October 2: It was an easy ride up until Cut Bank. As I left the city I dropped down in elevation at the river only to have to climb back to 3000 feet rapidly. As I reached the top I crossed into Blackfoot Nation and found myself atop the Plateau. The next six hours were some of the hardest riding I did on the whole trip. The area was the barren yellow rolling fields seen all along Eastern Montana. A few grazing animals, mostly horses dotting the landscape. What was present and fiercer than ever was the wind, directly set against me and wailing on at about 35 mph. I later found out that it's not unusual for the winds here to reach a hundredth and I was lucky that it was such a calm day. either way it took me what seemed like days to make it the thirty plus miles to the city of Browning. At one point, a conductor got out of his train while he was waiting for an eastbound train to pass and gave me a bottle of water. His be was Chris and he said that he'd been pacing me and despite me pedaling like the devil, I was only going about eight miles an hour.

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