An Exceedingly Long Bike Ride

The last donations have trickled in, and I have finally come up with the total amount raised for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: an impressive $21, 290.  Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed!

My sincere apologies for my rather lackluster blogging efforts in the latter half of the trip.  Once my laptop failed, blogging became a rather tedious matter of locating a small town library that was open and would let me sit around and use their computers for a reasonable amount of time. 

To make a long story short: I made it!  From West Yellowstone, I crossed Montana to Idaho; crossed Idaho to Oregon, and crossed Oregon to the Pacific.  I took a lovely ride along the Pacific coast, and finished up in Astoria on August 2nd.

Along the way, I:

• Stayed in an entirely too fancy B&B: The Old Hotel in Twin Bridges, Montana, where the rooms where gorgeous, and there was a restaurant downstairs that rivalled the best places I’ve been to in New York.
• Biked 120 miles on a 100+ degree day in order to reach Missoula, Montana, visit the Adventure Cycling Association offices, and procure the map I needed to complete my journey.
• Passed through Hells Canyon at dusk, thus getting treated to an incredible sunset, and avoiding the legendary daytime temperatures.
• Spent 3 or 4 hours biking along a canyon formed by the Salmon River in 110 degree heat, watching helicopters pump water out of the river and carry it up to the giant wildfires that were burning on the mountains in the not-so-distant distance.  Oh, also: stopping every mile of the last 7 miles to pump up the leaky tube that I couldn’t be bothered to replace on the side of the road, largely because I had already replaced it once that afternoon, and was sick and tired of doing that.
• Encountered the Adventure Cycling 2007 TransAm tour group, who were very hospitable and let me tag along / eat their food for a couple of days.
• Visited Mitchell, Oregon, where the proprietor of the local gas station kept a black bear in a giant cage right behind the gas pumps.
• Was awoken in the middle of the night by the dying screams of an unidentified animal (cat?) that suddenly stopped after about 15 minutes.  Probably the eeriest sound I’ve ever heard.
• Cruised up the Oregon coast, which is incredibly beautiful.  Considered moving West.  Decided it probably rains too much, and besides, I miss New York terribly.

That’s about it: I’m spending a couple of days resting in Sun Valley, Idaho, after which I’ll be back in New York!

Now where was I….

Ah, right - Colorado.  I have come quite a ways since then.  Notably, I have now crossed Wyoming.  All events in Wyoming were overshadowed by the incredible scenery — the route had me riding through the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.  This was a sensory overload — mile after mile of mountains, lakes, forests, rivers…

But I get ahead of myself.  Wyoming began, more or less, with a lovely ride down the shoulder of Interstate 80, into a town comprised largely of an enormous oil refinery (Sinclair,) followed by a town made absurdly expensive ($80 for the cheapest motel room available) by the booming price of oil (Rawlins.)  I was not a fan of Rawlins.  I stayed in the Jade Motel, where the walls had not been repainted since having what appeared to be numerous holes patched in them.  On the bright side, it was in downtown Rawlins, which meant I could walk to the local Thai restaurant — the first Thai I’ve had on the entire trip (in stark contrast to my usual NYC habit of ordering Thai three times a week.)  Surprisingly, it was passably good (although how wrong can you go with Pad Thai.)

From Rawlins, I headed out into the Wyoming hinterlands, stopping for the night in the “town” of Sweetwater Junction.  Sweetwater was marked on the map as featuring a grocery store and gas station, and I was not amused to find neither.  I camped out at the Morman Handcart Historic Site (which happens to be there,) in the good company of about 50 Mormons on some kind of summer camping retreat.  Due to the lack of amenities, and because I was reluctant to befriend the Mormons in case I should become involved in a lengthy discussion of faith, I subsisted on Clif bars dipped in peanut butter.

In the morning, I rode 30 miles to the nearest food source, which happened to be a little cafe at the Sleeping Bear Ranch and RV Resort.  The proprietor was amazingly friendly, and cooked me the most enormous breakfast I’ve ever seen: french toast, eggs, bacon, and hash browns, all stacked about a foot off the plate.  Having eaten only Clif bars and peanut butter for the previous 20 hours or so, I was overjoyed by this bounty.  I love the folks at the Sleeping Bear Ranch and RV Resort. 

Next stop (a slightly embarassing 10 miles further up the road,) was Lander, Wyoming.  I had really meant to go further, but I had it on good authority that there was good beer to be had and friendly people to be met in Lander.  Also, my front bicycle wheel had been making a very worrying clanking sound for the previous 200 miles or so, and Lander featured a bike store, so I stopped.  Lander lived up to its reputation: the local microbrew was tasty and highly intoxicating, and I met some locals, as well as a couple other bicyclists who were traveling east.  The friendly mechanic at Freewheel Ski & Cycle replaced half the bearings in my front hub, and my wheel was good as new.  It was certainly a worthwhile little rest.

