Hoosier Pass, 11,539 Feet - fuck yeah!

Day 45-46: Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado

When I planned for my early flight home from Pueblo, I had overestimated the time it would take to reach Pueblo. From Hot Sulphur Springs, I was at most three days away. I still had the trip's highest pass to climb - Hoosier Pass, at 11,542 feet - but from there it would be almost all downhill to Pueblo. I decided to spend the weekend soaking. My Friday night hotel room was unavailable on Saturday night, but available on Sunday night; I would spend the intervening night camping in the town's free park, set against the Colorado River.

According to town history, the Ute Indians used to enjoy the hot springs here before the inevitable white settlers took over, and now a private resort rests on the porous hill where the springs bubble up. The resort features an amusing hodgepodge of pools nestled into the hill's cracks and crevices, two dozen of them in different sizes, styles and materials, all connected by twisting catwalks. There were perhaps a hundred other guests while I was there, including families with children. Apparently the springs are a regional favorite. I also counted numerous international visitors, including quite a number of Russians, as well as a few asians.

My plan was to soak and read. I'd finished A Confederacy of Dunces. Apart from the library, closed, the only source of books in town was a small shelf of used books at the local gas station. I came away with a beaten copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'd never read, and I'm now in love with Harper Lee. My mental image of her is a picture of Catherine Keener, who played her in Capote. I was already in love with Catherine Keener; now I'm doubly in love with Harper Lee.

After a day of soaking, I was not even disturbed by the hourly freight trains that run along the gully between the resort and the city park, thirty yards from where I was camping. The same gully is used by recreational ATV drivers, so the trains slow down and frequently blast their horns in warning.

I crawled out of my tent on Saturday morning and went hunting for breakfast. Along the way, I met another pair of cyclists, following the TransAm from east to west, who had also camped in the park.

I was poking around town after breakfast when my chain broke again. This time, I was relaxed and ready for it. I pulled my bike into the shady parking lot of the hotel I was coming back to. I felt I had absorbed enough from the previous incidents to handle it at least semi-competently. Each time my bike breaks, I learned something about how to repair it. Last year, spokes, this year, chain. At this rate, I'll be a competent mechanic in just a few years.

By this time, my hotel room was ready. I checked in, cleaned up, bought a new used book (a Tony Hillerman potboiler), and went for another day's soak. In the afternoon, it rained. The clouds were breaking up when I left the resort. The olfactory effect of the new moisture was dramatic: the water hungry prairie grasses and wild flowers all released their scents, filling the town with an odor like sweet bees wax. I walked through the back streets of town, inhaling deeply. The other effect of the rain was a full, luscious rainbow. Most rainbows that I have seen fade away before they reach the ground. But, because of the stony mountains behind the rainbow, this one appeared to be firmly anchored to the ground.

Day 44: Walden to Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado

Wind again, leaving Walden, but the roads were the flattest I had seen in some time. Twenty miles passed, then thirty, and in the space of a few miles, I was back in the mountains. My spirits rose dramatically. At last I was free of the unchanging windy plains. New surprises lay around every bend, rewarding exploration.

Mountains!

The mountain road took me up and over Willow Creek Pass, elevation 9,683 feet, where I crossed the Continental Divide. For the eighth time? The ninth? It was a surprisingly easy climb.

What, again?

I had ahead of me thirty miles of downhill, less a mile here and there. The road followed Willow Creek. Most of the creeks I'd passed on the plains were questionably brown. I stopped to swim for the first time in weeks.

Willow Creek

The road skirted the town of Granby, built on the grassy hills above a wildlife refuge / hydroelectric dam.

Wildlife viewing area / hydroelectric dam

Almost before I knew it, I was in the village of Hot Sulphur Springs. I assumed from the name that there were in fact bathable springs here, but hadn't confirmed it. If there were, I was going to take a day off to soak. I learned from the locals that yes, there was a resort here, it had multiple tubs, and day passes could be had. All I needed to know. It was a Friday night on a holiday weekend in a resort town; once again, I lucked into a hotel room.

Hot Sulphur Springs

Day 43: Riverside to Walden, Colorado

The day dawned, miraculously, without wind. I saw Peter and the kiwi couple again. I had just finished breakfast at the local cafe when they arrived. Peter and I compared notes for the day ahead. I was going a short 48 miles to Walden; Peter was aiming to make it 110 to miles to the town beyond that. I had begun to hate him.

I made an easy ten miles, expecting at any time to see Peter at my back. He had to pass me, and I only prayed that he wouldn't catch me walking up a hill. It was during a two mile climb that I first saw the black speck in my rear view mirror: my nemesis. All I wanted was to reach the top of this hill before he caught up with me. I was spurred to a 50% increase in my climbing speed, from 4mph to a whopping 6mph. I fought to maintain speed as the black speck grew.

Peter and I reached the top together, where a new valley spread out below us. "I don't know if you saw me stop back there," he said. "That was the A Bar A Ranch. A lot of celebrities go there. Jimmy Fallon was up yesterday. Those're some good granny gears you've got. Looks pretty comfortable. I met a couple of guys touring on recumbents. One of them fell asleep in his seat, went off the road. He banged himself up." I vaguely shared story about once almost falling asleep on a bike after overworking. He politely waited for me to finish, said "I'm going to ride ahead. See you on the trail."

I rode my brakes as I watched him slide away. I used to speed down hills for the fun of it, but now they were my best chance to rest.

I crossed into Colorado two hours later, and took a break in the only shade available: the shadow cast by the "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" sign.

From where I was sitting, it didn't look appreciably different from Wyoming, though mountains loomed in the distance. After a week of windy plateaus, I actually looked forward to returning to the mountains.

Still no end in sight

I reached Walden early, at around 4pm, and found that every hotel room in town was taken by members of a 70-man seismology crew that was part of an oil survey. Camping in the town's public park was legal - and apparently even encouraged, as the town had the notion that campers helped chase away hoodlums - but not my first choice. I availed myself of Walden's surprisingly good community pool to shower and swim laps for a half hour. At least I was clean and cool.

I found one more motel, asked if a room was available and got a maybe, pending word from the seismology coordinator about a group of four in the field who hadn't yet shown up, and wouldn't I check back in an hour? I cruised Walden for dinner, checked back, and lucked into Walden's last room. I celebrated with a pint of Ben & Jerry's and a load of laundry at the local laundromat.

Day 42: Rawlins to Riverside, Wyoming

Sinclair

A few miles east of Rawlins lies the town of Sinclair, which leaves no mystery to its industry. "Sinclair" is Sinclair Oil's Wyoming refinery. This explained the numerous trucks loaded with metal pipe that had passed me previously.

Endless

Today, continuous 40mph winds. The first 20 miles in my favor (woo!), the remaining 40 miles a grind of sidewinds and headwinds. A day with heavy wind is like two without, sucking all my energy and leaving me wrung out at the end of the day, without even my usual 7pm endorphin rush.

At day's end I reached Riverside / Encampment, an historic copper mining area, and checked in to the EZ RV Park. Though I was too tired for company, I fell in with a group of assorted travelers that included: Peter, a bicyclist from Georgia on the TransAmerican route; a young couple from New Zealand on an extended world tour, traveling America by car; and an older couple from Australia, also on bicycles. The others had all been there at least a day and spent an evening drinking together, and it quickly became clear that Peter had commanded center stage, completely dominating the conversation.

Over dinner, Peter brought out a laptop to show his travel photos. I laughed when it appeared, and pointed out that it weighed twice as much as my tent, to which he defensively replied, "I travel light. I'm doing 80 to 100 miles a day." He pushed the laptop at each person in turn to make sure we saw his photos. Perhaps I saw something of myself in him, or perhaps I resented him for showing the energy and enthusiasm I felt I had lost, or perhaps he really was the self-aggrandizing jerk I imagined him to be, but regardless, there wasn't enough room in the conversation for both of us, which was a shame, because I was much more interested in the kiwi couple, who'd been traveling the world for six years(!).

In the moments when Peter was hunting for certain photos, I quietly asked the kiwis about their lives, and learned that after college, they'd lived in and traveled out of the UK for most of 6 years, taking menial jobs to support further travel. Peter would wait politely for other speakers to finish sentences, before resuming with his own narrative. As the others began ordering drinks, I regretfully begged off and turned in for the night.

Day 41: Rawlins, Wyoming

In between meals and reading from a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces that I bought in Lander, I watched television, that gateway drug to heroin and religion. I fear for what I may become.

Day 40: Jeffrey City to Rawlins, Wyoming

I stopped for breakfast at Jeffrey City's single cafe, where several tired looking older women seemed surprised to see me. I learned from my waitress / cook that Jeffrey City had once been a uranium mining community of 5,000 people. The mines tapped out, and the community blew away, leaving only a husk of a town. New surveys were being conducted, and with new mining techniques developed in the last half century, it was estimated that new mines might support a work force of perhaps 500 people.

Back on the road, I faced another day of heavy winds and endless plateaus. Rocky outcrops rose in the distance as the composition of the land began to change.


Watch for Graboids, it's Tremors country

By late morning, I reached Split Rock, a significant landmark along the Oregon Trail. A small "interpretive center" was nestled against the rocks, and from the plaques sprouting there I learned several interesting fifth grade facts, notably: the legendary Pony Express only operated for 18 months before it was replaced by telegraph lines, costing its investors a million dollars; many Mormons followed the Oregon Trail seeking to escape persecution, which was news to me because I'd thought Mormonism originated in Utah.



The rest of the day turned into another mind and body numbing slog. A few miles from Split Rock, I reached a turnoff onto another road at right angles, putting me solidly against the wind for 45 grueling miles.



The only service in those 45 miles was a cafe called Grandma's. I arrived there, heated and exhausted, ready for lunch and a nap, and found it locked up. Through one broken window I could see an wall on the other side that opened to daylight. I walked behind the building, where sprawled a junkyard full of vehicles and cast-off industrial equipment that I assumed must be left over from the defunct uranium mines. The open wall I had seen was the bay door of a filthy garage bay that adjoined the cafe. I found my way into the empty cafe, used the restroom, and filled my water bottles with ice. Afterwards, I wheeled my bike into the junk yard and had lunch and a nap in the shade of a half container. Between this and last night's empty motel, I was starting to wonder if I had left the land of the living.



The day dragged on, wearing me down, setting me back to swearing at the wind and hills, leaving me with only my angry perseverance to keep me moving forward. I climbed six miles from one plateau to another, crossing the Continental Divide yet again, and reached Rawlins at the end of a 12 hour day.



The road forked into Rawlins; one branch leading left to the interstate services; the other, right, into town. My route took me into town. I stopped at the first hotel I found, the Jade Lounge, run by an Indian family. Chatting with the mother, I learned quite a bit. They'd lived in California for 18 years and just moved bought the motel here a year ago. Winters were hard with lots of snow. The road just beyond the motel was under construction while they widened it, and they were losing money due to the construction.



I had decided to take the following day off to recover from fighting the winds. I parked my bike in my room, ate dinner at a Thai restaurant, and then went for a walk in the dark through the sealed off road construction. Walking down the dirt road construction zone in the dark, with neon signs in the distance, I was reminded of Burning Man, currently going on, and found myself missing it. I went back to my room and stayed up late watching cartoons and comedy shows.

Day 39: Lander to Jeffrey City, Wyoming

Between Lander and Rawlins lay two days and 130 miles of vast, windswept prairie with few stops and minimal services. I stocked up on supplies before leaving Lander, but as per my usual MO, I drew out my break until noon; and suffered through the worst heat of the day to make up for the late start.



After several hours of fighting the wind, my legs gave out. I looked for a shady resting place, and found a dry creek bed lined with trees, but it was so full of red ants that I didn't dare stop moving. Instead I leaned my bike against a fence post and crouched in its meager shade. Normally I would've napped after eating, but the elements were inescapable, and I returned to the road with a heavy belly.



I walked for several miles. I was put in the mind of old westerns in which riders sometimes walked alongside their horses, and imagined Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach chasing each other across these sere plains.


Sometimes the bike and I need some time apart

Though the immense vistas were inspirational, the grinding wind and heat blunted me of all my smart-aleck comments, whimsical notions, and fond reminiscence, left me with nothing but the drudgery of pedaling. And so, please enjoy this series of images without comment...











The midway point between Lander and Rawlins is tiny Jeffrey City, population 106. I was determined to reach it by sundown, and I arrived there just as the last pinpoint of sun dipped below the horizon in my rear view mirror.



There is a motel in Jeffrey City. I'd been warned, by my map, and by a woman in Lander, that it might be unattended. Sure enough, I found the office door locked, with a plastic bag pinned to it that contained a faded old note instructing would-be guests to call the local bar to check in.



The bar phone was answered by a guy named Tony. I told him I was outside the hotel office and wanted a room. Tony said, "Isn't he there? He should be there," never indicating who "he" was, but giving me "his" phone number.



I tried the new number, and let it ring. While it rang, I tried motel room doors. All of them were unlocked, and every room empty. The first four rooms I tried were trashed, filled with mattresses and water heaters and lengths of pipe, and I wondered if the motel was out of business after all. The phone continued to ring. I hung up and continued my examination. The remaining rooms were all vaguely acceptable.



I hung around in the lot, kicked the dirt, watched the sunset clouds. After waiting for a half hour, I took the room furthest from the road and office. If anyone arrived, I wanted to see before being seen. I showered off all the road grime, ate dinner out of my supply bag, and settled in for the night, trying to ignore the fairy tale quality of my circumstances. In the morning I made my room up as if no one had been there and slipped out like a wraith.

Sunday is the new Monday

I holed up for a couple of days in Lander, Wyoming, while I put my bike in the shop for repairs to the chain, front derailleur, and seat. Next stop, Rawlins, Wyoming.

While killing time in Lander, I came to decisions: I'm going to stop in Pueblo, Colorado. It's the half way point in miles, but its two thirds of the work. Perhaps next year I'll resume from there to finish the trip.

I made a flight reservation for September 10th, so I will be home in time for Mary's birthday. I expect to reach Pueblo by the weekend of the 6th, giving me ample time to pack up and ship my gear.

Meanwhile, here's the last week of back posts.

Day 31-33: Colter Bay Village
Day 34: Colter Bay to Togwotee, Wyoming
Day 35: Togwotee to Dubois, Wyoming
Day 36: Dubois to Lander, Wyoming
Day 37-38: Lander, Wyoming

Day 37-38: Lander, Wyoming

I enjoy figuring out what makes towns tick, asking what's the keystone business here? Most times it's easy. Apple processing. Feed and grain. Cattle. Tourism.

I arrived in Lander in the early evening and was almost immediately struck by certain qualities that I have found to be uncommon in small rural towns. Bookstores, retail health care including optometry and hearing, a family care center, a job retraining center, a children's museum, an arts center, children riding bicycles to the supermarket with canvas shopping bags, boutique art shops, artistic tiles by each sewer drain informing people to be mindful because this sewers drain to the Popo Agie river... In short, Lander is a progressive liberal town in the heart of rural Wyoming. I couldn't see an immediate explanation for it.

In size, Lander is equivalent to Dillon, Montana; but Dillon is little more than a stop on the I5 interstate, offering services to partway travelers. Lander appears to be far more prosperous than Dillon. In quality, Lander more closely resembles Tonasket, Washington; a town where the primary industry appears to be processing apples from the orchards of eastern Washington. Lander and Tonasket have in common a low frequency of franchise businesses. Both towns seems still to own their souls.

In the morning, I stopped for breakfast at the Cooking Crow. It was a weekday, and the place was empty but for a dour waitress who served me with a grim sort of humor. I remarked to her that Lander seemed like a very progressive, liberal town, hoping to spark a bit of conversation. Her response: "Unfortunately." And, "It's those damned NOLS people." I was discouraged from digging deeper.

I dropped my bike off at Freewheel Sports, and explained my situation to Don, the kid behind the counter. Mary had called ahead, and they hadn't received my package of parts, but they were expecting me. I left my bike and Don agreed to call when the parts arrived.

Later, I followed my tingling indie coffeeshop sense to a place called Folklore, where I settled in with coffee and wifi. Toward the end of the day I was approached by the barista, who was curious about my Asus Eee PC. He turned out to be one of the owners, along with his wife. Shane and Jess had been here less than a year, having moved here from Fargo, North Dakota. They seemed like a hippy dippy couple, so I asked him the same question: what's up with this place? It was NOLS, he explained.

NOLS is the National Outdoor Leadership School, with, at its core, a 27-day wilderness training program. Shane described NOLS in intelligent, glowing terms, definitely not to be confused with Outward Bound, as an organization that taught people a broader sense of humanity. NOLS' mission sounded thematically similar to the Brian Utting Massage School that I attended: to bring out the inner adult by teaching a deeper sense of humanity.

It seems that NOLS is well entrenched in the local community, and bicycling around the neighborhood later, I passed a number of their buildings. In terms of real estate, they seem to be on a par with local government. Shane explained that NOLS has long butted heads with the more conservative cattle ranchers who otherwise influence this area. Perhaps the conflict is a good thing, creating checks and balances, though I would point out to the cattlemen, if I could, that Lander is certainly more prosperous than many other towns of its size and consistency that I have seen.

Speaking of bicycles, I got a call from Grant, the owner at Freewheel, letting me know that my package had arrived. I went to meet him and reiterate my situation if necessary; but he seemed to have a clear idea of what he was doing. He was startlingly young. Later, I would learn that he was only 19, had worked at the shop for six years, and taken it over from the prior only in the last year. A lot of young area guys, he said, bought $50,000 trucks and $10,000 welding tools, and then foud themselves in debt with no work. The bike shop was his $50,000 truck, and his dream was paying for itself. After a day of working on my bike he charged me a preposterously low $27. I gave him $50 and still felt like I was cheating him.

Day 36: Dubois to Lander, Wyoming

In case I hadn't mentioned, the cities of Dubois and Lander reside in the aptly named Wind River Valley, where the steady Wyoming wind scores clean the desert underbrush.



I set out from Dubois with a strong tailwind that only varied as the road curved left or right, carrying me easily through miles of desert. It was forty miles in that the road diverged from the valley, climbing up out of the bowl of it to the grassy plains above, and that's when I learned to sail.



My path turned perpendicular to the wind for fifteen miles, and I was intermittently buffeted by strong sidewinds that grabbed my fairing and yanked me across the road. At first I held the wheel rigidly, struggling to tack into the wind and keep to the shoulder. I had often imagined mounting a sail on a bicycle at Burning Man; I quickly learned that my fairing was more than enough sail. Eventually I learned to relax, loosen my grip on the steering, and lean into the wind, with one foot hung down like an outrigger for stability.


What a crosswind looks like

Contemplating the wind, I wished for an organ that would let me see it, as I imagined that its currents must be beautiful and terrible. As a city boy with no experience in activities that are influenced by wind, I've never had to think much about it; never considered it as a constant, or as part of a lifestyle. But the longer I cycle, the more it impresses upon me its utter influence. It always makes its presence known, even in its absence. I understand why cultures that were dependent on it ascribed it faces of godhood, because it is so powerful, yet so capriciously arbitrary.



As the road led up out of one bowl and into the valley above, so it eventually crossed over to another bowl, there to sink below sunset colored cliffs and rejoin the wind's path.



I rode through the Shoshone reservation and was dismayed by the amount of obesity there: 3 or 4 out of 5, more among the women than the men. Bad diet and diabetes are among the enduring legacies that our nation has left the Indians, and while some tribes, such as the Kalispel, are dealing with it smartly, with PSAs and community health centers, others are not, and clearly the Shoshone are among the nots.

While I was stopped at the Shoshone reservation, a man in the passenger seat of a mini-van gestured me over to ask about my bike. After a couple of slurry questions, he asked, "Can I have it?" This is a question that's been asked of me by homeless drunken Indians in Seattle, as well as a few pubescent street punks. I frowned for a moment, wondering if this was some cultural expression that I didn't understand, something more than the simple minded question that it sounds like, before answering "No, you can't have it." He seemed unfazed, and I moved on.

It had been a long day, and I counted each of the remaining 20 miles from the reservation to Lander. I arrived in the early evening, with 75 miles behind me, and looked for the bike shop where Mary had agreed to ship my parts. I found it - closed, of course. I checked in to the Downtown Motel, which had caught my eye because its lot was bursting with flowering potted plants, which gave it a cozy look, a look that said someone cared, even if it was in all other ways unremarkable.

Alive in: Dubois, Wyoming

Laundromat in Dubois

This seems to be the week for bike parts wearing out. First my chain snapped and my front derailleur was bent. Today, my seat broke. The seat is attached by two bolts to a cuff that circles the post. One of the bolts sheared off, leaving the head of the bolt inside the collar, where I can't remove it. I think I heard / felt a snap when it happened, and thought I'd lost something, but couldn't see anything wrong. It wasn't until I stopped for a break, and the whole rear end of the bike pivoted backwards, that I saw what was wrong. The second bolt was still attached, but the seat had come loose from it. I was at least able to reattach that, and I will hobble along on one screw tomorrow while Mary has a replacement part delivered to the next town ahead.

Meanwhile, I made it over Togwotee Pass, and rarely have I seen such a dramatic change of landscape in such a short distance. From the west side of the pass to the east, I've watched the world change from dense forest to mountain lakes and meadows to rocky peaks to dry valley to painted desert.

Day 35: Togwotee to Dubois, Wyoming

In the morning, I caught another pilot car up through the next mile of road construction. I found that construction continued on and off further up the pass. I rode past tall cranes drilling blast holes and stockpiles of corrugated steel drainage pipes. Several miles up, I reached another pilot car zone.


Installing more internet

I'd just missed a column of cars. I walked to the head of the line, where a woman in reflective gear and hardhat waved me over. With time to kill, we struck up a conversation.



I learned that she'd owned a construction and cleaning businesses and rental properties, and was only doing road work three days a week so she could spend time with her kids, aged 22, 13, and 9. I was impressed by her industry and also her age, as I wouldn't have put her at much over 30, and I said as much. In reply, she extolled the virtues of a quarter cup of formaldehyde every day.



My next ride took me straight to the top of the pass, depositing me in a pretty mountain valley. In all, I'd only had to ride about half of Togwotee. Just the other side of the pass was Windy River Lake, where I stopped for an early break.



The eastern side of Togwotee is a long, gentle thirty mile slope, tearing through outfits faster than any quick change artist, from high mountain valleys and lakes, to craggy peaks, to scrub brush, to painted desert, and on down to the town of Dubois, which rests along the Wind River on the edge of desert.

Thirty miles...

