I would surmise that, heading out of Missoula, MT having logged close to 3000 miles and achieving the following stats pretty much makes my nephew David Shirley a celebrity- I say my nephew because many of you (Fish, others) have asked who the heck this David person is!

Yesterday David recorded these stats at his blog found at icycleagainstnegligence:

Helena, MT to Missoula, MT
142.73 miles
9:05.56 hrs
43.6 max
15.6 avg

At minimum, David is hero to more readers than Tom Rubenoff. (Thanks for your comment, Tom: "Holding down the century a day through the flat country. With a trailer. David is my hero.")

Dana Carvey of Wayne's World and David Lynch, director of Mulholland Drive, were born in the humble town of Missoula, Montana. The 2006 Census estimated Missoula's population at around 67,000 people of whom 93% were white, 91% were high school graduates, and the median household income was a bit over $30,000.

The entire state population was estimated to be under a million, scattered across a land mass of 145,552 square miles-- that's 6.2 people per mile, mostly concentrated in Missoula, Billings and Great Falls with a few in Helena, Bozeman and other mini-population centers.

It's a place where strange people find refuge. Proud resident Brad Tyer reports, "Unabomber Ted Kaczynski assembled his pipe bombs and manifestos from the comfort of his shack in Lincoln, otherwise best-known as the home of Hi-Country Jerky. And yes, Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant in the Paradise Valley made Montana its home base for the long, slow slog into End Times. And yes, militant members of something called Project 7 are soon to go on trial for allegedly plotting to kill county cops."

He also warns, "If Montana were to secede from the union to become its own sovereign nation (and don't push us, man, we'll do it), we would instantly become the world's fourth-largest (known) nuclear power. Innocuous white concrete bunkers sprouted in fields and valleys across 23,000 acres of central Montana contain some 200 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads and watched over by 55 "missileers" of the Air Force's 341st Space Wing. Don't mess with Texas? We've got three words for the Lone Star State: Bring. It. On."

Truth be told, David, eventually you are going to have to explain exactly why you chose to call yourself, I Cycle Against Negligence. I have asked you several times, but no response is forthcoming.

It worries me that you spent last night in the city that raised Dana Carvey. Reminds of the Gerald Ford's funeral in 2007. George H. W. Bush, remembering how Ford took comedian Chevy Chase's jabs so well, explained that Ford had taught him how to laugh at himself, even as the subject of public ridicule.

"I'd tell you more about that," Bush continued, "but as Dana Carvey would say, (imitating Carvey imitating him) 'Not gonna do it! Wouldn't be prudent!'"