From Lander, I went on to Dubois, which was a nice little town for the hour or so I spent in it before bed.  I wanted to get in as much rest as possible before the next day’s climb up to Togwotee Pass — a rather large mountain.

Coming out of Dubois, I got the first glimpses of the type of scenery that typifies the Tetons.  After making it over Togwotee Pass, I got my first glimpse of the Tetons themselves, which are breathtaking.

My time in the Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks was limited — I decided not to take my time particularly, partly because it’s high tourist season (and hence the parks are overrun by RVs,) and partly because I felt like a better way to experience them would be on a hiking vacation, which should be undertaken as a separate venture.

So I spent only one night camping in Yellowstone, and here I am in West Yellowstone, Montana, staying at a lovely hostel that somehow had a $27 (shared) room for me despite the fact that, “oh, Tuesday’s by far the busiest day of the week,” and the only other vacant room I could locate in town was an $164 suite.  Things really couldn’t be better.

Once again, my tech setup has been compromised: this time by the sudden and traumatic failure of the hard drive in my wonderful Sony UX380N.  I am currently greeted by an “Operating system not found” message every time I try to boot up.  I am rather annoyed by this because as I was purchasing it, I chose to forgo the more expensive solid-state HD version despite vague misgivings about spinning hard drives and long hours bumping up and down on the back of a bike.  Darn you, hindsight.

In any case, this leaves me a tad up a creek as far as updating things online goes.  I must currently rely on public libraries to fulfill my various and complex computer needs.  This means carefully scheduling lunch hours in towns that have public libraries, and hoping fervently that at least some of them have failed to lock down their machines so that I can install the software necessary to upload the data from my GPS/bicycle computer. 

The worst-case scenario will occur if and when my Edge runs out of memory before I find such an unsecured computer.  I remain hopeful that Garmin has provided me with a good large amount of memory, so that I will be able to travel many hundreds of miles without this happening, but I have no idea whether or not this will come to pass. 

Sigh.

Our real dive into the Rockies began a long run of breathtaking scenery.  Coming out of Royal Gorge, we immediately began to gain some serious altitude.  In a few days, we climed from 6,000 feet to 11,542 feet — the highest point on the TransAmerica trail: Hoosier Pass.  This marked the first time we crossed the Continental Divide.  The climb up to the summit of Hoosier Pass was arduous, but well worth it — a lookout, and a really nice downhill for the rest of the day.  

We drifted down through the nice little ski towns of Breckenridge and Frisco, along the impressive array of bike pathways that thread through and around the towns, and around the giant reservoir that they surround. At lunch time in Frisco, appetites buoyed by the climb, we ordered the most enormous pizza I’ve ever seen, and proceed to finish almost all of it. 

The day did not end quite as well as it began.  We had decided to push on to Kremmling, Colorado — 40 miles from our lunch venue.  As it turned out, this was a 40-mile stretch of road that featured 20 miles of incredibly strong headwind, followed by 10 miles of steep rolling hills that were not adequately indicated by the map.  Fueled by frustration over some technological difficulties that have been plaguing me, I threw myself into the stretch, and  I made it to our destination.  Audrey stopped at a campsite 10 miles short.  We met again in Kremmling the next morning.

Apparently Audrey did quite a bit of soul searching along that 40-mile stretch of road, and had decided, quite sensibly, that continuing to push herself to achieve high mileage days was silly given that she had plenty of time at her disposal.  We took a final ride to Hot Sulphur Springs, then I pushed on and left Audrey to relax, take her time, and soak in the incredible scenery.  I am certainly sad to lose a riding partner, but I can’t say I don’t think she made the right choice.  I have found myself thinking more than once that it would be nice to have a little more time to spend along the way.

After a long week or so crossing the plains, I finally caught sight of a shadow on the horizon: Pikes Peak.  This was tremendously exciting.  Before I reached the Plains, I was dying for some flat country.  By the time I was a couple days into the flat country, I was dying for some hills.  Flat is all very well, but when there’s no up, there’s no down.  And down, as you might imagine, is awesome.

Our second day in the Rockies, Audrey and I slogged our way up an 8-mile-long hill to reach a campsite at the Royal Gorge in central Colorado.  As it happened, the campsite was just across the street from a bar and grill that turned out to be a hangout for the local whitewater rafting crowd.  A couple beers into the night, Audrey and I not only were having a great time, but had talked someone into sneaking us on to a whitewater rafting trip for free the next day.  As it was already far past our bedtime, taking a day off to whitewater raft seemed like a fantastic idea.

