|
|
Bicycling, May 2007
|
18 miles (414 total), elevation 4200 ft.
I had wanted to get to Sula, Montana, but pooped out halfway there and stayed over in Darby. I probably won't reach the pass tomorrow either, 3000 ft and 31 miles to go.
Most of the towns I have been in have motels and restaurants, but Darby is one of the first towns I have found on this trip that has thoroughly converted to tourism. There are souvenir shops, gift shops, a town museum, a cowboy clothing shop, a holistic medicine/spiritual shop, an art gallery.
Most remarkably, Darby has a population of 800 people, but there are 6 real estate agencies here in town. I talked for a bit with one of the real estate agents about off-the-grid land. Even the remote, inaccessible land costs around $5000 an acre. Land in more prime areas costs $10,000 to $20,000 and acre.
The natives are mostly out-of-work loggers who live in town. Most people who live in the surroundiong area are immigrants from California, Seattle, etc.
|
|
29 miles (443 total), elevation 6200 ft.
Today was all uphill, gentle to Sula, Montana, then progressively more steep. I stopped and enquired about lodging at a couple of resorts in the last 8 miles, but both of them were only open Thursday-Sunday each week (today was Wednesday). So, I kept on climbing and hoped to find a flat place to camp along the road.
About 2.5 miles and 1000 ft shy of the summit, in a rain shower, I came across a logging road. It was still covered in snow and had not been travelled on since the snow had first fallen, so I set up camp on the road (not quite in the middle).
I was exhausted enough that I passed on dinner and crawled into the tent, read, listened to music, and fell asleep around 9:30. I woke up at around midnight to discover that the tent was pushed down on top of me. When I pushed back, I discovered that I was buried in snow. For the rest of the night, I only catnapped, knocking the snow off the tent and making sure that the vents around the bottom of the rain fly had not been sealed off by the snow.
|
|
4 miles in reverse direction (448 total), elevation 5200 ft.
When I crawled out of my tent, I was greeted with 9 inches of very wet, very heavy snow. The bicycle was almost completely buried (I had laid it on its side the night before). I bundled up, got packed, and returned to the road. The road had been plowed, but it was full of very slippery slush.
I then got into an argument with myself (Deer Woman) over which direction to go. I wanted to go on, uphill for 2.5 miles, then a gradual downhill for 27 more miles to Wisdom, MT. Another side of me wanted to go back down to the last lodge that I had looked at the night before.
I was greatly opposed to having to walk the bicycle down 4 miles (couldn't ride because of the slippery road and the brakes were jammed with ice), and then reclimbing that distance again in the morning. I argued that the conditions were likely to improve during the day as the temps rose.
On the other hand, Deer Woman thought I was an idiot. I didn't know how much worse the weather was going to get. My feet were already soaked from getting the bicycle to the road and the rest of me was getting wet in the sleet. The lack of brakes would be just as much a problem on the other side. The elevation on the other side didn't get any lower than the elevation I was currently at. I was pretty tired from the day before.
Drivers who passed by later that morning could observe the progress of the argument in the tracks of the bicycle in the snow at the side of the road. I went up and down the same 50 ft. stretch of road a few times while making up my mind.
In the end, caution and fatigue prevailed and I walked the bike down to the Lost Trail Hot Springs Resort. The room is nice (heat, shower, electricity, clean) but over my daily budget (room rate was $60 per night). Also, the menu at the restaurant was extremely limited (only 12 items, all either steaks or deep fat fried stuff, and masterpiece: deep fat fried steak strips, aka steak fingers), portions were tiny, expensive, and the only vegetable to be found was the ketchup. I hadn't had a warm meal since breakfast the previous day, so I indulged in the small portions of fat.
The snow quit falling at around 4:00 pm.
|
|
36 miles (484 total), elevation 6029 ft.
The climb up to Lost Trail Pass (6990 ft) was 6.5 miles, followed by Chief Joseph Pass (7241 ft) 1 mile later, then a long 27 mile gentle descent. By the way, I read at a road-side info site that Chief Joseph's Nez Perce name translates in English to "Thunder rising to high places".