I encountered more road work on the outskirts of Dubois, as I rode through almost a mile of freshly laid tar, which coated my wheels, first with tar, and then with a fine layer of micro-gravel, which became embedded in my treads. It was along this patch that two things happened simultaneously: 1) I felt a springy metallic crack, and 2) I heard a hardhat that I'd just passed yell, "Hey!" I stopped to look back, first wondering if I'd lost something, and then wondering if the hardhat wanted me off the road. Perhaps I should've waited for a pilot car? But no, he yelled again, "You're ok! Go on!", and I couldn't see any parts missing, so I continued into Dubois.



I stopped for a late lunch at a park in Dubois. While walking my bike through the park, my seat folded up and back, opening like the hungry mouth of PacMan. I caught it and wrestled it forward again, and quickly discovered the problem. Of the two bolts that hold the seat to the mount which wraps the post, one was unscrewed, and the other had been sheared off, leaving its broken head in the channel. So now, in addition to missing chain links and a bent derailleur, I had a broken seat. Chains and derailleurs can be found, but the recumbent's seat mount is a specialized item. It was time to call for help.

I called Mary and asked her to make a trip to Angle Lake Cyclery for parts. It was too late in the day for overnight delivery, so she would have to ship them the next day. There were no bike shops in Dubois, but there was one in Lander, 75 miles down the road. I believed that all my broken parts would last for one more day. Meanwhile, I hunkered down for the night in Dubois. With virtually no services between Dubois and Lander, I would have to make the 75 miles in one big gulp. I found a KOA with reasonably priced cabins, showers, and a monkey hut covered swimming pool, and swam a few laps before dinner and bed.

Day 34: Colter Bay to Togwotee, Wyoming

The Grand Tetons

After a large breakfast, I left Colter Bay Village feeling full, but relaxed. Looming ahead of me was Togwotee Pass, a 9,600 foot pass, the biggest bastard I had yet faced, and the second highest on the entire route.



The first miles passed quickly as I retraced part of the route that I'd ridden with Vernon and Andrew, before veering east away from Jackson Hole. The Tetons shrank behind me, paradoxically offering a better sense of scale as they receded into distance. It was 17 miles before I began climbing, though the climb wasn't as steep as I'd feared. The weather was hot, but bearable. I took it a mile or two at a time as the Teton National Forest spread wide and dense below me like a pine carpet.



During one break I took a seat on an old pine root that raised like a bent knee, and soon found myself covered with ants and termites. When I leapt up to brush myself down, I found that I was also covered, butt and feet, with sticky pine sap. I turned back to the safety of the road, but my left cleat was so gummed with sap that I couldn't clip in to the pedal. While I was picking sap out of my shoe, the golden late afternoon sunlight revealed clouds of termites blowing with the breeze. I fled up the mountainside as the termites were joined by vicious black flies, and rode through two miles of dense insect fields before they began to thin in the cooler evening altitude.



It was just a few miles up that I encountered heavy road construction. I'd been warned about this by the four cyclists who helped patch my broken chain. The road up Togwotee was being entirely replaced, and bicycles were being shuttled through construction zones in the pickup beds of pilot cars. A car was leaving just as I arrived. I gratefully heaved my bike up into the truck bed and climbed in alongside it, then rode at the head of a long column of vehicles being led through seven miles of earthworks and heavy equipment.



It was 6pm when we reached the far end. We'd passed, a mile back, the lodge where I'd figured on overnighting. I asked the driver what to expect up ahead: 12 miles more to the top of the pass, and "they're going to be blasting tonight". It sounded like a recipe for a bad ride, and I wasn't in the mood to punish myself. The driver agreed to drop me off a mile back.


The view from the truck

At the Togwotee Mountain Lodge, I hissed air through my teeth when I was quoted $179 for a room. While I knew exactly what I was getting into at Old Faithful, I was caught by surprise here. I should have known that any hotel with the word "lodge" in its name will automatically charge twice the price. But once again, I was stuck. I asked the two young guys behind the counter if they had anything cheaper, and I was about to ask if they had any campsites, when one of them, perhaps prompted by my obvious discomfort, offered me a room for $99. It was that or 12 miles uphill with blasting. I was happy to take it. And, if hissing got me an $80 discount, I wondered if crying might have brought the rate still lower. I resolved to try it in the future.

Alive in: Togwotee, Wyoming

I finally returned to the road after a humanizing three day weekend at Colter Bay. Besides just being worn down, I'm fairly convinced that the altitude has been affecting me. I've been between 7,000 and 8,000 feet since I entered Yellowstone, and I can feel the impact on my breath and heartrate. In any case, the time off really helped recharge my batteries. In between reading, eating, sleeping and blogging, I spent some time contemplating my schedule. I've been behind for some time, and up until recently figured I'd expand the trip as needed, but the gap keeps widening, and I've got Mary to get home to. At this point, I feel like I want to stop killing myself, and get as far as I get by the original deadline. I think I'll be happy if I make it to Pueblo, Colorado, and catch a train from there. Anyhoo, I'll keep my eyes on the calendar and see where I am in a couple of weeks.

Incidentally, the views of the Tetons behind me are much more impressive than the ones I had coming in. I came in parallel from the north, and I'm leaving perpendicular to the east; the sense of scale is clearer from twenty miles east than it was standing across Jackson Lake from them. Huge!



Today's character building challenges: insects, pine sap, and road construction. Criminy, the bugs in Grand Teton Forest are big, aggressive, and numerous! And I finally accepted a ride from someone - mandatory, really, but I was happy to have it: I reached a seven mile stretch of road construction, nothing but open earth. I'd heard about this from Keith the mechanic and friends, back at the gate to Grand Teton. I was shuttled through in the bed of a pickup truck acting as a pace car. It was 6pm by the time we reached the far end, and Tony, the driver, said it was 12 miles to the top of Togwotee Pass and that there was going to be blasting further up the road tonight, so I had him take me a mile back and drop me off at a local lodge.


I beat motorcycles!

While at Colter Bay, I finished reading one novel - Tim Dorsey's The Big Bamboo (he's like a sillier version of Carl Hiaasen) - and picked up a left behind copy of Michael Crichton's State of Fear. I knew nothing about the Crichton novel, but he's usually a reliable entertainer. As I got into it, I was wryly amused to discover that it's his global-warming-denial polemic. It's transparent and condescending and reads like a Jack Chick tract, but I'm finding it funny, given what I'm up to.

Day 31-33: Colter Bay Village

After two days of struggling to advance, I had decided to take the weekend off at Colter Bay Village. As I reached the turnoff, a profound sense of relief settled over me.

The word "village" is a bit misleading, as Colter Bay Village is not a residential center, but a recreational area with cabins, camping, a marina, horseback riding, hiking trails, and an Indian interpretive center. I'd called ahead to try to reserve a cabin with no luck, but I was sure I'd find a campsite. I stopped at the cabin rental office anyway; I desperately wanted a bed. I confirmed that no cabins were available, but I was able to rent a "tent cabin" for the following two nights. These turned out to be half-log half-canvas structures with suspended metal cots in them, sort of like mobile army barracks. I wondered if they had in fact housed troops or forest rangers. Meanwhile, I would take a campsite for the first night.


Colter Bay Marina

Since my chain was short a few links, I also pumped the office staff for information about getting to the next town, called Moose, where my map showed a bike shop. I learned that shuttles ran daily to Jackson Hole, the tourist destination beyond Moose. As I was wrapping up my interrogation, another fellow in the office who'd overheard my conversation, offered to give me a ride to Moose or Jackson Hole the following morning. Vernon MacIntyre and his 13-year old son Andrew were vacationing in the area for a week, and they had spotted me back at Old Faithful. Andrew was a competitive cyclist, so they both took a quick interest in my trip. Andrew had once broken a chain during a race, so we painbonded. In addition, Vernon's brother was at that moment near the end of an east-west transamerican tour; I suspected that helping me offered him a way to help his brother via karmic proxy. We chatted for a while, and arranged to meet back at the office at 7am the following morning.

So now I had a plan. I went to explore the village. In the village center were a laundromat / shower facility and a general store. While I was investigating these, I saw a van with a rack of bicycles on top - a packaged cycling tour. I'd seen these before and was actually on the lookout for one, because I thought they might have some spare chain for me. The van was empty. I scanned the area for a likely driver. While I was waiting, a group of four took an interest in my bike. We exchanged a few words, and then I resumed my hunt for the van owners. This is, of course, when the van pulled away, driven by the people I'd just spoken to.

I raced after the van, losing it as it disappeared into the cabin district of the village. I traced it to the tent cabin area, where I found the van's passengers preparing for dinner with a larger group of people. I apologized for following them, and asked if they might be carrying any spare bits of chain. I was directed to a young man who was helping to prepare dinner, whom I took for a member of the crew running the tour. When I explained my problem, he gave me a funny look and said, "I ride a recumbent too." He climbed into the van, rooted through some gear, and came back with a short bit of chain. He compared it against my chain, and finding them compatible, offered me the links. I was very grateful, and we talked shop for a bit before he returned to his mess duties.

So now I had a plan and a bit of chain. I wasn't sure I still needed to visit the bike shop the next day, but I decided to leave the option open. I did still need to find a camp site, so I rode to the campground, which was half a mile removed from the cabin area. At the campground registration, I was greeted by a ranger, a young woman, who asked me, "Did your girlfriend find you?" She became very embarrassed when I told her I was traveling alone. Apparently another pair of bicyclists were also camping there. I checked in and rode to the the hiker/biker ghetto, where, naturally, I met that couple.

They were Kevin and Alanna, a hippyish young couple, she with blond pigtails, he with a long brown hillbilly beard. They were riding the national parks mountain bike trail, which coincided here with the transamerica bike trail. They were each pulling a BOB - a third wheel trailer - and we quickly got to comparing experiences and inquiring about each other's rigs. I was eager for a shower and needed to set up camp first, so after a time I politely disengaged.

There were no campground showers - only the main shower facility back at village center, a half mile away. By the time I reached it, I'd already been at Colter Bay for hours, without a moment's break. The gymnasium-like men's showers were set up in two rows, each with a little curtained foyer. I dug in my toiletry bag for the bottle of liquid soap that was so convenient, yet so unsatisfying because I prefer the solid heft of a fat bar of soap. Since Mary'd left, I'd been carrying an unopened bar of Dr. Bronner's soap that I hadn't used for fear of creating a soapy mess in my toiletry bag. Digging past it now, I realized I must use it or lose it. I considered the long day and the broken chain, weighed it against each small comfort. And that shower was the best shower ever, because I had a real bar of soap.

After showering, I washed laundry. Kevin and Alanna had the same idea, and we passed the time together enjoying the comfort of domestic routine. I shared the cherry tomatoes I'd bought with Alanna, while Kevin drank from a tall can of Budweiser. I marveled at the amount of clothing they carried; measured in volume, the two of them had easily four times more clothes than I. Afterwards we all made a stop at the general store, and then rode through the dark to our camp sites. Though I was exhausted, I set my alarm for 6am in order to make my 7am appointment with Vernon and Andrew.

Morning came too soon, and I crawled slowly to wakefulness. I left my tent and gear at the camp site, and biked back to the cabin office. Vernon and Andrew arrived shortly after, in a rented white four-door Chevy. Vernon had taken the time to look for bike shops in Jackson Hole, and found four of them. Their only plan was to have breakfast and poke around Jackson Hole for a couple of hours. We'd be there before any bike shops were likely to open, so I was welcome to join them for breakfast.

Vernon and Andrew engaged in a quiet, constant stream of chatter that did not require my participation, for which I was just as glad. It was my first time in a car in the month since I'd left home. I was severed from the elements, my view was obstructed, and the world passed unnaturally quickly. I watched the Grand Tetons scroll past as if projected on a movie screen, while the conversation in the front of the car ranged from skiing to local geology to cell phones to sidearms, from which I gleaned that Vernon had once been a cop.


The only photo I got of Vernon and Andrew

We parked in downtown Jackson Hole, passing signs for a Scottish Festival and a farmer's market, and hunted down Jedidiah's Original House of Sourdough, a supposedly legendary flapjack mecca set in a squat, century old cabin. We found it suitably crowded, and in fact, a line ran out the door from the time we arrived until the time we left Jackson Hole, three hours later. The newsprint menus reproduced century old newspaper articles that outlined the founding of Jackson Hole; faded sepia photos and rusted bits of mountaineering gear decorated the walls.



After breakfast, Vernon and I arranged to meet back at the car in two hours. I checked a town business map for bike shop listings, and found Fitzgerald's Cycles a short walk away. On the way through Town Square, I heard a band of kilted bagpipers playing pied piper to the Scottish Festival.


Six pipers piping

The clerks at Fitzgerald's were still opening shop when I wandered in unawares. I hadn't examined my chain or front derailleur carefully - I just knew I wanted options. I'd broken at least three links, and I couldn't vouch for the integrity of the remaining chain. Either I needed a few links (which I'd already obtained), or I needed a full replacement, which means two and a half standard lengths. I bought the replacement chain along with some spare master links. Later, I would wish I had left the chain and bought a new front derailleur, when I figured out that mine was not just mispositioned, but bent.


Fitzgerald's Bicycles

I was left with an hour to kill in Jackson Hole. I wandered through expensive boutique art shops, admired the green slopes bordering the town, bought a cookie at the farmer's market, shopped for a paperback, and met Vernon and Andrew back at the car at the prescribed time.



On the way back to Colter Village, Vernon wanted to stop at a fish hatchery. It wasn't a stop I would have chosen, but I found it surprisingly interesting. The main attraction was a series of cement culverts, like shallow tethered lap pools, some covered with canvas monkey huts, which were populated with thousands of fish in various stages of development. We noticed a vehicle like a fork lift covered with funnels and wide mouthed PVC tubes, and identified it as a fish vacuum.


Fish Hut

It was mid-afternoon by the time we returned to Colter Bay Village. As we pulled into the lot of the cabin rental office, Vernon received a call from his brother, who'd reached his destination in Oregon and was getting ready to catch a train home. I thanked Vernon profusely and said my goodbyes. Since I was moving from a campground to a tent-cabin, I needed to return to camp to break down my tent and collect my gear.

I did as little as possible during my remaining two and a half days at the village: resting, replacing calories, reading, blogging, and utterly failing to take advantage of the village's attractions. I almost felt guilty - while other visitors were escaping to nature, I was escaping from it. Nonetheless, I returned to the road on Day 34, well rested and ready for the miles ahead.

More Monday goodness

I've basically been vegging out at Colter Bay Village. Apart from hitching a ride to Jackson Hole and back, I've eaten, slept, read a novel cover to cover, and monopolized the public clubhouse for its wifi. Everyone else vacationing here is escaping to nature, while I'm escaping from nature, spending most of my time out of the sun. Not so many pictures to show for it, but I've caught up on a week of detailed back posts.

Day 25: Dillon, Montana
Day 26: Dillon to Virginia City, Montana
Day 27: Virginia City to West Fork, Montana
Day 28: Entering Yellowstone
Day 29: Leaving Yellowstone, Parte Un
Day 30: Leaving Yellowstone, Parte Deux

Alive in: Colter Bay Village, Grand Tetons

After a couple of particularly hard days - physical, mental, and mechanical - I've washed up at Colter Bay Village in the Grand Teton park, where I'm taking off the entire weekend to refresh body and mind while I do some necessary bike maintenance.

Day 30: Leaving Yellowstone, Parte Deux

Lewis River

I woke at the Lewis Lake campground just as cranky and achy as I'd been the day before. I set my sights on Colter Bay Village for a day off, only 28 miles more. Beyond that was a huge bastard of a pass, Togwotee Pass, elevation 9,658 feet, a 2,700 foot climb. I would make a concerted effort to reach Colter Bay early in the day, to maximize my rest time.



In my experience, there's a point in every long trip when something inside says, "I'm done." I contemplated this, considered past trips, and wondered if I had reached that point. Then, at six and a half miles, my chain snapped.

I'm not a bad mechanic due to lack of aptitude. I'm a bad mechanic due to my complete lack of interest in how things work until I need to understand how to fix them. I'd never touched a broken chain before, and this was something I'd been afraid of. I carry a multi-tool, and a second, complete set of tools. I hauled my bike off the road, dug out the heavy toolset, and got to work.

The broken link had been stretched open. The pin was still attached. I needed to reseat the male part of the link and tighten it, but I couldn't get the halves aligned with the pin in place. I needed to replace the pin with a guided pin. I had no spare pins. Or did I? I discovered that the pro chain tool had a pin stashed away inside it. The pin was a millimeter too long, but I thought it was my only option. I had one chance to get it right. I guided in the spare pin and closed the chain.

A recumbent bike uses six feet of chain, or two and a half times the length of a standard bike chain, which crosses over itself on a spindle with twin grooves. I'd threaded the chain in backwards. I had to reopen it. I had a notion of what a master link was for, and found it on my chain, but misunderstanding it, I broke it getting it open. I rethreaded the chain correctly, but now I was back at square one.

I spent two or three hours wrestling with this as traffic whizzed by behind me. At times I thought about hitching a ride, but I wasn't yet ready to submit. I thought that I should be able to open another link, carefully, leaving the pin partially placed, so that I could remove a link and stitch the two ends together. And this actually worked. I got back on the road. The concentrated mental effort had cheered me by giving me something specific to focus on, and I left in a better mood than I'd started in that morning.

Most of the next six miles was downhill, and I soon rolled past the gates of Yellowstone and into Grand Teton National Park. I began to climb a rise just beyond the gates. My chain snapped again.



I had no idea which broke: the millimeter-too-long spare pin, or the half-assed patch job. All I could do was another half-assed patch job, and I lacked the confidence to attempt it again. I decided to walk back to the ranger station I'd just passed, and beg for a ride to the next bike shop. I turned around and began walking back toward the gates of Yellowstone.

Minutes later, a cyclist caught up with me from behind. She slowed to a stop, asked if things were all right. Her name was Audra, and she was traveling with two other riders on recumbents. She was sure they must have parts for me. We waited for her companions to catch up. They appeared with a third rider. Audra told me I was in luck, because the third rider was a mechanic, whom she had thought was already ahead.

In short order I was introduced to Keith the mechanic, and two middle aged men on recumbents, whose names eluded me. While I was happy for the help, in my depressed state they seemed like a threatening hive of samaritan energy. In a moment, Keith laid down his own bike, donned a pair of stretched rubber gloves, dug in his tool kit, and came out with an assortment of chain parts. He didn't have a match, but he thought he could patch the chain - the same way I had. I was dubious after my own failure, but I trusted his greater experience. He made essentially the same repair I had made, if using a slightly different technique.



After the ad hoc repair, the quartet surrounded me and peppered me with advice for places to visit or avoid. I found the four of them overwhelming and struggled to return in kind. By the time they went on their way, I was as beaten as ever I had been. I got on my bike and discovered that somehow, in the melee of good samaritanism, my front derailleur had been mispositioned so that I no longer had access to my 2nd and 3rd gears. At that moment, I had no resources to deal with it. Using only low gears, I pedalled back up the hill, away from Yellowstone.

The chain held through the afternoon, though I was still beaten. I knew exactly how Mary felt, the day she said "enough", and I wished that there were someone to stop me, to tell me it was ok to turn back, but there was no one to stop me, no one who could stop me, not only because I was alone, but because there is no one I would listen to, because I am driven, and stopping is not an option.

I cycled past a parked car, where a couple stood on a mound of rocks, he with his cell phone held high as if trying to find a signal. I realized that they must be stuck, and almost thought to stop and offer help, which made me laugh when it occurred to me that I was the least capable person for them at that moment.

Soon after, I came to a modest resort area in the Snake River area, where I stopped at a restaurant for lunch and to feel human. By now it was late afternoon, and I hadn't eaten since 8am. I used the restroom, and disliked what I saw in the mirror. My hair was matted and disshevelled. My face was haggard, sunburned an unhealthy purple, and smeared with fingerprints of bicycle grease. I looked like an angry beet.

If conflict is the obstacle between protagonist and desire, and character is how the protagonist surmounts those obstacles, then I'd reached a primal question: "Who am I?" Would I roll over and appeal to the gods? I'm passed by 50 4-wheeled dei ex machinis per minute. Or will I stand up on hind legs and shout, "I go on!" My veggie burger and fries had no answers for me. I sipped coffee and read from a battered copy of "A Wrinkle in Time" while the restaurant staff vacuumed around me.

On the way out I stopped for snacks at a convenience store attached to the restaurant. The small store was busy with people: staff maneuvering around, children playing, adults queued at the register. The bustle was too much for me, and I imagined the raging thing inside me swirling up like a maelstrom to engulf them all, and sweep away this entire corner of the building. Instead, I contained my rage with an ice cream cone.

Beyond the snake river waited one more climb before I reached Colter Village. Just a modest 500 footer, hardly anything. I kept a slow and steady pace - all I had were low gears anyway - and progressed, revolution by revolution, to the top. Beyond the rise lay Jackson Lake, to my eyes, another inland sea, stretching far into the distance. I cried as I descended the rim of the lake toward Colter Bay Village, and the cold wind stung me with my own tears.

Day 29: Leaving Yellowstone, Parte Un

The Overlook Hotel

Despite the comfortable and pricey accommodations, I woke with the sun. Six hours of sleep after fourteen hours of travel left me feeling cranky, irritable, and headachy. I wondered if my fever had returned. I downed some painkillers and went looking for breakfast. Along the way, I peered outside, where other early risers were slowly gathering. An eruption must be due. I followed the boardwalk from the lodge in a long arc around the geyser.



I imagine that I have little to say about Old Faithful that hasn't been said many times over. It's pretty magnificent. Hundred foot high spout of boiling water, billowing clouds of steam rising to the clear blue sky, the works. Ayup. Youse should see it.

Passing back through the lodge's rear courtyard where I'd parked my bike, I almost walked face first into an enormous blue Genie cherry picker parked just a few feet from my bike. Apparently there was maintenance work to be done on the aerie, and a couple of grubby steeple jacks were brought in for the job. The cherry picker was the largest I'd ever seen, and I watched as they scoped it up four, five, six stories, to the roof of the steeple, and then halfway back down, where they lingered, inspecting the lodge exterior. I was reminded of certain friends, some of whom would have given a premium bottle of Scotch for an opportunity to pilot such a beast.



After gorging myself at the lodge's breakfast buffet, I returned to my room for another nap, still determined to get the most out of it. I still felt off, a feeling that remained with me until checkout time. According to the schedule I'd adopted, this would've been my off day, but this was no place to take off. I returned shakily to the road.

