Today started with a wonderful conversation with Lucille over a breakfast of tea and cereal. I had a short day planned. Dillon is a college town and I was betting on getting lots of free internet time to get caught up on this site, pay bills, and take care of all the other online parts of my life.

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About the only thing between Twin Bridges and Dillon is Beaverhead rock. It was right after this rock that I ended up having the scariest traffic moment of the trip to date when a big truck ran me off the road. I was going uphill on a straight section, so there's no reason for him (or her I suppose) to not see me. The rest of the ride was harder than it should have been. My butt was hurting and that bug bite back there was getting really painful-obvious at this point that it was a giant spider bite. Three bites, actually, but only one was really bad.

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Eventually I dragged myself into Dillon, got massive quantities of Gatorade, a little chocolate milk (nothing better at the end of a ride), and directions to the KOA. I never really like KOAs-too expensive for one person, but there weren't any other options and I thought the AC group was going to catch up with me and figured they'd be staying there, too. But it was worse than I'd expected with a completely incompetent staff who completely screwed up my payment. I wasn't very happy, especially when she brought me my new receipt WHILE I WAS IN THE SHOWER! Gosh.

After many contortions in the shower, I managed to see just how bad that spider bite was getting. Maybe 4 inches across and well, you don't need details. OK, greenish yellow pus. (See, I told you you didn't need to know.) Another reason to let the group catch up since Toni is a nurse and could take a look at it. At least it wasn't down where I'd be sitting on it-I don't think I would have been able to keep riding.

ANYWAY, I ate in camp and took off to find the campus and the library. The incompetent campground people couldn't seem to give me directions to the college campus. The town is less than 4000 people! But eventually someone pointed me in the right direction and I found a completely desolate campus no internet for me anywhere. I went through some buildings looking for a lab somewhere, but the place was completely shut down. It's a state campus! Don't these people need to have something open on a Saturday?!? Bummed, I went to drown my sorrows at a Taco John's (not even my preferred Taco Bell). They screwed up my order. Things just weren't going well, but at least the employees knew where the public library was.

I got there with barely 30 minutes left before they closed, so I didn't get much done. The whole point of me scheduling my days like I had was to get here and have HOURS of access. Oh well. Tim showed up just after I did and gave me flack for not staying ahead of them. I wasn't much in the mood for jesting at that time, but it was funny to watch him get progressively more annoyed at the young man sitting between us blasting music well beyond the range of his headphones. I was happy to hear any decent music, so I wasn't complaining!

When I got back to camp, the AC group was trickling in, along with a couple doing the Great Parks route. I was just hot and tired and wanted some ice cream, but the incompetent KOA people couldn't even figure out how to sell that to me correctly. The group had some problems of its own, with a couple people having rough days, cooks getting into camp late, and groceries being some distance from camp. I stayed out of the way and did laundry and ate my ice cream while talking to Alvin (until he had to go deal with group stuff) and Patrick (who was also trying to avoid the group stuff).

The day didn't end all bad, though. Patrick and I decided to go out on the town. Alvin eventually joined us after everyone else went to bed. A rather drunk local cowboy kept bumping into me, making me scoot closer and closer to Patrick. Eventually the dude turned around to make his introduction to us, saying loudly, 'I don't like drinking with people I don't know. No point being strangers!' before basically hitting on Alvin (!) and saying something to the effect that if he wore fun shirts like that (his typical Hawaiian attire), he'd probably know how to have a good time. We didn't stay too much longer after that, especially after our jukebox got its plug pulled, and I was only mildly annoyed that Alvin got the attention instead of me!