The weather up to the passes was sunny, but a dark cloud full of sleet was squatting on the far side of the ridge. Standing on the pass, to the west was bright sun and miles of visibility. Turn around, and I couldn't see a quarter mile.
Having finally made it to the top, I wasn't about to retreat again. In the next 30 minutes, icing was a problem. Ice built up in the gears, keeping me from changing speed. Ice caked my shoes and pants from sleet splashed up from the road.
After 30 minutes of 15-25 mph, I came out the other side of the storm and down into the Big Hole River Valley, although the storm never gave me much of a rest, chasing me all the way into Wisdom, Montana (cool name for a town). As soon as I started shopping for a place to stay, it started snowing again.
I ate lunch at the Big Hole Crossing Restaurant and was pleasantly surprised. I had an excellent cream of tomato soup unlike any other tomato soup, and a quite respectable gyro. Although after 3 days of either cold food (and one meal of deep fried fat), anything warm with vegetables might have tasted pretty good.
The town has four lodgings, but no one was home at any of them. One had a sign to go to the restaurant where I had lunch, so I went back and enquired. It turned out that three of the lodgings could be arranged by the owner of the restaurant. I purchased a room at the Nez Perce Motel across the road, but the electronic keys didn't work. The restaurant owner then gave me the unmarked cabin (as big as a one bedroom apartment) for the same price ($35).
|
|
19 miles (503 total), elevation 6450 ft.
Because the stretch from Jackson to Dillon is 46 miles with no services at all, two tall mountain passes, and all private ranch land (no place to camp), I decided to do an easy 19 miles day instead of a gruelling 64 mile day.
The weather was perfect, sunny, tailwind, and about 50 degrees. The scenery continues to be spectacular, in the middle of the Big Hole valley with the snow-capped Bitterroot Mountains to the right about 15 miles away and a smaller range of mountains to the left about 8 miles away. Cattle and horses were all along the road. Most of the cattle would just stare at me as I went by, but one herd got all excited, some running towards me, some running away, and some running down the fence where I was headed. Poor things were bellowing so loud and long that I heard them at least a mile past. I don't know if they thought I was bringing food or what, but I created a lot of excitement.
There is only one choice of accommodations in Jackson: the Jackson Hot Springs Resort. They put me in a tiny cabin (room for a bed and about two feet at the foot and on one side). But the price is right: $29.00. The good news is that they have a gourmet restaurant that requires reservations in the evening. Funny how food seems to be such an important part of my blog. And, if I sit in the front window of the lodge, I can pick up a wifi signal from a mechanics shop across the street.
|
|
50 miles (553 total), elevation 5100 ft.
On the ride out of Jackson I encountered the three machines, about 30 feet tall, shown in the image above. I assumed that everything on a ranch has to do with hay or cattle, but I was clueless as to what they were. The nice people at the Dillon town museum said that they were hay stackers, devices that would create immense blocks of hay. Incidentally, the Big Hole Valley is known as the valley of 10,000 hay stacks.
Jo Hollier, my ex-mother-in-law teased me that I must be very tired and hungry, because so much of this blog has been about miles covered, about finding cheap motels, and about places where I ate. Well, to some degree, she's right. Much of the time on this trip is spent dealing with logistics. But, part of the problem is that this trip does not have many landmarks other than a few roadside signs that speak of Lewis and Clark, of mining in the area, and of the run of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce. Over the last three days, even these have disappeared. Each day is a strange mix of enjoying the action and movement, of fatigue and pain from riding, of tracking how many miles of road and how many feet of elevation yet to go, and every once in a while, transcendent moments of being swept away by the beauty and grandeur of the scenery I'm riding through.
Today's ride took me over Big Hole Pass (7360 ft) and Badger Pass (6760 ft). On the way to Badger Pass, I felt like I was flying, feeling strong and benefiting from a strong tailwind for much of the way. On the backside of Big Hole Pass I hit 50 mph and averaged 35 mph for 15 minutes. It's interesting that I am seeing much more wildlife here in the prairies than I saw in the forested areas of Idaho. Today alone, I saw a fox, a badger, a very dead and smelly skunk, ground squirrels, a blue heron, ducks, geese, a long-billed bird that looked like a rail, indigo buntings, hawks, and a variety of other birds that I didn't recognize.
