Marriage at Ten Miles Per Hour : /2009/Aug

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Days 64+: Portland, OR to Home

Day 64

We started our day by taking some photos out on the deck overlooking town. Note that these are the first new clothes since the Frederick Photos back in days 4-5.

Also be sure to have a look at my hands. Those, coupled with my awesome zebra tan on my feet, made me stand out pretty well in any crowd.

Next step was to get in touch with a bike shop. Way back before we'd left we'd asked Larry at Mt Airy Bikes for some advice. He'd suggested we talk to the Bike Gallery. Jillian's mother had talked with them before, so we had a good idea of where to go, but we called again to verify a few things.

Before we could go there we first stopped at a Pack and Mail. It took some work, but they found us a box big enough for our trailer, which we packed with just about as much as we could. That cost about $70 to ship - UPS isn't cheap. BOBs are also hard to measure, apparently, as it took a few tries for the Pack and Mail people to make us a box the right size.

Then we went over to their Division location where we met with Peter Lunoak. He first had to find us a box. Standard procedure for shipping a bicycle is to pack it into an old bike box. Our bike proved to be a little too big. In fact, the only box they had that would fit us was a huge electric scooter box. We took some measurements and called UPS. The box was too big for UPS to take. That meant shipping via Amtrak Express. Since we'd be boarding a plane soon, Peter agreed to take care of delivering the bike to the train station and working out a price with them. We agreed on a price that we both thought was fair (having not shipped Amtrak Express before, Peter wasn't sure how much it was going to be).

Bike dropped off, it was time to head out to dinner and to see a baseball game. We stopped at the Duck Store in Portland before getting dinner with Jillian's relatives. Then we were off to a baseball game. On the way, we saw things that made us love Oregon even more, including:

Afterward it was time to head home. We made sure to stop at Powell's, which fills an entire city block full of books. We only had an hour before they closed, which made us both very sad. We all could have spent a day in there. Both Jillian and I grabbed a few books as reading material for the plan ride.

Day 65

The next day we got up late and spent quite a bit of time blogging, napping, and doing laundry. For lunch we went out to a Pasta Bar/Buffet place, which was an excellent way to get lots of food. It was interesting - our metabolisms had already started to slow way down, and I wasn't able to eat nearly as much food as I'd expected. But I was still thirsty, all the time.

We also stopped at REI on the way home. The employees there weren't nearly as excited about our trip as we felt they should have been.

That night we had a fantastic dinner with Jillian's relatives before turning in for some sleep.

Day 66

Our flight left pretty early in the morning, and featured a stop in Salt Lake City. Jillian spent a lot of the flight not feeling very well, and I mostly read or napped. One thing that helped was the free drink tickets Jillian's parents shared with us (they'd gotten them for free on the flight out).

We landed and drove back to Lancaster. The flight took most of the day. It was good to be back in Pennsylvania though. But then, maybe it was just good to know where I was sleeping at night, and to know what I was having for dinner.

Day 67

We had quite the welcome back party at Jillian's parents house. Saw a lot of friendly faces and even gave some advice to a future bike tourist. After the party we loaded my car up with as much stuff as we could. I drove home that night - Jillian decided to wait a day in order to play Ultimate Frisbee in Gettysburg. I thought she was crazy, but whatever.

It felt good to be home.

| posted at: 04:11 | permanent link and comments

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

More Relaxing in Portland

Stoker's Log

Vacation Day Two

8/19/09

Portland, OR

We slept in late again and spent the morning doing laundry, starting to pack up, and writing postcards to the people who had helped us along the way. We got exact addresses for most of them, but some, like the police officers who helped us, will have to rely on the postal service's creativity. Good thing many of our new friends live in very small towns where everyone knows each other.

After our lovely lazy day, John and Trish made us a delicious dinner. Their Jillian got married recently as well, so afterwards we talked weddings and watched their DVD. My mom actually had the album that she'd scrapbooked while we were away, so we had photos to share as well. And of course we told stories and answered questions about the trip. It was a fun evening, and I really wish we didn't have to leave Portland and John and Trish already; I feel like our vacation and our time with them just started. But Kyle has to be back for work very soon, so we'll be climbing on a plane early tomorrow.

We're very committed to visiting western Oregon again, however, and sooner rather than later.

| posted at: 06:25 | permanent link and comments

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

WE MADE IT!

Just before sunset on August 17th, two months and a day after we left the east coast, we dipped our front wheel into the ocean in Oregon. It was ridiculously windy and freezing cold and we had to haul the bike over a dune to do it, but we figured having a few final obstacles was only fitting. We can't believe the adventure is finally complete.

An enormous thanks to everyone who supported us directly or in spirit, and to all who followed along (and who are waiting patiently for us to chronicle the trip in more detail...) :-D

| posted at: 08:18 | permanent link and comments

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Relaxing in Portland

Stoker's Log

Vacation Day One

8/18/09

Portland, OR

Now the real vacation begins.

We slept in late this morning, really relishing it, and then headed into town with my parents to take care of the bike. The friendly guys at Bike Gallery helped us tear down and pack up our giant bike in an electric scooter box so that we could send it home via AmTrak. Then we got a custom made box from the post office and filled it with parts, tools, shoes, and other equipment that we didn't want to stuff into our luggage. We enjoyed lunch at a delicious Italian buffet (though they insulted my mother by offering her the senior citizen discount), browsed briefly in REI, and spent the rest of the afternoon on the deck admiring the spectacular view and Kyle's strange tan lines.

We spent the evening out with our wonderful hosts and their son-in-law and daughter, who is also named Jillian. We had dinner at a swanky place downtown and shopped at the Oregon University bookstore (mostly for my brother, who loves the Ducks). Then we walked the streets of Portland a bit, admiring highrises with windmills, a giant mask, and a sign for our frisbee team's beloved P-Funk.

We were also impressed by the sheer volume of cycling traffic. Cyclists were everywhere, and cars had no choice but to respect them and share the road. Once again, Oregon was clearly a bicycle paradise.

Our ultimate destination was, no surprises here, a baseball stadium. The Portland Beavers, the Padres' AAA team, were facing the Iowa Cubs.

Initially down 3-0, the Beavers rallied to pull off a comeback and ended up winning 6-3. It was a great game and I really enjoyed myself. I also enjoyed a gigantic bag of cotton candy.

I did share some with the kid sitting in front of us, but it was still way more sugar that a human being should ever consume in one sitting.

Speaking of dangerous temptations, after the game my mother and I demanded that we stop at the world famous Powell's bookstore. It was wonderfully vast, and even though it was close to closing time I still walked out with a pile of books, including Orlando, Ultramarathon Man, and a few travelogues (which I justified as "research.") If we had had more time I may have needed a wheelbarrow to get out of there.

We got back to find that everyone else was asleep and that the view from the deck was just as impressive at night.

| posted at: 06:25 | permanent link and comments

Monday, August 17, 2009

63: FIN

Stoker's Log

Day Sixty-Three

8/17/09

From Eugene, OR

To Florence, OR

75.3 miles

10.2 avg mph

It was our last day, and we didn't even really know how to feel about it, other than amazed. Back in Wyoming we would have known exactly how to feel: exuberant, relieved, finally free. But then western Oregon gave us some of the best cycling of our lives, making our push to the finish feel a little less desperate. But even though we were in less of a rush to escape the bike, we were still very driven to finish the trip, to know that we had done it, to have the accomplishment firmly in our grip. As our miles-remaining count got lower and lower this week, I felt a growing sense of relief and confidence, because I knew that even if the bike broke down or one of us got injured we could find some way to make it work for the last few miles. And when we woke up this morning I was overwhelmed by the realization: we were actually going to make it across the country.

The trip still had a few surprises left for us on the final day. Two of my dad's favorite pastimes are watching minor league baseball and talking to new people, so I wasn't surprised to hear that he'd made friends with a local at a Eugene Emeralds game and told him all about our adventure. I was surprised when we heard that the guy had talked to his friends at a local news station, who would be sending a reporter to interview us this morning. The ready and raring one-man crew showed up at the hotel while we were packing up after breakfast.

He had some trouble keeping track of our wedding, start, and home locations, but otherwise it went well. We answered questions about the trip and rode slowly around the parking lot a few times for the B-roll. It was a fun time, and since no one we know will see the final product it wasn't even stressful.

After our fifteen minutes of local fame, we rode all of five miles (four if we hadn't gotten lost) to the Wandering Goat Coffee Shop, where we grabbed a morning pick-me-up and hung out with our new friends Aaron and Laura.

We had suspected that they were our kind of people when we saw that they were riding their tandem to the geographic center of every state, but it was nice to confirm it in person. They were fantastic and we had a great time swapping bike stories and repair tips, and we also asked them all about Eugene, because we're already falling in love with it enough to consider moving here. The job market is tough, of course, but they both managed to land perfect jobs for them: Laura teaches music and Aaron works for Burley, a company that makes bike trailers and other equipment. Best of all, they can both bike to work on Eugene's vast network of bike paths.

Soon Aaron had to do just that, so we all climbed on our bikes and saw more of delightful Eugene before parting ways. It was sad to say goodbye to our new friends and their amazing town, but we were very motivated by the signs leading to our final destination, Florence.

I started to feel sick in the strangely named town of Noti, but a break at a convenience store helped somewhat and we continued on down the small highway, passing through swampland followed by forests of very tall trees.

We happened on Morning Glory Farm, where Kyle enjoyed a smoothie and I consumed an entire container of blueberries.

They were delicious.

And have I mentioned that I love riding in forest shade?

It was lovely. Unfortunately the landscape started to look a lot more orange and yellow as we entered a construction zone and the traffic volume picked up. The lines of cones and pylons looked endless, and the flag people were not nearly as friendly or competent as our friends in Wyoming. But Oregon still demonstrated its care for cyclists with a bike warning light in one of the tighter tunnels.

We finally turned off of the road with the heaviest construction onto one with inactive work zones, and we also took the opportunity to stop at a small coffee shop with a great name: Caffeination Station. The decor was cheery, the owner was friendly, and Kyle's new friend was thirsty.

We got back on the road reinvigorated, talking about our plans to move to Eugene someday and singing our Bicycle Fantasy song at the top of our lungs. (Or was that last one just me?) We also wondered whether anyone still lived in the little house on top of the moving bridge.

My stomach was still bothering me, but it ceased to matter as we got closer and closer to Florence and we got more and more excited. My parents were already there, looking for a place where we could conveniently get the bike to the beach. (They discovered that our original endpoint was actually a cliff overlooking the water, which wouldn't have been the same.) We started a gleeful countdown at each new road sign.

My parents found a good place for us to finish, and they insisted on guiding us there themselves, driving ahead and jumping out of the car to direct us at every turn. They may have been more excited than we were. Finally we reached a "Staging Area" along the Oregon Dunes and followed them into the parking lot. A mountain of sand and brush stood between us and the not-yet-visible ocean.

We shouldered the bike together and followed my mom up the dune. We struggled forward, whipped by the winds and constantly stumbling. It was a fitting final challenge, really.

It was probably also fitting that it was unbelievably cold, just like the morning we set out on this crazy journey. As we crested the dune, however, we were glad that it had worked out this way. It was so much more dramatic to suddenly see the ocean spread out in front of us.

We stumbled down the slope like giddy kids and carried the bike to the ocean that we'd been seeking for so long.

Unfortunately it was much, much too cold for us to go rushing into the water the way I'd imagined it a hundred times. Instead we dipped the wheel in and ran back as quickly as we could.

I actually ran away a bit too quickly and left Kyle stranded for a moment. Ooops.

It wasn't quite sunset, so we waited on the beach, shivering together, taking photos, collecting stones and shells, and calling family and friends, though it was hard to communicate with them over the raging wind. If only it had been a little warmer so that we could have enjoyed the beautiful beach and fun dunes.

My wonderful parents stuck it out with us, and my father even braved the water so that he could put his hand in the Pacific Ocean.

We also talked to a vacationing French family, the only other people crazy enough to be at the beach in this weather. Finally the sun was low enough for my mom to take our victory photo, which made us indescribably happy then and every time we've looked at it since.

After the nice riding in western Oregon we had no desire to throw the bike into the ocean (back in Kansas it was a different story) so we lugged it back over the dune and packed it into the car. Then it was off to Portland, where our relatives John and Trish will be hosting all of us for a few days. I had trouble adjusting to riding in a car for an extended period of time; it felt too fast and abrupt after two months of living at ten miles per hour. So I was glad to take a break for dinner at the Steelhead Brewery back in Eugene.

It was fantastic, and I felt much better as we headed into Portland and up the twisting and turning hill road to our friends' home. They were asleep, but they had left a charming celebratory gift for us in the kitchen.

We went to bed feeling very welcome, very exhausted, and very triumphant. We actually did it; we rode from coast to coast. I just can't get over it all.

WE MADE IT!

| posted at: 06:23 | permanent link and comments

Monday, August 17, 2009

Day 63: Eugene, OR to Florence, OR

Today started with a rush to look normal for the news cameras.

We answered some questions, unpacked and repacked our gear for the camera, and generally tried to sound like we weren't simply the really exhausted and half glad to be done cyclists we were.

Afterward we gave Aaron and Laura a call, and agreed on a place to get together. Riding through Eugene was pretty awesome. Cyclists were everywhere. Coffee with Aaron and Laura was fun, too. We would love to live in Eugene.

Our new friends helped us find our way to the bicycle paths that traverse the city, which were extensive. Both were on their way to work, which they rode to every day. We were a little envious. Bike infrastructure was really amazing. We stopped again at a gas station just west of town, and took a shot of a very important sign:

Just 53 miles left. Tomorrow we could even sleep in.

OR-126 wasn't that great of a highway to ride. The shoulders were tiny, and there was a good deal of traffic. But, this being Oregon, people gave us lots of space.

We stopped again down the road, and then again at another gas station even further on in Noti. I felt exhausted and beat up.

From Noti we had a hill to climb - but it was less than 800 feet high.

On the far side of that climb, we saw an important sign.

I needed some Espresso. We stopped. Jillian wanted some berries, but wasn't sure she could eat an entire container and I simply wasn't interested. After some discussion with the clerk, she decided to go for it.

She ate them all without much trouble. We finally dragged ourselves away and rode on, along wonderfully shaded roads. We soon arrived at a tunnel, which had some awesome features for bicycles. Before entering, cyclists were supposed to press a button, which activated a light above the tunnel.

We love Oregon.

On the other side of the tunnel we had our last downhill of the trip. Unfortunately, it was marred by construction. We had to wait some time for our turn to go.

At the bottom of the hill was Mapleton, where we stopped, once again, for coffee at the Mapleton Caffeination Station. We had awesome frozen coffees before dragging ourselves onward, in an effort to arrive at the beach at sundown. I made friends outside with a very thirsty dog.

From Mapleton we had a very flat ride along the Siuslaw River. There was some road construction, but a lot of it seemed to be for widening the road and adding shoulders - we can't complain about that.

It wasn't nearly as bright as we'd expected when we got close to Florence. We were going to have to move pretty quick to make the beach by sundown. Jillian's parents met us, to tell us that our original beach location wasn't actually a beach. Instead, they'd found us an alternate beach where we could actually wheel the bikes into the water. We weren't sure how to get there, so her parents leapfrogged us, playing human signpost.

They were pretty excited about our finishing, and that really helped us keep pushing.

We pulled into the Oregon Sand Dunes Recreation area, and found her parents car. There we rapidly put on every article of clothing we could easily find. It was very, very windy.

In order to reach the beach we had to climb over the top of a dune (note to others: if you keep going down the road, you can completely avoid having to climb the dune). It took some effort, but we carried the bike to the top.

There is no real way to describe the feeling of seeing that beach for the first time. Two months of riding. Almost quitting in Maryland, Indiana, and Denver. Outrunning dogs. Breaking down and being rescued by strangers and friends in Idaho, Kansas and Ohio. Going to bed hungry because we couldn't find any food. Freezing in the Oregon during crazy night time descents. Freezing and purple feet in Laramie. Tears. All over in one instant.

The way we'd ridden through Florece we hadn't even seen the water. Our first glimpse came as we crested that dune. We were a little awkward going down.

Our first task was to officially finish - we had to dip the wheel in the ocean, as we had back in New Jersey. We raced down and lifted the bike high above our heads in triumph.

Our second task was to start making phone calls, while we waited thirty minutes for the sun to start dipping down. I called my parents, thanking them for all the weather reports they'd given us, and letting them know they didn't need to worry any more. I called the Staphs, who we missed meeting in Wyoming by a day. I called Pickle, who had lent us her house in Denver. I called Jester, who had originally planned to ride from Boise to Florence with us. I reassured him that he'd made the right decision not coming. We'd changed our plans so many times that the route we wound up doing was nothing like what we'd originally planned on. Jester wouldn't have had any fun at all.

The calls were made extra difficult by the wind, which swept our tracks clean moments after walking on them. We had to spend most of our time facing south, to avoid sand in our eyes. Mostly it was nice to just sit, and not move. I was cold, but didn't care too much. We were done.

Today was the first day I missed the kick stand.

Finally the sun went down, and we hoisted the bicycle above our heads one last time.

Pictures taken, it was time to pack up our gear and find some dinner. We didn't have a bike rack, so we had to carefully disassemble the bike in order to fit in the back of the car. Our apologies to the rental company - it was a little sandy.

We drove back to Eugene, covering a day's worth of distance in a little over an hour. Her parents took us out to the Steelhead Brewery for dinner.

Then it was on to Portland, where we stayed with some of Jillian's extended family. We arrived a little late for a welcome party, but they left us a little something.

We didn't have a chance to enjoy it - we were simply too tired. We took showers, enjoyed the view of the city from the back deck, and crashed into bed.

| posted at: 04:05 | permanent link and comments

Sunday, August 16, 2009

62: My Bicycling Fantasy

Stoker's Log

Day Sixty-Two

8/16/09

From Redmund, OR

To Eugene, OR

122.4 miles

12.1 avg mph

The morning was cold, Kyle wasn't feeling well, and we were gearing up for a 120 mile day, but nothing could ruin our good moods: we were beginning our second-to-last day of the trip, and the Three Sisters mountains made for breathtaking scenery.

Plus my parents had made it to Oregon. We met up with them in the town of Sisters, which was pretty but very touristy and crowded. We stopped in at a bakery for muffins, cheesebread, danishes, and all manner of delicious goods.

While we were gaining weight, our bike was losing it: we put the trailer in my parents' car and made plans to meet up with them later in the ride. Now I know how all of those cyclists who go on supported tours feel: fast and awesome. We flew through the forests... And then we hit the mountain passes, whose steepness and switchbacks make the roads impassable by larger vehicles.

But you know what? It was a fairly pleasant climb. A fun climb, even. Yes, it was strenous at times, and yes, I would have appreciated a wider shoulder. But it was shaded and scenic and I felt like we were riding really well. (And not just because we didn't have the trailer... though that helped.) Even when my feet felt like they were on fire, I managed to enjoy the climb. And then we stumbled upon a gigantic point of interest that we never expected: an expansive lava field.

Our goal was to beat my parents to the summit (granted, they had taken a few touristy detours, but they still had a car) and we were victorious!

And at the summit was another surprise: the Dee Wright Observatory castle. It was built from the lava rock and includes viewing windows framing different Cascade peaks.

And soon my parents were there as well, bearing Subway subs and Powerade (they know us so well).

We wandered around for a bit and then made our way to what promised to be an exhilirating downhill. Unfortunately one of our brakes was sticking, again. Kyle was not about to be robbed of the best downhill we've seen all trip, so we pulled over and he wrenched it open and we went on our merry but slightly dangerous way.

It was an insane and intense descent; Kyle was having the time of his life navigating the switchbacks. We didn't have to worry about cars because we were going just as fast as they were. It would have been terrifying if I had needed to stear or if I wasn't already used to Kyle's daring descents, but I just pretended that I was on a controlled roller coaster and enjoyed every minute of it.

Our parents were waiting for us at the bottom, chatting with a pair of motorcyclists. They were all overly relieved to see us arrive safely; apparently an ambulance had charged up the hill a few minutes before, sirens blazing, and after seeing the switchbacks they were terrified that it was coming for us. We reassured them, said goodbye for now, and rode on.

We rode along, pretending to be pirates (you know, the usual) and felt great when we passed two other cyclists. We pulled into a general store to get icecream and spent a few minutes talking to a cyclist who appeared to be eating tuna from a can. We also tried to call Aaron and Laura, fellow Hase Pino riders that we met online who are gradually riding to the geographic center of every state. They seem really cool and they happen to live in Eugene, so we're really hoping to meet up with them today or tomorrow.

You might remember my hit song "The Magic of Kansas," which chronicled all of the ways in which Kansas was horrible to an almost miraculous extent (except for the people, who were legitimately magical). Today I wrote a new state song: "Oregon: You're My Bicycle Fantasy"

Or-e-gon, You're My Bicycle fantasy

Or-e-gon, you're my bicycle dream

Slight downhill, regular bathrooms, and scenery

Shoulder space, dolphin riding, and shade from trees

And so on... It's true though. The road was amazing, the perfect cycling route with shade, a wide shoulder, and a slight slope (in our favor for once). It was also along the water, which meant a nice view, cute riverfront homes, and regular bathrooms at all of the boat ramps. At the one where we stopped there were two adorable girls picking blackberries and poking a dead salmon with a stick (until their mother realized what they'd discovered). And the dolphin riding? For some reason I decided that this attractions sign heralded not only fishing and picnicking, but shark riding and dolphin riding. (I guess you had to be there.)

Once again we were racing against the setting sun, but for once it felt exhilirating to be zooming along as fast and free as possible. My parents caught up to us at sunset, but they kindly offered to keep the trailer and drive into town to find us a hotel since we hadn't heard back from Aaron and Laura yet. We still hated riding in the dark for miles and miles, but it wasn't overly cold and knowing that a hotel room would be waiting for us was a major relief. We rode and rode and raced a townie on a bicycle and rode and rode and crossed a few bridges and rode and rode and finally got to the hotel, where our parents gave us the trailer and the enthusiastic Motel 6 people gave us cookies and a room key.