If my entry into the sulphur lands was like a good tab of ecstasy, flooding my system with tasty endorphins, then today I was feeling the unavoidable serotonin deficit, or "suicide Tuesday" as one friend calls it.


Kepler Cascade: looking straight down into the gorge

Throughout the day I was cranky and irritable. I swore beneath my breath at motorists. I grew angry at snapshot tourists: people who drive up to a scenic vista, hop out of their car long enough for a photo, and on their way; or worse still, those who don't even bother to leave their car to take the photo. Sometimes I wanted to scream at them, "GET OUT OF MY WAY! I'M AN HONORED VISITOR!" I passed seven cars parked on the roadside, partially blocking the road, so they could all photograph one lonely moose. The temperature fluctuated up and down by what felt like twenty degrees as clouds hid and revealed the sun.

At least I could get off the road. The lovely thing about traveling by bicycle is that you can step off the road wherever you like, to see things that no driver ever will. In Yellowstone, you only have to take a few steps. I took a short break by a lily pond, breathing in the quiet of the tall grass by the pond side.



Despite my crankiness, the climbing wasn't bad, to start out. I had two big climbs for the day, both up and over the twisted spine of the Continental Divide. I reached the first one easily enough, and took a quick break by the marker. This was the second time I had crossed the divide, and I was put in mind of a quote from a Bond novel. (Dr No? Goldfinger? I couldn't remember.) "The first time is happenstance. The second time is coincidence. The third time, Mr. Bond, it's enemy action." I wondered what else the divide had in store for me.

While I was lingering there, I was approached by a big fellow in a blue sweatshirt and a flame patterned dew rag. He was in shadow, and at first I took him for Indian, but as he stepped into direct light, I saw that I couldn't be further off. With his blond hair and broad features, he looked more likely to be of Scandinavian descent, in about his 50s. He was Bob, a pharmacist from West Virginia, and he used to be a bicyclist, before his knees went bad and had to be replaced. Like Frank the frozen man, he'd ridden a Bianchi (the second time someone had mentioned this brand I didn't know). He'd moved to motorcycles only a couple of years ago, and he'd just come from Sturgis, the annual Harley Davidson rally in South Dakota. He showed me his motorcycle, and the walking stick he'd picked up along the way in Snake River, Idaho. Bob seemed wistfully interested in my trip, as if he'd have loved to have done it himself, if only his knees hadn't given out. He reminisced about bicycles he'd owned. He gave me his card, and offered to put me up if I passed by his way in West Virginia.



It was about here where I'd misread my map, and thought that I'd already climbed two humps when I'd only climbed one. The second climb came as a complete surprise that set me back to swearing, and it was only stubborn anger that carried me through. I wondered if I might be suffering from altitude sickness, a thought that returned to me repeatedly over the following days.


Third time: enemy action

I continued wearily on through the park, passing wonders I had no mind for. I stopped for another break at an overlook above Shoshone lake. A minivan parked behind me and disgorged a nuclear family, who showed an interest in me. My bicycle and my trip were of frequent interest to other tourists, but my desire to talk about them was waning.


Shoshone Lake


Fire zone

At last I reached a long downhill slide toward the inland sea that is the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. It sprawled, gargantuanly, below me. On the way down I passed a series of bicyclists climbing up, spaced apart like pearls from a torn necklace, one, then three, five, eight in total. I reached the bottom, passed the villages of West Thumb and Grant Village, went on.

I stopped again at Lewis Lake, where I dipped my toes in the chilly water and pondered my next move. The south side of the park has fewer services than the west side, and opportunities were slim.


Lewis Lake

A campground waited around the south tip of Lewis Lake. I crawled in, bleary eyed, with only 30 miles to show for the day. I arrived at 6pm. By 7:30 I'd set up camp, had dinner, and crawled into my tent, where I read briefly, then slept for 12 hours.

Alive in: Yellowstone

Day 28: Entering Yellowstone

The day was still early, but I was nervous about entering the park beneath the overcast sky, afraid of being caught in another storm with no barns to hide in. I dithered for almost two hours in West Yellowstone, between grocery shopping, book browsing, and lunch. It was sprinkling when I finished lunch. The clouds were all headed east, over the park.

I rode timidly to the park gates. I stopped at a log cabin toll booth to pay the park entry fee, and asked the gate attendent if she thought the clouds would blow over. "They always blow that way," she said, pointing east into the park. A placard showed that all the park lodges were full, and most of the campgrounds as well. I asked about campground availability. The ranger told me there were always spots for hikers and bicyclists. I looked at all the vehicles lined up to enter the park, and felt like an honored guest - one of the few souls entering the park in the spirit of its original explorers. I paid up and rode on.

The first miles of Yellowstone looked a lot like western Washington, with narrow, tree lined roads stretching out to distant green hills. Different trees, I suppose, but I'm too much of an ignoramus to tell. In one sense, it looked like a million miles I'd already traveled, but the most amazing thing about Yellowstone was the lack of fences. No individual owns this, I thought. It can't be bought or sold or developed or strip mined for gravel or dredged for gold and left useless. It's protected, and it belongs to all of us.

The road into the park still followed the Madison River, seemingly tamer here than in Madison Valley. Though I was following the river upstream, the road frequently seemed to be descending. I'd seen this effect from Darby to Sula, as well. I wondered if it was just a favorable wind. It made for an easy ride, and I quickly reached the Madison campground, about 15 miles into the park.


Madison River

I took a short break at the Madison campground. I'd made good time, the clouds had swept on eastward, and I had the second (or third, or fourth) wind that I usually get in the cool early evening hours. I decided to keep going, 15 miles on up to the campground at Old Faithful. I cackled, "I'm going all the way!" as I rolled out of Madison campground, giddy with end-of-day endorphins. I remembered what one of my high school swim coaches had liked to say about distance swimming: "It's all GUTS."

And here is where I made a singularly expensive mistake. Perhaps you already have some idea what it was, but if not, I'll just leave you to chew on this ham-fisted bit of foreshadowing.



The road left the Madison River and climbed for a patch of three miles or so before joining the Firehole River, where it resumed its illusory downhill course, and now I was in sulphur country, and the landscape began to change dramatically.



I passed a grassy plain, tall yellow stalks fringed with red. Half hidden in the grass were numerous ravens, alone or in groups of two or three or twenty. I stopped and dismounted to watch them, and dozens of the nearest ones leapt from their spots to glide further out into the field. I wondered why they all gathered there. A moment later I saw the first vapor clouds, not half a mile to the south. I turned back to the raven field, saw that the ground beneath the grass was leached white, realized that the ground here must also be warm, and the ravens were enjoying the ground heat. I was immediately tempted to run into the fields toward the vapor clouds, but I didn't know the rules yet, and I was pretty sure it was a bad idea.

Around the next bend I reached the first official observation point, the Fountain Paint Pot Trail at the Lower Geyser Basin, where a boardwalk wound through an alien landscape. (Incidentally, did I mention that Shadow of the Colossus has a geyser field?)



The odor emanating from the sulphurous pools was one that I associated with good times, and just being around them brightened my mood.



Signs warned visitors not to stray from the path. As I followed the boardwalk, I examined the ground below. It showed animal prints and dung, and the occasional shoe print. Now that I knew the rules, I felt free to disregard them.



I walked out to one of the boiling pools. Beneath its cloak of vapor, the Celestine Pool was intensely clear, its crystalline hues revealing hidden depths.


The Celestine Pool: The most dangerous photo on this blog

Further down the boardwalk, a family pointed at me, and I heard father and children discussing me. I'd tried to time my exploit so that I was out of public view, and now I felt chastened for providing a bad example for the kids, and imagined their trauma if I had been scalded. I was done breaking rules for the day.


Bacteria Carpet near the Silex Spring

I periodically heard the ugly "quark!" of the ravens, and scanned for their perches. I found them throughout the park, perched above the visitors, cawing to let the people know that this is their land, though no one listens to them.

I returned to the road invigorated, and made a few more miles to the next major observation site. Sundown was near, but I was captivated by the springs.



I soon reached the Midway Geyser Basin, where the hot springs from the Grand Prismatic Spring feed dramatically into the Firehole River.


Hot Springs meet Cold River

The Grand Prismatic Spring bubbles up from a bleached white caldera, filling the area with a refractive vapor.


The Grand Prismatic Spring

I was there at sunset, and the spring's prismatic qualities showed themselves in a subtle, but startling way. I was facing directly east into the vapor cloud, trying to avoid photographing my own shadow, when I noticed the double halo around my shadow. Two concentric rings were centered around my shadow's head, the smaller about one foot in diameter, the larger about six feet. In my endorphin driven state, I stared lovingly at my double halo for long minutes. I wondered if this was anything like the effect of watching an eclipse through a pinhole (something I've never done, and don't entirely understand).


I have leashed the sundogs

I had almost lost the sun, and I hurried to leave. On the way out of the observation area, a sign with red type caught the corner of my eye. I thought it said "Dragon Gourd", and assumed it was the name of one of the springs. On closer inspection, it actually said "Dangerous Ground", and showed an illustration of a boy scout in distress, off the trail, his foot gone through a patch of thin crust into a hidden pocket of boiling, acidic water. I silently promised the sign that I would never leave the path again.

The sky dimmed as I counted the last miles to the park's heart at Old Faithful. I rode the last two miles, a confounding loop, in darkness. Signs pointed to lodging and other services. Nowhere did I see signs for a campground, and I began to grow nervous. I reached the center of the loop, where mammoth lodge buildings ringed a sea of parking. I pulled up in front of the closed ranger station to check my map. A young man walked by, apparently a ranger, and I asked him for directions to a campground. "Madison," was what he told me. Fifteen miles back, in the dark. No campground at Old Faithful. The ranger was young and inexperienced, or I might've tried to bargain for a bed in the ranger station. Instead I turned toward the imposing lodge buildings. Sleeping rough was not an option. The park had impressed me with its many "BEWARE BEAR" and "A FED BEAR IS A DEAD BEAR" signs.

I'd seen the "LODGES FULL" sign at the park's entrance, but I knew there had to be some chance of a room. The first lodge was an elephantine log cabin with a steeple roof, towering like some gothic pagan cathedral. The interior was no less imposing, with a three story stone fireplace, and hand carved wooden stairs leading up to a multi-tiered central atrium, capped by a remote belfry, all screaming "MONEY". Just another asset of the Xanterra Parks and Resorts corporation.

I was helped at the front desk by a solicitous clerk who found a lone empty room, and opened a heavy binder to offer photos for my approval. Double queen bed, facing Old Faithful, $220. "I've had 46 people look at this room," he said, "So I had to double check." I didn't know if he was speaking hyperbolically or literally, but I expected the latter. It was no time for hesitation. I took the room.

The lodge's layout confused me. It took me half an hour and three calls for help to find my room. Not until I stumbled into the extra wing did I realize that there was anything beyond the central aerie. I dumped my heavy bags, including my food, in the room. I worried that a bear might come to my room.

I was determined to wring every penny's worth out of my time there. I cleaned, rinsed my clothes, and wandered the halls. By that time the restaurants had closed, and I found that the lodge had no spa. Frustrated and overstimulated from 14 hours on the road, I returned to my room for a fitful night's sleep.

Day 28: West Fork to West Yellowstone, Montana

I woke dutifully to my 6am alarm and climbed out of my comfortable bed in my comfortable cabin at the West Fork RV park. The morning was cold. Outside, I could see my breath. The park's office wouldn't open for a couple of hours. I skipped breakfast and was on the road by 7am. I cycled through the chilly dawn, toes numb, waiting for the sun to warm me, but the road turned away from Madison Valley, toward the hills around Lake Hebgen, and deep into shadow. The wind blew capriciously, frequently changing course throughout morning.

I made it 9 miles before my empty stomach cramped, doubling me over with nausea. I ate a Clif Bar by the guard rail and pushed on. Waiting just around the next bend was the top of my morning climb, and an interpretive center that explained the sudden formation of Quake Lake, below me. The 6 mile long, 180 foot deep lake was formed during a 7.3 earthquake in 1959. 28 campers were sacrificed to the lake's birth. I was just happy to find a restroom and a sunny spot to sit in.



It was another 6 miles before I found breakfast, at a cafe in an angler's RV park. It was the second such I'd passed; the first had been closed. I rode in half mumbling, half singing, "You'd better be open, you'd better be open." Inside, the tiny cafe was bustling. I sat at an uncleaned table, too chilled to care. The harried waiter told me that it might be a while. I told him I had nowhere to go, which got him muttering, "I've got places to go, and things to do." I assumed I'd come in at a bad moment, and possibly broken etiquette by sitting at a dirty table, but I sat firm and patient, and smiled whenever anyone passed my table. I really did have nowhere to go. The table next to mine filled with a family who were apparently at the end of their vacation and had become friendly with the staff. Eventually the waiter warmed to me, and turned out to be a friendly and solicitous host, who reminded me a lot of Mark Edmison, my partner at the Green Cat Cafe.

After breakfast, a new challenge: 23 miles of road construction. I was unhappy when I saw the signs, but for once the construction worked in my favor. I encountered a road crew laying new tar and gravel just a few miles beyond the cafe. Beyond the crew lay miles of road in various stages of completion.


Spraying tar

Since the whole stretch was full of loose gravel, vehicles were led through at a slow pace by pace cars, in one direction at a time. Once I was past the active construction zone, cars passed me in short waves, leaving me for the most part with the road to myself as I wended around the north side Lake Hebgen.


My own private road

The road around Lake Hebgen was beautiful, and reasonably uneventful. With so little vehicular activity, it was the most relaxed travel time I'd had in weeks.


Hebgen Lake

I passed a few other cyclists on the road, including a pair of women, one of whom was riding a recumbent. Recumbent riders are rare enough that we tend to congregate when we find each other, and I stopped to chat with them. They were Traci and Kathy, on their way from Virginia to Oregon. They had a third person following them in a support vehicle, an RV that they could sleep in. We shared the usual road stories, before going our respective ways.


Traci and Kathy

The remaining miles to West Yellowstone were also fairly uneventful, free of any special character building moments - though the day never did warm up, and by now clouds had rolled in to cover the area, filling me with the fear of more storms.

I reached West Yellowstone in the mid-afternoon. As a major gateway to Yellowstone Park, West Yellowstone is a true tourist mecca, serving up chintzy Americana to travelers from around the world who've come to see America's grandeur. I browsed a couple of book stores looking for a paperback to carry through the park, and stopped for lunch at a self-consciously kitschy burger shop with a model train running along the ceiling joint from dining room to kitchen.


The Canyon Street Grille

Day 27: Virginia City to West Fork, Montana

I woke with a slight headache. I'd had the ocassional sniffle and cough since Jackson, and I was afraid I had a fever. Nonetheless, nothing for it but to get back on the road. I knew that I was stressing my immune system to the limits, but I was afraid that if I stopped, it would collapse entirely, leaving me sick for weeks.

I had camped at the V.C.R.V. to best position myself for the upcoming pass. As it turned out, I was only three miles from the top, and then eight easy miles to Ennis. If I'd known, I probably would've crested it the night prior and found a cheap motel in Ennis. Sure enough, Ennis, with less historic value than Virginia City, had $25/night rooms. I stopped for breakfast.



Beyond Ennis I entered the Madison Valley and the cloudless day grew hot with few opportunities for shade, and I felt my fever growing with the miles. Cameron was the only other town on my route that day, and it hardly even a town, with only an RV park and a combined general store / bar / cafe. I stopped there, napped gratefully in the cool grass beneath a shady tree, bought an ice cream, read awhile.

Sitting there on the lawn, I overheard speeches and applause; a meeting was being conducted in a large room behind the combined store / bar / cafe. During breaks, serious looking people stood outside with clipboards making calls from their cellphones. At least one was in uniform, and I wondered if they were law enforcement or area officials or perhaps the Madison Valley Chamber of Commerce.



I returned to the road, resolved to leave earlier the following day and travel in the cool hours of the morning. The sun wore on. I road over a bridge spanning a small creek bordered by trees, and took a break. Beneath the bridge, a large, active colony of cliff swallows had built a large cluster of globular nests. The water beneath the bridge was frigid, shallow and swift; I entered only up to my calves, wetted my shirt, and even that was temperature change enough to give me chills.



I continued on. I had perfect visibility ten, twenty miles down the valley, and I could see a line of trees far ahead. To my right was a dark slash in the earth - the deep channel cut by the Madison River. Looking around, I realized that the entire valley showed signs of violent erosion, its walls crenellated, its floor stratified, as the turbulent Madison River rolled and twisted in its course over geological ages.



I reached the end of my day at West Fork. It's not labeled as a town, and I'm still unsure if it's the name of the area, or only the RV/cabin park that lies there, just across a bridge from a more upscale angler's resort. My map showed services just a half mile down the road. I tried that first, and found nothing. There were no stores, and the cabins that appeared to have once been rentals now showed signs of long term occupancy. I turned back.

I crossed this bridge 6 times

After my feverish day, I wanted comfort. I tried the angler's lodge, which lay on the bank of the Madison, where several people in rubber waders stood in the water casting lines. I approached an open door, beyond which lay a fancy dinner table set with red wine glasses. A tall, broad man filled the door frame and asked, "Can I help you?" in a way that made it clear, in a firm, friendly way, that he was coming out to speak to me, I was not going in to speak to him. In the outdoor light, I saw that he had dark hair with a touch of steel, swept back toward a possible ponytail. Indian, or half, I thought.

I asked if they offered accommodations, and he explained that they only had an all-inclusive three day package. That door was closed, but he was friendly, and interested in my trip, and we stood and chatted for a while. I learned that he spent half the year there and half in Cape Cod (where it was implied that he ran another inn). As for the missing services a half mile south, he explained that the Sun Ranch, which I'd passed coming in, had recently been sold (by actor Steven Segal) to a new owner, who was extensively developing it as a resort for the wealthy, and he'd also bought up much of the surrounding area to house his employees. He finished by recommending the RV park just across the bridge, or the free camping land just nearby. He offered to help with provisions if he could (again making it clear that I was not invited to dinner).

And so, I crossed the bridge to the West Fork RV park. I stepped into the office, which was hotter than the evening air. A scented candle on the office desk filled the air with a suffocating fragrance, thought the office appeared empty. I poked around, and a woman appeared from a side room, seeming slightly scattered, a quality she retained throughout our transaction. A cabin was available for me and I was happy to have it at any price. The office sold a small selection of food, but very little that I could eat. I bought the day's last home made cinnamon roll and settled in to my little cabin off the Madison. It turned out to be one of the nicer rooms I've stayed in, with an open, functional kitchen layout and a small porch. I ate my cinnamon roll on the porch while I listened passively to the conversations of other guests. Before I turned in, I set my alarm for 6am, mindful to be off before the day's heat.

Alive in: West Fork, Montana

The Bridge of Madison County

Today's character building challenge: unrelenting heat and 40 miles without shade. Fortunately, five years at burningman camp has prepared me for heat.

I'm spending the night in a cute little cabin in an RV park in angler's heaven just down the road from a ranch once owned by Steven Segal. There's an angler's lodge next door, and the river was comically full of fly fishers when I rode in, up to their hip waders in the Madison River.

Day 26: Dillon to Virginia City, Montana

Beaverhead Rock

I lingered late in Dillon to catch up with the blog, and didn't leave until noon. But, the wind favored me with a rare kindness, and I sped along at speeds up to 22mph, making 26 miles in an hour and a half. Along the way I passed cultivated agricultural lands with hundreds of ten foot high rolls of hay waiting for distribution. I passed Beaver Head Rock, another notable icon of the Lewis and Clark trail, used as a navigation mark by Sacagawea's people, the Shoshone.



At Twin Bridges, my path took a hairpin turn from northeast to southeast, and I lost my favorable wind. Stopping at the Twin Bridges library, I met two other cyclists, a pair of college age guys on their way from Seattle to Denver. We shared notes and found a lot of common experience; our trips must have been paralleling each other for some time.

I was about to leave Twin Bridges when I met a man stuck in time. He rode right up to me on his bicycle, a man of indeterminate age, but somewhere north of 55, dressed in spandex shorts and a sleeveless black top that showed his armpits. He wore no helmet, and his think dark hair was immaculately blown dry, with golden tips that showed expensive care. He wore one small gold medallion, and a second of obsidian. The nails on his right hand pinky and thumb were laquered and grown long, either for snorting coke or for that extra long "hang ten". All in all, I'd say he had sort of a William Shatner thing going on, before Ben Folds scraped the camp off and gave him renewed legitimacy.

I believe his name was Frank. He first asked me about my recumbent, said he'd never ridden one, but his first bike, in '52, was a Bianchi (which meant nothing to me, but I understood that it meant something to him), to give me an idea how long he'd been a serious cyclist. Frank told me about his younger days as a cyclist, and how he'd ridden across country from New York to LA with a buddy in the 70s. He gave me a lot of advice about where to stay off the beaten path in Yellowstone (which I disregarded, because one of the things I like about knowing where I'm going is that it helps give me the strength to get there). He said he understood what I was doing, and approved, in a wish-I-could-do-it-again kinda way, and sent me on my way.

The comments about the first bike and the long ride placed him at about 65 years old, which meant that he froze at about age 30 in the mid-70s, spending 35 years in his frozen disco state. I wondered if I had also frozen and just not realized it.



The landscape began to change, as grassy meadows were replaced by scrub brush and gravel. I was deep into gold rush country, and outside Alder I passed through lands that had been extensively dredge mined for gold. The land had been scooped out and sifted, leaving behind small mountains of gravel in which nothing could grow.


The remains of gold mining

Historic markers shared the story of the Innocents and the Vigilantes. The self-styled Innocents were a group of road-agents, or highway men, secretly lead by Bannack Sheriff Henry Plummer, until their identities were discovered by area cattlemen, who formed the Vigilantes, and brought all of the Innocents to the gallows. (Anyhow, that's how the markers tell it. A quick Google search raises question about who preyed upon whom, and whether there wasn't some cover-up going on.)



Toward the end of my day I reached Nevada City and Virginia City, a pair of bustling gold rush towns that have been faithfully maintained and used as sets in many westerns. I considered staying in one of them, and even inspected the rooms and cabins of the Nevada City Hotel, but nostalgia comes with a steep price. I also had a pass to climb the following morning, and I wanted to get as close as possible. What's more, I wanted to watch the Perseid meteor shower that night, which meant camping outside. I continued through Virginia City to the Virginia City RV Park.