At the top of Badger Pass on the side of the road (above), I stopped to take a long lunch and was hit by one of those moments of transcendence that I mentioned before. Feeling something like a runners high, it felt good to have the hard part of the day over, and looking forward to the next 16 miles of downhill. I was very much aware of the smallest details: A breeze moving the grass, making a soft steady sound, punctuated with the buzzing of a beetle and the chirping of a grasshopper. Dandelions were scattered in the grass. The shape of rock formations. The smell of sage. Small, wispy clouds. Deep blue sky overhead. Snow-capped mountains in the far distance.
And that is your moment of Zen.
I stayed an extra day in Dillon for maintenance, including laundry, sealing shoes, book shopping, and bike tuneup. I was particular impressed with Alternative Bike and Board, the local bike shop. It is run by a guy who holds a full time job in education and opens his bike shop from 1600 to 1900 hours. I brought the bike to him to cleanup the drive chain following the ride in the snow, salt, and sand. He concurred that the chain and gears were a mess. But, once he got his hands on my bike, he not only cleaned up the drive train, he went to town doing a thorough tuneup, reseating the rear tire to retrue it, adjusting spoke tension, adjusting the bearings in the steering. He was only going to charge me $20.00 for a cleaning, but I gave him $30.00, his usual rate for a tuneup. It was amazing, but after walking my bike for six feet I could feel the difference in how smooth and silent the bike moved.
I also visited the the very nice local museum. Even though part of the museum was closed for resurfacing the floor, when I expressed interest in seeing the bird diorama, the staff spent 15 minutes finding a key to a back door to let me in and someone spent an hour with me talking about birds, maintenance of zoological collections, state laws and fees for displaying specimens, and taxonomy. After that, I spent another hour going through another section of 19th century mining, home utensils, toys, logging, and ranching.
|
|
62 miles (615 total)
A strange day.
There has been an annoying trend over the last decade in fortune cookies: They usually no longer predict fortunes. Instead, fortune cookies offer mindless, universal platitudes, such as "A close friend is the greatest fortune" or "A mind is like a parachute, it only works when it is open". Well, yesterday, I opened a fortune cookie after lunch at the chinese restaurant in Dillon and found the following fortune: "An alien of some sort will be appearing to you shortly!". Notice the exclamation point. Now that is a bold fortune. I can hardly wait to see him or her.
One possible candidate of aliens was the town of Alder. I love most of the small towns I have visited on this trip, but Alder, Montana left me with the willies. When I stopped to enquire about a room at the first motel in town, a young man came running out from the back to tell me that their motel was not yet open for the season. He then also told me to not stay at the motel next door, because the owner was not a nice person and had allegedly done something awful. A KOA campground a mile further up the road wanted to charge me $24 a night to set up a tent (usual rate is $10-$14). The cafe in town looked pretty seedy. Whether or not the allegation was true, I didn't like the feel and kept on riding (even though I had already done 52 miles for the day).
In Virginia City I had my first accident this trip. While checking out lodging in Virginia City, Montana, I was coasting down a steep, dirt street and came to a stop at the intersection. I had released my right show from the pedal clip, but it had apparently reconnected, because when I tried to put my foot down on the ground, I did a re-enactment of the person riding a tricycle on the 60's comedy show Laugh-In, falling over on my right side. I tore a hole in the knee of my pants, acquired a nice piece of road rash on the knee, and suffered some minor damage to the handle bar wrapping and the gear shifter.
There were no rooms available for less than $75 a night in Virginia City, so I went on to the Virginia City RV Park on the far side of town. Unfortunately, the campground was closed until May 15. The owner took pity on me and let me camp on his grounds for free.
|
|
14 miles (629 total)
After yesterday, I felt like a short riding day, climbing 900 ft over another pass and descending into Ennis, Montana. Ennis is yet another nice little town, with talkative, friendly people and mix of stores and restaurants catering to both ranchers and tourists. A brief glance at the ads for houses for sale at the four real-estate agencies in town (that I saw, there may be more) informed me that the price of land here is outrageous - the cheapest was $7000 per acre, and a couple of lots were over $100,000 an acre. I suspect that the prices reflect the nearness to Yellowstone National Park, which is only about 70 miles away.