It was then that Aaron called us back; it was too late to stay with them, but we made a coffee date for tomorrow morning, which should be a great way to start our LAST DAY. (Yes, we're very excited.) Our last task of the day was to rustle up some dinner, so we headed to the empty pizza place across the street and enjoyed a gigantic table all to ourselves while we waited for our food to arrive.

Here's to being almost finished!!!

| posted at: 06:21 | permanent link and comments

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Day 62: Redmond, OR to Eugene, OR

Today was going to be an extra good day. Our first stop of the day would be in Sisters, where we were going to meet Jillian's parents and give them our trailer. Then, almost seventy pounds lighter, we'd tackle the last real pass of the trip and head into the Willamette valley. As an extra bonus, we'd get an almost 5000 foot downhill from the top of the pass to Eugene.

Our first real stop may have been in Sisters, but we decided to stop at the grocery store down the street first. Motel 6's are cheap, but don't provide much in the way of a free breakfast in the morning. While I was feeling a little sick - likely from too much Mexican food - that didn't stop me from my usual donuts and doubleshots at Safeway.

The view on the way from Redmond to Sisters was fantastic.

I best remember one steep, though short climb, which just about killed me because I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't more than 200 feet, but the combination of Mexican food and heat was enough to slow me down.

Jillian's parents beat us to Sisters, and rather than hang out and wait they thought they'd drive east and find us. They found us about three miles away - though we had some trouble finding them, since we were waiting in a parking lot and they were driving a rental. But they took our trailer and left to find parking somewhere in town, which made the bike a lot lighter.

We met them just inside Sisters, which was accurately described by Jillian's mother as a town from the shore, but without the shore. We ate at a cute cafe. It's hard to describe how hungry you get a bike tour. Some of the people we'd talked to that had toured said we'd likely finish and spend a month just eating and drinking, trying to get the body caught up.

We couldn't stay long with Jillian's parents, since we'd arrived in Sisters much later than we'd originally wanted. We left them there to explore the town while we pressed on for McKenzie pass.

We didn't start very intimidated.

The road was flat for a long time. But it was a tree lined, so we were able to ride in the shade, which was incredibly important. We also felt like we were flying, with our unusually light bicycle. One other awesome thing about this pass: No trucks or RVs. The road simply isn't wide enough, particularly on turns.

As we raced to the top, we realized we were making great time. We also hadn't seen Jillian's parents yet. So we did the competitive thing and decided to race them. We only made one brief stop for Jillian's foot pain and to swap out water bottles.

Imagine our surprise when we literally came around a bend and saw this:

There's a 65 square mile lava field on top of the pass. We had no idea it was going to be there, and no idea we'd be riding through it.

We arrived at the top of the pass only minutes before Jillian's parents did, meaning we'd won. To celebrate our victory, they'd brought us Subway and fresh Powerade!

We took some time to explore the observatory.

Then it was time for our long awaited downhill. The top of the pass is at 5325 feet. Eugene, our goal, is at 430 feet. That's 4895 feet of vertical drop. I could hardly contain my excitement.

Of course, we were moving slow. While riding on a little downhill I noticed that if we coasted we'd come to a stop. I got really, really frustrated. Our last big hill of the entire trip, and we're having brake problems? This was just like the tire rub way back outside of Bedford, PA.

When we first sat down to work on the bike, I tried just spinning the wheel to see if there was a problem. Without any weight on the wheel, it would stop very quickly. I did what I could, using our chain check tool to pry apart the brake pads and then getting Jillian to balance the bike so that we could lower it down and align the pads perfectly. Finally, with our brake problem mostly fixed, we got going again.

This time, the descent was wonderful. It was a long series of shaded switchbacks, with almost no traffic. We were able to take advantage of both lanes while we descended for the next sixteen miles. Watching the trees was fun, too. The further down we went, the higher the trees got.

At the bottom of the descent, we found Jillian's parents chatting with some motorcyclists at a little parking area. They were rather concerned, since we'd taken a while to come down the hill and there'd been an accident at the top while we were descending. Apparently someone had backed out of a parking space near the observatory and backed right in to someone. Her parents were, understandably, a little worried when they started hearing sirens.

Her parents departed and went to Eugene to watch a baseball game while we rode along the McKenzie River.

This was some wonderful riding. Wide shoulder, slightly downhill, and no wind. There were even other cyclists. To keep things interesting, we decided to pretend we were a pirate ship and needed to catch the other ships in order to raid their stuff. We caught two, but didn't raid anything.

A few miles down we stopped at a little general store and had some ice cream. There's something about reaching the end of your tour that makes you feel kind of lazy - or like you don't want to finish.

This road was extra awesome, as it had something wonderful: bathrooms every few miles. Then we spotted this sign:

We knew the one sign was for fishing, and another was for picnics, but what was the last one? Jillian decided it must be for dolphin riding (We think it was actually for a fish hatchery). Dolphin riding, downhills, shoulders, and bathrooms? Oregon was our bicycling fantasy. Jillian even wrote a song titled, "Oregon, you're our bicycling fantasy"

On our way down the road, we called two cyclists who also owned a Pino. Aaron and Laura Beese also owned a Pino, and had spent almost two years riding to the geographic centers of 46 of the 50 states (I wasn't able to find their website to link to). They'd promised to host us in Eugene. But we'd kind of forgotten to call them until we were only a few hours out of Eugene, and we weren't able to get in touch with them.

It started getting late, again. Jillian's parents called us up, wondering when in the world we were going to arrive in Eugene. We didn't really have an answer. They drove out to meet us and give us our stuff back. But when they met us, we convinced them to find us a hotel room and drop our stuff off there. They also let us know about a TV reporter they'd met, and who was interested in meeting with us in the morning. After giving her parents a bit more stuff, they drove off. Aaron and Laura called us back, but we now already had a place to stay. We agreed to meet them in the morning.

By now, it was quite dark. But this was Oregon. We didn't care. There were wide bike lanes, and plentiful lighting. Our real problem was staying on the right road. We were even stopped by some cops, who just wanted to tell us how awesome our bike was. We ended up at a Day's Inn, which was almost brand new. We wheeled our stuff down to our room - meeting Jillian's parents in the parking lot and thanking them over and over. Then it was time for some dinner.

We got some pizza at a place nearly next door. It was a little slow, but then it was after ten.

Today ended up being an amazing day. We powered over the pass, had an amazing descent, had an awesome ride along the McKenzie and wound up with warm food after it was dark for once.

| posted at: 04:05 | permanent link and comments

Saturday, August 15, 2009

61: Fierce Plums and Friendly Riders

Stoker's Log

Day Sixty-One

8/15/09

From Mitchell, OR

To Redmund, OR

76.8 miles

9.0 avg mph

It was a wonderful morning at the Oregon Hotel in Mitchell (especially when we came downstairs to find giant homemade muffins waiting for all the guests).

We packed our chocolate muffins up for later and headed down the main street, by which I mean the only street. Everything was very wooden and Western; it was Dodge City or Dubois without the tourism, and we liked it quite a bit.

We saw signs for a public boarding school, which seemed strange until we realized that the towns around here are so small and people live so far apart that bussing students to normal day schools is not an option.

A few doors down from the hotel was a saloon/cafe, where we went for breakfast. The walls were decorated with old newspaper articles about a flood, including photos of cops in bowties and the story of a man who successfully rode his house down the river for miles. We ate a great breakfast, bought frozen snickers bars for later, and got on the road.

After a slightly chilly descent into the valley, we started a long climb in the heat. We were tempted to take a break on a gigantic rocking chair, but decided we were already doing enough climbing.

At least the scenery was interesting.

Plus we got to see a parade of classic cars, twice, as they took a Sunday drive up and down the winding road.

On our way up to the Ochoco Pass Summit, we ran into Steve again, who was impressed that we'd made it to Mitchell after all. And soon after we met another cyclist named Ben. He was from England, a recent grad about to enter the business world, and he had decided to spend his last free summer seeing America for the first time. We had a great chat with him about bikes and traveling while we sat on a tree stump eating the delicious chocolate muffins from the hotel and the (still unmelted!) Snickers from the saloon. We eventually got back on the road, happy to be sharing it with other cycling tourists.

Steve and Ben were both faster than us, but Ben started getting flat tires so we ended up leap-frogging each other most of the way. And we were having our own problems; Kyle was sure that something was dragging or catching to reduce our downhill speed, which is always frustrating. But for the most part we enjoyed the ride and the mixed scenery.

We rode along Ochoko Lake, stopping at a small store with an energetic sign man and an equally friendly owner.

For the first time in a long time we had cell service, so I called my parents while we drank our cold sodas. They're flying to Portland to stay with friends and see us to the finish line, and hopefully we can meet up with them even earlier (especially since they could carry the trailer for us!). We also realized that from the store we had exactly 200 miles left to the coast, so we departed the store in an especially energized mood.

We rode through Prineville, Oregon's oldest city. Kyle kept talking about the name in a weird, shrill voice; I was a little confused, but it was nice to be in a goofy mood again. We decided to take the long way round to Redmund instead of the busy and steep highway. It was an excellent decision, and we found ourselves riding through picturesque farmland and rolling hills. I felt so liberated and energized, utterly content to be on the bicycle. It was one of those beautiful moments that have been far too rare on this chaotic trip.

And then it got even better. We spotted a cyclist coming up behind us, and realized it was Ben. He caught up and this time we rode together instead of passing each other back and forth. We talked about the different regions we'd ridden through, and the various dogs, strangers, and cultural quirks we'd encountered on the way. We also traded stats and were mutually impressed; today was an especially long day for Ben, who tackled two mountain passes and over 100 miles. It just felt really great to have a friendly riding companion alongside us. We're not sure why the only people who seem to ride with us are Brits -- maybe no one told them about the prevailing winds either -- but we aren't complaining.

We eventually caught up to Steve, who had already set up his campsite for the night. He seemed impressed that we were once again making our slow but stubborn way to our planned destination. Ben continued on with us until we were just outside Redmund, where he found a good spot to stealth camp, and we continued into town to hunt for a motel with laundry, which we finally founded at a Motel 6. We also found a very fierce plum.

Told you.

We then capped off the evening with a very nice Mexican dinner. We figured we deserved it after so many granola bar dinners, and we were also in a mood to celebrate. It had been a good ride, and we only have two days left. TWO! We were happy enough to hula hoop.

| posted at: 06:15 | permanent link and comments

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Day 61: Mitchell, OR to Redmond, OR

Today started with some awesome muffins, but since we hadn't had dinner the night before our first priority, once again, was to find some breakfast. We packed the muffins for later and went across the street to a saloon.

Food was awesome. We also noticed a sign up for the local school - Mitchell School District #55. People apparently have to travel so far to get to the school that the school is actually a boarding school, with room for twenty boarders. That's pretty impressive for a guy who works at a school with 141,000 kids.

Across the street from the saloon there may or may not have been a man with a bear as a pet. Apparently he'd raised it from a cub, when it had been abandoned. We didn't take time to find out though.

Mitchell had a certain appeal though. It wasn't much of a town, but everything around it was beautiful, and the town seemed to have some spirit. We went back to the hotel to get our stuff together, finally getting a chance to talk with the owner of the hotel.

For perhaps the first time all trip today started with a downhill. Not much of one, and it was of course followed with a long, hot uphill, but we'll take what we can get. One fortunate thing for us is that our only climb was going to be in the morning. Once we were over it we'd be back into relatively populated west-central Oregon.

At the base of the climb the terrain was hilly and dry. Back in Mitchell, some 5 miles earlier and 400 feet higher up, it'd been kind of chilly, and we were wearing our jackets.

Now that we were climbing, we rapidly stopped and stripped off all our cold weather gear. I was amazed at how rapidly the temperature changed.

This climb, perhaps because it was still daylight, was pretty awesome. About 6 miles into the climb, we were passed by a classic car parade.

Midway up the climb, the terrain switched to forest, which was a nice change.

Toward the top of the climb, Steve, who we'd met in Dayville the day before, passed us.

He was moving a lot faster than we were.

Finally, we crossed Ochoco pass, and were able to start racing down hill. Well, kind of. Something didn't feel right to me, which was frustrating. After hours of struggling up a hill you want to treasure those few minutes going downhill. It almost felt like the brake was on. We pulled over at a little rest stop.

What we really wanted was a place to drop off some trash and get some water, but all we found were bathrooms. As we were studying the ACA maps, trying to determine how far it was to the next gas station, another touring cyclist pulled up. This cyclist was named Ben. He'd just finished University, and was spending his summer touring the country. We took off a little before him.

Of course, he passed us in no time at all, in large part due to our weird problem with the back tire that kept slowing us down.

This downhill wasn't nearly as much fun as we'd hoped. It wasn't even that long. But we did keep leapfrogging Ben, who had quite a few tire problems, flatting at least twice. Each time though, he never seemed to need any help, so we just kept riding on.

At mile 38, we reached Ochoco Reservoir.

Two miles later was the State Park. Right across from it was a gas station where we were able to stop and have lots to drink (and maybe eat ice cream). We stayed there longer than we should have, partly waiting to see if Ben was going to make it. But we ran out of time, and couldn't wait any longer.

A few miles later, we came to Prineville. For some reason, I got really silly, and started reading out PRINEville in a really shrill voice every time I saw a sign that said the town's name. In Prineville we stopped at McDonalds and considered our options.

I hadn't been sure how long it was going to take us to climb the Ochoco pass, and we'd originally wanted to spend a night in Sisters, so I'd researched some hotels in both Prineville and Redmond. Since it was only early afternoon, we decided to ride on. Of course, that meant we had two other options. We could either follow OR-126 or OR-370. 126 looked more direct, but 370 looked lot it had a lot less traffic. Since 370 was recommended by the ACA we, for once, took the more scenic route.

We rode around a low, long plateau for about a dozen miles.

While we were riding along flat farmland Ben caught up. Apparently he'd had more tire problems than expected even after he saw us and ended up having to wait for someone to drive in to Prineville and pick up some tubes for him. Friendly strangers are awesome.

Ben had some other tricks to show us. Apparently he sometimes took advantage of his British accent and stood outside grocery stores as it was getting dark. People would strike up conversation with him and the next thing he knew he was following them home to a meal and a bed. Unfortunately, we are rather short British Accents.

Before we got to US-97 we ran into Steve, who'd been camping on and off with Ben for a few days. Tonight Ben wanted to be on his own. We left him at what we thought was public land, where he was going to try some stealth camping. We left him with a card and our phone number, in case the camping didn't work out and he wanted to share a hotel room with us.

For once, we arrived in Redmond before the sun was down. We tried a couple of hotels in town, looking for one that had the most magical of all things - laundry. No luck. We ended up riding out to a Motel 6 outside of town, and arriving as it got dark. So much for getting in early enough to walk around a bit. There was quite a line at the desk of the Motel 6, but the staff was incredibly friendly and we chatted with a lot of fun people in the lobby. Dinner was at an awesome Mexican place across the street. It was almost celebratory and I was in great spirits. Jillian's parents were in Oregon - we'd no longer need to worry about getting stranded. If we had another night where we might get in at 3am, we'd be able to call for a rescue. Provided, of course, that we weren't stuck in an area without any cell reception like we'd been last night.

Back at the hotel, I was still in a silly mood and hulu-hooped with bike tires.

I wasn't very good at it.

| posted at: 04:04 | permanent link and comments

Friday, August 14, 2009

60: Here There Be Cougars, Cows, and Shoe Trees, But No Dinosaurs

Stoker's Log

Day Sixty

8/14/09

From John Day, OR

To Mitchell, OR

79.5 miles

8.6 avg mph

Even though yesterday destroyed us, we couldn't afford to take a full rest day, but we did let ourselves sleep in and enjoy a large and leisurely breakfast at the restaurant across the street. The carb overload was welcome, though we were a little disturbed when the cinnamon roll with icing came with a side of butter. We didn't get going until around 11, continuing the vicious cycle of late mornings leading to late nights leading to late mornings.

A few miles into the ride, I started to feel really dizzy, and it got bad enough that we had to stop at a park to rest. We noticed a poster on the message board warning about cougar sightings in the area and explaining what to do in the event of an encounter (look as intimidating as impossible, prepare to fight back if necessary, and never, ever, ever give into the logical urge to RUN). It was at this point that Kyle decided to tell me about the cougar the night before. I quietly flipped out over the fact that it had happened, and then over the fact that he had kept it from me, but soon I got over it and we got back on the road.

We stopped at the gas station that marked the end of town, then headed into farm and ranch country. It was a pleasant, scenic, and largely downhill ride that would have been perfect if not for the lack of bathrooms for over 3 hours. We finally made it to a park where we found bathrooms and a cyclist named Steve, a middle school math teacher also on his way West. It was still early afternoon, but he was done riding for the day, planning to spend the night at a nearby church that regularly hosted cyclists and even had showers. He suggested that we stay there too, saying that there was no way we'd make it to Mitchell. He was a nice guy, but we were really getting tired of people telling us that our plans are impossible. We couldn't justify giving up half a day of riding time at this point, so we said goodbye to him and rode on.

We were riding the Oregon Scenic Byway, which billed itself as a "Journey Through Time." The rock structures lining the road were certainly impressive.

We couldn't stop to take in the sights, however, because we really wanted to reach the Fossil Beds National Monument and Museum before it closed at 4:00. Our already fast riding transitioned into a frantic sprint with our eye on the clock as we got closer to the museum and the deadline. We went all out; I pushed harder than I ever had, with the possible exception of the time we outran storms in Kansas. With 2 miles and 5 minutes left I finally broke down, convinced that there was no way we could make it and that I was killing myself for nothing. Kyle convinced me to push it out, mostly by yelling, and we sprinted into the parking lot right at 4:00... only to find out that the museum was open until 5:30. I wanted to scream at Kyle but I didn't have the strength; I just collapsed on a bench, exhausted and mildly hysterical.

After a few minutes I pulled myself together and we went inside to see the fossils. We were very sad to discover that they dated from the Cenozoic Age, which meant there would be no dinosaurs.

Still, there were bones from a host of interesting animals, including a giraffe-horse and the "Easter bunny" (I kid you not). Their intimidating predators included a bear-dog, a giant bore,

and whatever this hungry looking guy was.

It was essentially a one-room museum, but they did well with the space they had, giving life to the bone displays with murals and sound effects.

Out in the lobby area was a glass wall that looked into the lab where the staff worked with newly discovered fossils. I was excited to see a lab tech wielding a small brush, and wondered what creature's bones she was about to dust off, but it turns out she was just reapplying her make-up. Maybe a transparent work environment isn't always a good thing.

Back outside, we checked our cell phone service -- still no bars -- and talked about whether we'd be able to find something for dinner that wasn't granola bars. A couple interrupted our forlorn conversation and asked us about our bike and our trip, and as always it was nice to be reminded that we were accomplishing something pretty amazing... assuming we pulled it off.

We got back on the road, now freer to enjoy the scenery around us (though I still took all of the photos while in motion).

We initially felt optimistic about the time, but our hope of minimizing our night-riding dwindled as we saw the climbs in front of us. We quickly realized that our last 40 miles would take us a long time and probably bring us into town well after dark. It was getting cold again too, and we still didn't have any cell service if something went wrong.

But we tried to stay optimistic, and when we stopped for a break on one of the uphills, we were greeted by an unexpected surprise. A car pulled off the road in front of us, and out jumped the couple we had met earlier at the fossil museum.

"We overheard you talking about dinner and granola bars, so we got some and came to find you," they explained as they handed us a bag of bottled water and granola bars. We had actually been complaining that we wanted anything to eat except granola bars, but it was such an amazing gesture that we accepted them wholeheartedly (and actually quite enjoyed them later). Once again, the hardest riding days introduced us to the best people.

We were also treated to two bizarre sights:

A tree covered with shoes (and remember that we're in the middle of nowhere here):

And a cow hanging out in the brush on the side of the road:

It looked slightly demonic in the twilight, and we were legitimately afraid that it would charge us, but it just glared us down as we passed by, giving it a wide berth.

At least the dogs we passed were cute and friendly.

And then, as it started to get dark, we saw another cougar. Well, Kyle saw it. Once again I literally and figuratively kept in the dark about it until the next day, and once again this may have been a good thing. With or without creatures, the night was terrifying. Our main light, at the front of the bike, was completely dead, and our headlamps were weakening. We were riding in eerie near-darkness, in the middle of nowhere, and it was cold again, a cold that slowly seeped into our bones and then blasted us unbearably on the downhills. I couldn't feel my feet, but I could feel the vibrations from Kyle's shivering behind me. How had this happened again, when today was supposed to be an "easy" day, less than 80 miles? We started wondering if we should hitch a ride, but few vehicles passed us and most may not even have realized we were there. We were beyond miserable and desperate to make it to the elusive Mitchell, but we couldn't ride any faster because of the dark and the cold. The miles stretched on and on...

We finally entered the small town and saw the illuminated Lodging sign. I yelled "It's so beautiful!" as we rolled into the silent town. We were a bit worried about whether our room would be accessible, however; without cell service we hadn't been able to call the owners to let them know that we'd be very late. We had managed to get a text through to my mom asking her to call on our behalf, but we had no idea whether it had worked until we walked in and saw a note and a key waiting for us at the otherwise empty front desk.

We fell in love with the vintage look of the place... until we realized that our room had a clawfoot bathtub, but no showerhead. We decided that drawing a bath wasn't worth it, especially since we would have to wear dirty clothing the next morning anyway, so we ate our granola bars and crawled into bed, dirty, exhausted, and relieved.

| posted at: 06:10 | permanent link and comments

Friday, August 14, 2009

Day 60: John Day, OR to Mitchell, OR

After getting in very late the previous night, we weren't really in good shape to get moving this morning. In fact, we weren't in great shape to move at all. First mission: breakfast. Across the street was a little diner. We downed a ridiculous amount of food, then were really slow packing up our stuff. We didn't get out of there until 11.

