Twenty-one years ago on this date, a guy rolled into Missoula with a dog, no apartment, and enough optimism to set up camp at a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi. That was the beginning of something. A rest stop in Du Bois, PA and a couple roadside snapshots were the opening frame. The city itself came next, equal parts promising and chaotic, which honestly describes most of what followed.
May 7th has a habit of showing up with something to say. Sometimes it's a big climb, like that Big Hole Pass ride where elk held up traffic and the wind was, of course, pointing the wrong direction. Sometimes it's a race finish where the cookies were earned the hard way, as Bill and Dave found out with 26 checkpoints and a hug at the end. One year a bike just waited, riderless. That happens too.
Other years the date showed up quieter. A 45-mile loop called The Bitter, run on scones and stubbornness. A train wreck with good form. A bird counting nuts in a new valley, wondering if the whole thing made sense. A night on the floor, lungs full, back screaming, just trying to find one position that didn't hurt.
Then the later years started stacking up their own flavor. Home felt wrong until the van was packed again. A spring break worth revisiting. Rain on a van in Gardiner, and the ache of good times that don't come back. Then wildflowers and momentum returned, with trails that felt like flying and a canyon hike that ended in burgers, which is pretty much the ideal resolution to any conflict. A full-throttle descent at Silver Mountain showed up next, mostly kidding about the high-octane part.
And then this year's post put a name to all of it. Fifteen years of showing up, Mr. Bear in the REI chair, Mo and Bill finding the strange beautiful things everyone else walks past, a van with a license plate that says exactly enough.
May 7th keeps coming around. So does the person who meets it.