I'm at the public library in Red Lodge, MT. Once again, the weather for the last two days has been great. I've been told, however, that the first snow of the season is supposed to hit the Beartooth Summit tomorrow so it looks like I made it over the mountains none too soon. Got pretty cold Monday night in West Yellowstone and, the next morning, the bike wouldn't start. Had to break my trusty jump charger out of the sidecar to get the bike started. This happened to me last summer in the cold weather and it looks like the problem is still there. The battery's new. My guess is the voltage regulator. It was showing a .5V voltage bleed when I checked it before I left. As a precaution, I unplugged the regulator from the stator last night. Spent the night at the Top of the World Campground at 8600 feet in the Beartooth Mountains. Got pretty cold last night up there, as well. This morning, however, the bike started right up lending further credence to the voltage regulator being the problem. The ignition cutting out randomly is also still happening. Of course, it decided to let me know that while I was ascending Beartooth Summit today which is over 11,000 feet. No place to pull over and no built up head of steam to restart the bike made things a little dicy. But, as usual, it did restart and I made it to Red Lodge without too much more trouble. For those that have not ridden the Beartooth before, besides being beautiful, the climb out of Red Lodge is like no other I know. You climb about one mile in elevation in about 5.5 miles of road. For me, today, it was a descent, not an ascent which, with a sidecar, is much more difficult than going uphill. The views, however, are spectacular. Things are a lot drier this late in the season but the fall colors are already starting to show in places which is a nice change of pace. Rode past an aspen grove yesterday that, it seemed, had adopted the red, yellow and orange color scheme of my bike just as a way of saying hi. Surprisingly, I've run into more Gilroy owners already than I usually do on one of my rides. Ran into an 02 Spirit owner from Pocatello in West Yellowstone while getting gas. Then, just now, while I was sitting in the parking lot of the Harley boutique waiting for the library to open, a guy comes up to me and says that he owns a 99 Chief. Says it used to be Peter Fonda's before Fonda got his Scout. He's out of Billings, MT which I will be going through tomorrow. I'm going to give him a call when I hit town and have lunch with him. Hopefully, he'll bring the Chief.

That's about it for now. Today's laundry day and the Squaw Magnet will probably get a hosing as well. Tomorrow, I head off across Montana on my way to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. Talk to you later.