Saturday, April 26, 2008

Day 1 - Capitol, MT to Buffalo


WOW...what a day! The morning started with Ruth, Bill, Tom, and Mary cooking us breakfast of homemade biscuits and gravy. Due to nerves I was only able to eat half of one, although I really do think it was awesome that they had such a feast for us. Also hard to eat to many knowing you get to add 40 miles on top of it.


It was a short drive to Capitol, MT from Bill and Ruth's house to start the run. To get a mental picture, Capitol is a town of 2 buildings, both not really in working order anymore and not used. There was actually a pretty nice crowd at the start line for us considering it was COLD and WINDY. Typical Montana wind! Ernie, the mayor of Capitol, MT had us come over and he presented to us the key to the city. We all stood around for a few minutes and laughed at how this is the "only key to this place" and how the key has a striking resemblance to a sardine can or Spam can key. What a memory.

The next 13 miles clicked along pretty uneventfully, which on a run like this uneventful is OK. We both had a friend biking with us the entire run(Tate Latz with me and Mike Bogard with Brendan) as well as Brendan's wife running and biking with us. 5 people on the road today!

Once we make it to roughly the 13 mile mark we turned onto Highway 20 and it was a LONG and WINDY Run all the way to Buffalo. We were SO lucky to have a few people sag wagon for us or wait for us on the road just to say hi are show their support, which was really nice. It was fun to see people on the road and broke the day up nicely!


I arrived in Buffalo at about 12:30 PM about an hour before Brendan who arrived at about 1:30. We decided that with as much support we had on the road today we could spread out today without the situation becoming to unsafe.


Anyways, after arriving we went to the cafe in town and burgers and fried. Made for a nice end the run, only being topped by the shower at our host families house, Linda and Wally Stephens.




So, its now 6:37 PM and I am going to ice and massage a bit and hit the hay before the sun goes down!



Thanks for following and maybe we'll see you on the road!



Nolan






HEY EVERYONE!! (It's me...Brendan)


I wanted to share a few thoughts with you...even though Nolan has a great posting. It was great to start out in a town with a population of 0! Pretty cool when a wonderful showing from the local bandwagon and started out with a bang!



Mike Boggard and I had an awesome day today, even with winds that reached 25-35 mph and gusts well over 40 mph. Thanks to the man upstairs for placing the wind mostly at our back. He is an Optomitrist at Ellsworth AFB and had an awesome adventure in Nicaragua recently...COOL stuff.



I took a ton of pics along the way and video to capture our experience along the way. We came across an area with 100+ buffalo and had the Odell Family help by driving in front and "blocking" us from the wild beasts!



We made it by without incident and didn't try to pet them---I don't think that would be pretty.


My AWESOME wife, GI Joni (Jonette), ran and biked with us, and was a champ against that wind- She is gearing up for first IRONMAN!!! Holy cow- Great training.


Bill & Ruth Rosencranz along with daughter Mary and husband Tom Riley were a GREAT support crew!! It really helped having folks cheer us on. THANKS to you all and for such a WONDERFUL night at your ranch!! You are family now, so we will be staying in touch and having you over for supper--- Hope you are ready to come over to the Murphy Household!


My picture taking and video making slowed me down, but it was worth it. When I am all done my friend Russ Miller is going to help me edit and make a phenom video of our journey---


We will also have thousands of pictures to chronicle this wonderful experience. We may not have as many pics and videos on our posts as we go because it takes so long to download anything, but will definately have a DVD and CD produced for not only a historical account, but also for entertainment & informational purposes...



Stay tuned and THANKS for YOUR POSTS on our guestbook. Keep em' coming---it really helps us get through these long days. We read every word you place on our website.



Take care,


"The Journey...is definately the REWARD"



Brendan~