The V.C.R.V., as it called itself, was a funny place in its own right, perched on a scrabbly hill above Virginia City. For starters, it was for sale, something I would say was true for more than 50% of the RV parks I had passed in Montana, and I'd begun to wonder why. The owner was a tall, beefy, red faced man in a beige cap. I asked him about the sale, if it had to do with the price of gas leading to fewer travelers. He answered all my questions belligerently, as if I was challenging his authority. No, he said, he'd asked people who'd visited, and it wasn't the price of gas. This struck me as a non-sequitur, and I let it go. He assured me that he wasn't selling the place because he was in trouble, and that his investments "back east" were worth $850,000. I assumed that he meant "back east" as in, say, the New York Stock Exchange; later, it struck me that perhaps he meant "back east" as in Iraq or Afghanistan. He certainly seemed like he could be ex-military, and who knows what pots he got into "back east". He went on to inform me of the value of every property in the immediate vicinity. I asked him what he'd do once he'd sold. "Not a damned thing." Hobbies, interests? "Not a damned thing." What would he do with his time? "Nothing." We soon concluded our transaction.

As I set up camp and used the facilities, I saw that rules were posted here and there. Each item was posted in all caps, fit to size an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, with exactly four exclamation points. "BATHROOM WILL BE CLOSED BETWEEN 10AM AND 10:30AM FOR CLEANING!!!!" "PUT THE SHOWER CURTAIN INSIDE THE SHOWER TO REDUCE WATER LEAKAGE!!!!" "DO NOT EVER LOCK THIS DOOR, IT MUST BE LEFT UNLOCKED FOR GUESTS AT ALL TIMES!!!!" This last was signed with a tiny, handwritten note reading, "As per the management, Dawn and Floyd." I was only happy that the bathroom was warm.

I'd never seen the Perseids, and it seemed a romantic notion to lie out watching them, though I doubted my ability or desire to remain wakeful during pre-dawn hours. I set an alarm for 3am. Nature woke me at 1:30am. I crawled out of my tent to pee, and immediately saw three white streaks overhead. It was cold. I called it good and crawled back into my warm sleeping bag.

Alive in: Virginia City, Montana

Nevada City and Virginia City are a pair of authentic old west gold mining towns. Original buildings - patched here and there with new materials of course - but no false distressed facades. There was a pretty huge gold rush here. Mary and I were just watching through HBO's Deadwood before we left, so it's pretty timely for me.

Unfortunately I'm not sticking around, but just camping overnight here before I tackle the next pass tomorrow. I'm hoping to get up before dawn to catch the Perseid meteor shower. With any luck, I may hit Yellowstone tomorrow night.

Monday morning goodness

For those of you who are reading the detailed reports, I've caught up for the last four days.

Day 21: Missoula, Montana
Day 22: Missoula to Darby, Montana
Day 23: Darby to Jackson, Montana
Day 24: Jackson to Dillon, Montana

I've also tidied up a bit to make a cleaner distinction between the brief "I've arrived" posts and the longer daily reports. "Alive in: ... " is a quick update to let people know where I am. "Day x: ... " is the full report. I'm usually three to four days behind on the latter, as I've fallen into a cycle of three or four days ride, one day rest.

Day 25: Dillon, Montana

It was like that when I got there

I arrived in Dillon humbled, exhausted, and wet, with little desire other than rest. Hopefully I can be forgiven for learning as little as I did about the place. Population three thousand something, apparent agricultural center for grain and feed, minor historical interest, center of town displaced by outlying services that cater to Interstate 15. I spent most of my time there lazing in my motel room, occasionally prowling out for diners and supermarkets.


A bit of local history that I learned nothing about

I checked into the (presumably) locally owned Sundowner Motel, much cheaper than the nearby franchise hotels. The closest source of food was a taco bus parked permanently in the motel's parking lot. The interior of the white painted school bus had been converted to a restaurant, with benches lining the front half and a kitchen in back. It was run by a couple. In between orders, the husband moved to the front of the bus to watch the Beijing Olympics on a television installed there, while the pregnant wife remained hidden in the kitchen. In the brief glimpses I had of her, I couldn't tell if her one dropping eyelid was blackened, infected, or simply deformed.


Fulfill all your wishes with my taco flavored kisses

About the most interesting thing I encountered in Dillon was one of the staff at the Sundowner. Though the motel offered internet access, I found that their router's wireless signal didn't reach my room. Using my laptop, I traced the signal roughly to its source; there were many concrete walls between it and my room. Since blogging was a priority, I would have to change rooms... or motels.

I checked in at the office, where I was helped by a woman with a bouffant orange hairdo. She spoke with a trace of a southern accent, and talked as long as possible on each breath, causing odd punctuations with each sharp intake that would flatten her nose and draw down her upper lip.

I identified myself as a travel writer, having chosen it as the simplest shorthand to describe my need. She showed an immediate interest and asked who I wrote for. I explained that I was working independently, which led to a revelation about her own work as a sort of travel writer. Apparently she'd worked in the service industry most of her life, and kept a collection of tips describing how to get the best deals from hotels. Her daughter had urged her to go to print, and she'd had one article published so far, writing as Penelope Wanderluster. In the end, she was able to find a room that suited me, and I remained at the Sundowner.


Grain and feed. Feed and grain.

I bicycled around the streets of Dillon, enjoying its easy, level roads. Dillon rests in another high mountain valley where you can see forever, and I wondered what it must be like to live at the top of the world, beneath such an open, endless sky. I wondered if it effected the group mind of the community. Did it make them feel free, or insulated? Did their children grow up strong and unafraid, or remote and bigoted? Or did it make any difference at all?


At the top of the world

Day 24: Jackson to Dillon, Montana

I started the morning with another dip in the hot springs before returning to the road beneath gathering clouds. There was wind, but like a lifer with no hope of parole, I had begun to grow resigned to my sentence. I was more concerned with the darkening sky, which looked like another day of rain. Jackson was too small a place for me to want to spend the day, and it had been too soon since my last rest day, but those clouds gave me pause. I would've been wise to spend the day at the springs. Before the day was out, I would climb through two mountain passes, struggle against 60mph winds, flee from a lightning storm, and be pelted by pebble sized hail.

The two mountain passes, Big Hole and Badger, looked simple on paper - each was under a thousand feet - but the Lost Trail had finally taught me never to underestimate the difficulty of a pass.

The first pass, Big Hole, assailed me with 60mph winds. The previous winds I'd encountered were nothing to it. I'd been tinkering with the setting of my fairing to bring it higher and closer to my body; now I stopped and brought it in as close and as high as possible, to give me the maximum screen. Most of Big Hole's elevation gain occurs in one curved ramp, a mile and a half long, that ends where the sky begins. I walked up it, bent into the wind, for an hour, before rolling down to the next valley.


Big Hole Pass, elevation 7,360 feet

Once upon a time I had imagined that each day on the road would become easier, as I grow lean and hardened. Instead, it seems that each day becomes more difficult, as I am continually tested with new and harsher conditions. And yet, I feel blessed to witness the magnificent beauty of this land. The harder each climb, the more glorious each descent, as beyond each hardship lies a new and wider land, bigger than anything in my imagination. I feel tiny, and the world enormous, and it's the greatest reward I can imagine. I was dwelling on these thoughts when the first tines of lightning flashed far away to my right.



Black clouds slid across the valley, and I watched uneasily as the distant lightning increased in frequency. I was twenty five miles between towns, and I mentally prepared myself for being caught in the open among the flickering tongues. I contemplated passing ranches while counting the seconds from lightning to thunder. Twenty four seconds.


Let's just take a closer look at that

The road curved away to the left, away from the storm, and I prayed fervently that I might outrun the storm. A double strike, 14 and 13 seconds. The road turned toward an incline, the foothills of the next pass. A flicker of light directly ahead and no seconds at all before a crack that split the world asunder, and in that second, before I had finished sounding out the syllables in my mind, "one chimpanzee", I was stung by hail like frozen bees.

I laughed. The world was too big, too impersonal to persecute me. Laughing and swearing, my ears stung by hail, I leapt off my bike and ran with it up a gravel road to the Holland Ranch. I splashed through rivulets formed by freezing rain, ran to a sealed barn, threw open a barn door, pushed the bike inside.


Sanctuary

I found myself inside a narrow storage room packed with dusty ATVs and curing animal hides. I followed a narrow passage to the main part of the barn, flung open the main door from the inside, back out into the rain, and brought my bike around into the barn proper. The barn was empty, but filled with the comforting smell of horses. I peeked outside as thunder rolled across the barn's metal roof. There were houses on the ranch as well. I stayed put, hoping no one would mind my trespass.


The view from the barn

I explored the barn. Downstairs, empty horse stalls, covered with a thick coat of dust. Upstairs was a cavernous loft as big as a basketball court, and in fact, a deflated basketball lay on the floor.


The storm abates

I had my lunch, scrubbed clean a wooden chair with a horse brush, sat and nodded as the storm quieted. I could still hear distant thunder, moving away. The sounds of birds and insects returned, and a flock of barn swallows emerged, swooping and pecking against the metal roof.


My savior

And so, I returned to the road, where Badger Pass waited.


Back on the road

I walked up another mile long ramp to the sky, beyond which, the storm had settled into the bowl of the next valley. Now I was chasing the storm. I hoped that it would stay far ahead.



I cried and laughed with joy and relief and not a little hysteria as I slid down that long ramp into the next valley, its distant rim a chiaroscuro of daylight and cloud shadow.



The town coming up was Dillon; 30 miles beyond that, Twin Bridges. I had hoped to reach Twin Bridges, but I was wrung empty.



Clouds still hung heavy as I rolled into Dillon, found a motel. I went to see a movie, Pineapple Express, which was perhaps the worst movie ever made, but sitting there in the dark theater, I began to feel human again. It rained that night, and the roads were still wet when I ventured out into Dillon on Sunday morning for a day of rest


Dillon, Montana

Alive in: Dillon, Montana

Today, two mountain passes, 60mph winds, a lightning storm, pebble sized hail, and freezing rain. And beyond each pass, a new and still more beautiful valley, wider and more magnificent than anything I could imagine. I've never known any harder work; nor any greater joy.

I'm taking a day off in Dillon tomorrow, will catch up on all the details and photos of the last few days.

Day 23: Darby to Jackson, Montana

Day 23: Darby to Jackson, Montana

The morning ride out of Jackson was easy enough for the first ten miles. Ahead of me lay Lost Trail Pass and Chief Joseph Pass, only a mile apart. On paper, it was nothing to be afraid of; I'd climbed worse in the eastern Cascades. The Rockies are much older than the Cascades, I thought, much more weathered, with softer edges. But, as with Wauconda, Chief Joseph had a beating in store for me.

Along the way I passed Sula, entering deep into the heart of Louis & Clark territory. As an aside, I must say that it was terribly generous of Louis & Clark to cross and recross these lands, methodically walking every square inch of them, so that future generations could lay claim to their historic presence.

The wind shifted throughout the morning, never becoming too harsh as I followed the Bitterroot river, then turned to follow Reime Creek. The climb began in earnest just ten miles below the peak of Lost Trail Pass, as rain clouds gathered above.

The wind picked up, carrying with it the first rain, a sharp, thin rain that stung my cheeks. As the climb steepened, I frequently walked, while the rain fell intermittently, now light, now heavy. The road to Joseph is carved right out of the steep mountain sides, leaving nothing but sharp inclines below and above. There are no comfortable lawns to rest on along the way. My only rest was leaning against a guard rail for a few minutes at a time. I crawled up the mountain slowly, painfully, fighting to claim each tenth of a mile for my own. Only one thought kept me moving, "The only way through is forward," repeated like a mantra.

I considered Zeno's paradox, the law of the infinitesimal, which states that any distance may be halved infinitely, and feared that I might never reach the top, straining to travel shorter and shorter distances.

About two miles below the top, another cyclist, on his way down, stopped to check on me, and we chatted by the guard rail, sharing stories. Daniel was a young man in his mid-20s from New Zealand, crossing from east to west. It was his first long tour, and he'd saved money for five years to make the trip. He told me he'd been held up a week in Washington DC when he lost his passport, and that a new one was waiting for him in San Francisco.

Eventually we each went on our way. I climbed back on my bike and rode another tenth of a mile until Daniel was out of sight, and then went back to pushing. The encounter had cheered me, but I was still climbing into the rain. I was weak and quivering with exhaustion, but the only way through was forward.

It was ten miles that took me three and a half hours to cover. When I reached the top I was too numb to rejoice. I pulled into a rest stop at Lost Trail Pass on the Montana / Idaho border. Inside, I used the urinal, and leaned my forehead against the sturdy tile wall. When I stepped outside the restroom, it had stopped raining. Within minutes, the clouds parted. By the time I left there an hour later, the clouds had fled. The blue skies felt like a grim joke.


Between Lost Trail and Chief Joseph

I had one more mile to climb between Lost Trail and Chief Joseph, but with the sun on my shoulder, I was invigorated. I found a slow, steady pace, and stayed on the bike to the top. I had reached the continental divide.



Somewhere beyond Chief Joseph was a high valley, so the ride down the other side was shallow, and the wind kept me pedaling. I should have enjoyed the thick forests more, but I was still numb.



It was not until the new valley opened up below me that I returned to life.



I rode through Montana's Big Hole, drifting across the high plains into Wisdom, where I stopped to rest and buy refreshments. I still had 20 miles to Jackson, but I was reinvigorated by the warm sun and change of environment.


Conover's Trading Post in Wisdom

High plains are my favorite landscapes to ride in, with the mountains and clouds below, and the view unimpeded in every direction. At the top of the world, you can see forever. Ignore the road and its like flying. And I flew, maintaining a vigorous pace for the last 20 miles beneath the darkening sky, and if the wind wasn't exactly with me, it wasn't exactly against me, either.



I giggled with slight hysteria as I rolled into Jackson with 75 miles of road burning in my belly. With a population of 50, there's not much to Jackson beyond the Hot Springs resort, and it seemed to employ - or at least entertain - most of the local population. It was a Friday night and they had no cabins for me, but an ample lawn for my tent.



The resort is quirky place, rough & tumble as only Montana can be. It almost seemed to be run like a co-op, and while I identified several employees, there also seemed to be a number of people casually helping out. A small dog pack wandered the grounds, occasionally running through the main lodge, and the evening's musical entertainment was a karaoke singer. The resort's restaurant serves first class food, though it was a mess of understaffed confusion.



And then, of course, the spring. The resort sits on a natural sulphur spring (discovered by Louis & Clark, of course), which is channeled into a standard size, outdoor swimming pool, set with ancient, crumbling concrete. I waded in among the other visitors and lhe soothing heat melt my tired knees. I chatted for a time with a father and son who were out for a weekend of mountain biking, but after my long day, the heat knocked me out quickly. I stumbled through the dark, back to my tent, and crawled in still wet.

Alive in: Jackson, Montana

Today was both a low point, and a high point, as so often happens. I'll share details later, but just wanted to let folks know that I'm safely at the Jackson Hot Springs Inn, where the "musical entertainment" for the evening is a karaoke singer. It's a quirky little place, but the "hot tub" - a full size swimming pool filled straight from the springs - is superb.

Day 22: Missoula to Darby, Montana

My route out of Missoula took me along state road 12 through the Bitterroot valley, passing through the towns of Lolo, Florence, Stevensville, Corvallis, Hamilton and Darby. As I proceeded through the valley, the surrounding countryside grew more beautiful. Now these were mountains. Beyond green fields lay pale blue peaks, ghostly faint with distance.



And for once, the wind was with me. I fairly flew through Bitterroot, even with a slight ascent, maintaining speeds between 15 and 20 miles an hour. I felt fast and powerful for the first time in days, racing along highway 12, my inner ear filled with the lyrics to Thomas Dolby's The Key to Her Ferrari (with numbers revised substantially down to match my true speed):

And then I saw her...
she was a bright red '64 GTO with fins
and gills like some giant piranha fish,
some obscene phallic symbol on wheels...
little rivers of anticipation ran down my inseam
as I kicked those five hundred Italian horses into life
and left reality behind me:
fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour...
my hand slipped inside the belt of my trousers
as we hit eighty, ninety miles an hour...
and as we passed the magic100 my love exploded
all over her bright pink leather interior...

In fact, I was making such good time that at the end of 20 miles I stopped for pie. Glen's Cafe sits on the outskirts of Florence along route 12, enticing travelers to stop and sample from among 20 varieties of pie. Apparently they'd been busy - most flavors had sold out when I arrived. I was served a whopping slice of blackberry pie with vanilla ice cream, which I followed down with a decadent glass of milk. I couldn't even tell you the last time I drank a whole glass of milk. While I ate, the mother and daughter serving staff taunted each other and gossiped about family matters with the various locals who came in and helped themselves to items behind the counter.


Shut your pie hole

It was a better timed break than I knew, because coming up was a nasty piece of business. Of the twenty miles of road between Stevensville and Hamilton, approximately eight of them were the subject of major earthworks. In patches up to three miles long, the road had been scraped away prior to being repaved, leaving course, graded substrate, gravel, and sand, barely two narrow lanes wide, edged with road crews, dividers, and heavy equipment. Sadly, I did not notice until afterwards that the bike route deviated around this section of highway. I toughed it out, eking out my bit of space on the devastated road, jostling and cursing and swearing through each mile of it.

At the end of the road construction, I reached Hamilton. My first sight of Hamilton was a scar in the earth: a gravel quarry, fronted by enormous yellow banners along its length, which read, "AMERICAN OWNED. MONTANA OWNED. LOCALLY OWNED. THANK YOU FOR BUYING AMERICAN." I imagined that the fruits of the quarry would be filling most of the road I had just suffered through; no doubt a lucrative contract.

Beyond the gravel quarry was a bridge, and beyond the bridge, an abomination: Hamilton, Montana. Population 3,700. A five mile strip of wide, asphalt highway, flanked by parking lots and chain stores. America's ugliest creation, defacing its most precious lands. I imagined that the value of that gravel contract must be truly astronomical for those LOCAL OWNERS to sell out their heritage this way. I did not stay in Hamilton as planned, but continued through, and did not give it a backwards glance.

The horrible joke of Montana's growing blight is that the people who recognize the problem and would like to solve it are held in check by rabid property rights advocates. I'd been following news in the local papers about an initiative in Ravalli County to introduce zoning laws, to control the size of new buildings, the spread of gravel mining and timber harvesting. Fighting the initiative are landowners who argue for their "god given rights granted by the constitution" to exploit their land however they choose. The zoning plan, now in its third draft, has already been defanged to the point of absurdity; the anti-zoners are unwilling to settle for any zoning measures, and have aimed to entirely quash the issue. They would rather risk everything they love about this land than give up their divine right to exploit it.

Montana is large. It will take some time to pave it all. See it while you can.


Don't get thrown in the hoosey-gow!

Darby is a quaint little restoration town, not unlike Winthrop, Washington, but more practical and less kitschy. While Winthrop seems like nothing more than a Disney-like facade that everyone leaves at night, people actually live in Darby. I rolled in early in the evening and came to a weary stop in front of what looked like a set of rental cabins. One of the cabins was being painted by a couple, and as I peered blearily through sweat stung eyes, she ran over and asked if I was looking for a room.


Traveler's Rest Cabins

The owners, it turned out, were avid cyclists. They'd been running the Traveler's Rest for six years. They were friendly, inquisitive, and environmentally forward thinking. I chatted with the wife for a bit, and without any prompting from me, the subject of Hamilton came up, which gave me a brief opportunity to rant. Her thoughts about Hamilton: "And it's a complete failure." I took a room for the night.


Darby's Seven foot cock

It was still early - my incredible speed had cut my day almost in half - and I hardly knew what to do with myself. I unloaded my bike and took a brief spin around town. Antiquing seemed to be a big business. I made stops for takeout food, a few groceries for the following day, returned to my cabin, and collapsed into bed.

Alive in: Darby, Montana

I took a rest day in Missoula yesterday, while I had my bike tuned up at the Open Road bike shop. I also visited the offices of Adventure Cycling, the org that publishes the maps I'm following. They promise free ice cream to touring cyclists, so I stopped by to demand mine.

The winds were in my favor today, for which I prostrate myself to all weather gods. My speed was doubled and my rest time halved. My day was half the length of recent days.

I slept in and had only planned to go 45 miles to Hamilton, but found it to be a horrendous asphalt jungle, so continued on to Darby, which is another of those quaint little old west restoration towns that knows which side its bread is buttered on.

In the end, I made my 60 miles, and still got in early enough that I didn't know what to do with myself.

The Heartrate of America

I have a fancy schmancy Vetta V100HR bike computer. I only bought this particular computer because it's wireless, and it was on sale for half price at REI so it seemed like a bargain. It came with three separate sensors, for speed/distance, cadence, and heartrate. The interface is so poorly designed and monstrously complicated that I have to refer to the manual for simple things like changing the time. I actually brought the manual on this trip. The irony is that I really only need the speedometer/odometer, and the cadence and heartrate sensors joined the landfill long ago. So I was amused when, during the climb up Washington Pass a week ago, the heartrate monitor began registering a pulse.

At the very top of Washington Pass was a tower tipped with a cluster of electronic monitoring equipment. I assumed that one or another of the devices was broadcasting on the computer's frequency. I saw this phenomenon repeated toward the top of each pass that followed, and occasionally in other locations. For the most part, it amused me to watch the rise and fall of heartrate of the land. It amused me until day 19.

On day 19 I was climbing a hill beyond Parma, Montana when the heartrate picked up. Only this time, the deviance spread like rot to the computer's speedometer/odometer functions. I watched my speed jump from 7 to 13mph, and then flutter between 10 and 20mph.

With tens of miles between food, water, and sleep, my odometer is a lifeline. I look to it for the hope I need to carry me through to the next oasis of services. Without it, I would be adrift in a sea of unknown bounds. When this happened near the end of my day, I nearly cried with frustration over the betrayal.

In hopes of placating the computer, I slowed, and I stopped. I cycled through its functions. I turned it off and on. I did the hokey pokey and I turned myself about. Anything to keep my precious miles. And eventually it calmed, returned to normalcy, and I went on.

As soon as I can find a decent replacement, I'm going to chuck the fucking heartrate of America into the next river I cross.

Seduction of the Innocent: how videogames warped my fragile little mind

The desire to bicycle three thousand miles does not arise without significant inspiration. If you've been following my blog, you've already read about the dad connection. But I count another, more insidious factor among my inspirations. I blame videogames.

I've been a gamer since I first plugged quarters into Space Invaders at age 9. My first home console was a Sears Telstar, which played four variations of Pong. By now, at age 40, I've owned over a dozen dedicated gaming systems. My favorite games have always been ones with big environments that reward exploration.

