WITH LUCK, my tires should arrive by FedEx today, enabling me to get back on the road by tomorrow.  I'm now behind "schedule" though, so I'll need to change or cancel my campground reservations at Powell USFS Campground.  I was planning to get there this Friday but it looks like Monday or Tuesday will be more realistic.

The pause has given me the opportunity to reconsider the back-to-back long days in my original itinerary.  I've already found a way to break the really long day (88 miles, NO services along the way) into 50 and 38 miles over two days.

Now I'm looking at finding ways to break the previous day, scheduled at over 70 miles, into two pieces.  Once I've got that sorted out I'll know what I need to do with the Powell reservation and then the West Yellowstone hotel and Yellowstone campground reservations.  (I'm thinking to cancel the Yellowstone campsites and trust to luck that there will be space in the hiker/biker areas.)

In the meantime, today (Tuesday 12 July) will be another rest day.  I've got the laundry going, so I'll pull out tomorrow with fresh clean clothes.  The surplus laundry soap I bought (the smallest I could get was a bottle sized for six loads) has been given to the man who is the owner / chef / busboy / bartender / dishwasher at the only restaurant in town (Chinese, which suits me fine).  

I had that opportunity because when I came into the laundry room, his clothes were already in the washers.  I was puzzled about the empty 20 pound rice bag sitting on the dryer, until he came in to transfer from washers to dryer, then all became clear.

Last night at dinner, I shared a table with a lonely man who is re-emerging into the world after two years in isolation.  He's a widower, and his dog has also died, so he's down to a pet chicken.  (A red tailed hawk took the other chicken, a while back).

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Hearing his story: retired Air Force weapons tech, former Oakland PD parole officer (there are some horror stories there), widower, sometime carpet cleaner, sometime dry cleaner, now ceramics artist, makes me once again realize what great good fortune I've had and what an easy life.

He was grateful to meet someone with a "normal" view of the world, after spending too many years dealing with the lowest strata of society.  I can't imagine everything he's had to deal with; some of what he shared is the stuff of gritty Hollywood movies and television scripts, except it's real.

In the minor irritation / potentially worrisome issue department, I've managed to once again crack the screen on my phone.  So far there's no impact on the phone's usability or performance but the crack is growing.  I've already had to replace the screen once, now I'll have to get it done again.

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I'm using the Ride With GPS app as my primary navigation tool, although I did take the precaution of also downloading every day's route to my Garmin as a backup.  Being without the phone, though, would dramatically limit my ability to post updates here, stay in contact with home, and generally live the modern-day electronically-connected life to which I've grown accustomed.  Here's hoping the phone doesn't give up the ghost entirely, but if there should be another long hiatus between updates you'll have one possible explanation as to why.