The afternoon was full of high winds and the threat of thunderstorms, which made me very happy that I was not on the road.
|
|
48 miles (677 total)
The day was filled with ferocious weather and I dodged or outran three different thunderstorms. However, for much of the day I was riding directly into 20-30 mph headwinds. At one point, the winds surpassed 50 mph, sufficient to lift the front wheel of the bike off the ground as I was trying to walk the bike along the road. The dark, threatening skies and sun-drenched hills made for dramatic, high-contrast scenery.
Towards the end of the day, I passed Earthquake Lake. A 7.5 scale earthquake in 1959 caused an avalanch that dropped the side of a mountain into a river valley, creating a new lake. The lake is filled with the trunks of trees that were drowned by the rising water. One of the roadside points of interest told the humerous story of a couple, staying in a local motel, who panicked, leaped out of bed, hopped in their car and tried to drive towards West Yellowstone (as if the town would be any safer). They drove screaming into a crevice that opened across the road. They survived, but would have been much less traumatized if they had just stayed calm and stayed put.
The map I bought from Adventure Cycling indicated that there were several campgrounds and services on the 74 miles between Ennis and West Yellowstone. However, after the town of Cameron, everything was still closed for the season. That meant no hot food and camping along the side of the road.
|
|
29 miles (706 total)
West Yellowstone (population 1800) must be the town of a thousand motels (well at least 30) although a quarter of them still had not opened for the season. It took an hour to wander around town finding the lowest priced lodgings. There are more motels than there are places to eat, and as far as I can see, there are only 2 grocery stores.
This morning I packed up and got on the road by 0630 and was fortunate to see a cluster of big horn sheep within 25 feet of the side of the road. Ten minutes later, I saw a small moose at the side of the road. According to a ranger at West Yellowstone, moose sightings are rare. While there are 17,000 elk in Yellowstone, there are less than 400 moose.
In the last three days, in addition to the sheep and moose, I can add to the list of animal sightings on this trip another fox, magpies, curlews, Stellar's jays, osprey, red-winged blackbirds, and ravens.
Yellowstone Park is just opening, and there are still some roads that are blocked by snow. There are only two campgrounds in the entire park that are open. One of the campgrounds is along my route, but it is so close to the park entrance that it is not really an option for me. The 70 miles long and 1500 foot climb through the park is more than I'm physically able to do in a single day, so I have a $90/night reservation to stay at the Old Faithful lodge Sunday night. The next stop is a campground just to the south of the park for Monday, the first day the campground is open.
Editorial comment: I am listening to CNN as I write this. Out of an 8 person patrol in Iraq, five were found dead and three are missing. I heard two different commentators saying that one of the soldiers in the patrol was an Iraqi interpreter, and that it may only be two soldiers missing, as if the tragedy would be somehow lessened if one of the missing people was Iraqi. The comment subtlely expresses an attitude that Americans are insensitive to the deaths of Iraqi.
The death of 3,300 US soldiers and the brain damage of another 5000 soldiers (as of now) is tragic. But the numbers are insignificant when compared to the losses of Iraqis. According to Bill Moyer's Journal on PBS, the number of Iraqi deaths is around 750,000. What would our reaction be if these numbers reflected US casualties? To put it in perspective, in all of World War II, 550,000 US military personnel died.
When the press emphasizes the US deaths and ignores the Iraqi deaths, when the US military mounts a major rescue effort for US personnel but we never hear about rescue efforts for Iraqi personnel, I wonder whether we convey a subtle and disturbing message, full of disrespect and disregard, that the lives of Muslims have less value. It seems like we are telling the world that we only care about ourselves, and I worry that we might be encouraging Arabs and Muslims to see the United States as being insensitive, lacking compassion, and worthy of their contempt. It is part of the atmosphere that feeds the recruitment of more extremists.
|
|
32 miles (738 total)
Yellowstone, and today in particular, was a treasure: great weather, an easy ride, plenty of wildlife, lots of scenery. I saw a brazilian bison and elk, a bald eagle, and the usual birds and small critters. I ate lunch watching elk. I took several scenic breaks along the rivers. The only downers were the number of cars on the road and the impatience and rudeness of some of the drivers. It's like they were in a hurry to see nature, and these durn animals keep getting in the way.