A couple miles out of John Day, Jillian started feeling very sick. We stopped at Clyde Holliday State Park to rest a while. We chatted for a while with some motorcyclists who were touring about the Northwest. I only felt a little envious of their motors. We also spotted a sign warning us about Cougars in the area. So I thought maybe I should fill Jillian in on the green eyes from the night before.

She wasn't terribly happy.

After the park, we rode on to the little town of Mt Vernon, and stopped at a gas station for some snacks. We stayed a lot longer than we should have, but again, we just weren't moving very quickly.

It was going to be almost twenty miles to the next town, and largely downhill. But then, we weren't feeling well. And we hurt. They became twenty very, very painful miles.

In Dayville, we came to a little park and stopped to use the bathroom and chatted with Steve, another touring cyclist. He said there was no way we were going to make Mitchell tonight. We explained that we didn't have a choice - we already had reservations at the only - and very small - hotel in Mitchell. Plus we needed to keep moving - we were rapidly running out of time before we had to meet Jillian's parents. In fact, we were planning to meet them at Sisters in two days.

In Dayville we glanced at the clock and realized that if we pushed really hard we might be able to make it to the John Day fossil beds to see the fossils. We started pushing hard.

As we got close, we passed through an awesome gorge.

We spotted a sign just inside the gorge that said we had 2 miles to go - and only 10 minutes until it was 4pm and the fossil center closed. Jillian broke down, but kept pushing. We both rode maybe harder than we ever had. It was such a simple thing - just a fossil center. But it was a huge mental goal for us.

We arrived right at 4 - to find a sign saying they were open until 5:30. Infuriating. We took time to explore the fossil beds and sit on a bench a while.

I was a little sad there were no dinosaurs here.

We sat around outside for a while, chatting with some fellow tourists who were amused by our bicycle. Finally it was time to get back on the road.

Mitchell was about 30 miles away. It wasn't much later than 5. We had a solid 4 hours to cover 30 miles. No problem, seeing as we'd just covered 2 miles in 10 minutes.

We knew there was another pass, we just didn't realize that this pass was almost 30 miles long. Long passes are worse than short ones, regardless of the height. At least at the start there were things to look at.

A couple of miles on, we met those same tourists from earlier. They'd driven all the way back to Dayville to buy us some dinner and something to drink. I love people that love cyclists.

We climbed, and climbed, and climbed, stopping in vain where we thought we might find a cell signal and trying to call the hotel to let them know we were going to be in a little late. We were finally able to get a text message through to Jillian's mother - we thought.

We saw a funny tree. We know nothing at all about it, but most cyclists seem to take pictures with it.

Just down the road from the shoe tree we spotted a cow on the side of the road. Cows normally seem kind of dumb and docile. This one seemed two steps from charging us.

Around mile 57, the pass started to flatten out and we were able to pick up the speed a little. Of course, it was pitch black and we were once again riding by headlamp. But by now one of our lights was dead. We operate on a system of three lights. I wear a focused headlamp, which I use to look for road hazards. Jillian wears a broad headlamp, as a light for others to see and to keep light on things nearby. We also have a little light on the end of the bicycle's boom. It doesn't really provide us with any light on the road as it points straight ahead, but cars can see it easily.

Somewhere on the long, flat top of the pass the end of the boom headlamp decided to die. We debated accepting a ride, if someone was to offer one, without coming to any real conclusions. Then the temperature started to drop, and we got miserable. Some distance off into a field, I spotted another set of green eyes. Nowhere near as close as the last ones, but still a little nerve racking. No idea if this one was a cougar.

Finally, after almost ten miles of an extra slow, not too steep climb, we crested the top. The downhill was fast. Really, really fast. We were stuck. We could either go five or six miles an hour and not be cold, or we could go forty and get down the hill in an instant. We wound up having to compromise a little. We went as fast as we felt safe - which was still freezing.

We spotted the sign for the hotel first, and it was the most beautiful thing we'd ever seen. It felt like it was three in the morning, even though it was only a little after ten. Although we were exhausted, we took some time to chat without the people outside and lock the bike up to the fence outside. Inside we found a note from the owner - Jillian's mother had called, our key was attached to the note, and we could take care of payment in the morning.

The Oregon Hotel was an older building, and the decor was lots of fun. We'd paid a little extra to get a private room. Inside we found a problem - the room only had a bathtub, no shower. As it was now quarter of eleven, we weren't really in the mood to draw two baths. But then, we didn't really have any clean clothing for tomorrow anyway, and we certainly weren't going to find any laundry here. So much for getting clean tonight.

Although the note in the lobby had promised us muffins in the morning, there was nothing to be had for dinner. We choked down the remainder of the granola bars from the friendly tourists we'd met at the fossil beds. They were extra tasty, since they weren't our normal ones, even if they were a little high in fiber.

| posted at: 04:04 | permanent link and comments

Thursday, August 13, 2009

59: Delirium in the Desert & Danger in the Dark

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Nine

8/13/09

From Vale, OR

To John Day, OR

126 miles

7.7 avg mph

I've decided that Malheur is an excellent name for this area. Today was miserable for many reasons, but let's start with those statistics to the right. We rode 126 miles at an astoundingly slow 7.7 average miles per hour. For those of you without a calculator, that means we were pedaling for 16 hours. And that's just time on the bike; we were on the road for much longer.

We left before dawn, watching the sun rise from a gas station where we stopped to buy supplies before leaving civilization. I don't know why I was so excited to enter Oregon yesterday: the Eastern half is a barren wilderness, much like Kansas or Wyoming, with nothing for miles and miles and miles and miles. At least in Kansas we had a tailwind twice, which helped us escape the state with our sanity intact. Today it was the opposite, with a strong headwind slowing our speed to a mind-numbing crawl. A few hours into the ride we already knew we'd be riding into John Day in the dark, if we made it at all. It was still so far away that our brains started screaming whenever we thought about it. And it was the same old story: unchanging views that were nice...for the first few hours we were stuck staring at them.

Finally we caught a break, or so it seemed: a town appeared before we were expecting one, and we could see a cafe with a sombrero on its roof. We were incredibly excited until we discovered that it wasn't due to open for another 45 minutes. We seriously considered waiting, but we really didn't have the time to spare. I was still determined to find a bathroom, however, so I jogged to the school across the street and did a little celebration dance when I found an unlocked door. The building was deserted except for a secretary in the main office; she was a complete sweetheart and was happy to let me use the tiny toilets and strange communal sinks in the girl's bathroom. Willowcreek Elementary School, you were officially the best part of my day.

We rode on, trying to break the monotony with songs and conversation, but the cloud of misery never really left us. Sometimes we saw farm animals, and since we didn't have anything better to do we started talking to them, sometimes in their language and sometimes in ours. We saw a number of dogs too, and fortunately only one of them was angry. The rest were busy herding goats or sleeping beside them.

Unfortunately there could be nearly an hour between one mildly interesting sight -- like a sheepdog or a group of men raising a barn -- and the next. Most of the time we were left alone in the high desert with our thoughts, and none of those thoughts were very happy. Even when we finally reached a general store it was bittersweet: we desperately needed the rest, the cold drinks, and the bathroom, but we knew that once we left it there would be nothing, no structure of any kind, for 40 miles.

So we took our sweet time there, even though we really couldn't afford the delay. We chatted to the cashier and admired the quirks of the store, like the pool hall in the backroom, the stuffed deer and mountain lion on the wall, and the rattlesnake contest:

I especially like the reminder not to bring the entire snake. So far the snake-hating owner had collected 73 total; the longest rattle was a foot long and the most collected by one person was 23.

To our surprise, we also met another cyclist there; he was on a recumbent going the other way. He was nice enough, but like too many of the cyclists we've met he was too pessimistic for our tastes, insisting that there was no way we would ever make it to John Day today. Thanks buddy.

We finally left the store, even more reluctantly than usual, and started on what promised to be over 5 hours without seeing another person or building, unless you count this empty post office, which looked like it had been closed for a decade.

It was just us and the desert, and it was getting sunnier and hotter by the minute. Then, as if the headwind wasn't detrimental enough, we also had to climb a series of hills. Add my usual desperate need for a bathroom and you've got some miserable hours of riding.

Eventually we entered an area that called itself a town, but it didn't seem to have any public buildings, just a collection of spread out houses and farms. The steep miles that lay ahead looked completely open and unprotected, so I really wanted to avoid going to the bathroom out there. Remembering the kindness of people who lived in the middle of nowhere in Kansas and Idaho, I decided to throw myself on the mercy of the last house we passed. No one answered the doorbell, but as I walked back up the path a truck pulled into the driveway, so I explained our situation to the driver and asked if I could possibly use her bathroom. She just glared at me as if I must be clinically insane, so I backpedaled.

"Sorry, I know it may sound weird, it's just --"

"Yes, it does sound weird, actually. You don't squat in the woods?"

"Um, not usually..." I was met by steely silence again, so I continued: "But I guess that's my plan now."

When she didn't say anything else I walked away and got on the bike, quietly fuming. Clearly people like Joann and Jon dangerously raised my expectations of Western hospitality. I do understand people not wanting to open their home to a stranger, but let's be serious: I couldn't seem threatening if I tried. Maybe as a rugged, rural woman she was just ashamed of my lack of outdoor skills. Or maybe she was a misanthropic bitch who lives in the middle of nowhere for a reason. Who knows, but I needed a plan B. A ditch with weeds almost tall enough presented itself, so I jumped down into it and attempted to use the Pee Pouch we'd bought at an outdoors store earlier. It was a complete disaster, and I climbed out of the ditch cursing the inhospitable lady, my lack of camping experience, and the uncanny ability of this day to get progressively worse.

We started the second of our four major climbs of the day, a long one with a series of switchbacks. We had to stop halfway up to eat something, but we eventually made it up and over. We started to see trees, which under the circumstances made us incredibly excited, but after a few miles we were back to desert and nothing to see. The most excitement we had was crossing into Pacific Time.

More miserable hours passed and we eventually reached the town of Unity. When the first buildings we saw -- a restaurant and visitor's center -- were closed, I was ready to kill someone, but luckily we spotted a convenience store further down the road. The camo-clad cashier also ran the campground next door, and asked if we wanted a spot for the night. We thanked her but said we were still going to try to make it to John Day. What a colossal mistake.

Our third long climb took us into the National Forest, and we were certainly glad to see trees. Unfortunately we wouldn't benefit from their shade for long: the sun was already setting, and we were still far from our destination.

Soon enough it was dark, and it also got cold. When we stopped to use a campground bathroom, we were almost tempted to sleep there. It would not have been a pleasant night, but it might have worked: it was handicap-sized (thank you Eagle Scout who built it as a final project) and the air-freshener hanging from the ceiling was a nice touch. Instead, we rode on and started our fourth and longest climb. I'm not talking about a hill; this was a long, mountain pass that seemed to stretch on and up forever. And downhills weren't rests; they were torture in the cold and the wind. I put on every layer we had, including some of Kyle's, and I was still shivering and miserable in my wind-break position up front.

As we rode on I felt increasingly uneasy. We were in the middle of the wilderness in the dark without cell service. The one time we stopped I suddenly found myself clinging to Kyle, haunted by vague apprehension and a child's fear of the dark. Stars kept shooting over our heads, and every time I wished fervently that we would be safe. And I didn't even know about the cougar.

Kyle spotted its eyes through the trees: glowing, close together, and just the right height for the cougars that frequent this area. They followed us for a few slinking steps, not scared but also not hunting...yet. It was just stalking us lazily, trying to figure out what we were. Instead of telling me about it, Kyle started singing and pedaling faster, and I joined in assuming it was just a motivational technique. Fortunately the combination of our noise, our speed, and our lights convinced the creature to leave us alone and it let us pass into the night.

Somewhere along the climb we discovered a miracle: a porta-potty on the side of the road, part of a small construction project. We pulled over and I went to use it, but as I got to the door the structure clanged and shook. I took a few startled steps back, and Kyle asked what I was doing just standing there.

"I think there's someone or something in there," I whispered, realizing how crazy it sounded. Kyle refused to believe me -- maybe he thought I had started to imagine boogeymen everywhere -- so I told him that he could use it first. As he walked up, however, a man emerged from the porta-potty, looking as confused to see us on the side of the road near midnight as we were to see him. It turns out he was a construction worker paid to camp there overnight to keep an eye on the signals. He offered us a Coke and wished us luck on our crazy journey.

We eventually made it to Prairie Home, which seemed cute but was all closed. Then it was a long, cold downhill into John Day, which we reached just shy of 2:00 AM. And we weren't done yet: when we rang the doorbell for the (locked) front office, no one came. We rang it again, and again... still nothing. We called the phone number and listened to it ring behind the glass, but no one came to pick it up. While we were waiting, I tried to get a soda out of the vending machine, but it just ate my money instead. There wasn't even a good place to sit down outside. Finally, almost half an hour later, someone came out and gave us our key. We couldn't decide whether to hug her or punch her, so we just took the key and collapsed into the room without worrying about anything but sleep.

So, to summarize: We rode from sunrise to 2AM, covering 126 miles of nothing much, very rarely encountering bathrooms or other people. We traveled through stifling heat, freezing cold, and a headwind that demolished our speed. We climbed four serious inclines and were briefly stalked by a cougar. When we finished all of that, we still had to wait outside for half an hour to get a place to sleep. Yeah, I'd say we're more than ready to be finished with this trip.

| posted at: 06:08 | permanent link and comments

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Day 59: Vale, OR to John Day, OR

Today was one of the days we'd been worried about for a while. We'd first started talking seriously about it in Nampa. It was nearly 115 miles from Vale to John Day, which seemed to have the most hotels. There was nothing in between. We started very early.

We also started with a stop at a gas station for breakfast. I thought we were fortunate just to have something open. We headed North out of town, following US-26. There wasn't much to see aside from a headwind, blowing down off the passes ahead.

A few miles in we came to Willow Creek, where we found a general store. Jillian really wanted to use a bathroom, but the store wasn't going to open for another half hour. I stayed with the bike while Jillian went across the street to the Willow Creek School, where the secretary was kind enough to let her use the bathroom.

We tried to stop again in Jamison, specifically to see if the Post Office people would unlock their port-a-potty for us, but the building was rather closed.

Then we rode on to Brogan, all in a punishing headwind. We stopped there at a store - apparently the last one for the next forty miles. We had some more to eat, in addition to checking out their Rattlesnake Contest:

We also met a cyclist on a recumbent who was heading from Portland to Boise. Specifically, he said there was "No way at all [we] are going to make it all the way to John Day." Unfortunate, because we had a hotel reservation and no backup plan.

Out of Brogan we had our first climb of the day, to almost 4000 feet.

There was no downhill on the top of Brogan - just miles and miles of flat, high desert. Nothing to keep us away from the headwind.

We did pass one more important sign though:

Then it was time for another climb, this time to only about 4400 feet. We were, curiously enough, in some sort of preserved forest land.

Next stop was in Unity, which was the little store the woman in Brogan had been referring to. There wasn't much here, and the clerk, noting that by now it was late in the afternoon, suggested we camp. There was a hotel, but it wasn't much, and neither of us wanted to spend the night there only to face more nothingness the next day. Outside the store was a sign charging people extra money to use the store outside normal business hours, which I found amusing. After having more to eat and drink we got back on the road, with a renewed mission of making it as far as possible before dark.

Then it was time for Blue Mountain Pass, at just over 5000 feet. It was a long, long climb. But at least we were out of the desert.

One advantage of Forest lands is the regular campgrounds. They were all empty, but it meant bathrooms we could use. It was getting cold, and the bathrooms were pretty large. Neither of us much cared of the idea of another 60 miles - as many miles as we'd done the day before - in the dark. I seriously considered just setting up our emergency shelter in the bathroom. We decided not to though, not sure of how cold it was going to get.

Not too far out past the campgrounds I spotted some bright green eyes on the side of the road. They were both forward facing, not opposite each other like you'd expect on deer. Furthermore, when they moved, they moved perfectly level to the ground, not bouncing up and down like a deer's. I kept my headlight on them for a while, and Jillian and I kept up very loud conversation, and they slid off into the woods. Jillian wondered why I was pedaling a lot harder than normal, but didn't question it too much. I didn't tell her about the eyes at all.

After we crested the hill we absolutely froze on the downhill. Jillian, as the wind break, had it a lot worse than me. But as I shivered the whole bike would shake. Not much we could do though - the downhills were our only chance to move more than six or seven miles an hour.

At the bottom of this pass was Austin Junction. I'd been hoping for a little 24 hour store or something there, but all we found was a closed store and DOT site. We stayed outside the DOT site, with its lights, and tried to warm up a little bit. But it was rather eerie, and our recent encounter with green eyes had left me a little jumpy. The shooting stars were fantastic, but we got back on the road quickly.

We had one more pass to climb before we'd be able to ride down into the valley and follow a stream to John Day. This pass was just over 5200 feet high, making it our longest climb. It was after 11 when we came to a construction site.

Construction sites are mixed blessings - sometimes they're awful, because the road is bad. Sometimes they're nice, because they slow traffic down and sometimes you can ride in closed lanes. But mostly they're good, because there's port-a-pottys. This one was no exception, and we stopped to use their port-a-potty. Jillian went first, but when she got near the door she turned to me and said "I think there's someone in there."

Ha. Funny, Jillian. We're 30 miles from the nearest house and you think there's someone using a port-a-potty in the middle of the woods?

"I heard a noise! It's shaking!"

Then a man walked out of the port-a-potty. Apparently it was his job to babysit the job site all night, to make sure the traffic signal was still working right. He gave us some cokes, which we gladly took.

Not too long after we crested the pass and had a marvelous downhill back toward civilization. Well, would have been marvelous if it hadn't been so cold. I couldn't stop shaking the entire way down. But the site of city lights in the distance was promising. We rode downhill nearly nine miles to Prairie City, where we'd originally considered spending the night. I was glad we'd changed our minds though. We would have been arriving at a B&B at after midnight, long after everyone had gone to bed.

The ride to John Day was uneventful, with nearly empty roads with beautiful stars overhead.

Finally arriving in John Day, we pulled in to an America's Best Value Inn. There was a sign, saying to ring a bell if you were a late check-in. As it was nearly 1 in the morning, we most certainly were a late check-in. We rang the bell, tried the phones, etc for a half hour. Finally a very sleepy looking woman appeared and very apologetically checked us in. She even gave us an extra day free.

Now in our rooms, we had to find some food. There was nothing open, of course, so we were once again stuck with the little snacks we had. It might not have been all bad, but the soda machine ate the first soda we tried to buy. Ultimately though, none of it mattered. We were so exhausted that food didn't really matter.

| posted at: 04:02 | permanent link and comments

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

58: Vale or Bust on the Oregon Trail

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Eight

8/12/09

From Nampa, ID

To Vale, OR

61.9 miles

10 avg mph

My sentiments exactly. Eager to start the day that would take us into Oregon, we quickly packed up, ate breakfast, and laughed as we walked by what apparently passed for the hotel gym.

Just as we were about to leave, however, we noticed that the trailer tire was flat; I guess when we made the front tire impervious the problems just moved along the bike. The annoying hotel manager chattered unhelpful advice at us while we tried to fix it and look up bike shops, but eventually we escaped and headed down the road to the coolest coffee house ever: The Flying M Coffee Garage.

They drowned my granola in milk, but everything else was delicious and the space and atmosphere couldn't be beaten. It gave me an irrational urge to move to western Idaho.

Our next stop was a Walmart so that we could return the unused tubes that were the wrong size. As usual I waited outside, and as usual the crazies found me. This man was primarily concerned about the weather, so the conversation was almost normal...until he abruptly walked away in the middle of it with no explanation.

We rode through the usual Idaho scenery for a while, at one point following trucks packed so high with onions that they lost half a dozen every time they turned or hit a bump. We were half tempted to grab a bag and collect the castaways. Eventually we reached the town of Parma, home of a delightful little restaurant named Apple Lucy's. We talked with the owner and the other customers, admired the shelves full of teapots, and enjoyed a hamburger and a ham and cheese sandwich. We finished off the meal with grasshopper milkshakes, which were really just giant cups of ice cream. Delicious.

We rode along the river and crossed it and the border at the same time. We had FINALLY made our way into Oregon! I rushed to the first sign I could find to herald the occasion, even though it was technically for a cross-state bike ride.

Then less than a mile down the road we found the actual Welcome to Oregon sign, and of course I insisted on stopping again.

Can you tell I'm really excited to be here?

Oregon welcomed us with road and bridge construction, but it wasn't bad at all and we got to ride through mini tunnels into Nyssa, which announced itself as the Thunderegg Capital of the World. Curious, we stopped into Thunderegg Coffee Co. for an explanation, a break, and a cold drink.

The family who owned the place explained that thundereggs are just round rocks with geodes inside, and gifted us with a small one to take along. They also gained cool points by having xkcd comics in the bathroom and telling us stories from the Burning Man Festival.

We thanked them for the sodas, the thunderegg, and the stories and got on the road again. We took in the rural views:

We also tried to puzzle out some mysteries, like the shack structures dotting all of the farm fields -- we guessed hale bale storage, but couldn't be sure -- and the fact that we were heading into Malheur County; I knew "malheur" meant "bad times" or "misfortune" in French, which didn't seem like a very promising county name. I learned later that it took its name from the Malheur River, christened by traders who were upset that their cache of furs hidden along its banks had been stolen. (They always blame the water ways...) There is also a Malheur Butte, which we could see from the overlook where we stopped briefly to rest.

We made it into Vale before sunset, which felt like a miracle. We toured the town, which was full of historical wall murals celebrating its place on the Oregon Trail.

She Could Stare Down Dysentary

Then we had dinner at the Starlite Cafe, a diner featuring delicious home cooking, ranch themed decorations, a friendly but hyper waitress, and a cook who periodically wandered out of the kitchen looking very confused.

Then it was back to our lodging for the night: the Bates Motel. Yup.

