With snark, Jason says, “Aw, you’re leaving before our president gets here!” Say what?! I have to stop myself from hugging him.

*Yeah, made ya look.

From the second I hop off Whitey and onto the 4-wheel ATV, I become the purest version of myself. Any and all sticks up my butt are dislodged.

Wind crashes my mood. Doesn’t matter if I start the day as Mister Pollyanna, the lamely-handled loner superhero with an infinite quarry of positive attitude as his superpower!

Never been to Montana. When I was a kid, it was my ‘favorite’ state. For a while. I was a rather capricious child.

“Hello, butte-iful!” I am giddy. “I’m in fucking North Dakota!” How crazy is this?

Refreshed! Enlivened! Abloom with openness and curiosity! Dying to move on! That’s how three nights at the Econo Lodge and two 8-hour days toiling away at the Rawlins Municipal Library in Pierre, S-Dak affect you.

No more rabbit-hole pop-philosophizing – let’s get down to the (wet) business of riding in the not-exactly-raining rain!

I have a cursory late-20th-century public-school skim-over knowledge of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Pretty much Schoolhouse Rock’s “Elbow Room.”