 Okay, up in the back. All right, now we're ready. Come get breakfast. Yeah, a little cereal for you. It's cold, it's cold, but at least the sun's coming up. So I bet you didn't know that my tent has a pizza shelf up here. See this right here? This, this pizza. I bought it last night for dinner and I'm just gonna eat it for breakfast. Oh, look at the morning hugs. Oh, you're so cute up there. Okay, one last one before getting on the bike, okay? All right, Mira, you ready to rock? Up, up, come on, in the back. Drop your step, come on. Let's go. Here, give me those. Okay, see you later. Okay, in the back, up, up, Mira, in the back. Come on. Up. Hey, get in here. That's a first. All right, see ya. I've learned so far on the Great Divide is that every day is gonna have up and down. Not always up, not always down, not always flat, but a little bit of everything. And right now, we're going up on probably the first rough road. All the other roads have been pretty well groomed. This one, this one's a little chunky. I'm looking at my Wahoo computer and it's like this. It might be the steepest elevation profile I've ever seen. It's kind of insane. Right here, it doesn't look that bad, but around the corner, we might have a surprise. Slowly, but surely, that's how it works. Come on, you got it. Woo, up, up, up. Now the uphill is taking me through a beautiful forest. That's where I'm going up there. Woo, woo, you know what's really nice is that I'm sweating quite a bit, which is what happens when the body works hard, but there's a breeze, a cool breeze. And when it blows across my body, it just cools me down and it's so nice. That was probably a lot easier for you, Mira, wasn't it? You panting? That's what I'm doing too. We just sweat in a different way. That was a pretty good hill. That was solid. What would you say that grade was? Yeah, 12%. Wow. Yeah, and it was pretty steady for a good portion around those switchbacks. What I'm most scared of in Montana aren't bears. They're these guys. They're everywhere. They just pop out of the woods and they create a smoke screen wherever you go. Look, there's so many of them. It's endless. This is a good downhill. That was quite the raging downhill. That was really fun. And now we've popped out in this beautiful valley. Man, imagine living right here. So here we are screaming down this downhill and we hit this beautiful valley. And I was just saying, wow, how beautiful would it be to live in a place like this? And then we rolled up on this ranch with some llamas in the yard and a teepee and some other things. And it says, welcome cyclists. I mean, meet these wonderful people. How's it going? Hi. Hi. So tell me about this place and what you're doing here? Well, we live right on the route. So it's an easy thing to host cyclists and we love cyclists. So we enjoy meeting all the people and hearing their stories and... Barbara's been here for 31 years. Yeah. The route was officially designed... Developed, yeah. Developed, thank you in 1998. So they just celebrated the 20th anniversary in 2018. And so since she was here, people would come by and... Stop and ask for water. They camp here. About 15 years ago, I bought a cabin from my neighbors and had it moved down in the pasture specifically for the cyclists. So now they have a great place to stop and stay and weather a storm or just take a rest day. And I joined four years ago and Barbara then converted a couple of sheds. And then we just got the TV up. So every year, we've been trying to add more and more accommodations, yeah. And how did you meet Barbara? So I was writing the divide from Denver to the Canadian border and I stopped in here around three o'clock in the afternoon. It was too early for me to stop and thank her for all the work that she was doing to support everybody because you hear about it up and down the trail, right? And then I took off and got about three or four miles up the road that you guys just came down and had a huge thunderstorm and decided that I'm gonna come back and stay in the cabin and that was really the start of everything. Yeah, we met, we visited and then he rode on and we just kept in touch with emails for about a year. Then he came back to help chink the cabin about a year later or six months later, whatever it was. And he's been around a sense. That's amazing. So as I said earlier, I've been, I've stayed here the longest of any cyclist. Four years. That's awesome. That's cool. What do you love about the cyclist? I'm guessing you get people from all over the world. Oh, absolutely. We do. Like I said, we love hearing their stories and this is an adventure for everybody. So I love hearing about their adventure and their ride and their animals they see and what, you know, it's a life choice too. And so why did you make that life choice? It's just, it's great to talk about. I would re-emphasize that just to say that everybody has a story, right? And so all the stories come to us. We just got to sit here and