I have no idea whether it predates Psycho, but we did enjoy watching people pull in, take a photo of the sign, and peel out in a hurry. The motel itself didn't make us fear serial killers, even though there was a hole in the window that could have been bullet hole, but we certainly felt visually assaulted by the decor.

It was kind of amazing, really.

We tried to get to bed early since we have an exceptionally long day tomorrow: 126 miles with long stretches of nothing in between towns. But hey, who cares; we're finally in Oregon and less than a week from finishing!!!

| posted at: 06:03 | permanent link and comments

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Day 58: Nampa, ID to Vale, OR

Today, unfortunately, started with a flat.

Lucky for us this was a really slow flat. I was able to just inflate the tire and get us going again. But we'd have to watch it. We had two goals before we left Nampa - first we had to check out the awesome looking coffee garage we'd seen yesterday, and second we had to stop at Walmart and investigate a new tire for the trailer.

Finding the coffee garage wasn't too hard, and Nampa seemed to have a pretty awesome little downtown. The coffee garage was a converted garage, with all sorts of space for having coffee. I had yogurt with granola, Jillian had milk with granola, which was kind of like granola milk. I wound up finishing that one.

Back on the road, we headed west, to Walmart. The manager at the hotel had given us ridiculously awful directions. If she'd just said something like "Stay on 55 - it'll be on your left' we'd have been happy. Instead there was all this discussion about which Walmart and what not. Sigh.

The ride down ID-55 was pretty awful. No much of a shoulder, lots of traffic, lots of lights. We ended up on the sidewalk here and there. When we did reach the Walmart I bought some supplies and spent forever returning some tires that we didn't need anymore.

After a stop at a Wendy's in Caldwell, we got on US-26 and followed that west out of town. We finally saw a sign we were going to the right way:

That's Ontario, Oregon, not Ontario, Ontario.

US-26 was a pretty relaxed ride, without high winds and without the temperature being too awful (or maybe we were just acclimated?). We passed through the little town of Notus, before arriving in Parma, which might be the yellow onion capital of the country. There we stopped at Apple Lucy, chatted with patrons and had a wonderful lunch of hamburgers and milkshakes.

Eventually we were able to drag ourselves away from air conditioning and milkshakes and get back on the road to Oregon. Tonight we'd be staying at the Bates Motel in Vale, Oregon. As a small, Mom & Pop hotel, we needed to get there before they closed for the night.

Out of Parma we turned North, heading through vast fields and watching Onion trucks roll by. If we looked to our West, we could easily see Oregon across the valley. When we did cross the river, we entered the town of Nyssa, the Thunderegg Capital of the world. We weren't entirely sure what a Thunderegg was, but we did take some pictures of our entering our final state.

There was some tricky construction to navigate in order to get through Nyssa, but we decided we were due for a stop there and we gladly stopped at the Thunderegg Coffee Company.

Inside the owners informed us that a Thunderegg is a round rock with a geode in it. They were even kind enough to give us one to take home. We stayed all together too long here, having fruit smoothies. We also enjoyed the XKCD comics plastered on all the walls.

Having spent most of the day enjoying delicious frozen drinks, we realized that we should probably get on the road if we wanted any hope of making it to Vale before close. We got back on the road.

We followed US-26 West, and caught wonderful views of Malheur Butte (Malheur means misfortune in French). It was pretty easy to spot.

Apparently it's an extinct volcano, which is pretty awesome.

Eventually we came to an overlook.

I also leaned that the county we were in - population 31,000 - is 9900 square miles big. According to the sign, and since checked on Wikipedia, that's approximately the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Deleware put together.

We arrived in Vale at about 8 - before sunset for once.

Most impressively, Vale has bike lanes everywhere. Vale's a little town - about 2000 people - but there were arguably more miles of bike lanes than there are back in Frederick, population 60,000. First we found our way to the hotel.

We were a little hesitant to stay here, but the reviews on TripAdvisor were awesome. We shouldn't have worried. Except about the decor.

The couch felt a bit like cardboard, too. But we were glad to have a room - if we hadn't made a reservation that morning, we wouldn't have been able to get a room at all. After exploring the town and shooting photos of the murals, we got dinner at the Starlite Cafe, which had really excellent food. Take our reviews of food with a grain of salt - we're always starving - but this did feel like a home cooked meal with friends, even though we didn't know anyone there.

Back at the Bates Motel, we took a little bit of time to get our gear in order before showering in the original all tile showers. Like any older hotel, the shower heads are about four inches too short for me, and I had to crouch the entire time. Good rate through.

| posted at: 04:02 | permanent link and comments

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

57: Lost as a Pirate in the Desert

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Seven

8/11/09

From Hammett, ID

To Nampa, ID

97.7 miles

10 avg mph

Joann sent us off with a delicious pancake and fruit breakfast and a cantaloupe for the road. We reluctantly said goodbye and headed towards Mountain Home. We were haunted by the heat and an irritating cloud of gnats; we figured out that we needed to exceed 12 mph to outrun these pests, which was fine until we faced a long climb and had to let them catch up. Finally we were back at Tony's Bike Shop.

While there we decided on a solid rubber tube for the front tire; it would slow us down but it wouldn't flat, which seemed worth it at this point. Then we headed out of town and back into farmland.

After a while the farmland turned back into desert. Then the frontage road we were on abruptly ended next to a trailer home with three angry guard dogs. We could just see the highway, but it was too far for us to cut across the sand and sagebrush to get there. We had no choice but to turn around, making our way in stops and starts as the dogs started to chase us. Riding extra miles is always frustrating, but doing it in the desert on a hot summer day is even worse. I was less than pleased.

We finally made it back to a bridge that linked us with a network of back roads, and we entered one of the most bizarre neighborhoods we'd ever seen. A neighborhood in the middle of the desert is going to be unconventional regardless, since the lots are much larger, no one has a lawn, and in the summer no one spends much time outside. But these people had a sense of humor, giving their streets funny names like "Desert Duck" and ironic ones like "Ocean View" and "Sea Breeze." One aspiring pirate took the ocean theme even farther:

But the entertaining sights weren't enough to distract us from the fact that it took a long, long, long, long time to reenter civilization in the form of a large and very welcome rest stop. We almost cried when we saw its sign towering over the highway.

We planned to take a long rest there, so we bought an outrageous amount of liquid: a bottle of rootbeer, a cup of fruit punch, and giant containers of Powerade and water. We also slurped up the cantaloupe from Joann, which was without a doubt the best one I have ever tasted.

When we felt relatively rested and hydrated, we reluctantly got on the road again, riding one exit on the interstate and another 30 miles on backroads before we reached the town of Kuna. It was bizarre to go from the nothingness of open desert to a neighborhood of perfectly irrigated lawns; I appreciated the rare sight of grass but it seemed outrageously wasteful out here. Mini Quizno sandwiches fortified us for the rest of the ride; in frustration I told Kyle that Nampa had better be less than 15 miles away, and I had to laugh when it turned out to be exactly 15. We weren't finished yet though: the street signs didn't match the Garmin map, so we tallied a few extra miles before we finally found the hotel and ended our 97-desert-mile day.

| posted at: 06:01 | permanent link and comments

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Day 57: Hammett, ID to Nampa, ID

Today started - at 5:30am - with Joann making us a wonderful breakfast of pancakes, orange juice, and fresh fruit. If only we could have a morning like that every morning. She also sent us off with an entire cantaloupe. Heavy, but delicious.

Riding through Hammett wasn't so bad - there was certainly more of a town than I'd been able to spot from the bridge. West of Hammett we found bugs. Lots of bugs. And it was already hot. In order to stay ahead of the bugs we had to travel more than 12 mph - which just wasn't going to happen climbing back out of the valley.

There really wasn't much to see beyond hay bales until we got to Mountain Home. I'll spare you pictures.

We stopped at the Albertsons, had some donuts (well, I did), then stopped again at the bike shop to buy spare back tubes and a new back tire (as a spare - can't be too careful). This meant we were now carrying two back tires - the slightly wrong sized one we'd been forced to purchase at Walmart back in Jerome and the new, right sized one. We stopped again at a gas station near the interstate north of town. It was very, very hot. Jillian, as always, was probably ready to take the highway, but I wanted to follow the frontage road, since I hate riding the interstate.

We followed the frontage road. According to the Garmin we'd be able to stay south of the highway the entire way. Google Maps thought the road would end. The road did abruptly dead end - causing us to travel an extra two miles. Plus we found a whole bunch of dogs, which took some effort to get away from. I hopped back on the Garmin and found us an alternate route. The road names in this area were a little funny.

The other road names were even weirder - all about beaches and oceans, even though we were hundreds of miles from the coast.

We did pass one development, complete with private airport. I'm not sure who would want to live out here.

Now that it was easily 100 degrees (remember that we'd been wearing gloves two days earlier) we were desperate for any stop. Imagine our relief when we spotted the Sinclair.

We camped out at on some chairs outside and had our Cantaloupe.

We drank a lot of fluid. We bought a root beer for Jillian, Hi-C for me, Powerade, and lots of water. It was almost disturbing how much water we'd had. We took some time to just sit as well, glad to not be in the sun.

When we did get back on the road, it was on the interstate. There were no alternate routes at this point, and we only had to travel one exit, getting off at Kuna. Not that Kuna was at the exit - we had a long way to go.

We'd had to make a decision about how we were going to get west of Boise. Our original plan had been to ride the highway another exit and get off to ride through Boise. Now that we were extra short time we wanted to skip Boise all together and ride around the traffic and stop lights. Kuna was our answer.

There are no photos from this section of the ride. There was nothing to see, except for some storm clouds to our south. We had to keep working in order to stay ahead of those.

When we did reach Kuna, almost twenty miles later, we found a Quiznos and had some dinner (and more drinks). I called home and got a weather report. Possible showers, but mostly clear if we kept moving. We got moving again - excited that there were only some fifteen miles left to our stop.

There again wasn't too much to see north of town. Things were greener, but mostly due to people living there and watering their lawns. We had an unnecessary climb over a rail road bridge, and then had some trouble finding the hotel. It was dark by now, and Jillian was navigating by way of the Garmin. That was hard, since the Garmin kills your night vision. Little did I know, but the Garmin was giving different street names from what was actually there. That was very frustrating, since here I thought Jillian couldn't even use a Garmin, when in reality the Garmin was all wrong.

We found a hotel, and though we didn't have a reservation we were fortunate in that the Super 8 Nampa had a first floor room available for us. We checked in and headed over to the Denny's to find some dinner (also, free refills on beverages). Service was good, though it took forever to get out of there and back to the hotel to sleep. We stopped and grabbed cookies at a gas station on our way back to the hotel, where we simply crashed, exhausted.

| posted at: 04:02 | permanent link and comments

Monday, August 10, 2009

56: Marzipan and Saint Joann

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Six

8/9/09

From Bliss, ID

To Hammett, ID

33.3 miles

10.1 avg mph

We had an exceptionally slow morning. For perhaps the fifth time in our lives, Kyle slept in longer than I did. Even after we got up and moving, it took us forever to leave town. First we went over to the 24 hour cafe and convenience store that made us so happy last night: Ziggy's!

We grabbed breakfast there, and I made the very poor choice of getting an overpriced latte, some fig newtons, and animal crackers with icing: it was way too much sugar for the morning. We also spotted an article about a cyclist who had been killed by a car the day before, which didn't make us eager to start either. Eventually we headed down the road to the Post Office, where we mailed home over four pounds of stuff, and wandered down to the overlook to see the river twisting through the canyon. In might be the view that gave Bliss its name.

We finally left Bliss, and for a while we had a very pleasant ride in warm but not unbearable weather. We passed the time talking about college classes and taking in the views.

And then we got a flat tire.

We eventually made it into a small town with a small grocery store. I was overly excited to discover a bag of Marzipan, a name I only knew from Homestarrunner.com.

They also had a fun wagon wheel bench outside.

I sat down on the bench and eagerly bit into my first round of marzipan...and nearly gagged. It was a crumbly, sugary mess that was completely unappealing, especially after my breakfast. I threw the bag away -- after trying one more round, which was just as bad -- and we continued on.

We rode a few more miles past the highway and abundant sagebrush until we got another flat tire. We fixed it and rode on, until it happened again. And again. And again. We had four flats in less than four miles, caused by a combination of crappy Walmart patch kits and these little buggers:

Goathead Thorns, the bane of any cyclist's existence.

Already out of tubes, at this point we were patching patches, which was doing us no good, and eventually we ran out of them too and had to give up. By this point the sun was blazing, so we wheeled the bike back to the only shade for miles: an underpass beneath the highway. The closest we could get to seating was the uncomfortably slanted wall, which was coated with bird shit. Kyle decided to see if there was anything up the road while I made dozens of fruitless calls. AAA has bike service in Idaho, but refused to pick us up because my membership was from out of state. None of the local taxi services had vehicles large enough to carry our bike, and neither did any of the rental companies. The mobile bike shop I called wanted to help but was too far away. My best lead of the afternoon was a bike shop one town over whose owner was willing to pick us up...after closing up the store at 6:00. It was currently just past 3:00.

Kyle wandered back through the haze. There was nothing of note close by, and no way that we could walk much further: the road was so hot that the tar had started to stick to his shoes. I climbed up a small hill to see if anything was visible down the highway, but it looked equally barren. We had no choice but to wait, cuddling awkwardly on the dirty concrete.

There was no way to get comfortable, and no way to escape the heat. Kyle tried to sleep. I read our book and wondered how long it would be before I'd have to clamber over the railing and go to the bathroom in the ditch. Every once in a while a vehicle passed us, but none of them even slowed down and few were large enough to be helpful anyway.

One of the cars that passed by was a beautiful old black BMW. And then, to our surprise, it turned around and the driver asked if we needed help. We thanked her for stopping and explained the situation but we weren't really sure how she could help with that car. But she said she lived less than a mile away and offered to let us wait for the bike shop people at her house instead of beneath the overpass. "I mean come on; you're sitting in shit." We couldn't really say no to that argument. We hadn't seen a house anywhere near by, but we followed her down a side road, wheeling the bike along, and ended up at a house completely hidden by trees. We set up a bike repair spot on the shady back porch, and I can't tell you how happy we were to have cold drinks, air conditioning, and a bathroom.

Our saviour, Joann, did much more than give us a shady spot where we could wait. Since she was already heading into Mountain Home to grocery shop, she took us along and dropped us off at the bike shop so that we could buy new tubes and tires. When she picked us up, she convinced us to stay the night instead of riding on. (We didn't take much convincing.) She also insisted on helping us play tourist, which we certainly don't get to do enough on this trip.

She showed us the scenery, from the winding river to the beautiful buttes.

Then she drove us to the famous Bruneau sand dunes. At almost 500 feet, they are the tallest single-structured sand dune in North America, and they also shift around throughout the year depending on the winds.

We watched a few kids attempting to body surf down the hills, and then cavorted around a bit ourselves.

Our next stop was a large organic farm owned by Joann's friend. Even though he wasn't around, Joann insisted that he wouldn't mind if we took some fruit out of the cooler truck, so we helped ourselves to cantaloupes and a watermelon.

Joann was raised by farmers and chefs, and it showed when she whipped up an absolutely amazing dinner for us. The drinks and conversation flowed for hours; Joann is pretty amazing, and not just because she saved us today. She's an outspoken, experienced, intelligent, and liberal woman making a great life for herself in the middle of conservative rural Idaho, and you better believe she has good stories.

Perhaps even more amazing is Joann's mother, who visited from her home just down the road. When she was a young teenager in Germany, she survived the Dresden bombings and walked alone for days to reunite with her family. She's still snappy and full of life now despite her health problems, and we even got her to climb onto our German bicycle.

Things finally wound down and we went to bed in Joann's lovely guest room, relaxed, happy, and most of all grateful. Today was probably the best evening of the entire trip, especially after our horrendous morning. The views and potatoes in Idaho are nice enough, but now we have a real reason to visit Idaho again.

WE LOVE YOU JOANN!

| posted at: 06:01 | permanent link and comments

Monday, August 10, 2009

Day 56: Bliss, ID to Hammett, ID

Today's plan was to ride to Mountain Home, which would put us in a great position to get to Boise tomorrow with enough time to find a bike shop and maybe even explore a little bit. It wasn't to be.

We started with a stop at Ziggy's, where we'd found dinner the night before.

Then it was back on the road, following the old US-30 route. But we didn't travel far. Not even half a mile down the road we found a Post Office and stopped to mail some things back. Little did we know that the Post Office had an amazing view of the Snake River Canyon. Jillian went to shoot photos while I took care of the Post Office.

I managed to scrape together just over four pounds of stuff to mail, including receipts, our gloves, some chain lube, and the headset wrench.

Then we were back to riding through nothing at all.

This open road wasn't quite as bad as the previous one. We were going downhill.

We were riding down into the valley, where we'd be able to directly follow along the shores of the river. We love riding downstream along a river.

Of course, we were hardly at the bottom of the hill before we flatted, on the front tire.

We passed through the very little town of King Hill, which has a pretty awesome location on the Snake. Then we flatted again, this time on the trailer. At least there were nice things to look at.

Not long after we came into the town of Glenns Ferry. We stopped a little grocery store to buy some brunch. We also got Marzipan, which wound up being the most disgusting thing either of us had ever tried eating.

Back on the road, we stayed on old US-30, following the highway fairly closely. Then the front flatted, again. Every time we were getting hit by goatheads, which seemed to be all over.

Not long after, we flatted again. This time outside of an RV Park.

But this time the patch wouldn't hold. We flatted as soon as we tried to put the tire back on the bike. We walked it, flat tire and all, about a quarter mile back so that we could hide in the shade in an underpass below the interstate.

By now we were completely out of spare tubes for the front - and we'd started with three. One had a bad valve. The other two looked like this:

The red patches came from our original patch kit. The green ones are from the Walmart patch kit. They simply wouldn't hold, no matter how long we held them in place, or how well we cleaned and scratched the hole. We were stuck.

By now it was about one in the afternoon, and hot. I was, once again, so frustrated with our equipment. I decided to walk down the road to the bridge over the train tracks to see if I saw anything that resembled a town. Jillian would stay in the shade and start calling everyone under the sun to see if she could procure us a way to a bike shop.

It couldn't have been more than a half mile to the bridge, but the heat was killer. My sandals were getting stuck in sticky road tar, melting under the heat. I didn't see anything, but the walk helped to calm me down.

Jillian hadn't had any luck. No matter how much money we promised no one seemed to have a vehicle that could pick us up. We had two plans. At 6:30 the owner of a bike shop in Mountain Home could drive down and bring us parts, or we could call my friend Kate's friend Jeremy - but he lived way back in Pocatello, and it would take him a long time to travel way out here to help us. We decided to wait it out until 6:30 - over three hours away.

If there was ever a time that I wanted to be done touring, it was today. I hate equipment problems, especially when I've done everything I can to be ready for them and things still go wrong. We hadn't seen a proper bike shop since Laramie - the ones in Lander and Pocatello had been closed, and we hadn't seen them anywhere else. We probably should have taken a really short day to get things squared away, but we were simply out of time. We had to get to the coast in order to meet Jillian's parents, who had already bought their tickets.

Maybe a half hour later a little, a late 80s black BMW pulled up (cars only passed maybe once every thirty or forty minutes), rolled down their window, and said to us, "You're sitting in shit." Joann offered to let us wait under a tree in her backyard, just down the road. We thought that'd be great, so we explained our predicament. Joann said that she was headed in to Mountain Home anyway to pick some things up for her mother - so she'd gladly take us in to town to pick up the parts. Perfect! Maybe we could be back under way without having to do any makeup miles.

We stowed our bike at her place and she drove us to town, dropping us off at Tony's Bike shop.

Tony's didn't have a 20 inch presta valve tube, which isn't terribly surprising. It isn't the world's most common tube. They could drill the rim, so we could fit a schrader in there, but I wasn't enamored with that idea. I saw a slight chance of cracking the rim and grounding us for a few more days. Jillian spotted something amazing - a no flat inner tube. It was simply a solid piece of rubber that you'd use instead of the tube. It wasn't a perfect solution though - this flatless tube simulated about 45psi - we were used to riding close to 100. They were also almost impossible to get off - we'd have to cut the tire off with a knife. But no flats. Ever. We bought it.

We met Joann back at the Albertsons, and she offered to make us dinner and give us a place to spend the night. How could we say no? Then when she offered to let us play tourist for the rest of the day, we were simply in heaven.

She took us to see the Idaho Sand Dunes, which are pretty awesome. There's a valley with high walls on both sides, causing passing air to carry dust and clay right over the valley, but to drop the heavier sand. These sand dunes were several hundred feet high, and still active - they moved around over the course of the year. Joann made sure that, just like all tourists, we pranced up them.

Next stop was one of Joann's friend's farms, where fresh cantaloupe could be found.

Sadly, her friend wasn't home. But that didn't stop us from raiding the outside fridge and taking a couple.

Back at Joann's, we called home, had showers, and fixed the bike up in the comfort of a shaded patio. Joann also picked up her mother and brought her back. Her mother had survived the Dresden firebombings, walking out of the city afterward as a young teenager. She had a lot of interesting stories. We also put her up on our bicycle for pictures.

Joann made us a wonderful dinner and filled us full of alcohol for the ride the next day. We even got to sleep in a real, comfortable bed.

| posted at: 04:02 | permanent link and comments

Sunday, August 09, 2009

55: Lacking Karma and Desperately Seeking Bliss

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Five

8/8/09

From Burley, ID

To Bliss, ID

82.9 miles

11.6 avg mph

We decided on yet another route change this morning based on a positive motel review and the hope that Bliss, Idaho would live up to its name. While he waited for me to get ready, Kyle decided to live large, eating a second breakfast and getting in some over-sized reading.

We spent much of the morning riding in the open under a blazing sun. We alternated between the frontage roads and the Interstate -- cyclists can ride it in Idaho and Wyoming because the traffic is light and there are very few alternatives. A few hours into our ride we got on an off ramp in search of bathrooms and food. We saw a dead cat, which seemed strange since we were in the middle of nowhere, and also rode by a woman standing outside of her car looking confused. Both were explained in a few minutes when we made our way to a Mexican mini-mart. It was home to at least one resident cat, who looked me over suspiciously.

