Lewistown ride

May 14, 2021:  

Today’s ride was to head 2 hours north to the geographic center of Montana, Lewistown, MT, have lunch at the brewery there, get my 2021 to turn over 1,000 miles, and to ride with a friend for the first time.

The ride is all 2-lane roads across the eastern prairies with a few twisting routes over a couple mountainous areas. The weather for most of the day was perfect: clear and 62 degrees. My friend, who I have known for a couple years, rode his Victory.  Our first stop was the town of Roundup.

This is my first ride with the new seat that I made.  So far so good.

After passing by Grass Range, MT we pulled over for a quick break.

Lunch in Lewistown was fine. We ate at the brewery but there were sort of limited options for this vegetarian but the regular salad was enough with an Irish Red beer.  It’s a small city, about 6,000 people, with a nice Main Street and great trail system.  It is a Mecca for fishermen.

From there we headed west and encountered road construction for a ways where I rode the FJR on gravel for the first time. When we got to the town of Moore, noted for “Eddies Corner,” a store and restaurant and not much else, I notice that my odometer indicated 999. Yep, one more mile to the end of the engine break in period.

From there we headed south to Judith Gap, noted for its wind which has attracted a massive number of windmills. They have the blade from one of them in their city park.

The next stop is the former railroad town of Harlowton. They have a fine brewery but, alas, it wasn’t open so we headed east, following the Musselshell River, a beautiful drive. About 15 miles outside of Billings, we encountered rain. It wasn’t too bad and we were close enough to home at this point that donning rain gear wasn’t worth it.

A great day where we covered about 290 miles.  The seat pad seemed to give me about 100 miles more distance before butt fatigue started to set in.  I think I'll try modifying it with a gel pad and see how that feels.