Road Tripping Season - to the North!

Bike racing is about the easiest excuse to pack up the car and go explore cool places. Missoula was the destination of my first ProXCT of the year (the ProXCT is the national XC MTB series), so Christa and I made a trip out of it, enjoying our time in Montana, and also stopping off in Idaho and Wyoming on the way home.Driving in Missoula is no easy feat. The map shows a wiggly but generally northern route through Wyoming, and a time stamp of somewhere in the region of 14 hours. In the UK, I'm very used to taking GPS times with a pinch of salt - knowing the roads can shave time from journeys with ease. But in the highways of the great western US, there really isn't anywhere to gain time. Instead, you seemingly lose time in petrol stops, food finding missions and 'bathroom breaks'. We chugged north all the way to Bozeman, where we finally broke free of the drive for a quick, if soaking spin on the roads outside of town. I'm been through Bozeman a fee times now, only ever long enough each time to wish that I could see more of the place. At some point it will need to be a destination in its own right.

Waking up to a Monday morning in the mountains is a special treat. With work to do (via laptops and phone calls) Christa and I set out for a short ride in the hills. We climbed back up the pass on the old road, now a quiet bike path, and then jumped on some singletrack. We accidentally chose the 'jump' trail, and had great fun riding a short loop with the most amazing view.Although only a long weekend, our trip north was so much more than a bike race.