The bathrooms were confusing and just this side of sanitary, but I was highly entertained by their graffiti ( "When I was in Oregon I wish I'd fucked John") and signage ("BUY before drinking. You know who you are!").

When I got outside I saw the woman from the off-ramp, who was attempting to change what was now a very flat tire. We offered help, which it turns out she desperately needed: she didn't know much about the truck, which was her husband's, and she had two fidgety kids in the back. Kyle worked his magic -- a slow and labor-intensive kind of magic -- to find the jack points, lift the truck, and get most of the bolts off. When the last one got stuck, he borrowed better tools from a guy who had pulled in to deal with his son's diarrhea; this parking lot seemed to be the pit stop for major travel issues.

Finally Kyle got the spare on and we sent the thankful but shy woman on her way and got on the road ourselves. We were back in farm country, which was picturesque but extremely buggy.

After miles and miles and miles of open fields and blaring sunlight we were relieved to arrive at Anderson Camp and take a rest inside their lunch room. Continuing my strange food combinations, I ordered a salad and tater tots. While we waited, we discovered that Mexican Coca-cola, which is made with a different kind of sugar, is DELICIOUS and lacks the normal Coke aftertaste, and that books by Ben Goode are really, really bad.

The title may be funny, but I assure you that the book is not. We've seen tons of Ben Goode titles in diners and rest stops along the way, but we never had occassion or time to read them until today. I'm now incredibly angry that this Ben Goode guy/conglomerate is making so much money. I think I need another Mexican Coke to cool down.

We had hoped that helping the stranded mother with her truck would award us tire karma, but we had no such luck. We were on the highway about a quarter mile before our exit when our front tire flatted, so we had to walk the bike up the off-ramp to a Wendy's to change it. Inside, I enjoyed my Frosticino and the surprising fact that the men's bathroom had a long line. We were in the town of Jerome, which of course made me think about Jude Law in a wheelchair and three men in a boat, to say nothing of the dog. (Anyone else?) We planned to visit the police station to make sure that Interstate riding was legal throughout the state, but the building was closed. Fortunately we spotted a sheriff at the gas station who was very friendly and cleared us to ride on the Interstate.

We rode through town towards the next exit, but Kyle noticed that the tires didn't feel right. We pulled over yet again to investigate and discovered that the other tire had gotten so worn out that it was lumpy. I could see the black clouds forming above Kyle's head as he slammed the tire to the ground and wondered aloud where the hell our tire karma had gone.

We used the GPS to find stores that sold bikes and parts and called around but no one had the exact size tire and tubes we needed, of course. Our best bet seemed to be Walmart, so we rode there, 3 miles out of our way. Kyle went inside to find something that would work while I guarded the bike outside. An older man who wandered over to see the bike claimed to be friends with the guy who invented the recumbent bicycle, which led to a discussion about his own windmill designs which have been patented but aren't selling even though they're vastly superior to the current models thanks to the engineering expertise he gained through years of working at Boeing before he got laid off, though he's hoping to get funding from a Native American friend who is currently involved in a water rights dispute. When he had finished this story he abruptly walked away without any small talk to close the conversation. You meet the most interesting people outside of Wal-Marts...

When Kyle finally emerged from the Wal-Mart he had a tire that wasn't quite the right size, but would work. We got back on the interstate since we had essentially ridden back to our original exit. Kyle was still incredibly frustrated, I was starting to feel sick, and we were both depressed by the realization that we would be getting to the hotel well after dark, yet again. It was not a pleasant ride.

Our moods started to improve when we got going at a steady 18-20 mph clip, but darkened once again when the exit we expected after 11 miles didn't show up until almost 30. It was also getting dark and we were low on light power, so much so that when it got truly dark we had to dig out our tiny flashlight so I could hold it up to illuminate the road for our last 7 miles.

We made it into the town of Bliss without incident, thank goodness, and discovered that the recommended Amber Inn Motel was indeed an excellent find. The room was large and clean and had a window seat, and just next door was a 24 hour cafe. I forget what I ordered for my entree, but I remember inhaling delicious mashed potatoes and glass after glass of lemonade. When I stopped zoning and eating enough to really look around, I realized that every patron near us had some kind of handicap or disfigurement. It was rather surreal, and we still don't have much of an explanation for it. The waiters and waitresses were unscarred, but perhaps not for long: we couldn't help overhearing a loud backroom battle among the waitstaff, all of whom looked either rage-filled or lifeless when they emerged to serve and clear food.

We still consider the cafe one of our favorite dining places, though, because we never expected to get a warm, delicious dinner that late at night. It almost made up for our opposite experience in Dubois...almost. We walked back to the motel and sank into our comfortable bed, looking forward to going to sleep and waking up in Bliss.

| posted at: 05:07 | permanent link and comments

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Day 55: Burley, ID to Bliss, ID

As much as I don't care for riding on the Interstate, today we were going to be left without any other options. West of Heyburn I-84 rapidly becomes the only paved road straight west we can easily find. Jillian talked me into getting on the Interstate right away, rather than waiting a while. I did my best to procrastinate at breakfast. As much as everything I'd ever read had said it was ok to ride the interstate, I'd never seen anything official. I simply couldn't believe that it was legal for cyclists to ride the Interstate.

I shouldn't have worried so much about the interstate. While it was really boring, and we couldn't talk at all, it was only 8 miles until there was a good frontage road that we could use. No traffic, not too hilly, not too hot or windy yet. We took advantage.

About 15 miles in, we crossed the highway at an exit and stopped at a convenience store. There wasn't much here, but we had cold drinks. On our way out of the convenience store, we found a young mother with a bit of a tire problem. Her tire was bulging quite a bit, and she needed to put on the spare. We gave her a hand.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get one of the nuts off the tire, no matter how much weight I put on it. I even tried rigging up a longer handle to get better leverage. No luck. The woman we were helping asked the driver of the next truck down for a hand. He had a real tire iron, which got the nut off right away, but before he could help he had to help his kid, who was throwing up off the tailgate of his truck.

Tire changed, the woman drove off and we were able to get moving again, feeling full of good karma, even if we were still a little worried that the spare tire was kind of low on air (there was no pump at this convenience store).

There wasn't a whole lot to see in this part of Idaho.

Our next stop came at a place called Anderson Camp. It was simply a campground with a little cafe. It was quirky. We had lunch here - salads and tater tots. Most importantly, I also had some Mexican Coke - Coke made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. It was wonderful, leaving no aftertaste. All of the tables at the Anderson Camp had these awful books which we tried to read, but couldn't. Then it was back on the road, still avoiding the Interstate.

About 40 miles in, just outside the town of Jerome, we flatted on the front. I really didn't want to change the tire on the shoulder, and we were quite close to the exit, so we walked the bike off the highway.

At the top of the ramp was a Wendy's, where we got very wonderful Frosties before changing the tire. I was not happy about having to change the tire.

As long as we were off the highway, I thought maybe we could stop in at the police station and inquire about riding on the Interstate. But the state Police barracks was closed - it was a Sunday. Fortunately, just down the street we spotted a sheriff filling up his car and took the opportunity to ask him. He confirmed that it was completely legal, so we decided to ride to the far side of town and get back on the highway.

Just before the ramp to get back on the highway I noticed problems with our back tire. The same boot we'd put on our tire way back in Wyoming was still there, and now it was making the bike bounce a bit and causing a bulge of our own. We stopped at another gas station, and took a look.

No luck. We needed a new patch kit and we needed new tires. We did some searching to find a bike shop, but there wasn't one in town. The only option was the Walmart - back by the first exit to town. We called ahead, and they said they had some tires that were close. Close probably wasn't close enough, but they were our only option and by now it was getting to be dinner time. We needed to get moving if we were going to make it to Bliss.

Indeed, the tires at Walmart were close - but not perfect. But, as always, we were out of options. I bought them anyway, as well as a patch kit. In another two days we'd be in Boise, where we could surely find a shop to supply us with all the things we needed.

So now, a day which started with us hopefully establishing some good Karma was on its way to ending terribly. I was so very, incredibly frustrated. I love riding bikes - I hate fixing them. I did what I could with the tires and we got back on the road, choosing to ride slower than normal until we knew how well the boot on the tire was holding.

A few miles later, we started raising our speed, eventually averaging 17-20mph. Our plan was to make it to Wendell, where we'd get off the Highway and follow US-30 in to Bliss in order to keep off the Interstate when it was dark. But after a very brief conversation we decided to stay on the highway - it was only 7 miles, and there might be no shoulder on 30.

Jillian kept her headlamp moving side to side, scanning for road hazards. I did my best to avoid them, but at the speeds we were going in the dark, it was almost impossible.

Only a few miles out of town is Malad Gorge State Park, and I was kind of upset that we weren't going to be able to stop. Today was supposed to have been a fairly easy day, if we hadn't had tire troubles we would have had plenty of time to stop for pictures.

But, so much as we'd had an awful day, the Amber Inn in Bliss was wonderful. Small, inexpensive, with huge rooms. But most importantly there was a 24 hour diner nearly across the street. We had a tremendous amount of food, which nearly made everything ok, and we were able to forget the awful part of the day before going to bed.

| posted at: 03:27 | permanent link and comments

Saturday, August 08, 2009

54: I Think You Need More Than 10 People for a Massacre, and Other Stories from the Oregon Trail

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Four

8/8/09

From Pocatello, ID

To Burley, ID

90.5 miles

9.5 avg mph

After breakfast and my leftover cookie, we headed out into the very cold morning. We passed a thermometer sign that read 47 degrees, and it felt even colder with the on and off rain.

When we got out of town, we felt like we were riding through the apocalypse; thorny, black plants creeped on the side of the nearly empty road.

Luckily there were signs of brightness and happiness ahead.

Now where is my MarioKart?

True to Idaho's reputation, we passed several potato fields.

We had beautiful views of expansive farms set against the mountains.

And we finally saw some of the larger wildlife I'd been anticipating, though they weren't exactly wild.

The random elk resort was interesting, but I was way more interested in riding on the OREGON TRAIL! Fording the river, hunting rabbits, trying not to die of dysentery... childhood dreams realized. Ok, we didn't actually do any of those things (well, I guess technically we did avoid dying of dysentery, but moving on) but we did ride on the old trails, which had a nice view and a bloody history.

I love that when the misused indigenous population kills a whopping 10 pioneers it can be called a MASSACRE, but I digress. I did like the other displays.

We also wanted to see Register Rock, a boulder that hundreds of pioneers etched their names into on their way west. Unfortunately it was in the middle of a gazebo in the middle of a park where a crowd of guests was in the middle of a party, so we did an awkward bike-by photo and moved on.

We rode through a great deal of nothing much, passed another ghost town, changed a flat tire, and then bushwacked our way to a reststop. We spotted it from the road, but there were prickly bushes and a barbed wire fence between it and us. Undeterred, we walked back and forth along the fence until we found a spot where the wires had been bent enough for us to sneak through them, being careful not to cut up our clothes and skin. Clearly I'll do a lot for a bathroom. On the way back I was actually happy for the fence, since it kept us safe from three energetic dogs and allowed us to get on our way.

We rode into the great wide open, the great nothingness.

I never thought I would say this, but it was worse than Kansas. Kansas at least had cows, trucks, and the very occasional tree, but this road was utterly vacant of cars, animals, and even telephone poles. There was no motion, no signs of life or growth for mile after mile. A random stack of haybales and a low fence were the only evidence that humanity had set foot there at all.

Like so much of our travels, it was enough to make a person crazy. Desperate for distraction, I asked Kyle to give one of his lectures from class. He traced the history of computer programming languages from Fortran through PHP, describing their characteristics and creators in detail and answering all of my questions about them. When he was finished, the view still hadn't changed.

But there is beauty in barrenness.

That photograph of an empty crossroad is one of my favorites from the trip, though I was certainly tired of the view at the time. I think everyone should experience the simultaneous vulnerability and liberation of a truly wide open space at least once in their lifetime. There is something about being in such a deserted place that changes you, that cracks you open and exposes you to life.

We made our way through the vast nothingness, riding for Rupert. Not our delightful British friend, who is somewhere ahead of us on his way to California right now, but Rupert, Idaho, the next town on our route. Unfortunately the outskirts were populated by unfenced and unchained dogs. We convinced two dogs not to chase us, and then had to give everything we had to outrun a very large and very fast mutt. A little later several horses ran alongside us, which was much more enjoyable. It also spawned a bizarre brainstorming conversation about raising attack ponies, but I doubt the genius of our plans would make sense to anyone else.

Between complete barrenness and the outskirts of civilization came another of my favorite photographs of the trip: a pair of animals in stark contrast against the vastness.

We followed the main road into Rupert but barely spent five minutes in town before getting back on the road. After more tiring miles -- which always seem longer when the sun is setting -- we could finally see the florescent lights of Heyburn and Burley in the distance. After riding in a circle (thanks Garmin) we had to decide between alternate routes; Kyle was adamant about taking the back roads, and he eventually talked me into it even though I was tired of bushwacking and backcountrying, especially at night.

It turned into a miserable ride, and not much of a shortcut after all. I was jumpy and kept flinching and letting out little shrieks whenever a dog barked, expecting a beast with gleaming teeth to lunge at us out of the blackness. We rode under a spray of water and I started coughing and gagging as we realized it was actually pesticide. When we reached a crossroad, we started to fight over whether to take it back to the highway, and nothing improved to make our anger dissipate. Night rides are rarely enjoyable, and this was turning into one of our worst.

We finally made it to the Super 8 and started searching for dinner. We weren't impressed by the convenience store's offerings, so we ordered pizza. It tasted like cheesy cardboard, so I made a sad dinner out of breadsticks and went to bed, glad that today was finally over.

| posted at: 05:07 | permanent link and comments

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Day 54: Pocatello, ID to Burley, ID

Today was cold when we woke up. We spent some time wandering about the hotel, dragging out feet at getting moving and hoping it would warm up, but without much luck. About twenty miles away was the little town of American Falls, where I'd wanted to end up before we had to do makeup miles the day before. We'd reevalutate the weather when we got there.

We did notice quite a few cyclists outside, apparently attending an event at the University, but we didn't have the time to join them.

We started by riding up US-30 back toward the interstate - the same road we'd followed out of Jillian's parents house back in Pennsylvania. The roads were, thankfully, empty, perhaps due to the early hour.

Of course, we did make sure to stop at a gas station on our way out of town to get some coffee. My addiction to Starbucks Starbucks Doubleshot Energy+Coffee drinks was getting to be debilitating.

We passed a huge Simplot Factory west of town. Given the amount of sulfur moving into that place, I'd love to know what they do there.

We paralleled the highway for a while, stopping to chat with a car that wanted to check out our bike and get our story. After stopping at another gas station (you never know where the next stop might be), we took a picture of an amusing sign.

We started seeing some signs for construction. Usually we pay them close attention. But this one was telling us the road ahead was closed - maybe. The road names were a little confusing to us out of towners, and we weren't really sure. We eventually did arrive at a closed road - but only a closed bridge, over some train tracks. We could either cross the bridge anyway, or ride back a number of miles and use the highway. Since there was no construction actually happening at the time, and since equipment was parked on the top of the bridge, we rode right across the bridge. This construction zone also brought us another bonus: an unlocked port-a-potty on the far side.

After the bridge, the road moved away from the highway a bit and we spotted what appeared to be an elk farm. This was actually the closest we got to elk the entire trip.

Not much longer later we arrived in American Falls. Our route took us right past the hotel we'd considered staying at. Jillian didn't like the looks of it at all. Neither did I, but I felt like crap. Tired and cold. Very cold. We rode on to a Subway, where we stopped for some lunch.

I expected the hot food to make me feel better, but it had the opposite effect. I wanted nothing more in this world than to grab a room at a motel - any motel - and crash until the next morning. It was a long ride to the next real town - Burley. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do that, and if it rained I wasn't sure we'd be able to keep warm. Jillian agreed to let me make some phone calls about weather.

My father reported that the weather actually looked like it was going to be clearing up, and maybe even warming up some. How depressing that was. I'd really hoped he was going to tell me something terrible, like that it was going to snow. Before we went any further we took the bike to the Bingham Coop, where we bought some gloves. Never in a million years did I expect to be wearing what appeared to be surplus Army gloves in the middle of August. We got some food, eating it at a little table. I'm not sure either of us were actually that hungry, we just didn't want to venture out into the cold. Jillian also hunted in vain for warmer clothing. I may or may not have had another Starbucks Doubleshot

We finally did get moving, riding past the town festival on our way out of town. We followed little side roads as long as we could, but eventually we were forced onto the Interstate, which is completely legal in Idaho. Fortunately, this was a very short trip on the Interstate. Only a mile down the road was a rest area and history center.

Here, Idaho was pretty again.

From the rest area we were able to follow a paved hiking trail to Massacre Rocks State Park. Though the area was famous for a massacre on the Oregon Trail, I was mostly fascinated by the former waterfall. Apparently way back in the day there'd been a massive amount of water that flowed through the area all at once, cutting this notch in the cliff walls.

Past Massacre Rocks we were able to keep off the highway again. We followed a little road up a small hill, gaining a nice view of the valley below us before heading back across the highway to stop at Register Rock, where many Oregon Trail travelers carved their names.

We didn't stay long, as we had a long way to travel and there was some sort of family picnic going on.

Not long later we flatted, again, in the front.

Thankfully, it had finally started to warm up some and I wasn't quite as miserable.

This was actually a fairly nice area to ride, with mostly empty roads and kind drivers. After climbing another hill, we passed a state rest area. Of course, we had to stop, since we weren't sure how much further we had to go, but there was a fence in the way. We carefully positioned the bike and found a way to sneak through the fence and bushwack our way to the rest area. After that it was another series of miles of nothing.

Except then we turned away from the highway. I thought I knew what nothing was. I knew nothing about nothing.

In this nothing, there weren't even any telephone polls, let alone buildings. We rode for miles, rather concerned that we were so far from everything. But, just when we started to feel sorry for ourselves for not taking the highway, we noticed a massive storm cloud, but far to our south. If we'd stayed on the highway we would have likely been stuck riding through the storm cloud. Instead, we rode through nothing at all.

Our immediate goal was the town of Rupert, which was locally famed for its nice downtown. That little image kept me going through the miles of nothing. When we did finally reach civilization again, after crossing the Snake, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, the sun started dipping below the horizon as we crossed the Snake River and moved into Rupert.

Rupert, with its gorgeous downtown, was no longer our goal. I kept us east of town, as we turned south and headed for Burley. We stopped briefly to use a gas station and take a bearing on the Garmin. Then we were back moving again, making great time without any wind and with the best temperatures we'd had all day. Bike touring is like that. Low and high spirits on the same day.

As we got closer to town, I realized we needed to be one exit further down on the highway. We had three options. We could either ride into the town of Heyburn, make a right, and travel down 21st street and deal with what I thought was a fairly busy commercial district. Or we could get on the Interstate and deal with riding in the dark. Or we could turn down 300 South Road. Numbered roads usually concern us a bit, since there's a good chance they might not be paved, but this one seemed like it might. Jillian was very opposed - she'd spent enough time in nowhere today, and wanted to stay a little closer to lights and people. I wanted to stay away from lights and people while it was dark. Ultimately, perhaps because I had the handlebars, we turned down the very rural road.

The road did turn out to be dark, and we weren't able to make great time. Jillian was nervous all the time, for good reason. There were just enough houses that people lived nearby, but not enough houses for people to chain their dogs up. Dog barks freaked us both out, since dogs are nearly impossible to see in the dark. We were also splashed by mist from some irrigation machine - we hoped it was only water and not water mixed with some sort of pesticides or fertilizer.

This actually wound up being a really terrible area of riding for us. We yelled at each other, with no real result. There was nothing left to do but move on. Our spirits soared when we saw the bright yellow sign of the Super 8.

After checking in, we tried to find some food. The gas station next to the motel said they sold pizza - but we were unimpressed. We grabbed some sodas and instead retreated to the hotel and ordered a pizza and breadsticks. Jillian was in terrible spirits by this point. But we devoured the food and found some sleep, happy with each other again.

| posted at: 03:21 | permanent link and comments

Friday, August 07, 2009

53: What We Need Is Another Winning Lottery Ticket...and Cookies

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Three

8/7/09

From Idaho Falls, ID

To Pocatello, ID

93 miles

11.6 avg mph

And now you've seen the Idaho Falls. Not quite Niagra, and surrounded by the commercial district, but I guess still nice enough to name a town after...

Since we had to make up miles, we got going early without breakfast; I ate the rest of the bread loaf on the way and Kyle planned to wait until we got to the gas station. Unfortunately, what we thought would be 14 miles was closer to 20, which meant a 40 mile round trip before we even started our new miles. With the heat, the construction, and the unexpected distance, we were pretty miserable, even though the ride offered some very interesting sights.

I've always said that the classiest (and most carnivorous) threads involve a raptor:

Other mascots were not nearly as effective. I'm not really sure what message this auto detailing company was trying to convey (child labor, pedophilia, and the Coppertone girl's brother come to mind), but it disturbed me.

And I couldn't get a good picture of it, but I swear this store says "Midget Market."

Distractions aside, we were incredibly relieved to FINALLY reach our new favorite gas station.

We needed a good rest there before starting the second leg. We chatted with some ladies as we ate our food: Kyle went super healthy with juice and Nutrigrain bars, but I decided that cream soda, pretzels, and Nutter Butters made a much better second breakfast. (It was a hard morning.) We also bought another lottery ticket and won $5, making it three in a row. Apparently I need to play the lottery whenever I'm having a hard day. (Note to self: I should probably rethink this idea.) Our fourth ticket lost and finally broke the streak, so we decided it was time to go. It felt good to be heading west again, and even better when we crossed over into new territory. The interesting advertising continued, including Martha, the fantastic giant drag-queen waitress.