One of my very favorite games, just released a year or two ago, is a Japanese import called Shadow of the Colossus. In it, you spend most of your time on horseback riding peacefully through empty plains, lonely forests, remote mountain lakes, desert mesas, and the desolate ruins of the magnificent culture that once spanned them all. These long, contemplative rides are punctuated by brief, violent battles against creatures the size of megachurches, but that's neither here nor there. Really, the game is about riding the horse and enjoying the scenery.



I won't say that the game instilled me with a desire to travel, but it certainly raised my awareness of a deep seated need. During long car rides, I'd often felt the gentle tug of broad, expansive vistas, inviting me to explore them. And here I am, riding my horse and tilting my lance at windmills. The scenery is everything that was promised in Shadow of the Colossus: the endless grassy plains, the green rolling hills, the remote mountain lakes, even the desolate ruins. I haven't met any giant monsters yet, but my hopes remain high.

So the next time you hear someone claim that videogames aren't corrupting the fragile minds of our precious youth, you tell them for me how videogames turned me from a productive member of society into a seasoned vagrant, following the winds of chance wherever they may take me. In short, you tell them how videogames ruined my life!

Birds of Prey

One of the great things about this trip has been seeing wildlife that I've only otherwise seen in zoos. In particular, I've crossed paths with a lot of large birds. Sadly, they haven't often presented themselves for photographs, nor does the iPhone's fisheye lens well serve the subject, so you'll have to make do with my paltry words, which of necessity must include such cliched hyperbole as huge, enormous, gigantic, and holy shit.

I've routinely passed deer carcasses on the roadside, but on day 14 out of Ione, I startled several scavengers off of one. The flurry of feathers included several ravens, which are shaggier and twice the size of their urban cousins, the crow. Last to flee the scene was a turkey buzzard, which glared balefully at me before circling lazily to a perch in the treetops.


Srsly. There's a vulture up there.

Later in the same day, I passed by a utility pole atop which clung a five foot wide nest of woven brambles. Out of the nest there peeked three downy gray eaglets, chirping down at me.


Peep peep, dude. Now gimme a fuckin' cracker.

Days later, while following the Flathead River out of Paradise, Montana, I stopped for a dip in the river. I'd just parked my bike, changed my shoes, and walked down to the river's edge, when I looked to my right and there, not 30 feet from me, was a golden eagle the size and color of a chocolate lab. It was bent over something on the ground, but soon turned and saw me as well. For a moment I thought to run back to my bike for my camera; the idea passed just as quickly. The eagle and I stood still, contemplating each other. With not a trace of hurry, it raised its wings and hopped toward the water. It caught a low draft over the river's surface, then swiveled its wings slightly for a quick turn into an updraft, which carried it up and into the trees standing over the water's edge, where it disapeared.

That same evening, while preparing to bunk down beside a picnic table in Dixon, Montana, I heard a scrabbling noise in the tree behind me, and looked up to see what I believe was a barn owl glide silently by, and take up residence on a nearby fencepost.

Oh, and let me not forget the family of wild turkeys I saw grousing along the rode out of Colville, Washington, which quickly fled from me into the brush. I may or may not have seen turkeys in the zoo, but I've certainly seen enough of them on the dinner plate.

Day 21: Missoula, Montana

Crossing the Higgens Avenue Bridge

Missoula's a hard city to figure out in just a day. Nestled at the north end of the Bitterroot Valley and spanning the Clark Fork river, it's got an interesting frontier history and an active outdoor culture. It has the most robust bicycle use I've seen outside of UC Santa Cruz, and bicycle lanes are everywhere. The city's river still runs clean, and people swim in it right off the downtown parks. But, with a population of around 50,000, Missoula appears to be falling victim of its own success. Rather than promote urban density, planners have spun a growing web of new roads lined with generic townhomes. The city's historic downtown core shows a few remnants of pre-automotive urban density, and just a couple of new office towers; everywhere else is sprawl.


One of very few modern towers

I rode in to town during a jammed weekday rush hour, pleased to find well marked bike lanes, but surprised by the amount of car traffic. I had two things on my immediate agenda: finding a bike shop and a motel. I was going to take the following day off and enjoy Missoula while checking my bike in for a pro tuneup. I'd broken a spoke the day before. After last year's adventure, I was carrying spare spokes and tools, but I still preferred to have a pro tune.

I'd already called ahead and made an appointment with Open Road, listed on my Adventure Cycling map. Plan was to bring it to them first thing the next morning, but since I'd made it to town early enough, I stopped by to verify their location and see what was available in their neighborhood. They were located in the southside, Missoula's first wealthy residential neighborhood, which now borders Montana University. I cycled through blocks of leafy elms shading Queen Anne homes, crossed the Higgens Avenue Bridge, and checked in to the Bel Aire motel across the river in downtown, where my first act was to enjoy to take advantage of their hot tub.


Clark Fork River, between Downtown and Southside

I sat in the Bel Aire's sunken tub, relaxing my sore knees and watching the sky through the window that looked out over the parking lot. I noticed a shimmer of heat haze emanating from below the sill of the window, and sat higher to find its source. Beyond the window was parked a rusty, beaten, dark blue Crown Victoria LTD, with a device on its hood that I at first took to be a wind scoop. In a moment I realized that it was a small, propane powered barbecue grill, being tended by a snaggle toothed, scraggly haired man in a blue cap and blue t-shirt that said, "Got Roof Top?" I had noticed him when I arrived, and I had the notion that he was with the girl behind the counter who'd checked me in. I chuckled as he forked a half dozen sausages from his cartop grill, while yellow crickets climbed fruitlessly against the glass of the spa window.

In the morning, I prepared to take my bike to the shop. On the way out, I was stopped by a young woman in the alley behind the motel, who asked me, "Hey man, do you know what day it is?" I laughed, because I was so far off the calendar that I had no idea; and because I found it adorably cute that Missoula's young people still earnestly address people as "man". I checked my phone and gave her the date.

I'd unloaded my bike of all my bags, and in honor of Montana's bareheaded cyclists, I went native and rode without my helmet the twelve or fifteen blocks to the bike shop. It was freeing to ride sans helmet and bags, and it felt good, like skinny dipping or bare backing, but also a little precarious. I reached the shop intact. I've known shops that wouldn't work on recumbents, and I was pleased, when I showed my bike to the shop jocks, that they were unafraid of it. I left them with my spare spokes in case they didn't have the right ones available.


Southside

After settling affairs with my bike, I gravitated immediately toward the closest indy coffee shop, Bernice's Bakery, where I chatted with a friendly counter girl about cross country bike trips. She'd recently done a 500 mile loop around Montana, and we shared stories. Incidentally, the pastries there are excellent, and I highly recommend their spinach croissant.

After a relaxed breakfast, I went looking for a laundromat. I take an almost obscene pride in wearing the same set of bike clothes every day, rinsing them by nights, and machine washing them on days off. I have a clean set that I wear during washing days, preserving their virtue for my theoretical interviews with the press. (I also carry a pair of comfy yoga pants and a t-shirt in case I need to appear slightly more presentable.)

I settled on a place called SPARKLE!!! (3 exclamation points or 4? I can't recall.) It was a cheerful spot with a soda counter and free wifi, run by a neat, mustachioed gentleman of about 50 - whose name I later learned was Paul - with whom I shared a few words. I spun up my filthy bike clothes and sat down to work, occasionally getting half drawn into running conversations between Paul and visiting friends. At one point, Paul stopped by the table where I was transferring photos and asked, "Are you working?" He had a phone in his hand, and I thought he might need to cut me off, but no, he was there to gossip. He'd just heard from a friend that Tonka, makers of Tonka Toy Trucks, had released an actual truck. He invited me to google it up. We spent several minutes looking for it; this was the best match we found.

With still the better part of an afternoon to kill, I wandered by the boutique shops of the university area - like Seattle's U-District, but so clean! Everywhere I went, I saw bikes leaned against racks, while cyclists rode by engaged in habits usually reserved for motorists, including smoking cigarettes, talking on cell phones, and playing air guitar.


The Boutiquey part of town

Later, I wondered through downtown, and found my way to the offices of Adventure Cycling. AC is the non-profit org that publishes the maps I'm following, and they have an open offer of free ice cream for visiting cyclists. I stopped by to claim my ice cream. I was shown around their offices by a young male staffer, in a somewhat awkward presentation. It's understood that visiting cyclists are important guests, but really, the staff do have jobs apart from playing concierge. I took my ice cream, posed for a Polaroid, accepted a brief tour, and left, but not before the blue ink from the ice cream wrapper ran all over my hands, and from there to my laptop, which I'd been showing off. I felt slightly insulted.


The Wilma Theater

I made my way back to Bernice's for lunch. I find that one of the best ways to get comfortable in a new town is the repeat visit. My massage school psych teacher, Marv Thomas, said in his book Personal Village that it takes, on average, seven visits to a new place to be recognized as "a regular". I find that the process can be dramatically accelerated by walking in with a big personality.

Eventually, the shop called. My bike was ready. In order to silence the chorus of Russian crickets performing in my brakes, they'd replaced the steel pads with resin. I had mixed feelings about the durability of resin vs steel, but at that point, I was happy of anything that would free me from the agonizing cacophony. They charged me less than the cost of my motel room for the service, which seems unbalanced, but there you are.

I rode back to the motel well fed, with clean clothes, on a quiet bike with all spokes intact. I visited the Bel Aire's hot tub again, and watched the scraggly man, today wearing a different blue t-shirt, cooking steaks on the Crown Vic's hoodtop grill. All in all, a good day.

In the morning, I visited Bernice's again, chatted with the same counter girl, and bought extra pastries for the road. On the way out of town, I also stopped at SPARKLES!!! I needed an ATM, and I recalled that they had one. While there, I showed Paul my bike, and pointed out my route out of town. He dug in his wallet, and came out with a $10 gift card for a local supermarket that he "never gets to anyway". As I'd suspected, Paul was sweet on me. The card came with one string, he said, which was that I had to buy sunscreen. It was a touching gesture; the card covered my lunch.

Alive in: Missoula, Montana

I reached Missoula at about 5pm. My only association for Missoula is a line of dialog from Twin Peaks, delivered in a pinched, angry voice by Leland, as he is about to murder Laura Palmer's identical cousin: "So you're... GOing back to... miSSOULa.. MONTANA!" By that measure, the city does not disappoint.

Missoula appears to be a city determined to commit suicide by sprawl, so it took a half hour to wend through the condo-sproutin' outskirts into downtown, where I checked into the Bel Aire motel (pool and hot tub, baby). I'm hanging around tomorrow to put my bike in for a professional tuneup, so will catch up the blog in detail then.

Day 17-20: Highway 200

The Pack River Delta

After parting ways again with Mary in Sandpoint, I had hoped to pick up the pace and start my days earlier, to avoid getting stuck on the road past dark. Unfortunately, the prevailing winds were against me from the day I left Ione, so I effectively spent another week climbing, only now against wind instead of gravity.



I've been keeping a log, which has shown me that I spend about as much time during the day resting as cycling. With rest time, my mileage averages out to about 5mph, which means that 60 miles takes me 12 hours, give or take. That's right, if I hit the road at 9am, I don't stop until 9pm. I pray for the wind to stop. Meanwhile the days between days, the interstitial days, slide by one into the next.



I've found Idaho and Montana drivers to be generally more courteous of me than Washington drivers. They usually pass with a full lane's width, and often even slow down to pass. Honkers are fewer; with exceptions such as the driver of an enormous recreational vehicle towing an enormous power boat who was just too enormous to share the road with me; and the piece of shit brown haired asswipe driving an oncoming small gray convertible who thought it was funny to swerve into my lane and lean on the horn in a mock game of chicken. If I'd been carrying a gun, I guarantee there would have been an incident of bicycle-on-motorist violence. It's at moments like that when I wish for James Bondian defenses such as tacks or oil slicks or rocket launchers. Apart from such moments, I've grown somewhat more inured to honkers.


Good drivers.

The scenery has not disappointed. Leaving Sandpoint, Highway 200 swings north around Pend Oreille Lake, through the Pack River Delta, and then follows the Clark Fork River on a southeasterly course for Missoula.



Train tracks hug the entire length of the river bed, and freight cars were my frequent companions.



Because the tracks are laid flatter than the road, I often wished for an attachment that would let me mount my bike to the rails. In fact, I spotted a Chevy pickup truck with just such a device, riding along the tracks. I assume it was an official vehicle, and not merely a clever opportunist.



I passed into Montana on the morning of day 18, just 5 or 10 miles from where I'd stayed at the Clark Fork Inn. Almost immediately, Big Country's "In a Big Country" bubbled up to my conscious mind, and the three or four lines of it that I know repeated in an endless loop. Two days later, I would hear it playing on an 80s radio station at a diner in Plains.



Shortly after entering Montana I stopped at a riverside state park to stretch and urinate. When I exited the restroom I noticed a parked car, about 50 feet away, that I'd not seen on arrival. I was sure it couldn't have driven past while I was in the john - all the park restrooms I've seen in this region are small concrete bunkers placed over pit toilets, that echo ferociously. I noticed that the car's trunk was ajar. A lifetime of crime drama has taught me beyond any shadow of a doubt that a car parked in a remote location with its trunk ajar can mean only one thing. I considered this, and wondered if I had cell reception. I examined the car again. The trunk was still ajar. I was unwilling to approach the crime scene in my mind, though common sense began to dawn. State park, riverside, Montana, early Sunday morning. Surely, someone was fishing. I kept my distance from the car, but moved down toward the riverbank. Further down the bank I saw a man in a yellow cap with a fishing rod. I resolved to keep my grim imagination at bay.



As the big country opened wide its arms to welcome me, so did the Montana tourism industry. Each small town's "Made in Montana" pennants proved that Montana is savvy to tourism, and hotel prices climbed accordingly. The high prices shed new light on the would-be growth of Ione, Washington, which shares similar natural beauty. I imagine the entrepreneurs of Ione looking with jealous eyes to their neighbors to the east and asking, "Whatta they got that we don't got?" (For some reason I imagine Al Pacino in the role, bombastically explaining the situation to his underlings: "They got trees. We got trees. They got lakes and rivers. We got lakes and rivers. What the FUCK does it take to bring in las touristas?")


The Public Dock at Trout Creek

I stopped on day 18 at Thompson Falls, Montana. Tucked away behind the town is a hydroelectric dam that spans two sides of a small island. A quaint wooden foot bridge invites strollers to walk the island, where info plaques explain the hydroelectric process.


The bridge to Terabithia... er... Thompson Falls.

I stayed at the Falls Inn, just a block away from the bridge mouth. The motel has recently changed hands, and appears to be run quite well by its new owners, but the pure classic 70s decor remains intact. I imagine that it was quite the swingers lounge back in the day. I am only sorry that I failed to get a photo of the marlin hanging on the faux stone wall above the sculpted hot tub in the spa room.


I wonder if the guys who made Myst visited here.

Speaking of accommodations, I was pleasantly surprised by the availability of vegetarian options at restaurants along highway 200. I wondered if they sought to cater to the high number of Seventh Day Adventist churches in the area.

Surprising in another sense is the apparent lack of motorcycle helmet laws in Idaho and Montana. I saw few helmets at all in Sandpoint; about 50/50 on the roads of Montana, and I suspect that most of the helmeted riders were Canadians. I realize that Idaho and Montana are hard fightin' live free or die tryin' kind of states, but it surprised me to see riders so cavalier about it, especially after the accident I witnessed (Canadian, by the way, and wearing a helmet).



Day 19 was the day the salt left my body. It stained my clothes, my bike seat, and the strap of my shoulder bag with white rime. Astute readers of The Destroyer series, featuring Remo Williams, may recall this as a sign of puberty among practitioners of the ancient Korean art of Sinanju, of which all other martial arts are merely a shadow. It has been known to happen to adults who have undertaken the rigorous training of Sinanju, though such adults are rare. I can only conclude that fighting the winds of western Montana is at least as rigorous an undertaking.

The towns slowly rolled past: Plains, Paradise, Parma, Dixon, Ravalli, Arlee. The 60 mile stretch between Plains and Arlee was devoid of all services, with not a single motel nor campground to be had.


I like barns.

Past Paradise, I found a crazy person's rest stop. Someone had spray painted "REST STOP" in garish orange spray paint on a boulder, with an arrow pointed off the road. Other stones had also been marked in a crazy quilt of messages. Bits of orange and green vinyl ribbon were tied to stones and twigs, showing a trail down to the river. A rambling sign was taped to a tree, proclaiming "welcome to the waters edge AT YOUR RISK" and "this is how we do things in Montana" and signed by "A GOOD VET".



I followed the markers off the road. They bent away from the water, and instead lead to a one foot deep hole in the ground, which was described by surrounding marker stones as "OUT HOUSE". I wondered if this was all some crazy vet's Rambo fantasy, a macabre trap for the unwitting, then reminded myself to curb my imagination.



I did not use the "OUT HOUSE", or enter the river, though I did find a more civilized access point just down the road, where I took a dip and met an eagle.

Shortly after my swim, I stopped for an unplanned dinner break when my body demanded it. I sat and ate with my back to a chiseled cliff wall, watching the sun go down over the river. I contemplated how odd I must look to passing drivers, sitting by the side of the road, miles from any town.


Supper time.

I stopped for another break on a piece of Kalispel/Flathead Indian land that was open to non-motorized traffic, and considered camping there. As I walked through the stubs of dried grass and cattle dung, yellow grasshoppers flung themselves crazily from my path, like cartoon roaches scattering from an exterminator. Though I considered the notion romantic, I found the land too inhospitable for my soft city body.


Conservation land.

I ran out of steam at Dixon, a dying bedroom community (bedroom of what, I couldn't tell - probably Missoula). The only businesses in town had been boarded up. I passed people winding down their day, their dogs always barking at me. I circled the town looking for a likely place to camp, and settled on an unmanned firehouse with a big back yard. The sun was still up, but close to setting. I was in full view of the neighborhood and didn't want to unroll my sleeping gear until dark, so I sat at a picnic table and had another dinner. Shortly after I settled in, I was reminded of the ever present railway. I slept beneath the stars, interrupted by the occasional freight train. In the morning, I climbed through the broken window of an abandoned house opposite the firehouse, to use its restroom. I left Dixon without talking to a single soul.


Dixon's finest accommodations.

I rolled into Ravalli on the morning of Day 20. I'd expected a bigger town with services, but found more boarded windows. I did manage to find a sole survivor - a small shop run by a woman who made doughnuts and sandwiches, and sold fruit and handmade knickknacks from local orchards and area craftsmen. The coffee was weak, but the doughnuts were amazing. I had one just out of the fryer, still hot with grease and freshly applied sugar glaze. I purchased some fresh fruit and two sandwiches to carry me to Missoula, as I expected nothing between here and there.

I was surprised when Arlee, the next town, had services after all, and I stopped for another breakfast. By then it was nearly noon and the heat of the day was upon me. The ten miles out of Arlee was among the worst patches of road I have ridden, with heavy commuter traffic and no shoulder, and a climb that looks at first like an illusory descent. For bad experiences, it ranked with Washington 97 through the Yakama reservation.



An hour out of Arlee I was despondent. After a week of fighting the wind, I'd begun to wonder if the constant struggle was actually my strength giving out on me, or if maybe my wheels were seizing up with grit or my brakes dragging. The steel pads in my disc brakes had been squeaking since Mazama, and now they were singing like a chorus of angry crickets performing an experimental Russian symphony, which was slowly driving me mad.

And then, the wind changed.

I found myself really rolling downhill for the first time in a week. I was rolling down off a mountain, and my speed jumped up to 35mph, but my nerves were shot from heat and traffic. The wind was coming from behind my left ear, pushing me downhill, but also laterally, and I was hit with a severe wobble. I unclipped my feet to use my legs for balance while I slowed my descent, still wobbling at 20, at 15. I clutched the brakes and slid downhill at 10mph, happy to be moving forward without effort at any speed, as I rode down into a new valley.

The steep descent dropped me off at a truckstop at the busy junction of SR 200 and Interstate 90. I stopped there, bought a frozen coffee, and ate one of the sandwiches I'd bought at the little shop in Ravalli. I was just a short hop away from Missoula.

Day...uh...twelvety: Ravalli, Montana

As the green hills of northwestern Montana turn to brown toward the state's interior, so too does its economy, apparently. The map shows towns between Plains and Missoula, but you wouldn't know it to ride through them. There are no services between Plains and Missoula - only boarded up shells of gas stations, cafes and taverns; the latter bearing For Sale signs extolling the transferability of liquor licenses.

I slept rough last night, on the lawn behind a firehouse in Dixon, and in the morning crawled through the broken window of an abandoned house to use its bathroom. Seven miles down the road in Ravalli, I found weak coffee and fresh-made doughnuts at the closest thing the area's got to a grocery / cafe.

35 miles to Missoula. I'm still fighting brutal wind and crawling along at 5mph, but even so, I ought to be there by late afternoon.

Day...uh...twelvety: somewhere in Montana

Day 19: Plains, Montana

Speaks for itself

I mentioned that every two-bit motel has wifi. The corollary is that every place has their wireless routers configured differently, by which I mean wrong. I'm carrying two network devices with different operating systems, and it's a 50/50 chance that one or the other of them will fail to recognize or connect with any given hotspot. Neither of my devices could connect with the Thompson Falls Motel's router last night, so I gave up and called it a night.

I stopped today for lunch at The Circle diner in Plains, where I was served by a perky blonde waitress who flitted about like a hummingbird, never settling in one place long. Since the kitchen area was about as big as the dining area, this must give her a lot of exercise.

I'm making slow progress through Montana. It's mostly flat, but I've been riding into heavy wind since I left Ione, almost a week ago, which cuts my speed in half.

By the way, if it's "the big country", why are the outskirts of every town full of self-storage units? If big country people don't have room enough for all their stuff, heaven help the rest of us.

Several people have mentioned that they've had difficulty using the comments feature on the blog, so I've turned off the security. Comment away.

Day 18: Trout Creek, Montana

I stopped for a quick swim and a late lunch in Trout Creek, Montana. Well, sorta late, because I crossed over a dateline at the same time I crossed into Montana, so it's an hour later than when I left this morning (you know what I mean).

I've been continually amazed by the ubiquity of wifi. Every dinky little motel has it now. This is great for me, as Montana is a great, big, black hole in AT&T's service. I'll be out of phone service for at least a week, so the wifi stops will be my only means of connection.

Next stop, Thompson Falls, MT. It's 20 miles down the road, so I plan to call it a day there.

