Day 6 - Saint Regis, MT to Bozeman, MT

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Greetings from Bozeman, Montana! I am less than 150 miles from my destination for he next week, Billings MT. The only problem is that I allowed an extra day in case anything went wrong. Nothing did, thankfully and my reservation does not begin until tomorrow, so Bozeman it is for tonight.

I began my day in a rather leisurely fashion. Had some coffee, chatted with the locals, ets. Then I put some time into the bike. Over the last couple of days, two problems have developed. First, the stitching on one of my saddlebag lids began to give way, causing it to flap in the breeze (this has been audible on a couple of my videos). Second, yesterday, the return spring on my rear brakelight switch broke and was vibrating against the exhaust making a really awful sound. I took the saddlebag off the bike and brought it into the room where I stitched it up with a cheap sewing kit from the gas station across the street. As for the rear stoplight switch return spring, I simply removed this altogether and will replace it when I get home. The only side effect to this will be that the brake light will not activate when the rear brake pedal is depressed. It still works fine with the front brake handle though and since I use both brakes 99% of the time, that'll work. At about 11:30 am, The Mothership and I departed St. Regis and continued east on I-90. Soon we cleared the mountains and moved into flatter country, the green steadily giving way to brown.

At a rest stop about 25 miles west of Butte, I looked around and realized why they call this "Big Sky" country. Wow.

I almost ran out of gas today. Fun fact for my non motorcycling friends: While there are some exceptions, the vast majority of motorcycles that you see do not have gas gauges. Yep, it's true. What they have instead in a "Reserve" setting. Here's how it works, you drive along, your engine begins to sputter, you switch to reserve (a gallon or less on most bikes) and then you start praying to the gas fairy. The trick is to get to know your bike and know exactly how far you can get on a tank. I also carry an extra gallon in a motorcycle specific gas can inside one of my saddlebags. Imagine driving your car around with no gas gauge.

The closer I get to Billings, the more Valkyrie I see. This seems normal but it isn't when you consider that they're all headed west. Did somebody change the dates? We shall see.

Tomorrow, Billings and InZane!



See you on the road,

Alien

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