We eventually reached Blackfoot, "The Potato Capital of the World!" (Bet you thought that was in Ireland, but no.) They even had a museum, which we sadly didn't have time to visit.

We actually thought about staying there for the night (the town, not the potato museum), but thanks to a dance competition and Native American festival every hotel was booked. We had to get back on the road -- and fast -- because a storm was on the way. We raced out of Blackfoot and towards Pocatello, 25 miles away. Terrified that Pocatello wouldn't have any hotel rooms either, I called my mom from the road and tried to explain the situation while sprinting through the wind and the rain. We eventually figured things out and she managed to book a hotel room for us, which was a huge weight off our mind. If only the storm would go away.

We passed the Shoshone-Bannock Festival that I desperately wanted to visit, especially to see the traditional ball sports, but the storm and the setting sun drove us ever onward into Pocatello. Fortunately, we had a pleasant surprise waiting for us there: my mom happened to choose a hotel where they bake cookies every night for their guests. That's right: the friendliest hotel staff I've ever met made us fresh. baked. cookies. We enjoyed them when they came out of the oven, after our delicious dinner at the restaurant next door, and for breakfast the next day. We love you Rodeway Inn!

| posted at: 05:02 | permanent link and comments

Friday, August 07, 2009

Day 53: Idaho Falls, ID to Pocatello, ID

We started our day with a makeup miles. I hate makeup miles. You feel like you're not going anywhere at all, even though you're moving in the wrong direction. Since we'd spent the night at a Motel 6, there was no breakfast for us. Thinking that we only had seven or eight miles to ride until the gas station, I opted to wait for breakfast until our turn around point. We started the day by taking a look at the falls.

It wound up being 19 miles. Through construction. And dust.

When we arrived, we decided to spend the remainder of our lottery winnings on another ticket. We won, used it to buy another and finally lost. We took our time getting moving again. Even though we were going to finally be going the right direction again, the prospect of riding 19 more miles that should have been doe the day before wasn't very appealing. I grabbed something healthy - juice and multigrain bars. Then we got moving again.

Finally, we started feeling a little better. Only for it to start getting a little wet. We made fairly good time back to Idaho Falls though. We kept considering alternate routes to get away from the construction, but there weren't a lot of choices.

On the far side of Idaho Falls we stopped at a gas station, where we were asked for directions. We always find that a little curious.

The ride out of town wasn't very interesting. The shoulders were sufficient, traffic wasn't too heavy, there wasn't much to see. Typical Idaho.

Eventually we found our way to Blackfoot, where we found a wonderful site.

There wasn't a whole lot in Blackfoot. But there were clouds, and we were feeling kind of beat up. But when we called around we found all of the rooms were booked. Having wasted twenty minutes, we got back on the bike to try and rush to Pocatello.

Jillian started calling hotels while I was navigating, but the combination of the wind and our limited access to hotel listings made it hard. We tried the three or four hotels I'd originally identified back in Denver, but everything was booked. After a call to Jillian's mother and a plea to search for a room for us, we doubled our efforts to try and make Pocatello as quickly as possibe.

It turned out that we were trying to ride through the area right in the middle of the annual Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival. All the hotels were booked. We did get to see some of the festival grounds while riding in Ft Hall, but for the most part I was just bitter. Jillian wanted to stop and see the 24 hour handball tournament, but I was too concerned about getting a room.

Sometime later Jillian's mother called us, having called half the hotel rooms in town. She'd found us a room at the Rodeway Inn. Unfortunately, it was a few miles out of our way. But we didn't have any other options.

Mood swings on the bike are surprising. After we'd secured a hotel room, I was in a much happier mood. Jillian, while sad she wasn't going to get to watch any sports, was also perking up. We fought with some traffic through Chubbuck, but generally had an easy ride in to town, eventually stopping at the Rodeway Inn across the street from the University.

Maybe it was because we were so happy just to have a hotel room, but the Rodeway seemed like a fantastic deal. The price was reasonable, the room was on the ground floor, and there were free cookies at night. The staff was so friendly they might have been robots. We took advantage of those before grabbing a real dinner at Elmer's Pancakes & Steakhouse. Lots of food at a fair price. Then it was back for some rest.

| posted at: 03:20 | permanent link and comments

Thursday, August 06, 2009

52: Part One: Felons Give the Best Directions
Part Two: Only Winning the Lottery Could Make this Day Better

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-Two

8/6/09

From Jackson, WY

To Idaho Falls, ID

98.7 miles

11.9 avg mph

We didn't start our day with an expresso or a jackalope ride, but we did mail two pounds of excess baggage home and shop in Albertson's large and luxurious grocery store, so it was a good morning nonetheless. As I waited outside for Kyle to buy his yogurt, fruit, and donuts, a guy came up to me to talk about local bike routes and the riding he used back when he had his bike. Then Kyle traded off with me and got the rest of the story: turns out his bicycle was taken away from him by the police when he was picked up on outstanding warrants on his way to a case worker in Helena. When he found out about our journey, he suggested an alternate route along the Snake River. We called my mom to look it up on googlemaps -- I like to double-check directions from former felons, even if they're nice -- and it did actually look better, so we decided to take his advice. I also got breakfast, of course: I was looking at some impressive gourmet muffins until I realized that a giant loaf of fresh French bread cost the same price. One of the best parts of this trip is that I can eat half a loaf of bread for breakfast and not feel guilty...or even all that full.

For a path through the Rockies, our route had a blessed number of downhills and flats, which was fortunate since I felt run down all day. It was beautiful as well, even though we missed the bike path at the beginning.

Downhills or no, we were significantly tired and sundazed when we saw the sign for the Kahuna Lunch Counter, so we were excited about sitting down for an air-conditioned lunch. Unfortunately the only thing there was a bench, a bathroom, and an overlook, where we watched kayakers and rookie white water rafters for a few minutes before getting on our way again.

We eventually entered Idaho and had a lovely ride past a lake whose name I don't remember.

And then something incredibly depressing happened. I spotted what I thought was a dead fawn on the side of the road -- which would have been disheartening enough, even though we see a great deal of roadkill -- but as we rode by, it lifted up its head. I made Kyle circle back, which is when I saw that one of its front legs had been severed. It stared at me and shook weakly, its chest rising and falling sporadically with terrified, shallow breaths. I couldn't look away and I couldn't do anything to save it. We couldn't even end its pain, not when all we had was a pocket knife without the experience or the stomachs to really use it. The best we could do was get to town and find the number for the sheriff's department, who would send someone out to find it. My heart broke as we left, and the image of the shuddering fawn pushed us over the hills even faster than the storm building behind us could. In a cruel twist of fate, a Forestry Services truck passed us on the road but we couldn't get its attention, so we kept riding to town as quickly as we could as it started to rain.

After several wet and morose miles we reached The Dam Store. Yup.

We told the owner about the fawn and she called the sheriff's department and gave them the mile marker. We sat in the store for a while, drinking coffee, watching the rain, hoping that the fawn situation would end as best it could. I found temporary diversion is trying to photograph a hummingbird outside.

Then the rain finally broke and we got going again. We were really in need of a liberating downhill, but instead we crawled uphill for mile after barren mile. The only diversion was watching farmboys use four-wheelers to herd their cattle and horses.

Otherwise it was like Kansas on a slope. We eventually reached a rest stop, which as usual made us incredibly happy. Behind it was a scenic overlook with a spectacular view of the Snake River we'd been following all day but hadn't been able to see since we entered farm country.

When we headed inside, I started to worry that the building was haunted: a moaning and wailing started just outside the bathroom door. When I wandered outside again I saw why: a ridiculous wind had blown up out of nowhere. We hid back inside for a few minutes, but the surprise wind was apparently there to stay. We weren't too far from our destination, but making it there was no longer going to be easy.

We got back on the road with difficulty, and the wind cutting across it only got worse. Headwinds are exhausting, but crosswinds are downright dangerous. Kyle struggled to keep our behemoth bike on the road, and I had to time the strength of my pedaling based on whether we were riding straight, veering dangerously, or fighting to right the bike. A couple pulled over to offer us help, but they were driving a Subaru that would never fit our bike. "Thanks, but it's only wind; we'll be fine," we told them. And we were right...for about ten minutes.

The winds got even more intense, determined to drive us off the road. Kyle managed to save us from falling again and again, but then the shoulder turned into gravel and a gust of wind threw us into a skidding wipeout. We survived the fall with just light brushburns and a bloody lip, but it was the end of our riding for the day. Through the windblown dust we could see a gas station up ahead, so we decided to walk the bike the rest of the way and take shelter there. We made the difficult walk there only to realize that anywhere we tried to prop the bike it was bound to fall over. Fortunately, the owner of the Sinclair station let us keep it inside, and better yet, her cousin offered to go get his SUV, which was large enough to fit our bike and us, and drive us into town. Once again we were going to be saved by a compassionate stranger. I like Idahoians already (and I hope I'm calling them by the right name).

While we waited for him to return with the SUV, we decided to buy a lottery ticket. We went with Scrabble, one of our favorite games...

And we won $15! We spent some of the winnings on another ticket, but by that time our savior and his son had shown up with our ride to the city, so we packed up and headed into town as the sun set. We checked into the hotel, said goodnight to our heroes, grabbed dinner at Subway, and scratched off our second lottery ticket... to discover that we'd won another $10! Either Sinclair has an amazing collection of lottery tickets, or the universe decided to make up for our depressing and dangerous evening. Either way, we're definitely going to buy more tickets tomorrow when we ride back and forth to make up the miles. (Yes, we're still doing that.) Here's to a better tomorrow.

| posted at: 05:02 | permanent link and comments

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Day 52: Jackson, WY to Idaho Falls, ID

After a marvelous morning of drying laundry with a hair dryer, we set out to purchase some breakfast and send some mail. Our first stop was the post office, just down the street from our hotel. After setting the bike on a railing, Jillian and I went in to mail just over two pounds of receipts, maps, and small bits of gear back home. Then we were off to Albertsons, to get a late breakfast. I headed in first, grabbing two donuts, some yogurt, and a banana. Jillian went next.

While she was in there, I met a man outside the store who was curious as to just what we were doing. We talked about the two different routes we might take to Idaho Falls today. This was something I'd considered at length. We had two options:

Over the Pass - At 88 miles, this is the shorter route by almost 20 miles. But it involves 2000 feet of climbing over a pass.
Along the River - At 107 miles, this has the potential to take a lot longer. But almost all the route is along the Snake River, and therefore mostly downhill.

The man we were talking to was very much of the opinion that we should follow the river, stating that it'd likely take us a lot less time. Once he said he'd actually ridden both routes, I thought I should maybe actually listen to him. Then he started talking about some of his other stories, such as how he used to have a bicycle, but the cops had taken it after he'd been picked up on a warrant up in Montana.

Once Jillian returned and our new felon friend had left, we called Jillian's mother for more info on our two possible routes. The felon was probably right. We might average 4mph up the pass, so it might take us two or three hours. We'd probably be able to go twelve to fifteen along the river - potentially making up for the extra mileage. Since we were feeling a little lethargic, after an awful night in DuBois and a bad morning full of drying laundry, we decided to follow the river.

Being the very prepared people we are, we stopped at a gas station on the way out of town.

Then we were off, following US-26 South. We hopped off the road and got on a bicycle path that followed the road.

We had some trouble following the bike path, as sometimes it was hillier than the road, sometimes the path ran off into a development, and at least one the path just stopped, making us get back on the road. Once again, we completely failed at following a bike path.

Some seven or eight miles out of town, our road first found the river. On both sides of us we were surrounded by huge trees. This was a very, pleasant change after many days of riding through what felt like desert. Eventually we came to a gas station/grocery store at the intersection with US-189/191. We decided this would be as good a place any any to take care of our rather upset stomachs, and stopped to use a bathroom and have some coffee. I had discovered a new love of Starbucks Doubleshot Energy+Coffee and I was hoping they'd help perk me up. We also took some time to wait outside at a picnic table.

Riding along the Snake was fantastic, and we were able to maintain fairly high speeds the entire time. Plus, the scenery was gorgeous.

The snake is a popular river for white water rafting, so we looked for an excuse to pull over. When we saw a sign for a place called "Lunch Counter" we had to stop, hoping for some food. Instead, we found a lot of people on the water, riding over "The Lunch Counter."

A little disappointed, and quite jealous of the rafters, we got back on the bike. Another twenty miles later, we came to the little town of Alpine, which had another gas station for us to visit. We grabbed some more food, by now quite hungry. Alpine sits at the base of the Palisades reservoir, and we briefly considered stopping for the night, because we just felt so darned tired. But we rode on, heading North into Idaho.

Once we were in Idaho, the valley where the reservoir was started to close in and we'd move up and down short hills, with great views of the lake.

We also passed a dying fawn, stuck on the side of the road with a severed foot, but clearly still alive. It was quite awful to see.

But there were also awesome bird nests on top of most of the telephone poles. We figured they were Osprey nests.

We rode almost all 18 miles of the Palisades, when we started seeing tremendous storm clouds above the mountains to our East, back in Wyoming. We started playing the shelter game, again, and trying to move as fast as we could. We arrived at the Dam Store just as the rain started to break.

Jillian had the owner of the store call the sheriff to report the dying deer, while I tried to keep the bike out of the rain. We weren't able to get milkshakes at the store either, instead we some more coffee and attempted to take pictures of a hummingbird while we waited on the rain. I also called my mother, to get a more recent weather report, since this was coming out of nowhere. Fortunately, she said we were likely to be safe.

Then it was back on the road again, to Swan Valley, where we stopped at a Philips 66. It still looked stormy over the mountains, making us extra glad we'd decided against taking the pass. A few miles later we hit our first climb of the day.

After a long, crawling climb, we came to the top of a plateau with expansive plains and were able to pick our speed back up.

Some miles later, we came to a rest stop, which we badly needed, and which was situated high above the Snake.

We went into the rest stop. Minutes later, I could hear a terrible, terrible wind outside. Doors were being blown open, trash cans were blown over, and we had to chase down pieces of our gear. I looked downriver again, and we were no longer able to see the hills in the distance. Everything in the valley was a terrible shade of brown. Figuring we were no more than ten miles from Idaho Falls, we hopped back on the bike and rode as hard as we could.

It wasn't long before the wind got even worse, and we started having to ride the bike at a constant angle in order to keep the wind from blowing us over. A steady, constant wind we'd ridden in before. This was something different. Wind would cycle back, hitting us at a different angle. So I'd have to angle the bike 20 degrees into the wind, only to right it suddenly when the wind shifted to a headwind (never a tailwind). A few miles in, a couple in a Subaru stopped and offered us a ride, but Jillian was quick to decline and I didn't see any way for them to move our gear. Besides, we figured it was only some wind. We'd dealt with a lot of wind before.

Less than twenty minutes later, an especially strong gust of wind pushed us hard toward the center line of the road. I instantly shifted my weight upright, to counteract only for the wind to die out. Unable to re-correct quickly enough, our front wheel caught the sandy gravel on the side of the road, making us lose our balance. I quickly threw a foot down as we started to fall, but our bicycle, plus us, plus trailer easily weigh almost 400 pounds. One leg on sandy soil wasn't enough, and we were thrown onto the ground. Righting the bike in the wind was nearly impossible. Fortunately, we crashed nearly outside a gas station/Subway - the only one we'd seen all day, and the only building before Idaho Falls on our route.

Jillian went inside first while I tried to find somewhere to place the bike. No matter what side of the store I looked at, there was too much wind. Plus, ever fearful, we were hesitant to put the bike where we couldn't see it. Fortunately, the gas station clerk was willing to let us stash the bike in the entry way of the gas station, both outside of the elements and where we could see it.

We chatted with the clerk for some time, before her cousin asked us if we'd like a ride back into town. Since by now it was almost 9 and it was getting dark, we were all too happy to agree. Only problem is that he'd need to run home to get a much larger vehicle. Still, we were so very grateful. In the meantime, after cleaning up a little blood from the crash, we sat down at the Subway, had dinner, and bought a lottery ticket.

We actually won a few times, ultimately getting up to being almost $35 ahead, but reinvesting our money every time and mostly losing.

When our ride returned, we found a way to load the entire bike into the back of his truck and headed for the Motel 6. We met some folks outside and discussed the ways the winds in the west are crazy. We found some more fast food to snack on and crashed, dreading make up miles tomorrow.

| posted at: 02:28 | permanent link and comments

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

51: Riding a Jackalope and the Rockies

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty-One

8/5/09

From Dubois, WY

To Jackson, WY

80.5 miles

10.4 avg mph

If only all of my mornings could begin with a latte and a jackalope ride.

No one was manning the Branding Iron Inn office when we got up, so we headed across the street to Kathy's Koffee at Bear Square.

The guy behind the counter not only made us delicious drinks, he also told us stories about his own cross-country bicycle trip from Seattle to New York. As we ate our breakfast -- ham and egg on a bagel for Kyle, a croissant for me, and a giant blueberry muffin to split between us -- I had an overwhelming desire to spend the entire day there, which led to an even stronger desire to be finished with the trip and back to reading and drinking coffee in my normal life. Sigh.

Of course, we eventually had to leave, pack up, check out, and get going. But there was something I needed to ride before the bike.

That's right,

They actually ran out of these tickets, which saddened me, so I had to take a photo of their display. I was cheered right up, though, when I heard a group of women becoming increasingly confused as they perused the museum of Jackalope information and artifacts.

"Wait, jackalopes aren't real, right? I mean I thought it was a joke but they have all of this information and even fossils..."

The museum, which was actually just one section of an enterprising Exxon convenience store, had another giant jackalope out front.

I resisted the urge to ride it and we climbed on the bike instead. We rode out of Dubois, waving fondly at the laundromat that fed us last night and at its intimidating competition.

We had a rather pleasant morning ride. Kyle asked me what I would put on my syllabus if I ever landed that elusive teaching job, which led to a great conversation about literature, teaching, and the pieces of stories that were still stuck in our memories from middle school.

We had been warned in person and through travel blogs about a massive construction project in the area that was impassable by bike, and we discovered it before too long. We were able to ride through the initial sections without any trouble, but when we were nearly at the top of one of the hills we were told it was time to climb into the pilot truck and be carried through the worst of it, and we would have to do the same a little later in the day. For once we wouldn't be able to make up the exact miles that we'd been driven, but the truck took us more downhill than up, and watching how difficult and dangerous the road was for motorcyclists, we couldn't really complain. Plus the construction project was one we enthusiastically supported: widening the shoulder for bike and car safety on the twisting and turning mountain road. We came to enjoy the brief respites; during our first ride I sat up front and chatted with the driver, who pointed out the "Indian snow" (a patch-e here, a patch-e there) and checked on the weather report for us. The other time I rode with the bike so that I could take pictures of the colorful trees; somewhere along the way I realized that despite growing up near farm country, it was the probably the first time I'd ridden in the back of a pickup.

The rest of the time we were on our own to climb the Rockies. It was an intimidating prospect. The steep uphills reared up in front of us, and one of the rare stores we passed reminded us about the dangers of exertion at high altitudes.

So we climbed, and climbed, and climbed, and soared downhill for a while, and then climbed, and climbed, and climbed... But as we pushed our way uphill through the infamous Rockies, we realized something strange and encouraging: the Appalachians were much, much harder. It was hotter back then, and we were still getting in shape and getting used to the bike. And the Appalachians, while not as long or as high, tend to be steeper than the Rockies, and have fewer helpful passes. Compared to most of our trip, the Rockies are tiring climbs, but compared to the Appalachians, they really aren't so bad. We still have more of the Rockies to climb tomorrow, but so far they seem, while tiring, certainly doable.

Outside one of the rest stops (which offered showers at an interesting rate of $1 per 2 minutes 40 seconds) we saw three touring bicycles. The complex was big enough that we didn't locate their owners before they left, but we caught up to them on the next uphill and chatted as we passed by. They were an eclectic group of friends who were riding across the country in sections over the period of three summers; this was the final leg of their trip that would end in San Francisco.

And then we discovered why so many cyclists and motorcyclists were braving the construction to ride this pass: ahead of us were the beautiful Tetons and a seven mile downhill. They were both magnificent.

We rode alongside the Tetons for many scenic miles, really enjoying the view and the comparatively flat ride.

We had planned to ride part of the Yellowstone route, but then we looked at the prices. It was $12 for cyclists, so unless we convinced them to charge us per bicycle we would be paying $24 for just a few miles in the Park, which didn't seem worth it. So we stayed on the road that led to a place called Moose and advertised all kinds of wildlife.

Despite the warnings, all we saw were antelopes from very far away. We might not have even noticed them, but a number of tourists had parked their cars by the side of the road and wandered into a field to try to get pictures of them.

We kept right on going, enjoying the ride and excited to be making great time (for us, anyway; we were passed by another cyclist at one point). Unfortunately, it took us longer to reach Moose than anticipated, so by the time we got there I was irritated and Kyle was bonking (cyclists' term for a serious energy crash). We perked up somewhat after slushies, however, and we rode on towards our destination for the day: Jackson Hole, paradise for elk (there's a refuge there) and rich tourists. The town is most well-known for skiing, but the tourist population and the prices are also quite high during the summer. The cheapest lodging option was still well over $100... for a Motel 6. It made us want to cry a little, but when we got to our room we discovered that someone had replaced the usual Motel 6 room with a clean and cheery Ikea display.

Jackson Hole was nice, if excessively touristy. We especially enjoyed the antler arches.

It took us forever to find a restaurant that was somewhere in between fast food and freaking expensive, but we eventually settled on a place called Sidewinders where I inhaled chicken pot pie (baked, not boiled like in PA, but good nonetheless) and a fantastic salad.

We thought we would return to the hotel in plenty of time to do laundry, but it turned out that everyone else had the same idea; the lines for the two machines were so long that I ended up having to handwash, which sucked as usual. Still, it was a good day overall, and I feel like tomorrow we'll be ready for more of the Rockies and Wyoming.

