Rest day in Missoula, MT

(August 8th). After riding the tandem over to a bike shop for some maintenance work,* we walked all over town, including the University of Montana campus and at least a 4 mile hike to the REI (outdoor equipment) store, and an equal distance back.

Missoula is a very nice place. It sits at the feet of the Rocky Mountains and there are 3 rivers running through it or nearby. Plus it is a college town, home of the U of M Grizzlies. There are a lot of young people, a ton of bars and coffee shops and it is very bike-friendly, with lots of bike lanes and a remarkable number of bike shops for a town of this size.

On the way back from REI, we stopped at a thrift store to buy some new (used) books to read. Unlike most of the thrift stores we have been in (as you can tell, we love these places), the Multi Item Store was a dingy, smoky dive. There were two old guys working the store. One guy handled the checkout (there was no register; they took cash only and gave us a handwritten receipt). The other guy - who kept his gaze on the down on floor at all times - at first sat at a little table right in front of the wall of books we were looking at. I guess we should have asked him if he could move so we could see the books better, but I thought he might be asleep. He finally got up with a grunt but without uttering a word and moved into the other room. When we were ready to check out we found the second guy sitting next to the first guy, who was listening to some obnoxious rap music. The second guy told the first guy how much to charge for each item (nothing had prices on it). It was a weird place, but we found three paperbacks for $2.25 so we were happy.

*We actually went to two shops because the first one did not have the parts (new saddle and tires) that we wanted. We had worn out a front tire (tread separation) and needed to replace Penny's saddle (although the White Bird welding job had held up fine).