The next morning, after sleeping in until a luxurious 8am or so, we had a lazy breakfast, and floated over to the rafting company.  Everything worked like clockwork: for $5 each we got ourselves onto the afternoon raft trip down the Royal Gorge.  The trip was incredibly fun, and a good little workout for those abdominal muscles that have been almost entirely neglected otherwise.  Afterwards we were immediately exhausted, and took an hour-long nap in the laundry room almost accidentally.

I’ll be honest: we barely made it out of Royal Gorge.  Despite our best intentions on our second night there, we drank a couple more beers than was sensible, and stayed up a little too late once again.  The place had a volleyball court and a guy playing endless cover tunes in the back yard.  It had been a long time since we saw so many under-30s in one place — small-town America, sadly, tends toward the older demographic.  The next morning we didn’t wake up until 9, and weren’t on the road until 11. 

We did make it onto the road though, and that’s what mattered.  Royal Gorge was starting to seem dangerously addictive, and even with free raft trips, the expenses were mounting (although somehow I did manage to drink for an entire evening and end up with a $6 tab — I think the locals got a real kick out of the bicycling idea.)

I have crossed the Great Plains.  I know they were the Great Plains because every town had an enormous white grain silo that could be seen from at least 10 miles away.  Particularly at the end of a long day, this had the effect of inducing an overwhelming euphoria that was eroded depressingly quickly as it became undeniably clear that significant further effort would be required to reach the town.

In general though, the Plains treated me pretty well.  After the initial week of rain (that flooding I mentioned previously turned out to be an ‘A state of emergency has been declared for large parts of southeastern Kansas’ kind of thing,) I was treated to some generally moderate temperatures, and mostly calm-ish cross winds.  This compares rather favorably to the horror stories I’ve heard from a number of sources involving 110 degree temperatures and 40mph wind gusts.

In Kansas, I watched giant machines crawl across endless fields of grain; in eastern Colorado, the plains were scrubby and used mostly for grazing cattle.  There is something magical about the expanse of the land: it feels like standing at the center of an enormous dinner plate.  The sky was bigger than I would have imagined possible.  If there were anywhere I would believe that the earth was flat, the Plains would be that place.

I stayed in a few really nice bicycle-specific lodgings during this part of my journey: Elaine’s Bicycle Oasis in Bazine, Kansas, and with an amazingly generous lady named Gillian in Ordway, Colorado.  Elaine had a pretty house in the middle of Kansas farm country.  She fed me delicious meals, let me do my laundry, and kept degreasing scrub in the shower.  It’s the little things.

Gillian is quite a character: a native New Zealander who works as a guard at the local penitentiary, keeps horses, goats, cats, dogs, and a turkey (that I saw,) and has the most incredible mullet I’ve seen in quite some time.  She invites cyclists to stay at her house — in most cases, arriving, showering, and in bed before she gets home from work at 10.   It’s really wonderful when people open their homes to perfect strangers engaged in the madness of a cross-country bicycle ride. 

Also of note in Kansas was the beginning of my ride with Audrey.  Audrey is a girl from a small town in Michigan who is also riding across the country.  I met her over lunch in a Dighton, Kansas.  We chatted for a while, and when I told her where I was planning to stay that night, she immediately bid me adieu, saying that it was far too many miles for her.  While I was having dinner before putting in the final 20 miles of the day however, Audrey walked into the restaurant and sat down at my table.  We rode the remaining 20 miles to Tribune, Kansas as dusk fell, bringing the day’s total mileage to over 100.

The next day, Audrey once again said goodbye — she was certain that she wouldn’t make it the 120 miles I had planned for the day (I wanted to get in as many miles as possible while on good flat land.)  But once again, just after I had finished dinner, Audrey pulled into town.  She’s certainly tougher than she thinks.

Thanks to my friend Dave, I now have a brand new, shiny Edge 305.  Dave works for a GPS company that very generously donated it.  This is the most utterly fabulous thing to happen on the trip so far.  I had almost forgotten how great it is to have the Edge: not only does it tell me important things like how far I’ve gone, what direction I’m going in, and what my speed, cadence, and heart rate are, it also beeps at me when I’m supposed to turn. This is completely invaluable, as it means I can space out a bit when I’m riding.  So, thanks Dave!  Thanks Dave’s boss!  After a two-week hiatus, the statistics section is being updated again.

Note that the Edge is not what powers the “Current Location” section.  That relies on a GPS-enabled cellphone that needs a Sprint data signal to transmit my location to the Internet.  Unfortunately, Sprint data service seems to be a little scant here in the MidWest, which is why my current location is stuck somewhere in Missouri.  I hope that service will return soon!