Day 18: Loose Gravel

I imagine that truly seasoned travelers have as many words for road surfaces as Eskimos allegedly have for snow. For me, riding a road bike, gravel, dirt and sand are the worst. Then there's the tricky one I'm calling composite gravel. I don't know the proper term for it. It's like asphalt that's had all the tar baked out of it, so that it's solid, but gritty, like sandpaper. As with sandpaper, the grit falls away in nubbly bits that find their way into corners. On the road, these loose bits of gravel are flung to the gutters, where they accumulate into drifts. I respect and fear the stuff, and I'm careful to ride the breaks on downhills. I often have to stop to pick bits of gravel out of my tires.

On crossing from Idaho to Montana, highway 200 promptly shifts from smooth asphalt to composite gravel. I'd been riding the stuff all morning. I was approaching a slight bank in the road when a column of five bikers moved to pass me. Three had passed already. I was watching the column in my rearview mirror, so I saw every second of biker number four's long slide when his bike went down on the gravel, just yards behind me. In my mirror, it looked like the cycle might slide right into me. I jumped off my bike and laid it against the metal guard rail.

The cycle had actually stopped some yards behind me, raising a dust cloud into which the rider had disappeared. I ran into the cloud and saw that the rider had been thrown or slid another dozen feet. He was lying on his back, starting to struggle up. He was probably not comforted by the command I barked, "Lie! Stay down!" I knew he needed to remain mobile, and that was the best that came to mind in the moment.

Fortunately, biker number five had also stopped. He straightened four's legs and removed his helmet. Four was revealed to be a man in his 50s with a spot of blood on the bridge of his nose. Five retrieved a clean cloth from his own bike and wiped the blood away. Five had the situation under control, and at this point, I felt pretty useless. I'd turned on my phone in case 911 was needed, knowing too well that I wouldn't find a signal.

I sat with four as the rest of the party caught up. One of them, a woman, spilled her own bike coming to a stop. Four tried to sit up to see; I told him she was all right. I asked him his name, told him mine. His was Bob. He had a spot of blood in his eye and I couldn't tell if it was from the bridge, or if he might've been concussed, but I wanted to keep him talking and moving slowly. He did manage to sit up, and the leg I'd thought looked broken was fine. "I knew I shoulda taken that turn slower," he said. His friends kicked the gravel, "Like driving on marbles."

With Bob standing, his buddies lifted up his cycle. The fairing lay in shattered pieces, and the cycle had leaked gas into the gravel. They began inspecting the cycle for specific damage. I felt the need to be useful, but it was clear that I had nothing to offer. I returned to my bike with ambivalence, watching over my shoulder; and pulled back onto the road.

I was shaken. Surely not as much as Bob, but shaken nonetheless. It wouldn't do to lose my nerve. If I did, I might as well just pack it all up and find a train home. I just kept pedaling.

Alive in: Clark Fork, Idaho

I had a very late start today, since I wanted to spend as much time with Mary as I could. We parted ways in Sandpoint at about 2pm. Over the last week, I've fallen into a bad pattern of dawdling early in the day and then paying for it by riding late, and I'm determined to stop that.

I reached Clark Fork, about 25 miles from Sandpoint, at 5pm. It was early to stop, but the next town down the line is another 25 miles, which would have put me there no earlier than 8pm. Though my gut was yelling to keep moving, sense won out, and I decided to rest up and start early in the morning.

I rode past some beautiful scenery along the Pack River Delta, but I'm unable to transfer photos at the moment, and I haven't much else to report about today. I did take the opportunity to back post about Day 12 on the road, and Day 13 in Ione. I had an evening in Ione that was pretty entertaining, so I hope you'll check it out.

Day 15-17: Sandpoint, Idaho

The bridge over Pend Oreille Lake

I reached Sandpoint, Idaho at 3pm on a Thursday. The bike trail over the Pend Oreille Lake bridge led me right into the heart of town. I made a couple of lazy circles around downtown seeing what there was to be seen. I found the Monarch Mountain Roasters, a cozy, independently owned coffee shop, and settled in for the duration. (Give me a good coffee shop, and I'm happy.)


The fabulous carrot cupcake of Monarch Mountain

Mary was driving from Seattle to meet me, and she arrived soon after, an eager bundle of affection. We started calling area hotels and were surprised by the high cost of accommodations. Apparently Sandpoint is something of a destination spot. We booked two nights at a La Quinta just a block away from the Monarch.


Mary contemplates the biscotti at Monarch Mountain

We took a lazy, domestic weekend, sleeping in, stuffing ourselves at local restaurants (including Eichardt's, recommended by our house sitters, who are from here), catching showings of Hell Boy and Dark Knight, and poking through the Saturday farmer's market. For me, it was a vacation from the rigors of daily cycling.


The world's tiniest pizzeria

From our brief time here, my sense is that Sandpoint is a very pleasant city; clean, walkable, well laid out, surrounded by outdoor activities, with a vibrant culture that supports home grown arts, and a friendly, well educated and physically active populace. It seems to have many of the amenities that I appreciate in a big city - restaurants, music, theater - with a population of just about 7,000.


The Panida theater. Viggo Mortensen started here.

Random things that amused me

Everyone's favorite family


Always good to be forewarned about drunk drivers


WTF? Seriously, WTF??

(I was further amused when the iPhone recognized the word "wtf" and auto-capitalized it for me.)

iAmerica

I didn't buy a new iPhone before leaving for the trip because I was a bit too busy to wait on line on opening day. The only thing that really appealed to me was the new GPS feature, but I figured I might buy a phone along the way, once the initial demand had been met. Now that I've been on the road awhile, I've found plenty of use for GPS, so I've been keeping my eyes open for opportunities to buy the phone.

Except that there are none.

Sand Point, Idaho has a Verizon dealer. But the closest place to buy an iPhone is in Spokane, WA, 75 miles away. Nor will I find an iPhone in Missoula, MT (pop roughly 60,000) - or anywhere in Montana, for that matter.

So where is Steve selling all his ten million phones, is what I want to know? How do people outside major cities get their iPhones? I mean, c'mon, by the mail?

The Lord of the Beans

I'm at the Mountain Monarch coffee roaster in Sandpoint, Idaho, enjoying their coffee and free wifi. Viggo Mortensen just sat down next to me.

Alive in: Sandpoint, Idaho

Made it to Sandpoint, and Mary drove in soon after. We'll probably hang around here tomorrow so we can spend some time together and I can catch up on the blog. The bicycling is a full time job, and the blogging is another part time job on top. I'm making a real effort to document my days (the interesting bits, anyway) - but AT&T really sucks out here in the wild - and my days keep running extra long. Anyhoo, more soon.

Alive in: Newport, Washington

A quick update from a comically inept McDonald's in Newport, WA: every order wrong, or your money back! I expect to cross into Idaho shortly, en route to Sand Point, where Mary is driving ahead to meet me. I'll catch y'all up on the last couple of days from there.

Day 13: Ione, Washington

I stopped for a rest day at Ione, so I had some time to poke around. More than many places I've visited, Ione left a peculiar impression on me. My first sight of Ione was the burned building on the southern edge of town. A prominent poster tacked to the ruin announced that the fire was caused by arson, and offered a reward for information. After visiting, I'm still unsure whether or not to consider it as an appropriate metaphor for the town.


Arson

Like a fish climbing up onto land, Ione (pop 400 something) appears to be a town at the cusp of a make-or-break evolutionary leap, struggling to metamorphose from a backwoods logging/mining town to a vacation destination. Decrepit houses sit empty as the old institutions of the town die off. Even the local Grange chapter, that bastion of rural social life, has been boarded up and its building put up for sale. But, among all the decaying single story buildings can be found a pair of new two-story motels. And indeed, Ione is ideally situated on a wide bend of the Pend Oreille river that is beautiful in summer. In Autumn, the local chapter of the Lion's Club fires up a historic train line for scenic tours. I don't know how the area fares for winter sports.


The view from the Riverview Motel

Porter's Plaza, the motel I stayed at, counted among its siblings a small pizzeria, a laundromat, a gas station mini-mart, and a car wash, all owned by the same local man. This enterprising fellow must have been employing half the teenagers in town during summer break. When I checked in to the motel (at the gas station), there were two girls minding a toddler behind the counter, and a teenage boy with a black eye in the back room.

(Speaking of teenage boys... nearly every young male that I passed in Ione gave me a look as if they were sizing me up; to see if they could take me, in case I threatened to diminish their already dwindling gene pool by carrying away one of their women. Perhaps not coincidentally, I overheard several conversations regarding recent fights and the characters who'd started them.)

My motel room was surprisingly well appointed, a bargain at fifty bucks. The motel has an A-frame roof, and the second story rooms each have loft spaces with second beds; just the sort of place to double up with friends for a ski weekend (assuming there's skiing in the area).


Downtown Ione

After checking in, I rode around town. Ione's downtown is only a few blocks square. You can see it all in under an hour. By bicycle, in a few minutes. It's telling that Wikipedia has nothing to offer about Ione but census information. The post you're reading is probably the longest thing written about it in some time.

With nothing else to do, I considered visiting the local bar: the Boots & Saddles Saloon. I'm not much of a drinker, and usually uncomfortable in bars unless I'm in a Santa suit, so I stood outside feeling ambivalent. The place sounded eerily quiet, and then loud voices were raised. Maybe not my kind of place. I pushed inside anyway.


The Boots & Saddles Saloon

The saloon was bigger than I'd expected, and far away in the opposite corner sat a small cluster of people, hunched over the bar smoking. I was surprised as much by their silence as I was to see people smoking indoors (c.f. Washington's smoking ban, enacted last year). I asked timidly, "Are you open?" The grumpy reply was, "No, we live here!" And then I was inspected by an enormous dog that padded over to me silently. I forget the breed(s), but it looked like a calico St. Bernard.

And so I sat down and joined them, the three men sitting at, and one woman behind, the bar. Fortunately, bicycling across the country is an amazing ice breaker, and soon I was part of the conversation. In fact, they all began talking at once, weaving the sort of conversation that is created by people with long familiarity. I was overwhelmed, and at first I thought they were all wildly drunk. They were all of them intense characters in their own unique way, but it took me a while to separate out the threads.

Barb was the dour, laconic bartender. To my left sat Doug, with thinning gray hair and a wry, quiet sense of humor. Beyond him sat Jeremy, a big man of about 30 and a nearly incomprehensible speaker, with one misty eye wide open in a fanatical stare and the other fixed half shut in a lupine wink. Danny sat at the far end, a grizzled, bearded scarecrow of indeterminate age, with a voice like hot embers being ground together under heavy pressure. The dog, which had gone back to its bed in the corner, belonged to Danny.

I asked Barb if she served cider. I was prepared for her sardonic stare, so raised my hands self-deprecatingly and shrugged. "We've got beer and wine. Some coolers. Mike's Hard Lemonade." I was happy to settle on a hard lemonade. After cycling all day, I downed the first one quickly and ordered another.

The other three continued talking over each other... except that, I realized, Doug was actually talking under the other two, speaking to me in a steady, quiet way that cut like a drill beneath the cartoonish raised voices of the others. He warned me not to veer off course, and then shared a story about driving to New Mexico, where he and a compatriot acquired a five gallon gas can full of home brewed Tequila, which ended with them drunkenly driving 500 miles off course. He warned me about the Indians in Utah's Mojave desert, resorting to old ways as the US economy fell. Barb caught this, and insisted that "I'm sure he's planned this out!" During one of Danny's outbursts, Doug quietly asked me, "Did you understand a word of that?" Laughing, I admitted I had not.

Doug was the first to leave, sharing a comment and a hug with Barb that suggested they were old friends, or perhaps even a couple. In the absence of Doug's piercingly direct dialog, I was able to get a better sense of the two other men. I also learned that Barb had worked with the logging crews as well; had lived in Arlington and Seattle, and returned to Ione just a few years ago. I told her how I admired the saloon, and lamented the loss of such character in Seattle; she agreed that even Arlington had grown past what she'd once known.


Jeremy and Danny

Jeremy's conversation became slightly more comprehensible as I made an effort to follow him. He'd been a logger, worked a variety of jobs, and now was working "the Mex'can backhoe", which he repeated excitedly. I didn't understand the "Mex'can" part, but I did know what a backhoe was, and Barb confirmed that he operated one. (The Urban Dictionary defines "Mexican backhoe" as someone who digs with a shovel, because they have no backhoes in Mexico. This gives you some clue to Jeremy's sense of humor.) Jeremy asked if I'd seen any pretty women on my trip, and of course I told him I was married, and that I'd seen some, but hadn't done anything with them. He blushed as Barb reprimanded him. Jeremy offered me a cigarette, which I politely declined, as Barb reprimanded him again, "He's riding a bicycle, he don't need that!" Jeremy defended himself, saying "I offered! I offered!" as if it had been pointed out that sharing was a grace lost from among his manners.

Jeremy was missing at least one finger from his left hand. I assumed he'd lost it in a logging accident, and asked him about it. He was uncharacteristically shamed for a moment, and then said, "Shotgun." He pointed to a dimple in his left temple that I had noticed, and tried to point out a line along his scalp beneath his hair, checking with Barb for confirmation. She agreed that he had a line across his scalp, though it didn't show beneath his hair. I didn't know how to respond. "But how?" I asked. "Drugs," he said, "It was drugs. That's all I'll say." I raised my bottle to him and said, "Congratulations. You're a lucky man to still be here." A moment later he said, "It was meth. I did some bad things. But no more." Jeremy's behavior was explained. I raised my bottle a second time, congratulated him again, let him know that I was not judging him.

And Danny. Danny was a true American archetype, a wizened John Henry, a mountain man who'd spent his life felling trees and mining the earth. Danny was small in size, but gargantuan in character. His throat must have been scarred by his years beneath the ground; he spoke like a rasp against stone, in an animated voice that rose and fell like a tumbling log. He laughed heartily and often. I tried to follow the train of his conversation, though I was often bucked off. He spoke about owning his own business, and working jobs all over the country, but always being drawn back home by the trees. We both agreed that money was not worth happiness. He told me I was strong for pursuing my trek across the country; I held up my soft, white hands and told him that he was strong. We settled on "determined" for me.

Danny bore a strong facial resemblance to a girl I know in Seattle. I asked him, "Danny, what's your last name?" "Boggs!" he croaked. "Do you have any Steadmans in your family?" He looked confused, and I repeated the question. "None that I know of," he said. I continued, "Because you look an awful lot like a girl I know in Seattle, she's about 30." Barb laughed as Danny considered the notion of a girl with his face. "Does she have a beard?" he asked. "No," I said, "I think it's in the eyes and the nose."

At some point Danny bought another round, and I submitted to a third Mike's Hard Lemonade. Between the drink and the day's cycling, I was ready to drop. I felt that I owed a round, and I made my apologies and thanked Danny, Jeremy and Barb for the evening. I'd entered the bar timidly, feeling like a deep outsider, an anthropologist on expedition. I left it feeling heady and excited with the discovery of new country.

I bicycled tipsily back to my motel, and only woke once to take painkillers for my incipient hangover.

Day 12: Superheroes

Stubbs ground me down and reopened old wounds as I cycled by rough roads torn by dust devils. I revisited a line of thought that began during last year's ride to Black Rock and bled out this passage:

It's hard work being a superhero, but if it's the only way to get your dad's attention, you do it anyway. Or you give up and stop talking to him, like I did. I'd hardly spoken to him in three years, when he called on his birthday to tell me that his own father had just died. Two weeks later, on Thanksgiving, he died himself. I would never be a superhero now.

You see, one of the main reasons I'm out here is to write a novel about coming to grips with my dad's death. It's a sincere story with an overlay of social satire. I've been struggling for a year with the opening sentence, and there it is. I haven't cried over him in that year, and I thought that enough time had passed, but stringing those words together so plainly rips it out of me all over again. The truth hurts. This trip is my ode to him. Maybe I can still be a superhero in his memory.

As a revered comic book artist, my dad was an old legend in a minor pantheon of deified celebrities. I've heard it said that the child can't surpass the parent until the parent dies. (Alright, it was on Battlestar Galactica, you fucking geeks. Shut up!) I don't know that it's true, but since my dad died, I've let go of old feuds, married, and bought a house. My sense of priorities has certainly shifted. Could just be that ol' sense of impending mortality showing me how little time I have to get serious about achieving my goals.

So now you know, I'm out here writing a book on a bicycle. I concentrate best when my body's active and in motion, and the constant physical effort of it has a way of tearing away the comforting white lies and baring the soul, so I'm crossing the country to find the time and freedom and inspiration to say what needs to be said. It's what drives me to finish this trip and maintain this blog so rigorously.

Day 12: Stubbs, the Evil Clown

The five advertised passes through the northern Cascades are Rainy and Washington, Loup Loup, Wauconda, and Sherman. Rainy and Washington are kissing cousins, just a few miles apart, so for most purposes count as one. All in all, four days of climbing. But there's another, unadvertised climb; the hump of land between Colville and Ione, which I've named Stubbs.

While Stubbs lacks the "pass" designation, the sneaky bastard climbs as high as Loup Loup and lies as long as Wauconda. It's 30 miles of climbing, and the downhill side is windy enough to keep you peddling. Stubbs is a pass in every regard but for the elevation marker that grants the affirming opportunity to stamp your feet in triumph and shout, "There!"

If Wauconda is the sly, smiling sadist, and Sherman the tender hearted old Don, then Stubbs is the malicious prankster who clutches your shirt sleeve until you turn to pull away, and then delivers a belittling sideswipe up your backside, sending you stumbling into a pile of trash on your way to the curb.

In short, it was another long day.



I had many small impressions of the morning as I passed by fields of yellow wildflowers and people shoeing horses, and was passed by red tailed hawks and click clacking cicadas. I took frequent breaks at fence posts bordering tall, grassy fields, occasionally chatting with owners who meandered out to pick up the day's mail.

I rode past a house with at least a dozen dogs chained up in the yard, placed equidistantly apart from each other at chain's length, every dog bouncing and barking at me in a terrible cacophony, the lone "Beware of Dog" sign an amusing understatement. It wasn't so much a kennel as a dog garden. I imagined the home owner's train of thought: "Need more security. Another dog, yeah, another dog, that'll show those fuckers." I could hear answering barks behind me, over the hills in the distance, though whether merely echoes or another dog garden, I couldn't tell.



In another amusing dog moment, I was passed by a car with dogs hanging out both side windows, barking at a column of motorcyclists riding behind. Shortly after that I was passed by two logging trucks, each fully loaded, passing each other in opposite directions, which left me with questions about the efficiency of such a system.

Along about mid-afternoon I was pushing my bike up a hill when my attention was captured by the damnedest metal... thing. Glimpsed from the road was a teardrop shaped, rusting silo. It looked like a Mercury capsule, with paneled sides and a mesh dome. Between me and it was a metal guard rail, a steep embankment, and a couple hundred yards of wooded property. Farther up the hill, I found the property entrance, its gate decorated with an imposing NO TRESPASSING sign, below which squatted an ominous, weathered barn.


Keep Out. No, really.

I wanted a closer look at that silo. I reconsidered the embankment. At the bottom was a barbed wire fence, its brittle, wooden posts faded and falling. It was clear that many people had come this way over the years. I imagined area teenagers sneaking out to the silo for private purposes. I placed a foot on the least erect fencepost, and it bent further toward the ground. I tightroped across it as it yielded to my weight, careful not to let it bite me in the ass as I stepped off it.


What's he building in there?

Old dirt roads overgrown with grass laced the property, and I followed one toward the silo. I could make out the decrepit farm building through the trees to my left. To my right, a tantalizing view of other rusting structures. Suddenly, I found myself in line of sight of the farm building. Through an open bay door, I saw afternoon light reflecting off the polished grill of a modern vehicle. Sharply aware of my contrasting white / black bike clothes, I stepped back out of sight.

I was trespassing, there were no two ways about it. If someone with a meth lab was in a shooting mood, I was a highly visible target. I scanned the open doors and windows of the farm building for motion. That was where my courage / foolishness ended. I wouldn't pass through the building's line of sight, and while there were other roads around the far side of the property, every passing minute diminished any credibility in my claims of ignorance. Sadly, I retraced my steps past the fence and up the embankment.

As I recrossed the front gate, I contemplated the NO TRESPASSING sign. With all the fascinating old gear rusting in their back forty, they might as well have posted a sign that said FREE CANDY. I imagined that they might have made money by opening the place for public viewing.


The view from the falls

Later in the afternoon I took a break at a scenic lookout over Crystal Falls, a minor falls in a deep, worn canyon. The viewing area was enclosed by metal fencing, but the interesting views were all down below, so I hiked down to the mouth of the falls for the falls-eye view.



Four bikers arrived shortly after me, and left slightly before. A passing mini-van made a sudden u-turn, and the woman driver pulled alongside the drivers to deliver a message, which they passed to me in turn. The message: "She said to watch for cows down at the bottom." (Four hours and ten miles later, I would meet those cows, clustered in the road.)


Oh grow up

I was still climbing Stubbs two hours later when I reached the Beaver Lodge resort & campground, where I took a break to swim in Lake Gillette with the presumptive beavers. I continued on, refreshed and ready for Stubbs' final leg.


Presumptive Beavers

I finally broke free of Stubbs' clutching grip and stumbled to the curb of the Pend Oreille river. I sank down into the Pend Oreille river valley with tears on my face; at last, I had crossed the Cascades. At the bottom of that hill was a left turn and a flat, four mile finish into Ione.


The golden hour strikes

As I rolled down the last hill, I spotted a deer in a field on my left. It also saw me, froze, and then tore across the field, scrambling to reach the road ahead of me. If I was a car, I'd've hit it. As it was, it disappeared into the brush on the right side of the road, leaving me with a flash of white and a small glimpse into deer psychology.

The area I had just reached is called Tiger, and I stopped short of the turn to Ione to admire the signs for the Tiger Store, the Tiger Historical Center, and Tiger Physical Therapy. While I was stopped, a young blond woman stepped from a white compact car with Canadian plates, and crossed the street to ask my help finding "ponderay". This was my first time I had heard "Pend Oreille" pronounced; I greeted her with a blank stare.


The great plains recumbent

Alive in: Colville, WA

Long day. Tired. Bed. More tomorrow.

Day 11: Sherman's March

Having learned my lesson from Wauconda, I did not dawdle in Republic, and sleeping in wasn't an option. After I'd rolled up my bedroll, I walked stiffly into the next door gas station's mini-mart. The lady clerk inside asked, "Sprinklers startle you?" I had an egg muffin, a doughnut, and coffee for breakfast. It was another long day that extended into night, but it can't be said that I got a late start, or that it was Sherman that confounded me.