just meet a lot of incredible people. We were hoping last year to meet Leo Wilcox, who is a racer, are you familiar with him? Oh yeah, oh yeah. And so we were dot watching and she was a long way out so we went to bed. She showed up here at 2.30 in the morning and stayed in the cabin and left at 5.30. We never got a chance to meet her. Oh no. We'll get her back up here. Okay. Yeah, that's cool. And what do you offer? You have like a whole fridge of drinks over here and sandwiches. Yeah, we have a refrigerator on our front deck there for all the cyclists and it has pop and beer and water and fresh eggs and sandwiches. Yeah, but not vegetarian, but we'll fix it. Yeah, we'll fix that, we'll fix something for you. And so the first stop is to come here, hang out in the shade and the breeze and just relax and visit with us. So we like that. And then our accommodations are a teepee and a cabin that sleeps three and another shed that sleeps four and a little tiny house that sleeps two. And what's it been like this year with COVID? It's been tough for us. We're about a quarter of what we usually get. Last year we had 362 guests the previous year, 350. We were hoping for 400 this year and then COVID hit and we're obviously not gonna get there. Yeah. Any foreigners this year? Just you. She means this guy, the Canadian. That's it, you know, the border's been closed and it seems like every month they keep moving it up, you know, the Canadian border. Wow, we're very excited to be here. This is really special. Can I just add one other thing? Oh yeah, for sure. And that is that everything here is free and the only thing that we ask when people stay with us is that they pay it forward. We'd like to think that we have four acres of love right here in kindness. And we just hope that any of that love and kindness we just spread out into the world. So that's why we do it. That's why we do this, yeah. Really? Yeah, absolutely. Wow. I'm all about love and kindness. I wish my friend Dana could be here. She's all about that too. Yeah, there's not enough of that in this world. That's correct. There's not enough love and kindness and especially right now with so much division. You know, when I started doing this ride it was the great divide. And I think there really is a great divide right now in the United States, in the world, you know? Well, we like to think when we have our foreign visitors that we can act as ambassadors for people that live in the States, right? They may get a misimpression about what we are, right? And when they stay with us, they can see another side of the way people are in the States. Yeah, that's beautiful. You guys are wonderful. My heart just got bigger. Lookin' out there and share. Yeah, you know I will, you know it. Oh, what do you think, Mara? Hey, buddy. You guys look like you belong in Star Wars. Look at that face. Look at your face, bud. Hello, Mr. Llama. Hello. You need a haircut, mister? There is a lot of love in this little farm, ranch, guest house, bicycle paradise. And it all starts with these two. What a nice service they offer. Nice isn't the right word. What an incredible service they offer. Nice. So John has offered to do a little work in return for the sandwiches and beer and we're gonna split some wood. There we go, nice kick. Mira wants to help. Hi, Mira, you're so cute. Oh, this is really funny. This place is a vortex. We thought we'd come here for like five or 10 minutes, have a sandwich, keep movin'. But no, we're still there, hangin' a couple hours later. All right, Mira, you ready to go? You ready to go, Mira? Ready to ride bikes again? Bye, John. We'll see ya, thank you again for stuff. Absolutely, thank you. What a spot, huh, John? That's a real special experience, wasn't it? Oh my God, I'm so glad we stopped. My heart is really full after stopping there. That was special. That was unique, that doesn't happen every day. 10 out of 10 on road magic. Trail angels for sure. We're like a hundred meters outside of the Lama Ranch and then when I see this big thing cross the road, I'm like, that's a big deer. Wait, that's not a deer, that's a moose. Oh my God. And today we're the lucky ones, mate. No mistake that I got you when we're movin' up, man. You know, NASCAR has a pace car. We have a pace Mira. She sets the pace and we just follow. That's nice. I'm gonna look up to sunnier skies. When I find that I've lost my compass, I'm gonna look for all the stars in your eyes. And today we're the lucky ones, mate. No mistake that I got you when we're movin' up. We have made it to the capital city of Helena, Montana and we are lucky because tonight we're staying with friends from Boulder and they're making us food. We're gonna camp with our backyard. It's gonna be so awesome. We're the lucky ones now. The ones now. Look at this beautiful meal cooked by these wonderful people. Thank you so much. You're the best. Cheers. And look at that view. Oh wow, we are in luck. What a spot. Oh yeah. Look at this road.