I’ll also add a little plug here for Verizon, which has amazing data coverage — I’ve been riding along rural routes, through podunk towns but have hardly ever been unable to connect to the Internet with my Verizon phone.  I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but: Yay Verizon!

On Thursday morning, I finally rolled out of the Ozarks and into Kansas. I spent a couple hours on a long, straight, flat road that was a little like heaven. When I saw the “Welcome to Kansas” sign, I was overcome by an elation that almost moved me to tears. Oh Kansas. Sweet, flat Kansas.

I stayed the night in a hotel on a strip mall in Pittsburg, Kansas. This hotel used to be a Holiday Inn Express, but apparently Pittsburg, Kansas is not hot enough to warrant an HIE any more. This seemed about right, since it was largely composed of the aforementioned strip mall, which featured such gems as Wal-Mart, and a drive-through Starbucks. I walked around the strip mall, cutting through parking lots and across grassy dividers because, of course, there was no sidewalk. People gave me really weird looks, as though walking indicated some sort of psychological disease. I purchased a bottle of the finest “champagne” the liquor store offered: the $12.99 special, some fresh fruit from Wal-Mart (luxury!) and spent the evening watching retarded cable shows in my hotel room in celebration of my arrival in Kansas.

On Friday morning, I dragged myself out to the laundromat and washed all of my clothes, which had developed a nasty case of wet dog smell due to days on end of intermittent drenchings. The weather the entire way across Missouri, and so far in Kansas, has been pretty awful. Right now, as a matter of fact, I am sheltering in a Subway restaurant in Yates Center, Kansas, through which I have been forced to detour due to impassable flooded roads. It poured all night, all morning, and doesn’t look like it’s letting up. I keep hearing people say such things as, “I ain’t seen this much rain since the ‘51 flood.” But I digress.

Despite the inclement weather, I made it from Pittsburg to Chanute, Kansas on Friday afternoon. I pulled into town as the sky was growing dark, suggesting another downpour was imminent, so I was happy to find a hotel right in the middle of town. The Tioga Hotel was great — located in an old-fashioned building on Main Street and featuring a bar and restaurant in the lobby. It was rough around the edges in a charming way that I have been sorely missing in all of my strip mall motel misadventures. The doors opened with real keys, and the doorknobs were cut glass: that sort of thing.

It turned out, bizarrely, that Chanute has a pretty rollicking nightlife. Apparently the Tioga is the town’s gay bar. Which is not to imply that the clientèle was exclusively, or even mostly gay. I met a good number of manly men who wanted to tell me all about the thousands of dollars a week they earn by virtue of their union membership. And about their sweet truck that they’re getting custom painted at an astronomical cost. I learned that there is a job that involves walking out along the lines of underground pipes to check them for corrosion. The job does not entail fixing the pipes; just finding any problems. There is also a job building the cabinetry for Chuck-E-Cheese’s. Who knew? I stayed up far too late (midnight — ha!) which I might have regretted, but as it turned out it was still raining steadily at 8am, so probably just as well that it’ll be another short-ish day.

When selecting places to dine en route, I have tried my very best to eschew the chain restaurant on the strip mall in favor of the mom & pop shop off the main drag.  The towns I passed through from western Kentucky, through Missouri, into eastern Kansas almost invariably have had a single, solitary non-chain restaurant, most often pegged as a diner.  By and large, they are cozy little places with friendly owners just dying to fill you up good.

However, the food at these establishments has been, without exception, terrible.  About 3/4 of the menu is breaded and fried.  There are precious few vegetable choices past the potato; those that exist are generally fresh from the can.  Salad, where offered, consists of iceberg lettuce, a few limp slices of tomato, and some grated American cheese.  Fruit is the tinned variety, drowned in a thick coat of syrup.  There is no such thing as whole grain bread, and I haven’t seen real butter for about 500 miles (”whipped spread” is incredibly popular - apparently the trans fat scare hasn’t made it here yet.)  This is doubly weird because I’ve biked by a whole bunch of dairies. As a final insult, coffee is consumed only with powdered creamer; a substance that I’m pretty sure is created by some sort of refinery.

Frankly, Middle America, I’m surprised you are in as good health as you are.  I suppose you probably don’t eat out that often (although the mom & pop shop always seems to have some regulars hanging out in it.)  I am finally beginning to understand how chain restaurants managed to become so prevalent — that Applebee’s salad creation is starting to seem positively gourmet.  Which is really depressing.  Where are the mom & pop who grow fresh veggies in the back yard, bake their own bread, have a couple cows on hand for dairy?  I guess that’s too much work to be cost-effective.  Or maybe no one who thinks like that can limit themselves to sticking around in a one-horse town.