Sherman's a pleasant old fellow.
Let's forget that whole "burning of the south".

Sherman Pass is advertised as the steepest of the bunch; and while it may be, it is also one of the shortest. If Wauconda was the sly sadist, Sherman is the grand old gentleman, open and inviting. Where Wauconda's narrow, twisty passages hid the road around every bend, Sherman's broad slopes gently revealed the road ahead. The day was cool and breezy, and being a Monday, the ratio of cars to me was considerably more in my favor.


A skeletal nursery

Toward the top I passed through an area that must have burned in the past few years. Tall, skeletal husks stand guard over the lush nursery below, the bright growth springing up from the boneyard. I stopped at the White Mountain Fire Overlook to survey the extent of the burn zone. It spread as far as I could see.


Sherman Pass, elevation 5,575

Sherman's 17 mile climb passed quickly. In fact, with regular stops for rest breaks, I reached the top of the pass by early afternoon. By then the afternoon had turned chilly, and I realized I hadn't eaten anything more than a Clif Bar, a plum, and some goo since breakfast.

I stopped for lunch at a trailhead near the top. With this constant exercise, I don't feel the usual pangs of hunger. Instead, I know it's time to eat when my body stops functioning, and my arm extends like a pseudopod to draw nourishment into me. In short order I had eaten a handful of baby carrots, a large avocado, half a jar of baby dill pickles, a double handful of crackers, a quarter pound of veggie sausage meat, a length of string cheese, an orange, and two Tiger's Milk bars. Afterwards I felt sated, but not overfull. I also felt sleepy, but it was too cold on the pass to nap. I decided to ride down to a sunnier spot.

Leaving the trailhead, I met two cyclists who'd just come the east side. They were a couple, male / female. They'd come 3,200 miles. They were tall, lean, and golden, dressed in bright yet tasteful colors, like angels. It made me miss Mary. I'd begun telling people that my wife had enough after one week and went home. It sounded so easy and painless when stated so simply, devoid of the sorrow and second guessing. I wondered if we also would have become golden angels after 3,200 miles.


How fast is too fast?

I began the slide down the east side. The fitful night and the heavy lunch caught up with me and I felt sleepy. I was adrenalized, yet yawning, and my reactions were sluggish and exaggerated. The steep downhill carried me past 30mph, but the strong uphill draft threatened to throw me off balance. I throttled the brakes and looked for a cultivated turnoff to nap.

The day warmed as I descended, and a ways down, I found Camp Crowden, a historic site. Crowden was one of Roosevelt's New Deal children, a home to the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC took up young men by the hundreds of thousands and put them to work building roads, hiking trails, dams and fire lookouts. I lay down on a picnic table and slept. Afterwards, I explored.


The sluice is loose!

The course of the pass follows Sherman Creek, which flows through Camp Crowden. There I found a sluice which channeled the river for a short distance through a buried concrete culvert, which let out in a small reservoir. I climbed down into the reservoir and up through the culvert, so thick with fish they bumped my legs, to find the hidden waterfall beneath the sluice.


I hope there are no C.H.U.D.


Closer. Closer. Closer still!


Under ground waterfall

Rested, I resumed the long downhill slide. With breaks for poking around, writing, taking photos, it was nearly 5pm when I reached the bridge to Kettle Falls. It had taken me six hours to climb the pass, and another four to come down off it.


The Columbia River


The Bridge to Kettle Falls

Kettle Falls somehow got the better of me, and it took another four hours before I saw the end of this tiny town.


The Boise Log Mill

The bike route I was following circumnavigated Kettle Falls, following the Columbia River past an enormous logging facility and up into the hills that skirt the town.


Well, I'll just go around anyway.

Following the map, I reached a dead end: a road closure with no detour signs posted.


Uh oh.

I bumped around the sign, figuring whatever had closed the road, that I could pass by it.


Bridge? What bridge?

The bridge spanned the river beneath a hydroelectric dam, and it was being replaced. The new bridge hadn't yet been connected to the old road. There was a five foot span of earthworks on either side. I saw a pair of motorcyclists across the other side, also trying to find a way around. They yelled across to say that the detour was some ten miles around. I had no energy for a ten mile detour. I unpacked my bike and carried all my gear, piece by piece, up and over the earthworks, across the unfinished bridge, and down the other side.


Rock and roll heaven

The road beyond the bridge climbed one more steep hill and then let me out into heaven. It was the golden hour, that special moment before sunset when the sun pours down liquid amber, and I ascended into an expansive grassy plain. High tailed deer loped through the waves of grain.

I was so awed by the vision of this new landscape that I rode right past the detour signs leading to my turn. Of course, since I was coming from a closed road, there were no signs facing in my direction. There, I have given you the gift of suspense. You know something I didn't, and it only remains to be seen how long it took me to figure it out.


The road to heaven is closed. Go away.

I pedalled through heaven, basking in the amber light, passing a jogging couple, an older woman on a bicycle, another couple out for a stroll. Rounding a bend, the road split into two gravel roads. Neither of these seemed likely to be mine. Between the gravel road and the closed bridge, I thought that the occupants of heaven must be trying to keep out the riff raff. I dragged my bike a mile up that gravel road before I gave up. Above heaven was a cluttered farm, littered with old vehicles and barking dogs, with no one home to ask for directions.

I rolled carefully back down the gravel road to the paved road of heaven. Past the golden hour, heaven had lost its shine. I found directions. Night was falling. Again.


God dammit. Night again. It's like it happens every day.

The road from Kettle Falls to Colville put me back on 20 / 395, a major highway, busy with traffic, before returning to country roads. I hated riding in the dark on a highway; but the country road took me a mile or two out of the way, circling around the back side of town. I sweated every last bit of those final miles, riding through the descending dark, gritting my teeth, wishing I'd stayed on the highway.

If I hadn't followed the back road, I wouldn't have likely seen the meteorite. Not just a distant white streak, it was close enough that I could see it gutter and flare before it came to rest just the next field over.

I made Colville at 9:30, and considered sleeping on a lawn again, but oh, how I needed a shower. I pulled my bike into the first motel I sighted. The office had closed, but four teenagers hanging out in the lot let me into a room. Apparently it was a transient motel, and the room was worn beyond belief, stained by water, fire, mildew, use and age, but at least it had a bed and a shower.

When I left in the morning, two of the teenagers were again (still?) in the lot, but the office was still not open. I left $40 and a note beneath the office door, and wasted no time leaving Colville.

Day 10: The curse of Wauconda

I was cocky after taking Loup Loup so easily. I dawdled in Tonasket until noon thirty, enjoying breakfast and poking around local shops. Wauconda, the cruel bastard, took its measure of sorrow to teach me a lesson for it.


Just a pickin' and a strummin'

The morning began nicely enough with breakfast at the Wildwood Cafe. A sign outside advertised guitar lessons. Inside, the walls were plain, but the ceilings high, and the floors stained a dark walnut. A small cluster of people sat to the back. I wasn't sure who was staff and who visiting, until an older fellow disengaged to take my order, standing casually with me at the front counter. I failed to connect with him, and ate in silence while I listened to the other party lament the unfair balance of Democratic actors in Hollywood. ("I used to like George Clooney, until he got political.")

A couple arrived soon after that quickly found a common ground with the proprietor: it seemed that they dealt in musical instruments. I ease dropped as their conversation ranged through old blues musicians they had known. I recognized Les Paul's name. "Old time string music, fiddles and things. Those old guys played it straight. A D chord is a D chord. One guy, he'd throw in one wild jazz chord, for just one beat, then go back to playing it straight." Eventually the proprietor brought out a guitar and picked out several melodies that I half recognized.


A storm is coming. Just like that last scene in Terminator.

The driving heat and steep climb out of Tonasket set me in a fierce mood, and I sank deep into a meditation about strength and will. I imagined my blood being cleansed by the heat. No headaches. No weakness. Room and time to think clearly, the freedom to sink my claws into my thoughts and strip them bare, rend the meat with my teeth and suck the marrow from the bone of them.

I had honed my lord-of-the-flies manifesto to a fine point by the time I stopped for a rest at the three mile mark. As I sat in the hot sun on the edge of a cultivated lawn, a car arrived with a plain middle aged woman and an older woman whom I assumed to be her mother. They waved as they exited, and the younger woman said, "It's so hot. Why don't you go sit down by the creek?"

She lead me down through the brush and burrs that stuck to my shorts, to the creek behind her house, and left me with an invitation to come up for ice water when I was ready. I climbed to her back porch like a chastened kitten and tamely accepted her shade and ice water. Her name was Danette, and I learned her family had lived on this plot for at least three generations.

I resumed my painful climb toward Wauconda Pass, twenty five, thirty miles of climbing. Loup Loup was straightforward, but Wauconda kept me in agony, hiding its secrets like the cruel cellmate who grins as he slides in the shiv. I wish I could say that Wauconda was some local figure of legend, but Wauconda is not a local name. It was brought here by gold prospectors from Wauconda, Illinois, in 1898, and given to a gold rush town that left only a ghost town. Wauconda, Illinois is said to have been named after an Indian chief, and maybe that's why the spirit of Wauconda is so mean. His good name was dragged and left to rot almost two thousand miles from home.


crazy affection dog wants to ride wif U

It was Saturday, and there were a fair amount of vehicles on SR 20. Many of them honked at me throughout the day. When drivers honk, I have to assume that it's hostile. They may mean it in a friendly way, or an acknowledging way, but with a horn's limited range of expressive, and the knowledge that any single car could be the one that kills me, I can only take it in a get-the-hell-out-of-the-way way. I never know when honking drivers are happy or irritated by my presence on the road, but I always swear at them under my breath.

And so, when someone yelled out their window in a clear effort to startle me, the thunderous scream was ripped from my mouth without thought: "FUCK YOU!" Even as the words were passing my lips, I knew what I had invited. It was a white compact car full of young men. What if they stopped? I hate conflict and I don't know how to fight, but a plan was in my mind in the space of a breath.

Hit the biggest or loudest first, go for the face, use the helmet, don't give them time to react or even get out of the car if I can stop them. I'll probably have to drop the bike and I hate to do that. Whatever happens to me, I'll teach them not to fuck with bicyclists.

They didn't stop.

This is what days of sharing the road with aggressive drivers does to me. In my post-event fantasy analysis, they do stop, and I beat the snot out of them all, thereby halting all automotive traffic, ever.

I pulled off the road at the next crossing, into an idyllic valley with a large farm house at a bend in the road, a horse pasture below, and a flock of domestic geese honking in the back yard. I stopped by their front fence to cool down; even 25 yards away, I could hear the family setting down to dinner. My idyll was dulled by dad yelling at the kids, "Because you don't listen to me, that's why!"



Dad, please don't yell

Postscript, July 28
Two days later I caught up over breakfast with the news from home about the altercation between Critical Mass cyclists and a motorist, that resulted in injury to two cyclists, and the driver beaten. My violent fantasy acted out. The omelette in my belly turned to lead, a cold mixture of shame and dread.

I've only attended one, Critical Mass, and I've long suspected it of a burgeoning mob mentality that frightens me. This kind of activism only serves to alienate the opposing side. I hope that people who are interested in pro-cycling reform will instead look to Cascade Cycling, an activist group that works through legislation, not confrontation.

I stopped a few miles more down the road to visit with a trio of horses. I stood by their fence and took a ridiculous number of photos of them approaching my bike, which amused and calmed me.


Meet your replacement

Soon after, I reached the top of the pass, though Wauconda wasn't done with me yet. My progress was slow and night was falling rapidly.


Here's your fucking elevation marker, you fucking fuck.

Soon I found myself riding in darkness. As I neared the town of Republic, where the road dipped below town, I was forced to brake to avoid a deer in the road. Wauconda relinquished me to Republic, but not before making me climb the last quarter mile.


Don't let the sun go down on you, boy

There'd been a stock car race in town that day; Republic's three motels were full. The parking lot of the second motel was half full of motorcycles, mostly Harleys. A party of about sixteen people, whom I took for the bikes' owners, spilled into the parking lot. They were a mixed bunch, men and women, mostly in their 30s. It occurred to me that I might buy a spare bed for sale among them.

Many people would not know it of me, but I'm naturally shy (despite my winning ways). I can approach a group of strangers, but it takes a conscious boost to get me over that hump of apprehension. I tamped down the timid and cranked the charm up to eleven before pushing my bike into their circle. As I'd expected, my recumbent caught their attention. They admired the fairing and made the requisite jokes about the missing motor.

They had no bed for me. They were doubled up themselves because the other half of the hotel had been booked by a funeral party. But, they offered me a beer, and took an interest in my trip. I spent an hour chatting with them, since I had no hurry by that point: it wasn't getting any darker. I learned that they were from the Seattle / Tacoma area, out for a weekend cruise. When the time came for them to move the party to a bar, I moved on.


Oooh, scary

I knew of a campground 3 miles down the road from Republic, but I feared of the dear in the dark. Instead, I settled for a public lawn on the edge of town. It was a strip of cultivated grass at the entrance to a wilderness trail, just up the street from a gas station. At least I'd have coffee and a restroom in the morning. I lay my bedroll down in a needle filled hollow beneath a small grove of pine trees, and cursed Wauconda before fitfully drifting off.


Sleeping Arrangements

Wauconda had one final indignity for me, when I was woken just before sun-up by the gentle patter of lawn sprinklers on my head.

Day 9: Loup Loup

For friendly poopers

This pair of co-crappers spotted at BJ's Branding Iron Cafe in Twisp.

Traveling with Mary, I was content to get as far as we got. If we hadn't made it all the way, so be it - we would've figured out how to get home from wherever we stopped. Now that I'm alone, I'm determined to reach Virginia and all stops are out. Today I cranked out 62 miles from Twisp to Tonasket, about 9 hours en route. I had a late start after breakfast with Mary and Katja, and so didn't reach Tonasket until evening. By then, my ass felt like two hot, sharp rocks were strapped to it.

Loup Loup Pass, Elevation 4020

The first goal was to climb Loup Loup Pass. Loup Loup wasn't as steep as portions of Rainy and Washington, but it was a continuous grade without breaks that felt like a long slog. I was surprised though, when I reached the top - it was only 15 miles from where we'd camped. After the spectacular views from Rainy/Washington, the scenery going up Loup Loup was unremarkable - unbroken trees without variety, like eating a sparrow after a diet of peacock.

Once through the pass, it's a different story, as I glide down into the expansive Okanogan Valley, its endless long rolling hills receding into the distance. The Okanogan River feeds the fertile valley center, a meandering strip of luscious green fringed by desert colors.

The Proud, Mighty Cock

The town of Okanogan, which is not as pretty as the valley after which it is named, appears to be the bedroom community of nearby Omac, a chain of big box strip malls about which, the less said, the less I will sound like an asshole.

Riverside on the other hand, appears to a picturesque farming village, the sort of quaintly perfect Norman Rockwell setting that appears in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg movies and Stephen King novels. It's just a pity that you have to drive through Omac to get there.

Next along the string of towns is Tonasket, which appears to be bigger than Riverside, with all the amenities still locally owned, and very few franchises in sight. It looks like the big business here is an apple processing plant. Tucked away behind the plant, on the river, is an enormous public rec area, with ball fields, a skate park, a river walk. All in all, a nice place to raise kids.

Seen in Tonasket. Posted without comment.

There appears to be a campground here in town, but I'm dying for a shower, so I settle for a crappy motel. I remember when crappy motels cost $25 - $35 / night, and nowadays they seem to go for $65 - $75 / night, so I'm pleased when this one only costs $53. Shortly after I settle in, there's a knock on the door. I've just washed my clothes, so I answer the door in a towel, opening it just a crack. Outside is a pale, thin woman with a sheen of sweat on her face. She asks for Rickie, and when I haven't heard of him, she mumbles about having the wrong room. Apparently I've been given the local meth dealer's usual room.

Day 7-9: Mary No More

The road out of Twisp

From a purely dramatic viewpoint, Mary chose an excellent day to break down. We set out from Twisp accompanied by darkening clouds and rising humidity, along the road to Loup Loup Pass. We rode slowly, our stiff legs reminding us that we hadn't stretched. Mary rode behind, and I saw that she was lagging more than usual. About 8 miles down the road, she stopped. She may have had her face in her hands. I set my bike off the road and walked back to her. Mary was crying. I took her bike and lead her off the road to a safe patch of grass. She paced for a bit, avoiding my eyes. Then she came to me and looked directly in my eyes and said, "Ivan, I don't think I can do this."

Up until now I'd considered it my duty to encourage Mary. My job now was to get her to safety, where we could rest and consider our options. We turned back to Twisp as the dark clouds continued to gather. We found an internet cafe, and I contacted friends to see if a ride home could be arranged, while Mary blogged about the morning. At this point we had no fixed plan of action, but I felt that Mary needed choices. Soon the storm broke, shattering the sky with thunder and lightning, and conveniently washing away all the day's tension with a cathartic and highly symbolic torrent.

The storm passes on

By the time the storm passed, we had arranged several pickup options (thank you, Katja, Mike, Larry, Marco), and discussed our next steps. Mary's spirits perked up. We decided to sleep on it, and arranged for a potential pickup the following night. I'd been keeping my own shit together for Mary, but I cried when we got the confirmation. Mary hugged me and we sniffled together in the internet cafe.

All the while, the thing that kept going through my head was Jack Black in High Fidelity, trying to arrange a rock dirge after John Cusack's girlfriend's father dies. "The night Laura's dad died, brother what a night it really was, brother what a night... angina's tough!"

At the end of the day

We kicked around various compromises to see how we could make the trip easier on Mary. The heat, the duration, the pace - all were too much for Mary. About a week was enough for her, and preferably in cooler weather. We talked about taking some shorter trips in Autumn.

Though we planned this trip together, it is a singular vision of mine, something I've long dreamed of. For Mary, it's "something big" to fill a void in her life that she has yet to name. Neither of us wanted me to quit. I'm independent and Mary is supportive, and those are (among) the qualities we love in each other. Mary was already busy planning ways to help me from home, and even visit me along the road.

Mary second guessed herself, but I think we both knew the right decision. Though I dearly wanted Mary to continue, I could not deny that while my vitality had grown on the road, hers had faded. And so we took two days of R&R in the rivers and internet cafes of Twisp, enjoying the heightened intimacy of mild tragedy.

Mothers, please read ahead. Others, you may click and drag across the box if you wish to read a naughty aside regarding intimacy.

Incidentally to those at home: after days of non-stop exercise, the orgasms are mind-blowing. Just sayin'.

We divided up all the gear on Thursday afternoon, which felt like dividing the CD collection during a breakup. Katja arrived on Thursday evening. She spent the night camping with us, and we all three enjoyed wine and fruit by a fire beneath the stars. In the morning, we had a final breakfast in Twisp. Before we separated, Mary announced her plan to catch up with me by car at Missoula, MT.

We may spend the summer apart, but we will still work together. To steal from "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka": every hero needs a theme song; and Mary is mine. (Cue: "Wind Beneath My Wings")

Day 7: Mary today, gone tomorrow?

Well, the big news of the day is that Mary feels like she's had enough for now. We're going to sleep on it for a day while we look at options to get her home. We've talked it through, and it's a big, teary decision, but her health and safety comes first. If she goes home, I plan to continue on once I've seen her safely on her way, and she may fly to Virginia in September to meet me at the other end.

While this news may trump any of my missed posts, I still plan to fill in the backdated gaps, as capturing the story of this trip is an integral part of the journey for me. I expect to post more shortly, so please check in again soon.

The fickle fates of wifi

Due to the vicissitudes of travel and the vaguaries of locall wifi spots, it's been hard to get much posted. I've written plenty and taken many photos, and will post them as able. Meanwhile, we're still alive and crawling forward. We took a slow day yesterday, and camped last night outside Twisp, in preparation for Loup Loup, the next big pass.

Day 6: The Superfluous Bundle

Today was supposed to be an easy day, though some critical quality of easy appeared to be missing from it. The plan was to check gear, repack supplies, stock up on groceries, and ride a puny 20 miles, passing through Winthrop and on to Twisp, where we'd retire early before tackling Loup Loup Pass the next day. My only goals for the day were to make time to write, and mail off a handful of unused items we'd culled from our gear. Cumulatively, they were about the size of a bundle of groceries, and the space could be better used.

Breakfast at the Mazama Countryside Inn was nice enough, and we chatted with a pair of older recumbent bicyclists whom we'd seen on the road a few times, always ahead of us. After breakfast, we spent several lazy hours tending to our equipment, and we hit the road to Winthrop at noon.

Immediately, we were slammed with heat. Where yesterday the temperature climbed with us, today we stepped into its full force. We labored over every hill and broke in the narrow shade of lone pines. Mary took it hardest. By the time we reached the edges of Winthrop, she was nauseous from the heat. I left her in the cool grass of a shady park, while I scouted the area for services.

In Winthrop proper, which is basically a tourist strip, we looked for a UPS office and a wifi spot while we shopped for more supplies. We sat down for a light lunch to let Mary rest. It was just shy of 4pm when we realized that the whole town appeared to be shutting down. Leaving Mary to wait for our food, I ran down the street to ship our bundle, just in time to watch the lights go out at the frame store that doubled as a UPS drop-off.

Back at the cafe, I checked for public wifi spots, but the only one available had an obnoxious filter that showed only Methow Valley advertising. The two published wifi spots in town had shut down. We stopped for ice cream to cool Mary's heat anxiety and my frustrations.

The road from Winthrop to Twisp was packed with rural rush hour drivers; among the worst drivers for bicyclists, because they think they know every inch of the road, and they slow down for nothing. We passed the Post Office on the way out of Winthrop. It had shut its doors 25 minutes earlier.

We'd targeted an RV park with wifi in Twisp, and we found it, two miles shy of Twisp. We still needed groceries for the Loup Loup climb tomorrow, which meant me riding into Twisp and back while Mary set up camp. The day was fading rapidly. I took the bundle with me in case I might find some way to be ship it. Leaving the park, my right foot stuck in my cleat, and I fell into gravel.

I'm a good caretaker when it's required of me, and Mary's needs come first on this trip. I know this. There is no question in my mind about it. But I'm an introvert by nature, and caretaking comes with a cost. It's one of the reasons I let go of my massage license. (I had a client who liked 4-hour deep tissue sessions. After one of these I was ready to punch him.)

With Mary's needs secured, my own needs brim up from a well of frustration and percolate into a near fury. The need to write. The need to mail. This. Fucking. PACKAGE.

It comes as a splash of cold water when I find a UPS drop-box in front of Hank's Supermarket in Twisp. The drop-box includes supplies for mailing envelopes. I need a box. I strong-arm into the market, barrel straight through to the cavernous inventory bay. No one stops me or questions me. I find a box. I pull a roll of duct tape from the market's school supply section and rush back outside.