Yee-hah.

| posted at: 04:25 | permanent link and comments

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Day 51: Dubois, WY To Jackson, WY

When we woke up, the hotel office asn't open yet. Though most travelers could have just left their keys and gone, we hadn't paid yet, because we'd been checked in by the owner's son. Since we were very hungry, we packed the bike up and rode downtown.

The sidewalks of Dubois are made of wood, in an effort to keep the mud out of the buildings. The old section of Dubois is very western, with all sorts of history.

There's also a former mine in town. We weren't in town long before finding a coffee shop to camp out at and enjoy breakfast.

While there we talked at length with the owner, who had ridden a bicycle from Seattle to New York many years earlier. Once again, we really wanted to be done with the trip, and to just be hanging out at a coffee shop at home getting things done.

When we left the coffee shop, we stopped at a gas station so that Jillian could ride the giant Jackalope.

Then we were finally able to check out of the hotel and get on the road for real, only to stop at a gas station on the edge of town to enjoy our last civilized bathroom stop for a while. For a gas station in the middle of nowhere, the lines to use the bathroom were rather lengthy.

Perhaps because the scenery was finally green instead of brown, we were able to perk up and got into a better mood. We talked about teaching English, and told favorite short stories we remembered for a while. We soon hit more road construction. Time time, the pilot truck gave us a ride over the very, very rough road.

There couldn't have a been a better time for us to get a lift. The truck drove us almost half way up the pass, before dropping us off after the construction. We climbed for a while before coming to a little store/motel. Here we refueled on drinks and food and met another group of touring cyclists. This group was moving slow, taking a few seasons to do a cross country ride. This summer they were doing Denver to San Francisco, the long way.

The mountains started to look very impressive as we got closer and closer to the top.

But we were to be robbed of the chance to ride over the top of Togwotee Pass. Just before we got there we once again hit road construction, and had to hop in the back of the pilot truck.

We were actually very glad to not be on the road. There was no pavement at all, with huge machines all over. We'd read reports of cyclists who hit this stretch on a Sunday and were stuck riding it. We were glad it wasn't us. After the first stretch, we stopped at a transfer station and waited for another pilot truck. We finished the construction at about 2 in the afternoon.

From here we were hoping for a very easy ride to Jackson, over 3000 feet below us. We rode a little way before stopping at a gas station for lunch. Inside our jaws dropped at the price of a can of soup, but we were very amused by the cans of air for people who aren't used to the altitude.

Just down the street from the gas station we caught our best view yet of the Tetons.

The Tetons are something you need to see first hand. No picture will ever do them justice. All of Jackson Hole Valley was gorgeous in the same way. No matter where you were there was a set of five to seven thousand food tall mountains in view.

The change in geography between the two sides of the pass was startling. Now, on the west side of the pass, there were trees everywhere. Our original plan had been to ride around Jackson Lake, but we were quickly turned off to the idea by the steep prices at the gate to Yellowstone (Note: Turns out there is no road around the west side of Jackson Lake; I'd simply read the map wrong).

Riding the highway to Jackson wasn't a bad consolation ride. The wind was in our favor, and we rode hard to try and have some time in Jackson to explore. We even saw other cyclists out, though we were unable to catch them (they weren't touring cyclists). Some time after passing through the little hamlet of Moose, I bonked. We stopped at a gas station on the edge of town and refueled on slushies.

We dragged ourselves into Jackson, only to find it was much too touristy for our tastes. Mostly it was because of the absurd number of people in town, and the fact that our night at the Motel 6 was going to rank as one of our most expensive hotel rooms all trip.

Jackson was a kind of neat town, and I'm sure it's a fun place to visit if you have the money, but we just felt out of place. We checked in to the Motel 6, which was full of other young people traveling, and discovered that we were spending the night in an Ikea Catalog.

We did have enough time to walk back toward town for a real dinner. We had some wonderful potpie at the Sidewinder, as well as some fantastic salads. Though we couldn't have been very good food critics after last night's meal. After the walk home, it was laundry time. Unfortunately, there were lines to do laundry, and we ended up hand washing everything, hoping it would dry by morning, which was doubtful, since it was getting late already.

| posted at: 02:20 | permanent link and comments

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

50: No Food For You

Stoker's Log

Day Fifty

8/4/09

From Lander, WY

To Dubois, WY

82 miles

8.5 avg mph

We greeted the morning sun along with the pronghorn and got on the road. We enjoyed our ride through Lander quite a bit; the downtown was charming and just outside it were a series of interesting sites, including an intrepid pioneer woman with a series of teepees.

Then we rode by a home with what we were sure were decorative deer in the front yard.

And then they moved. They didn't run away, however; they just kept chilling out in the front yard, watching us and chomping on weeds, apparently unaware that they were in a neighborhood beside a road. Neither did they seem afraid of the giant dragons that apparently frequent these parts.

Remember Chief Washakie, whose trail we've been following? Today we reached the outskirts of his fort, which according to signs is also the location of Sacajawea's grave site.

It was time for a break and a snack, so we stopped at the local grocery store where Kyle and his donuts made a new friend.

We road on through the beautiful western landscape (which would have been more beautiful if we weren't against a headwind and getting crazier by the minute).

But then we were stopped by a serious construction project and had to wait with a line of cars for a pilot vehicle to lead us through. We made our way to the front and started chatting with the flagger, who told us about the Crow Heart Butte visible in the distance.

He explained that the Butte got its name when our old friend Chief Washakie defeated a tribe of Crow Indians on top of it and marked the victory by cutting out the conquered chief's heart and carrying it around on his spear. The historical signs we've been following never indicated that level of Temple of Doom badassery.

We finally got moving again, doing our best to keep up with the line; pilot cars drive slowly, but still not as slowly as we do, and eventually we were on our own again. When we approached the active part of the work zone they saw us and were kind enough not to run us over with their equipment, but they didn't wait until we were past them to start work again, so I got a healthy spray of tar on my face, arm, and shirt as we rode past. That's going to take a while to wash out...of my skin.

We also passed a troublingly incomplete sign:

That sounds great, Mr. Sign, in fact I was planning on not breaking any windshields, but do you think you could, you know, offer some more specific instructions about HOW I'M SUPPOSED TO AVOID IT? We don't have a windshield, of course, but since my face occupies that space I would like to know more about these mysterious threats.

Once again the headwind made the day longer than it should have been, but for once we were finished before it was completely dark out. Dubois (pronounced like dew-boys, because once again no one understands European pronunciation out here) looks like a Western town built for tourists, but it's actually a legit Wild West town (that has now been converted for tourists). Many of the original buildings are still standing, including the bar and general store frequented by Butch Cassidy, who spent summmers on a nearby ranch.

We also got to stay over in our own little log cabin, which was cute.

The town was still hopping around 8:30 when we rode down main street, so we figured we had time for quick showers before we ate. We emerged clean, refreshed, in normal clothing, and excited to have a sit down dinner for once. We were doubly excited because our friend Staph (who sometimes pretends to be named Paul, and who led a hiking group in the area recently) highly recommended the Cowboy Cafe. We walked through their doors, inhaling the aroma of perfectly cooked hamburgers, only to be turned away because the kitchen had just closed. Disheartened, we walked down the street to check out the other restaurants, all of which had the same disheartening news: while they were still technically open, and in most cases packed with customers, they weren't serving anyone new. We even ducked into the local bar to see if we could grab wings or a pizza, or maybe just some peanuts, but all they had were drinks. At this point I was getting extremely depressed and frustrated, and when we walked to the edge of town only to discover that even the gas station was closed, I was ready to burst into tears. I had been expecting and deeply craving cold drinks and food that was warm and flavorful, and if we had to go back to the hotel room and make a dinner of tepid water and the last of our bagels I might not be able to handle it. Then I spotted it, the holy grail of my drastically lowered dinner expectations:

The vending machine was in the back corner of an empty laundromat. According to the hours posted on the door it was supposed to be closed, so I sprinted into the building before an employee could materialize to lock us out. We pulled out all of the dollar bills we had, which was enough for a soda for each of us and a bag of Cheez-its for me. (Kyle, for some reason I couldn't understand, was okay with eating more bagels back in the room.) It was a far, far cry from the dinner I had been imagining, but at least it was something with flavor.

Afterwards we crawled into bed, and I struggled to fall asleep with irritating bug bites and a growling stomach. Wyoming is going to be a very, very difficult state...

| posted at: 04:09 | permanent link and comments

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Day 50: Lander, WY to DuBois, WY

Despite arriving so late the night before, we started early again today, since we simply couldn't stand another day of night riding. We had breakfast at the Pronghorn, then took off to see about purchasing a new tire. Downtown Lander looked like a pretty awesome place, but since it was still early the outdoor shops weren't open. Even then, they were outdoor outfitters, we couldn't find a real bicycle shop. We decided to ride on.

Lander really is right in the wilderness. We passed within a few feet of deer on someone's front lawn before realizing they were real. The people also seem pretty awesome. Someone had a dragon skull on their front lawn.

The ride north out of town was greener than usual, but still very open. It might have even been a nice ride if we hadn't both been in a bad mood.

We eventually came to the town of Ft Washakie, where we stopped at a grocery store for supplies. And by supplies, I mean donuts, which this dog very much wanted to enjoy.

Ft Washakie is the home of Sacajawea's gravesite. We didn't take the time to stop, since we were once again in a rush to get to DuBois. Like a number of towns we passed, Ft Wasakie had its name on the hillside.

Following Ft Washakie we had a difficult climb followed by long, windy miles of open space. We hit a wide, empty plateau at mile 26, giving us a few minutes to simply push in the wind without feeling like we were getting anywhere. But, a few miles later, we had another wonderful downhill to the intersection with US-26. Not long away from here we found another rest area, which was a relief. Any excuse to get out of the wind we were happy to take.

Down the road we started seeing construction signs.

We rode to the head of a long line of cars, where we talked with the flagger at length. He was very critical of the people in Montana for being so backwards, much like how people in New York criticize Pennsylvanians, and people in Maryland criticize West Virginians. He also told the story of Crowheart Butte to some of the folks in cars.

In 1866 the Shoshone and Crow tribes fought a battle at the base of Crowheart Butte. When Chief Washakie was finally victorious, he placed the heart of the Crow chief on his lance at the (depending on who you talk to) top of the butte.

Finally the pilot car returned, and we were told that we could follow a group of cars through the next five or six miles of construction. This was infuriating, as there was no way we could possibly keep up with the cars. If we were going to need to pull off somewhere in the middle of the construction and wait for the next passing pilot car anyway, why hadn't we been allowed to just go?

A few miles in, we passed the construction crew tarring the roadway. We stopped, waiting for a pilot car to go by, so we could be sure we were out of their way. The crew waved us through, but as we passed the tarring truck, they turned it on, spraying us with tar. Since there was no way to be sure if they'd done it on purpose, we rode on, eventually coming to the town of Crowheart.

We stopped at a general store, purchasing some ice cream for the heat. We also chatted with three county employees eating their lunch outside the store. They were driving up and down the road, spraying weeds and had passed us a number of times and had seen how miserable we looked. After seeing Jillian's legs, they gave us some very, very effective bug spray.

After leaving Crowheart, things got even emptier as we averaged about eight miles an hour in the wind.

Eventually we found our way to the entrance to the Wind River Canyon, at about mile 60. The canyon was an awesome break - the walls kept the wind off us, and the canyon kept the air a little bit more humid. Of course, it also gave us something to look at.

The homes we saw started to change as well.

Although the picture we got doesn't show it, the homes were much nicer, and in more of an Alpine style. We'd been told that the billionaires were buying the millionaires out in Jackson, so the millionaires were moving to Dubois. We very much loved riding through the canyon, only wishing we'd been doing it the other way, so that we weren't constantly moving uphill.

We rode through the very western style streets of Dubois at about 9pm. Dubois is very much a tourist town, and everything was open. We were ecstatic at the idea of eating a real meal. We checked into the Branding Iron Inn, where the owner's son provided us with a key (we'd reserved ahead of time, which was good, since we got the last room). The rooms were great, with high ceilings, log cabin walls, and a very reasonable price. We dropped our stuff off and got back out the door.

Our friend Staph had told us about the Cowboy Cafe, and had said they had the best burger in the world. But when we got there, we discovered that even though they were full of people, they were actually closed. As was the Italian place. And the bar. And all the gas stations. We thought about getting the bike back out and trying to ride a little further past town, where we thought there might be more eateries. After all, there was a Super 8 down the road a ways. But we couldn't be sure. Jillian started looking for a soda machine - just anything other than our standard fare of PowerBars.

We found one in a laundromat, whose hours said it was closed. We got some change together and purchased a can of root beer, a can of Sprite, and a little bag of Cheez-Its, and took our food back to the hotel room. We still had some days old bagels in our bag, which I covered in our peanut butter and choked down. It was awful. I washed it down with Sprite and went to take a shower.

Unfortunately, the shower was rather old and came from a time when people weren't generally as tall as me. I had to crouch all shower.

Showered, I got in bed and got to sleep before the hunger could keep me up.

| posted at: 02:20 | permanent link and comments

Monday, August 03, 2009

49: History, Various Hooved Animals, and a Distinct Lack of Pie

Stoker's Log

Day Forty Nine

8/3/09

From Rawlins, WY

To Lander, WY

136.3 miles

11.6 avg mph

With so many miles to cover, we should have started before daybreak, but we decided to wait for the hotel to put out a delicious breakfast before we got on the road (of course). Once again the view was stunning but largely unchanging.

For a while the weather was fairly pleasant, but the heat and the headwinds gradually increased to sanity-destroying levels. We brought back our most depressing game from Kansas: choosing one of the few landmarks in the distance and trying to guess how far away it was. Then we started to worry that we were seeing mirages:

Fortunately we weren't alone on the road. Since we're back on the official ACA route, we got to meet other cyclists today, though as usual they were all headed the opposite direction. First we met Michael, a teacher who was making very impressive time. He warned us against the food at Grandma's Cafe, which depressed us; the Grandma in question is famous in the cross-country cycling world for her welcoming nature and her homemade pies, and we were really looking forward to having a late breakfast there. So we held out hope as we rolled up to the gradually deteriorating cafe.

Unfortunately, Michael was right. Our English muffins were pretty good, but our lemonades had debris floating in them and the lady we assumed to be "Grandma" was tired, grumpy, and all out of homemade pies. Of course we have to welcome anything close to an oasis out here, but we still left rather disappointed.

An hour or so after Michael, we met some self-proclaimed "turtles": two Swedish retirees taking their sweet time across the country. They were absolutely delightful, and I can only hope that Kyle and I spend our later years the way they are doing (though I highly doubt I'll be more willing to camp as a senior citizen than I am now, so we'll have to ride slowly across somewhere more populated).

I was also thrilled to finally meet antelopes willing to stay still long enough for me to take pictures.

And then, a little while later, I got to see another family of them crossing the salt flats.

We spent the the day criss-crossing the Continental Divide several times and following several historical routes: the Oregon and California Trails and the paths taken by Mormon pioneers, Chief Washakie's tribe, and the Pony Express. We were able to see the same landmarks they used, such as Split Rock:

And in Muddy Gap we visited a combination Mormon Remembrance Site and gas station that used its walls as a giant guest book. (We signed with our frisbee nicknames.)

About 2 hours later, we reached the next sign of civilization, though it wasn't much of one. Jeffrey City was once a uraniam mining boomtown, but when those opportunities dried up it became a ghost town, a line of empty businesses and silent neighborhoods.

The only open business was the bar, and we made up 2/3 of the patrons. We admired the bird-friendly exterior, chatted with the woman behind the bar, watched Bonanza, used the bathrooms, and downed two deliciously cold sodas before reluctantly returning to the road.

We also checked out the hodgepodge art shop across the street, which we remembered hearing about as a place for cyclists to camp.

Nothing seemed to be stirring over there, however, so we moved on. We rode and rode and rode and you know the drill until we reached a rest area in Sweetwater. By then the winds were so intense that we decided to drag the bicycle inside so that it wouldn't blow over. We laid down on the benches, content to munch on granola bars in silence, but a chatty gentleman from Iowa came over to us and we had a long conversation about everything from marathons to gay marriage (in which I learned that Iowa is surprisingly and refreshingly progressive). We ventured out of the building when the weather seemed to have calmed down, but it was a temporary reprieve. Soon ominous storm clouds appeared on the horizon and haunted us for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We would outrun one storm only to spot another, adding an element of stress and danger to a ride that was already guarenteed to be exhausting.

Finally the storm clouds dispersed and we found ourselves on a beautiful descent as the sun set and the moon rose over the hills. A moment of pure happiness and exhiliration broke through our frustrated moods and left us grinning all the way down. As we zoomed past a campground we startled a trotting horse, its hooves kicking up sparks on the asphalt. We felt buoyed, even invincible.

It didn't last long.

We stopped to turn on the bike lights, and in those brief seconds that we were no longer moving, we were attacked by an angry swarm of biting insects. We leapt back onto the bike and took off as fast as our fatigued legs could stand, but I still felt like needles were stabbing me for miles. I thought it might be my imagination, or the aftermath of earlier bites; there was no way bugs could be biting me through the seat and my clothing, right? I tried to tell Kyle but his attention suddenly needed to be elsewhere: a lightning strike had just appeared to our right, much too close for comfort. We now had two very good reasons to ride as quickly as possible -- three if you count how late it was already -- but it still seemed to take forever to get to town.

When we finally made it, our problems weren't over. To our surprise, the hotels were all booked; we assume it was because of the Mormon tourists whose vans filled their parking lots. Fortunately, we snagged the last room available at the the Pronghorn Lodge; unfortunately, it was a suite so it cost us $110, but beggars can't be choosers. Outside we met an energetic woman named Polly who was vacationing with her mother, and they insisted that we let them take our picture in front of the hotel's impressive pronghorn.

The photo forced us to smile, and the women's excitement about our trip was surprisingly energizing, which is exactly what we needed. We walked over to McDonald's a little less depressed than before, and even though the milkshake was not gourmet this time I was incredibly happy to have a filling meal in me. I was hopelessly distracted by the itchy bug bites, however, and when I finally looked at my back and below in a mirror I almost screamed: those buggers had been biting me through the seat and my clothing during the ride; I was so covered with bites that I looked diseased. I stopped counting somewhere around 80, slathered myself in Cortizone cream, and collapsed on the bed wanting to cry.

I'm not sure how to express how utterly sick I am of the trip and these wide open spaces right now. If we had started this trip in Oregon, I'm convinced that Wyoming would have broken me, and I would have decided to quit and catch the first flight home. (Assuming Wyoming even has any airports.) I can't quit now, of course, since we're so close to the end, but OH do I want to be finished with this whole batshit crazy endevor. I just want to be done, finished, off the bike and home. I want to stay inside for days, and never ride at night again. I want it all to be over. I want to collapse on the beach and just barely keep myself from throwing the bike into the ocean.

| posted at: 04:02 | permanent link and comments

Monday, August 03, 2009

Day 49: Rawlins, WY to Lander, WY

Today was going to be a very, very long ride. 130 miles, with only one minor town. We'd be fortunate to even pass a gas station. It was the day we'd been worried about for a month, having almost quit the trip over fears of this day. We knew we'd be riding well into the night. We hate riding at night, but knowing you're not going to have a choice leaves you kind of calm about it. We had a leisurely breakfast at the Hampton, since it was hot and delicious. We got on the road around 7, rather than 5 or 6 like we should have.

The ride out of Rawlins was barren. As soon as US-287 leaves town you can see a landscape completely devoid of any buildings. Just flat grassland with low hills in the background. Everything is a shade of brown. But there was a generous shoulder, and the winds hadn't picked up yet, so we were content.

Only 11 miles out of Rawlins we passed an exciting sign.

Then we had an amazing view. We were crossing into the Great Divide Basin, a 3900 square mile area where water is unable to drain to either ocean. We were at the southern edge of the basin, and could just make out the northern edge from atop the rim. We played the Horizon game, with Jillian estimating the edge to be some 6 or 7 miles away, and me guessing 11 or 12.

As we descended into the basin, we ran into Michael, a cyclist who was trying to ride to Virginia very quickly. He recommended we not try to make Lander tonight, since it was just too far. About ten miles later, we came across an older Swedish couple, who had left Lander two days earlier and was only hoping to make Rawlins by nightfall. The edge of the basin didn't look any closer.

The basin wound up being twenty miles across, without a single paved road crossing our route the entire time. We didn't even see a tree. Just dunes, scrub, alkali flats, and the occasional antelope.

At the edge of the Basin was Grandma's, a roadside stop famous among cyclists for the pie. We'd heard so many stories about how fantastic it was to stop here. Inside we simply found a tired woman, who was sold out of pies. We ordered some Lemonade and some English Muffins. But the lemonade had things floating in it, so we didn't really drink much of it and instead got back on the road quickly, and rather demoralized.

Just over the ridge from Grandma's, we ran into another sign.

Some 40 miles in, the hills began to look a bit like mountains.

This section of Wyoming is barren, but gorgeous. We were more than a little envious of the motorcyclists we saw pass us.

After passing through Muddy Gap (which wasn't muddy at al), we came to Three Forks, where WY-220 meets US-287 and heads off to Casper and Independence Rock. We stopped at a Gas station here, the last one we'd see until Lander. Inside, every available surface was covered by signatures from other travelers.

We may have also eaten some ice cream.

Although I would have liked to see Independence Rock, we didn't have the time (it would have taken an extra day). We stayed on 287 North. We'd be following part of the Oregon trail route for a while.

Our next stop came as a surprise, at Split Rock Historic Site.

The large cleft in the rock made it a natural landmark for people on the Oregon trail and it later became a stop on the Pony Express. We enjoyed it as a place with a working port-a-potty. We did not enjoy the winds that were starting to pick up.

Some twenty miles later we came to another oasis at Jeffrey City. Jeffrey City is a modern day ghost town. In 1957 a Uranium mine opened, and thousands of people moved there. A large high school, with an Olympic sized swimming pool was built. Hundreds of buildings were constructed for the workers. Then the mine closed, and 95% of the workers moved out within three years. Today only about one hundred people remain.

