Liverdance 3, Part 3

Back at Charlie's we figure a half-hour of drinking is not enough, so after schlepping everything quietly up the staircase of amazing resonance Casey busts out a few discreetly hidden cans of Molson. Or Ranier. Really, they could have been Natty Ice, for all I know. Anyway, we continue drinking while getting the basic lowdown of the apartment rules ("the bathroom is through the single bedroom, so take care of whatever you need to do now"), the local scene, anything to know for the race (no secrets divulged), and bike polo.
Now it's about 3am, and we retire. I wake up at about 4:30 to take a leak, so I (thought I) sneaked outside quietly to water the bushes. Back to the couch, and I awake a few hours later as Charlie walks into the living room.
"Um, so I'm in a bit of trouble, I guess." He says to me.
"Were we too loud or something?"
"No, I told you to go outside to pee..."
"Yeah, I'm cool with that,"
"Well, because of that I'm in trouble with Megan. So tonight just walk through the bedroom, OK?"
Leaving the apartment we first cruised over to the Hammer Coffee where Megan works to get a little jump-start on the day (reallyreallyreally good coffee, by the way).
Megan seemed to be more embarrassed than anything else as to our use of the yard as a toilet. Using one set of words, she managed to apologize to us and reprimand Charlie in the way that only a wife can do. Leaving the coffee shop, we agreed to use the bathroom.
Breakfast left me wondering why it's so hard to get really, genuinely good food at a good price in Bozeman. For less than what one would spend for warmed-over mediocrity at IHOP I got the biggest and tastiest breakfast burrito I've ever had. C-note got the Huevos Rancheros which, as was described to us, "Made him feel like Luke Skywalker finding Han Solo." Seriously good food.
So, we've got about six or so hours before the 4:30pm manifest handout time. We're in a city, we've got bikes, what is there to do? Well, we ride! I think we put on somewhere around twenty miles that morning and afternoon. We did manage to get a rough idea of the layout of town and we even managed to get some Thai food. Excellent Thai food. A mountain of pad thai with fried rice and a bowl of egg drop soup for $6.25. I couldn't finish it.
Note to Bozeman restaurateurs: A person should be able to buy a tasty and filling lunch for less than $7.
Finally, it's time to get to the race. We roll up right about at 4:30 and start milling about. Some Warlocks pull up and start taking money and handing out manifests and spoke cards. We've got an hour and a half? There's only nine stops? This is gonna be cake!
Eventually almost 80 racers show up. All types, too.
Drunk guy keeps asking C-note to borrow his map while a couple of transients stand aside with their brown bags in hand. Being the out-of-towners we get a bit of assistance from Megan and a few others, but the map C-note got turned out to be excellent, with numbered blocks and everything!
GO!
We take off, 80 bikes in different directions yet towards a common goal. The start is really my favorite part of an alleycat. It's so chaotic, so nerve-wracking yet it seems to work out smoothly. Except for the dolt that managed to right-hook Casey. No, not a guy in a car, a guy on a bike. Lucky for the Bianchi there was no damage.
First stop comes quickly, with about 90 percent of the racers descending on a bar in the space of six or seven minutes. The pack splits up pretty quickly after that. Having to down a cup of beer will do that.
My second stop is about six miles away, and I've got a good route there. In city you don't know anything about, you don't try to take shortcuts. I head south on a selection of two-and four-lane roads, settling into a nice rhythm. A few red lights popped up at inconvenient times but were disregarded as the road was clear.
Second stop, the Little Dutch Goose, a very..."interesting" bar. Situated squarely in the middle of a residential area with schools and few businesses there's a bar with a muddy parking lot, lots of old American Iron parked there, and people (median age: 50) packing all 500 square feet of this place. I run in, much to the delight of some onlookers and look frantically for 'Kyle'. The bartender notices me and asks,
"Can i get you something?"
"Uhh, I'mlookingforKyle..."
And right then a late-20's guy with a messenger bag leans back from the bar, with an expression that very succinctly said,
"WTF?"
Manifest gets signed, then it's on to stop three, another four miles away.