At the UPS drop-box, another cold splash. 'This box accepts packages up to 16" x 13" x 3".' My box is significantly bigger. And, I've just stolen duct tape. I pace back and forth, considering. A woman approaches me.

"Excuse me, do you need help?" she asks. "I've been watching you go back and forth, and you seem confused." She's an older woman, a bit airy, a bit hippy, with a sort of Julie Haggerty thing going on. I explain my problem, and she meanders on for a bit with unhelpful solutions, finally suggesting that I just leave my package on top of the drop-box, as "I've done it myself. No one takes them!"

I give this a flick of thought. My bundle contains my friend Nipper's radios. They are valuable to him. I cannot lose them. In the politest voice I am able to muster, I smile as I say, "I'm just not that trusting." I explain that I'm agitated, and she waves me a cheery good luck.

Back inside the market. I settle in to a dining area and rip and shred the cardboard box, cram my stuff inside, and tape it roughly rectangular. My mangled, stillborn package looks hideous, like something that contains a poorly written manifesto. Back to the school supply aisle for brown packing tape. Obsessively, I cover five out of six faces of the box almost entirely with brown packing tape, hiding everything but for the moisture stains on the front face. I am satisfied.

I walk back outside to the drop-box and slam open its metal flap. With all the pain in my soul, I heave my mutant package into the UPS box and emit a primal growl.

Exorcised, I return to the market, take a blue plastic hand cart, and begin shopping.

Day 6: Distressed facade capitol of the world

It was a hot afternoon when we biked into the outskirts of Winthrop, so we stopped at the first place we found, a shady park, with nothing but a couple of squat, unremarkable buildings in sight. I assumed that this was the town, and I only hoped there were enough services nearby to find Mary some comfort from the heat. And so, I was completely unprepared for what we found around the very next bend, which is why I bust out laughing when we arrived.

Winthrop is a tourist town writ large. Like a Disneyland pavilion, it has no other purpose than to attract visitors and their money. All of Winthrop's center is a faithfully maintained pioneer facade. Every store front is lovingly weathered, and the shops still bear rough hand painted signs for things like the Trading Post, Three Fingered Jack's Saloon, White Buck Trading Co.

Worth the drive! Just beware - the whole damned place shuts down at 4pm.

Alive in: Mazama, WA

Just a quick post to confirm that we're still alive. We haven't exactly found easy access along the North Cascades Highway.

We reached El Diablo Lake yesterday. Today we summited Rainy Pass and Washington Pass after a grueling 11 hours and 30 miles of climbing, and then coasted down into the cool evening of Mazama, where we are now holed up at the Countryside Inn.

More to follow on Tuesday morning...

Day 5: Mary conquers her mountain

El Diablo Lake

Q: How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time!

We woke before dawn in the El Diablo Lake campground. The morning was cool, and early light reflected off the verdigris skin of the lake. A 30 mile uphill climb over Rainy and Washington passes waited for us, and Mary was afeared. We'd camped next to another bicyclist who'd just come the other way over the passes. Mary interrogated him about the slope and the weather with a hint of desperation, searching for answers to ease her fear.

I'd faced my own mountain on my last long bike trip - reached a place where I doubted my strength and wondered how I'd get home if I broke down, unable to move forward or backward. I knew exactly what Mary was going through and my heart ached for her. All I could do was to coach her as best I was able, let her set her pace, call for frequent rests, and encourage her to eat. I could try to offer, as needed, strength and compassion, patience and humor; but the strength Mary needed to climb her mountain could only be drawn from the deep wells of her own soul.

The lake from above

We left the campground at 7:30am and immediately began climbing, stopping for frequent breaks. The day warmed quickly, but the first five miles passed slowly. The road always followed the river, so we learned first hand about temperature inversions. Then, a godsend - a 6 mile downhill. We coasted against the uphill breeze to the 11 mile mark, and broke at a hiking trailhead. There, we met a couple who were preparing to take mountain bikes onto the forest trail. They shared a topographic map that showed our route in more detail than we'd seen.

Mary searches her soul

We resumed climbing at 11 am, with 13 miles remaining to the first pass. If we could keep up even a 3mph ascent, we could make Rainy by 5pm. If nothing else, we could walk 3mph. With no campgrounds between us and the other side, we had to crest both passes, or camp offroad.

From then on the day became a torrid crawl. The temperature climbed with us and shade grew sparse. We walked as often as we rode, pushing our bikes up the steep grade. Despite the harsh conditions, Mary's spirits improved markedly. I think the anticipation had been her undoing, but faced with the necessity of marching onward, she rose to the challenge.

Climbing Mary's Mountain

And so, we crawled toward the top, occasionally dunking our shirts (and my head) in frozen tributary streams that trickled down from the cliffs above us. We reached Rainy Pass before 5pm, as we'd hoped. I was very proud of Mary, but as she pointed out, we still had another 5 miles to Washington Pass. We enjoyed a brief downhill to another trailhead, where we rested and prepared for the final assault.

Rainy Pass, elevation 4,855

The last few miles were steeper than any patch since the Newhalem tunnel. We'd ride, walk, break, ride, walk, break, inching toward Washington Pass. The landscape changed dramatically, as sharp cliffs gave way to lush green mountain meadows. I lost my own steam, and had to stop for a longer break, resting in the tall grass. We'd been 3 hours since our last real meal, and I felt it.

Washington Pass, elevation 5,477

And then, finally, we reached the top. Washington Pass, elevation 5,477. I hugged her as she cried tears of joy, relief, and sublimated anguish. Once done, she was all business, "Let's keep going." Mary's goal for the day was a bed and a shower. It was the mantra that kept her going. We were going to find a bed and a shower.

Starting down the east face

The east face of Washington Pass was an incredible descent - far sharper than what we'd just climbed - and I was grateful we were going east, and not west. We rolled downhill for an hour and twenty miles (with Mary's cautious hands setting pace on the breaks - alone, I would've plummeted off the mountain at 40mph).

We rolled onto the grounds of the Mazama Countryside Inn at about 6:30. We were so hyperactive from the cumulative stress of the day, that we strode in like gibbering meth fiends, tripping over ourselves to explain our needs to the inn staff. Comfortable beds, a hot tub, a swimming pool, and a cozy restaurant were never so welcome.

And that is how Mary conquered her mountain. Bite by bite, one revolution and one step at a time. And she will carry that with her, every day of her life.

Day 4: When Mary met her mountain

It'd been an easy ride until Newhalem. We'd been coasting for miles now, downhill from Darrington to Rockport, Rockport to Newhalem. We hit our first real climb just past Newhalem, and that's when Mary met her mountain.

How's that for steep?

The Newhalem climb was unpleasant, even for me. The road up the gorge from Newhalem is viciously steep; the afternoon had become swelteringly hot; and at 5pm, all the weekenders on the North Cascades Highway were on their way home. As if that weren't enough, there's a tunnel.

Mary and the tunnel of doom

I can type the word "tunnel", and you may read it, but it can't convey to you the proper visceral reaction. You'll have to trust me when I say that this was no ordinary tunnel. A sign above the archway read, "SLOW TO 30 WHEN BICYCLISTS IN TUNNEL" Before the arch was a button for bicyclists, just like a pedestrian walk button. We didn't know exactly what it would do, or how long the effect would last. So, we pulled up next to it, caught our breaths, drank some water, and prepared as best we could before pressing the button.

Your fate awaits you

The button didn't stop traffic, oh no. No red lights for us. Instead, it turned on a set of blinking yellow lights above the tunnel entrance, and an intimidating ribbon of yellow lights along the tunnel floor. We dashed into the tunnel. It had barely any shoulder. The rough, dark walls were hewn from the very mountain rock, lacking any civilized concrete veneer. There were no lights but the yellow ribbon, and the literal light at the end of the tunnel. An oncoming car in the opposite lane honked, whether at us or merely to hear the echo, I don't know. In short, it was terrifying.

I followed behind Mary, always watching to be sure that she was still hugging the right side, still moving forward, still all right. The tunnel was not actually very long, and we came through it. We pulled aside where the road widened and stood by the guard rail, panting.

Though the worst hurdle was behind us, the day was still hot, the climb steep, and the road choked with vehicles. We broke for frequent rests. The road followed the Skagit river gorge, giving us beautiful views of verdant green waters, vivid enough to compare with the lush crystalline blues of the Mediterranean. We reached a scenic viewpoint above the Ross Lake Reservoir, which feeds the Seattle City Light hydroelectric plant, and dozed on mossy ground near the rest stop's pit toilets.

The lady and the lake

Eventually we reached a peak, and rolled down the cool shadow side to the campgrounds at El Diablo Lake, where we pitched tent for the night.

Though the day was over, we knew we had an entire day of climbing ahead of us, as we ascended toward Rainy and Washington passes. Mary had spent the afternoon hot, tired, aching, miserable, and full of self-doubt. She had begun to look with real fear toward the following day. In short, we had reached the foothills of Mary's mountain.

Day 4: The Bunny Whisperers

We ate breakfast this morning at The Eatery, a country inn attached to a small resort settlement called Clark's Skagit River Resort. The food was good and the setting pleasant, but what really caught my attention was the menu. It featured stories about the resort's history. The best - and funniest - of these was the one that explained the history of the rabbits living in and around the grounds.

In short, the story tells of the exploding population of domestic rabbits released in Friday Harbor in the 60's, and the obvious solution, which was: huntin' expeditions. A couple of the resort's owners captured a few live rabbits and began raising them in hutches. From there, the story outlines the cyclic rise and fall of the rabbit population at the resort, as the bunnies are variously preyed upon by hawks, owls, bobcats, cougar, coyote and bear.

The thing that entertained me so much about this was the laissez faire attitude toward the rabbits. They are, after all, not valued pets, but simply a part of the food chain. This passage in particular cracked me up:

One year a bobcat came around; she took all but 11 rabbits for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Later a big old black bear paid several visits, as ornery and crazy as he could be. Our dog, Teddy always let us know when he was around. He came once about 10pm and again at 4am for three nights in a row. He could smell the apples and vegetables in our utility room - and he was determined to get in. During this time he destroyed the hutches and slaughtered at least half of the rabbits. The other half got away. Mr. Bear returned again - and now he's the living room rug, but that's another story.

The whole story put me in mind of the domestic rabbits now multiplying fiercely in Seattle's Greenlake Park. These rabbits, with few or no natural predators, have become enough of a nuisance to warrant some sort of civic measures... but, because of the cute and cuddly factor, liberal hand wringers have roadblocked the obvious course of action. The last time I read about it, some of the bunnies were being humanely removed to a retirement park somewhere.

I like to think that Clark Resort's bunny story puts the Greenlake issue into perspective. I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: Edible invasive species? Kill two birds with one stone and feed 'em to the homeless. Spoken as a 25-year vegetarian, no less. Let's at least be practical, people.

Day 4: Big Lou

The road to breakfast

I was reminded today of a joke I heard from my best friend in college, Joe Caffrey. Rather than try to dredge up a half remembered mishmash, I went straight to the source. In the words and Manhattan accent of my old friend Joe (with some edits for punctuation):

A man (I'll call him Mike - Ivan) is drinking alone in a crowded bar, when suddenly the door pops open and in steps a well-dressed man, who says "Hello, everybody!" The entire crowd except for Mike turns and says, "Hi, Big Lou!" Big Lou sees Mike, who didn't say hello, and sits beside him.

"Hi, friend," he says, "I'm Big Lou, and now that I know you, I know everybody." Mike looks at him and says, "Get lost. Nobody knows everybody." Big Lou says, "I do. I know everybody. Who do you want to meet?" Mike says, "Do you know the Mayor?"

And so, to make a long story a bit shorter, Big Lou takes Mike to see, each in turn, the Mayor, and then the Governor, and then the President. Each time, Mike counters lamely, "Ok, maybe you do know..." etc.

Then, after meeting the President, while in the DC airport, Mike is still not convinced, and Big Lou asks him, "Ok, who do I have to take you to, to convince you that I know everyone?" Mike looks up and sees a travel poster of the Vatican and says, "Do you know the Pope?"

Big Lou flies him to Rome, and it so happens that it is Thursday, the day when the Pope addresses the crowd in St. Peter's Square. Big Lou takes Mike to the edge of the crowd and says, "Look... you wait here, I'll make my way through the crowd, and in ten minutes I'll come out on that balcony with the Pope."

Ten minutes later, Big Lou appears on the balcony, arm in arm with the Pope; and he looks out into the crowd and sees that Mike has fainted. He makes his excuses to the Pope and rejoins Mike, who by this time is revived.

"What happened?" Big Lou asks. "Why did you faint, because I know the Pope?"

"No," says Mike, "because the guy next to me said, "Who's that with Big Lou?"

This joke came to mind because, during breakfast at a randomly chosen diner, several miles from Rockport, four days ride from home, a friend of mine walked in the door. It was Roselie Rasmussen, a girl with whom I went to massage school in 2003-04. I knew that Roselie was raised in Darrington, through which we passed just yesterday, but I hadn't seen her in several years, and the last time I heard from her she was stationed at the South Pole (not a joke)...

Roselie entered with her parents, whom I'd met before, and her guy Tom, whom I hadn't. They joined us at table, and we had a nice time catching up. Roselie's dad, an energetic character, is a local chiropractor. I forget her mom's calling, but I know that she's heavily involved with Darrington politics. Tom had useful advice about our next day's ride. And Roselie was just as I remembered her - a quiet, friendly, shy girl, with a passionate interest in her world.

The view from the cockpit

Day 3: A special guest star

We got an early start from Arlington, determined to make some real miles today. Rockport or bust! Our bodies were the only obstacles. I was on day three of my headache. I've always suffered from headaches and this happened on my last trip too, so I knew I had it to look forward to. There was a scary moment during the night when I woke up when a stabbing pain in my right temple - the kind of pain that moves in and takes a name for itself - and I imagined spending the next day lying on the ground - but fortunately it faded back to a manageable ache after a few Tylenol and more sleep. For Mary's part, she was still feeling a few remnants of the Bad Burrito episode, as well as fielding some inconveniently timed issues of feminine hygiene (how do< you handle this on a bicycle trip?).

And so, we made slow but steady miles through the morning. After a lot of debate, we'd chosen SR 530 to Darrington, over route 9 to Sedro-Wooley with a possible detour over (gasp) I-5. There was some concern about traffic on 530 due to a Bluegrass Festival at the Darrington Amphitheater - but in the end we shared the road mostly with day tripping motorcyclists en route to the scenic North Cascades Highway. The road itself was fine - decent shoulders, fairly level with a few gentle climbs - and stunning views of mist capped mountains, still peaked with snow.

Speaking of motorcyclists, we had a special visit from my friend Larry, who caught up with us along the trail. Larry came bearing fruit and soft drinks, and I had to laugh when he hauled the watermelon out of his sidebag... Larry accompanied us on and off over the remaining miles to Darrington, and treated us to lunch at what was possibly Darrington's only restaurant.

Arlington to Darrington, 30 miles, with 20 more to go 'til Rockport. Incredibly, the road from Darrington to Rockport is 20 miles downhill along the Sauk River. It's a phenomenal piece of road with gorgeous views and nary a car in sight. But since we haven't climbed much since leaving Seattle, I'm not sure how the math works out, and I'm a little nervous about tomorrow. There's a piper to be paid somewhere.

And indeed, we have three mountain passes in our near future. I'm confident though. We're still struggling, but I can see our rhythm falling into place already. Another couple days and we'll be old hands.

For tonight, we're holed up at the Howard Miller Steelhead Park, a lovely little state park along the Skagit river.

Mary, in the radiant glow of the Sauk

Day 2: Arlington, spare thy sting

If day 1 was the vicious sting of reality, then day 2 was the soothing balm of mercy. We didn't make many miles, but our faith in our quest and the good nature of humanity were both reaffirmed.

Setting out after breakfast at the Buzz Inn, we rode only a short distance into downtown Snohomish, where our eyes were attracted by the shiny baubles of an internet cafe. We were so busy before leaving that I'd been unable to configure the dueling blogs laid out before you. We took up residence for several hours while I learned the quirks of our traveling laptop, a tiny 7" Asus EEE with Linux OS. It's not exciting and I won't dwell on it, except to say, "eee! so cute!"

By then it was lunchtime, so we hopped over to alternafood cafe Grilla Bites, for sammiches to go. We'd blown off the morning, but I felt better equipped to document the trip - because after all, existence without documentation is futile.

We left Snohomish along the Centennial Trail, 17 placid, tree-lined miles connecting Snohomish to Arlington. I'd like to take this moment to point out the odd mental block that I have around the word Arlington. For no reason I can imagine, it's a word that I simply cannot recall. I can work around it - for instance, I know there's an Arlington National Cemetery, and that I can remember - but I can't get there directly.

We did arrive at Arlington, of course, where the trail comes to an unpleasant end at a gravel parking lot, and no sooner had I thought, "Where do we go from here?" then fate blessed us with Lauria Garka. (Forgive me if I've misspelled your name, Lauria.) Lauria (sounds like Marie) and her two friends had also just finished the trail, and were loading their bikes onto car trailers as we arrived (we later learned that they were training for the Seattle Danskin triathalon). Lauria asked us the leading question, "Are you packed for long ride?"

With shocking speed, the conversation turned into a generous invitation. When Lauria heard that we hoped to spend the night in Arlington, this big, bold, brassy, blond, generous firecracker of a woman, impulsively invited us, two complete strangers, to her home (all the while assuring us that she wasn't crazy, nor did we look crazy). She gave us directions, and then drove ahead to let husband Mike know what she'd done.

The wealth of Lauria's hospitality was almost embarrassing. She and her amiable husband Mike fed us dinner, let us shower, gave us a spare bedroom, and even boiled eggs for our breakfast, only asking for our company in return. We enjoyed an evening of good chat and a night in a soft bed. And, as Lauria is a postal carrier, she was well versed in the local roads, and replete with good advice for the next leg of our trip. She saw us off in the morning with coffee, and our sincere gratitude.

The unrequited love of Molly Garka

The Garka's dog Molly, a Cairn Terrier / Poodle mix ("A Carnoodle!"), has a hilarious fascination with the backyard water sprinkler. She spent the entire evening biting it, rolling it, digging at it, until Lauria turned off the water, at which point, Molly took up mournfully staring at the hose valve, hoping for the return of the spray.

Technological superiority

Readers may find me posting more frequently than Mary. It should be remarked that I have the technological upper hand in our husband v. wife blogging competition, as I wield the only iPhone in the family. Shhh - please don't tell her.

One of these days, Alice!

I like it when people ask us where we're going. Presumably, they expect something like "oh, just down the trail a ways'. My stock answer is simply "Virginia", said with a straight face. Questioners invariably respond with a long, blank stare. The sheer magnitude of the answer breaks their expectations and leaves a momentary comprehension gap, as big as if I had said "to the moon!"

Day 1: A day late and a mile short

As a wise man said, every trip of a thousand miles begins with a realization: "Holy shit, I'm going a thousand miles!" It's 3,300 or so, in our case, en route from Seattle, WA to Virginia Beach, VA.

We had the idea last year after I bicycled to Gerlach, Nevada for Burning Man (chronicled here). That was a 700 mile ride, my first ride of more than 150 miles, and it was extraodinary. I'd always wanted to bicycle across country, and I saw that 700 mile ride as proof of concept. Having finished it successfully, I looked forward to the next leap. Mary has also long wanted to do something extraordinary (I did not drag her along on this trip, thank you - she and I are willing partners in the expedition). We're neither of us in fantastically good shape, or well trained for a three thousand mile bike ride, but we're determined.

The strangest thing about preparing for a long journey is the process of severing the strings of your regular life. Work, bills, pets, house - all have to be placed in the care of other people. The piecemeal surrender of life's commitments feels like a preparation for death.

We had a bit of a rocky start. We postponed our departure by a day to give ourselves a full day for final packing and equipment check. Unfortunately, I still had a piece of freelance work to finish that took most of my day, leaving Mary to assemble all our gear while I swore at my client. The client came back with changes which I was unprepared to tackle, which left me in a moral fever that literally kept me up all night.

We spent the night with friends, the couple who are watching our dog Sally while we're gone, whom we had also imposed upon for an early shuttle ride to Golden Gardens in the morning, so we could start at "the coast". We loaded up our car with bikes, gear, and dog, loaded our stuff from our car to their truck, and slept on their couch. Unfortunately, an unheard alarm lead to late rising, which meant no ride for us. We reloaded our car (sans dog) and drove home. At home, the couple who are housesitting for us generously offered us a ride to the beach, so we transferred our load once more.

At Golden Gardens we did a final equipment check, loaded up our bikes, and started out along the Burke Gilman trail at 9:45am. Since we were both suffering from sleep deprivation (for my part, enjoying headache, nausea and shakes), we soon stopped for breakfast.

The day started gray and cloudy. The sun broke through and warmed us in the late afternoon. We hit Woodinville around 3pm but didn't realize it, and continued another 5 miles on to Redmond. I can't say I regret it though - the trail through those parts is gorgeous. Leaving Woodinville put us on urban arterials, which are never fun, and they wore pretty badly on Mary.

By 5pm we'd eaten only Clif bars since breakfast, so we halted at a quickie mart between Woodinville and Snohomish and tour through it ravenously. We came out with two dollar frozen burritos, spiced nuts, and a boiled egg. Road food never tastes so good as it does after a full day of exertion.

We were about 4 miles shy of Snohomish when roadwork narrowed the shoulder to a two foot wide strip bordered by concrete bumpers. We stopped shy to reconnoiter. If I were alone I would probably have bulled through it, but it was no road for Mary, who was looking a little dazed. We followed down an adjoining road to find a shady spot for a break, and lucked into a little grassy meadow, actually someone's oversized yard. When Mary saw it, she knew she was done, and we decided to camp there. Mary spotted the owner nearby, and got his and his wife's permission to pitch tent.

It was a good spot, on a mown lawn, nestled against an old barn. The tent went up easily, and I crashed hard and fast. Poor Mary spent a good part of the night nauseous, sweaty and shaking, either from overexertion or her truck stop burrito. She was mostly recovered by morning, though still tired.

In the morning we took the back road to Snohomish and stopped for breakfast at the Buzz Inn, a kitchshy old diner bordering on the Snohomish airfield.

It's a slow start as we find our pace and build our endurance, but I have no doubt that the first week will toughen us up.

Starting Out

Hello, world!

(You can tell I'm a programmer.)