We stopped at bar, which also happened to be the only place open. Inside the bartender was playing World of Warcraft and watching Bonanza, but was happy to get us a couple of cokes. On our way out of town we passed Mocking Bird Pottery, where we heard the cyclists can camp indoors for free. I'd spent a good portion of the day before reading about hotel options and there was apparently a hotel in Jeffrey City, but it was so sketchy that most cyclists decided to ride on. We saw something that might have been a hotel, or might have been an abandoned former hotel. We rode on.

Our next stop as the Sweetwater Rest stop, another twenty miles away. The ride there started to look a little scary.

Plus the winds started to pick up. Although we certainly saw quite a bit of lightening on the horizon, we managed to outrun the storm. But then another storm came up, chasing us for a few more miles. This process repeated the whole way to the Sweetwater, where we brought the bike right into the main building at the rest area and sat for a while, rehydrating and trying to keep warm. While there we talked at length with a man from Iowa, who loved the idea of our trip.

Once it seemed like the rains had died down enough to safety ride again we went back outside. It was early evening when we started up the climb out of Sweetwater, chased again by storms. Despite having almost fifty miles left to ride, we were fairly confident. The Adventure Cycling maps include an elevation profile on the back and we knew that some miles after Sweetwater there would be a long downhill that would speed us into Lander.

That downhill came at mile 92. From the top we estimated we could easily see fifty miles to the mountains far to our north. The added speed also gave us some hope that we could avoid the storms chasing behind us. We couldn't get pictures of most of it, since we were in such a hurry to ride out of there. Jillian did snap one, toward the end.

It would have been a fantastic end of the day, as we watched the sun go down on our descent. But we still had almost thirty miles to go, and it was rapidly getting dark. Once it was no longer safe to ride, we pulled off to put on lights as quickly as we could.

We regretted that decision immediately. Despite stopping for no longer than a minute or two, we were assaulted by hundreds of mosquitoes, who bit us through our clothes and bit Jillian through the bike seat. We were in agony as we rode as hard as our legs could push us, with hundreds of aching points on our bodies, as we tried to outrun the bugs we couldn't even see in the dark.

With the dark came quieter winds, but up ahead on the horizon we could see lightning strikes that appeared to be explosions. Jillian kept her eyes on our surroundings, looking for lightening that was too close, and we both played the shelter game - Jillian would call out the mileage whenever we found something, anything that we might hide under in the event of a terrible storm. There wasn't much to pick from - the best shelter we found was rock overhangs on the side of the road.

Ten miles outside of Lander we came across a girl riding a horse. We didn't think to call to them, but as we passed we spooked the horse, almost causing the girl to look control and sending sparks flying from the horse's hooves.

Finally, at just after midnight, we arrived in Lander. We tried the First Choice Inn, only to find it completely booked by a number of buses out of Salt Lake. There aren't many hotels in Lander, so we tried the Best Western Pronghorn, where we were able to get the last room, a suite, for much more money than we wanted to pay. But we had no other choices - there may have been no other room available in town. The sense of relief when we finally moved the bike into our suite was beyond belief. We'd actually ridden the hardest day on the entire journey.

But then we walked over to McDonald's to get a pathetic dinner. We'd only had trip food to eat since those English Muffins in the morning, so we were happy to just find somewhere open, but it wasn't enough or good enough food. We ate a quiet dinner in the kitchenette of our Hotel Room. The bug bites were miserable. Getting to sleep wasn't hard, but we just wanted to be done with this trip.

| posted at: 02:20 | permanent link and comments

Sunday, August 02, 2009

48: Expresso and a Rodeo

Stoker's Log

Day Forty Eight

8/2/09

Rest Day

Rawlins, WY

We've been trying to push across this part of the country as quickly as possible, partly because we have to cover great distances in order to reach a town each night, and partly because, due to Kyle's work schedule, our time is running out. But eventually all of the long days, night rides, and late bedtimes were bound to catch up with us. We desperately needed a day off, and Rawlins -- a cute town located in the midst of a string of 100+ mile days -- seemed like a great place to take a break. Our depressing hotel, however, did not, especially after we ate stale bread products out of tupperware containers for breakfast. We decided to switch accomodations, and my parents were nice enough to get us another Hampton room with their rewards points. I do love those cloud pillows.

We spent the morning at one of our favorite places: a coffee shop with free internet and cheerful decor.

Initially we had to sit outside and wait for it to open, but that meant we got to meet another fellow adventurer, in this case a hiker traveling the Continental Divide Trail. We talked for a while about our respective journeys, lives, and stumbling blocks: turns out he was currently dealing with torn shoes. Lo and behold, when he asked a local about where he could get them fixed, she offered to take them back to the super sewing machine at her house and fix them up for him right then for free. I really love meeting so many good samaritans across the country (and I'm glad that this time we didn't have to be stranded to do it!).

After spending some time in the coffee shop and finally handing the computer over to Kyle, I decided to go wandering and check out the art downtown.

I also checked out the train station.

And they are either are not fans of birds on their windowsills, or they have some very strange decorating ideas.

When we were ready to leave the coffee shop for good, I dragged Kyle back to the train depot to pose with the most amusing and interactive mural art:

We have especially stunning hats in both of them, if I do say so myself.

Speaking of being Wanted, next we visited the historic prison.

Unfortunately we didn't see the inside because we weren't willing to wait almost an hour for the next tour to start. Plus we had a more exciting tourist plan in store: a rodeo. I've really wanted to see one ever since we got out West, and tonight we finally got our chance.

It was both a large and intimate affair; near the arena there was row after row of trucks and small RVs -- clearly a crowd had traveled to stay for rodeo week -- but the rodeo audience tonight was fairly small and everyone seemed to know each other. We sat just above a delightful crowd of cowboys who certainly knew the competitors well and did an excellent job of heckling them.

In the part of the rodeo we watched, teams of four competed to laso a calf, drag it out of the pen, and pretend to brand it, then chase down two cows running free in the arena and lead them into a trailer.

I love a good cattle chase and laso display, but I also felt really bad for the young, terrified calves that were dragged around by their back legs. It became hard to watch for an animal-loving suburb/city girl; I appreciate the rancher culture out here, but I'm clearly not ready to be part of it. Eventually we were ready to leave for dinner -- one that did not involve red meat -- so we headed down the road to Penny's Diner.

The diner was charming, though it did lose some of its appeal when we realized it was a chain. After dinner (spaghetti and a salad for me, french toast for Kyle) we headed back to our cloud bed to watch home buying shows and plummet into sleep. Our days off always go by too quickly, especially since tomorrow we plan to ride over 120 miles. I'm groaning already...

| posted at: 04:02 | permanent link and comments

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Day 48: Off day in Rawlins

We woke up feeling awful. We'd slept like rocks, but after getting in late and only having a McDonald's dinner, we weren't doing very well. We called Jillian's parents, who were able to arrange for us to spend the night in the Hampton Inn across the street. We'd just need to find a way to kill some time until check in.

We started by trying to take advantage of the free hotel breakfast. We found it to be sketchy days old pastries served out of kind of clean tupperware. Stomachs a little worse for wear, we packed out gear and left the hotel as quickly as possible.

We rode into town, a few miles down business route 30. As the library wasn't open, and the post office wasn't open, we found ourselves at Huckleberry's Espresso. Outside was a through-hiker on the Continental Divide Trail. We swapped stories for a while, each of us unable to imagine the journey the other was taking.

Inside Huckleberry's we had a real, delicious breakfast with real caffeinated beverages. I'd given up coffee in anticipation of this trip, and after over a month of not having any, it tasted fantastic. Since we only had the one computer, Jillian and I split up. She took the camera and went exploring town, while I stayed behind and worked on the blog (In fact, I wrote the entry for St Clairsville to Newark, almost exactly a month earlier).

Rawlins has a number of fun murals that you can check out at Jillian's entry. At the coffee shop I had a long conversation with one of the barista's children, which rather got in the way of me getting any real blogging done. Eventually Jillian returned, so we got Ice Cream and chatted with another family. The mom of that family had grown up in York, only half an hour from where Jillian had grown up.

Some time early in the afternoon we decided to explore the rest of Rawlins and check in to the Hampton Inn. We rode down to a little park by the train tracks for some fun pictures.

Then we went over to the prison, which we chose not to enter, in order to save some money. It was an impressive looking building, which housed a number of frontier inmates.

Across from the prison was the bike shop, which was unfortunately closed, leaving us to ride our booted bicycle another long day to Lander.

On the ride back to the Hampton, we noticed advertisements for a rodeo. We were in Wyoming, how could we not go to a rodeo?

Of course, once we were in the cloud that is the bed at the Hampton, we asked ourselves how we could possibly leave the bed to see the rodeo. But we went anyway.

The Rawlins Rodeo park was large, and full of trailers that people lived in at the rodeo. We were going to see a local "farmhand" rodeo - the big one wouldn't be until the next week.

We watched a number of local teams compete at a series of events, but mostly just felt bad for the calves they were catching and pretending to brand.

When the rodeo wrapped up, we walked to the end of the park and had dinner at Penny's Diner, which appeared to be an authentic 1950s silver diner. We were slightly disappointed to discover that it was actually a minor chain affiliated with Oak Tree Inn, but were not disappointed by the food, which was every bit as greasy and dinery as you'd expect out of a 50s diner.

At dark we retreated to the Hampton and watched some TV. I could have gone to sleep immediately, but on those beds I feel like you need to stay up for at least a little while, just to enjoy how comfortable they are.

| posted at: 02:20 | permanent link and comments

Saturday, August 01, 2009

47: I Saw the Signs

Stoker's Log

Day Forty Seven

8/1/09

From Larime, WY

To Rawlins, WY

111.5 miles

9.4 avg mph

The Ramada had the most impressive breakfast we've encountered so far, so impressive that even people who weren't guests of the hotel came and paid to eat it. It didn't make a major difference in my day since I'm not a breakfast person, but Kyle was in heaven with all of the hot food options, including made-to-order omlettes. After stuffing ourselves, we packed up and rode down to the local bike shop to buy spare tires and tubes. They didn't have any in the right size, but we were at least able to purchase another patch kit. At the mini market down the street, I decided on a rather unconventional pair of snacks -- pumpkin seeds and pink wafer cookies -- and chatted with a young couple even more infected with wanderlust than we are: they've been touring the country in their RV for going on two years now.

We finally left town for another very open road. Based on our maps, we didn't expect to see much of anything before we reached the Sinclair station miles and miles away; unfortunately, we also didn't expect the Sinclair station to be closed down. Luckily for me, in the field next to it was a porta-potty beside some tents. They belonged to construction workers who lived far enough away from the worksite that sleeping over in a campsite made more sense than commuting or paying for a motel; this is what happens when wide open spaces meet a bad economy. The workers were about to climb into their trucks and drive off to get lunch -- where they had to go for food I can't imagine -- but they were kind enough to unlock the porta-potty for me and the van full of children that pulled up after us.

We then did a good deal of boring highway riding that you don't want to hear about. Along the way we were waved down by the delightful Officer Troy, who explained that due to a major bridge repair project, the state had closed down the highway and diverted traffic to a temporary road next to it. He said that we were welcome to ride on the closed highway, however, and gave us his business card so that construction workers and other officers would let us pass through. That's right, we suddenly had an entire highway to ourselves.

The empty road was incredibly liberating and cut our stress in half. It also had the benefit of all construction sites: regular porta-potties. In this case, they were extra portable:

Their wheels are really amusing -- almost as amusing as the name Honeywagon -- until you're using one during a wind gust and start to worry that it will head down the road. Which reminds me, I should add that we faced an awful head wind all day long. Sigh. It was so exhausting and infuriating, though we can't say they didn't warn us.

This sign is one of many like it along the highway; they say "Next 5 Miles" because that's about how often the signs occur. I would have changed "Possible" to "Inevitable," but that's just me. Some of the signs even had small wind socks to drive home the point.

Other interesting signage included an adjustable (and freaking fast) speed limit sign:

And strangely positioned mile markers. (Was it really that hard to move the sign a little ways down the road so that it could say 275.5 or an even 276? Am I the alone one who finds marking .37 strange?)

At this point you may be wondering why I'm showing you a series of road signs instead of more interesting pictures, but I promise there wasn't anything else to see. The area we rode through today was certainly beautiful...

...but it had even less variety than Kansas. The only significant outdoor sight of the day was the army of windmills stretching across the distant hills like Don Quixote's greatest nightmare.

Especially as a cyclist and an ultimate frisbee player, I will never understand how people living out here deal with the constant wind, but I was very glad to see that they put it to work. We got more information about the windmills and the lifestyle from the owners of a campground general store (that was blessedly OPEN) and their amusing FAQ answer board.

As I sat at their only table contentedly eating my pretzels and chocolate bars, I flipped through Hauler Magazine, a publication devoted entirely to tow vehicles and the drivers who use and love them. The best part was the (apparently long-running) American Towman comic. What will they think of next?

Then at the rest stop (which appeared after a long and blurry series of miles) I discovered a comic almost as amazing: The Zone Ranger. After a young man made the lethal mistake of driving in a truck's blindspot, he and his car came back as a sort of Transformer ghost superhero dedicated to teaching people about the "No Zone" around trucks. I couldn't make that story up if I tried:

The rest stop also included an informational sign about the Wyoming environment. Unfortunately, it ended with a boldfaced lie.

Even though it balances the ecosystem and produces power, I refuse to consider the Wyoming wind our friend right now. But at least by the late afternoon we started to hit downhills that lessened its effect. We also got to see a few families of antelopes, which was an exciting break in the monotony even though they always refused to stay still for a photograph. We made a quick stop at a Conoco station, and as we left the sun was setting and we weren't even close to finishing our 100+ mile day. Once again, we would be riding for hours in the dark. Great.

It turns out we would also be riding on a road that was in the midst of being resurfaced and therefore horribly uneven and unpleasant. It also passed by businesses that were all, you guessed it, closed. It's a sad day when you see more closed gas stations than open ones. I was seriously wondering whether anyone used gasoline in Wyoming when we finally saw the lights of the Sinclair refinery and an accompanying gas station and truck stop. After a few long minutes we reached it, and when it was my turn to guard the bike, I let the camera play with the beautifully eerie lights.

I desperately wanted to get food in Sinclair, but we were less than 10 miles from Rawlins, our destination for the night, so we carried on. Our only food option in Rawlins turned out to be McDonalds, and we were almost unable to eat there; only the drive-thru was still open, but fortunately they let me walk through it. It was a McDonalds like none I've ever seen: a machine grabbed and filled the soda cup all by itself while an employee made me a milkshake that was much too gourmet for a McDonald's.

Unfortunately, since I'm mildly allergic to strawberries, I couldn't drink all of it out of fear that they'd actually switched to natural ingredients, but I was impressed all the same.

We were much less impressed by the hotel. Checking in took FOREVER because the clerk had some sort of problem with the computer and no backup plan. I felt especially bad for the other family attempting to check in, because they didn't speak English very well and thought it was a problem with their card. We helped as best we could and finally got a room, which turned out to be decorated in the cinder block prison style. I suppose it was the perfect setting for us to listlessly eat our limp fries and decide that there was absolutely no way we could ride the next day.

| posted at: 03:31 | permanent link and comments

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Day 47: Laramie, WY to Rawlins, WY

After our long, awful day we weren't too anxious to get up. Bu the promise of a hot breakfast ultimately convinced us. The Ramada had someone making omelets which we very much enjoyed.

After dragging the bike back downstairs we got slowly on the road, in quite a bit of pain. Our first stop was the Post Office, to mail some extra papers back home (every pound counts!). The Post Office we found was in a gas station, and the clerk had to stop manning the cash register in order to mail our packages.

We wanted to spend some time in Laramie, specifically hunting for a bike shop to replace our tire. I called a couple of shops, finally finding one on the far north side of town that thought we had a tire our size. On the way there, we saw what we thought were interesting license plates.

Our current theory is that the number on the left of the cowboy is the county number and the number on the right side is the car number. All in decimal.

We looked around the bike shop, eventually finding something that was close to our tire, but not exactly our tire. From what we'd heard and read, both Lander and Rawlins had bike shops, so we'd have to press on and try to buy a new tire at one of those.

On our way out of town, we stopped at another gas station, since it was likely the last place we would be able to stop for a long, long time. While there, we met a couple who were also on a cross country adventure. Two years earlier they'd sold everything they owned, bought an RV, and ever since had been traveling the country. They were currently on their way to San Francisco, where they'd bought a place and were going to finally settle down. Jillian and I munched on some wafers and seeds.

Wyoming is one of a few states where cyclists can ride on the interstate, in part because interstates are often the only way to get from one place to another. Someone in Colorado had told us that there were a few counties in Colorado which have more paved road than the entire state of Wyoming. We'd be taking the interstate the entire way to Rawlins.

Interstates are boring. Really boring.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before construction started.

Riding on the interstate made me nervous. Riding on the interstate in a construction zone was even worse. After passing through a few barrels we were stopped by a cop. Wyoming State Troopers may be the nicest people alive. He said that while there was going to be something like fifteen miles of construction, they were only redoing bridges, so most of the pavement would be empty, and that as long as we were careful to walk on some of the bridges it would be no problem for us to ride in the construction. Half the interstate, all to ourselves!

Thank you much, Wyoming State Police.

We'd checked the Garmin before leaving and learned of a gas station about twenty miles in at exit 290. We were so excited.... only to find that it was closed. Heartbreaking. And the gas station was the only thing there. The only thing there. We rode over a cattle guard to get off the exit ramp, and we carefully followed the only paved road to the former gas station. We turned around again, noticing for the first time a port a potty behind some bushes.

The port a potty was actually the location of a little camp, where construction workers lived rather than commute twenty miles or more to the nearest town. We arrived at just the right time, with some workers letting the driver of an SUV use the port a potty. They were kind enough to leave the door unlocked for us.

Then it was back into the construction. More boring, uneventful, interstate riding. In some ways it was even more boring than regular highway riding. Since there were no cars and no shortage of trucks, the roads had quite a bit of dirt and stone on them. A couple miles later, we came across a "Honeypot"

The Honeypot was a portable port a potty. Awesome. Little shaky in the wind through.

Ah, the wind. Every five miles we saw an appropriate sign.

Sometimes there were even little windsocks attached to the signs.

In such a windy place, it would only be fitting for there to be windmills.

We'd just arrived to the little town of Arlington, home of a little, tiny gas station.

Inside was a sign that listed answers to all of our questions.

We bought some lunch and sat down at their table for a while, enjoying the reading material.

American Towman. Complete with comic strip. Amazing.

Back on the road again, we rode over the top of the ridge. About six miles later we ran across a rest area. It was an interesting place, with picnic tables surrounded on three sides by large brick walls. I read the sign, which described how the wind cleared mountains of snow in the winter, creating exposed food for animals to eat. It also had a ridiculous lie on it.

We couldn't stay long though. It was dinner time already, and the wind hadn't died down at all. We rode another 12 miles before hitting WY-72, which is where the Transamerica Trail hooks up with our route. Here we found another gas station, where we could hit the bathroom and grab some more snacks.

Then, for the second night in a row, we got to see a sunset. At least this time it wasn't raining. And with night came in a break in the winds.

Wyoming had been a terrible, terrible place all day. Many times we'd felt fortunate to make six or seven miles an hour. Now, in the dark, it was fantastic. It wasn't too cold and there was no wind. Since we were on the interstate there was sufficient shoulder. Since we were in Wyoming, there was almost no traffic.

A few miles out of Sinclair, we stopped when we saw a gas station sign. But this late at night, it wasn't open. We rode on.

Of course, before long, construction started up. Suddenly it felt like we were riding on rumble strips. When we arrived in Sinclair, we got off the highway to stop for a few minutes at a truck stop. Fortunately, this truck stop was of the 24 hour variety. We didn't stay long though, wanting to get to Rawlins as soon as we could. From our rest stop we could see the lights of the Sinclair Refinery.

Yes, I know the picture is a little shaky. It was cold and we were exhausted.

Although we didn't much care for the construction, we very much liked the shoulder. We got back on the highway and rode on to Rawlins, just a short, if cold, hop down the road. Interestingly enough, it was down US-30, a road we'd first been on back in Pennsylvania.

We pulled off the highway, getting on US-287 (Which we were going to be on for a while). It was nearly 11 as we found or way to a McDonalds. I carefully walked the bike down a hill while Jillian ran over to the drive through to ask if we could take the bike through. Thankfully, they let us. We got some food, and then set out to find our hotel. They had an awesome drink machine.

We rode into the 1st Choice Inn, where we tried to check in. The 1st choice is a short little cinder block building, which kind of feels like a prison inside. However, it was by far the least expensive room in town. Jillian watched the bike while I tried to check in, only to be thwarted by a broken credit card machine. There was another couple there who were trying to check in as well, who didn't really speak much English. As I didn't speak Mandarin, I wasn't much help explaining that the problem wasn't with the card, it was with the reader. After twenty or thirty minutes of trying different cards and many hand gestures, the clerk finally agreed to give us both rooms on the condition we formally checked in during the morning.

While the room did look a bit like a prison, with cinder block everywhere, it was a warm place to spend the night. We ate our McDonalds food as though it was a gourmet meal. We thought about the next day's ride. Lander had to be our next stop, as it was the next place with a hotel. Unfortunately, it was also 130 miles away. We decided it would be impossible, especially since it was midnight already. Instead, we decided to call Jillian's parents in the morning and hopefully cash in on their remaining rewards points for a night in the Hampton Inn.

| posted at: 01:21 | permanent link and comments

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Day 64

Day 65

Day 66

Day 67

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Monday, August 17, 2009

Monday, August 17, 2009

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Friday, August 14, 2009

Friday, August 14, 2009

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Saturday, August 08, 2009

Friday, August 07, 2009

Friday, August 07, 2009

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Monday, August 03, 2009

Monday, August 03, 2009

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Saturday, August 01, 2009

You can view more entries using the archive links to your left or by looking at our index!