from the awe of the created, not in the manner of its creation.

While the process by which Vermeer made his masterpieces is intriquing, it isn’t why we hang them in a museum. The act of appreciation comes in the observation of the created work, not in the manner of the individual strokes. We give credit to the artist moreso for the work than the process.

Call me a deist. I don’t care. Call me a pluralist. I don’t care. My Christianity majors on the red letter words: To do good, to be good, and to love others.

The particular telling of how I came to be, or how the universe ends has no bearing on those tasks and that way of life. It neither threatens nor enriches my ability to do those things.

But moreso, I feel like such efforts to define history in these ways are an act of faithlessness, not faithfulness. Trying to prove God exists through science or argument or asking for signs feels to me like a fruitless and self aggrandizing endeavor. Seeking for proof diminishes the act of faith and for what it’s worth Romans talks about how Abram (Abraham) believed and his faith was credited to him as righteousness.

To me it is the act of observing and appreciating the creation that is the true act of faith. It changes us. It makes us more sensitive to the beauty of our Earth and the people and other living things that inhabit it. It helps me to do good, be good and to love others.

To me, Scientific inquiry is the purest form of that appreciation. It’s a desire to understand the great machinery God set in motion. It falls in line with God’s command to Adam to “Go forth and name all the animals.” It is my great act of appreciation for the artist.

And damn… what an artist.

So I leave you here for today, as I sit in a Laundromat cleaning my clothes, resting my muscles. I have plans to go to a national park after eating, but that may or may not happen. This is my Sabbath after all, my very own day of rest.