About an hour of the ride could have been titled "Bicycles with bison". As a local described it, we were in a 200 car buffalo jam. Being on a bicycle was an asset, since I could ride on the shoulder up to the front. Once they were committed to their journey down the road, the bison didn't have anywhere else to go; there was a cliff on one side and the river on the other. So, we plodded along at 3 miles an hour. The guy in the lead car (seen in the picture), was impatient and kept trying to get around them, honking his horn, and crowding them. A couple of college students from a 100 cars back had run up to the front and started waving their arms to motivate the bison to move faster. After a brief stand-off where one of the males turned around and stared down one of the students, the bison were motivated to run, reaching a rather pathetic 7 mph "gallop". One big male came up with a limp and stopped at the side of the road, blocking my way, causing me to move over to the left side of the road. After about 15 minutes of running, many of the bison had their tongues hanging out.
However, the bison got their revenge. They stopped dead in the road and took a bathroom break. About half of them urinated and even more of them defecated, making the roadway treacherous and a multi-sense extravaganza, nasty to behold. They stopped long enough that a couple of bison even took the time to make a half-hearted attempt at making baby bison. After another 10 minutes of walking down the road, the bison moved into some trees at the side of the road and traffic began to move again.
I'm beginning to wonder if bicyclists might be snobs. I saw about 8-9 bicyclists on the road today. It is probably too small a sample to be significant, but when I was riding, every bicyclist I met waved at me. The three times today that I encountered a cyclist while I was walking / pushing my bike, not one would answer my wave.
|
|
42 miles (780 total).
The ride today went over three more passes (highest, 8391 ft), crossing the continental divide three times for a total of 1900 ft of climbing. In 2003 I had set out to backpack the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada. Well, I gave up at the Colorado border. I hadn't realized it when I decided to do the Trans Am bicycle route, but it has followed the continental divide trail for the last 400 miles from Missoula to here and will cross it at least twice more (tomorrow is Togwotee pass at over 9600 ft).
One of the interesting sights of the day was Lake Isa (above) on top of Craig Pass. The east side of the lake drains into the Pacific Ocean via the Snake and Columbia Rivers, while the west side of the lake drains into the Gulf of Mexico, via the Yellowstone, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers (and no, I didn't make a mistake about east and west, think Panama Canal).
Two miles further and 500 ft lower in elevation, Lake Lewis was still frozen over. The only thing I can figure is that Lake Lewis must be deep with more thermal mass, making it slower to warm up.
More animals: yellow-headed blackbird, ground squirrels, and osprey.
I was the inaugural camper for the 2007 season at Flagg River village, between Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. There was just one RV and myself in the campground and only 4 tables of diners in the restaurant that evening. By the way, one of the hazards of being one of the first patrons at establishments that are opening for the season is that the food is often leftover from the previous season. The blueberries in the blueberry pancakes were crunchy. There have been similar tales at convenience stores and restaurants along the last 200 miles.
|
|
34 miles (814 total)
An easy, mostly level day of cycling that took me along Colter Lake, which is at the base of the Grand Teton Mountains.
The highlight of the day was seeing a couple of otters in the Buffalo River (above), near the eastern border of Grand Teton National Park. Although they were about 300 ft away, these are the first otters I have seen in the wild.
Another sighting today was a sandhill crane. I also watched an elk jump into the road in front of a car and barely miss becoming an instant hood ornament.
Even 10 miles east of the Grand Teton mountain range, and the mountains are still pretty imposing.
|
|
45 miles (859 total)
Today's ride included what felt like the mother of all climbs: 2800 ft in 18 miles and four hours to cross Togwotee Pass (9700 ft). Two miles and 600 feet short of the summit, the universe gave me a break. Construction had reduced the road to one lane with a pilot car taking batches of cars through the construction area. Because bicyclists could not keep up with the pilot car, the crew brought up a pickup truck to carry me and my bicycle to the top of the pass.
At the pass is a mountain called Pilot Knob. The name comes from a huge rock sitting on top of the peak (barely visible in the image above). I have a hard time imagining how a rock of that size could wind up at the top of a grass covered mountain. A glacier from the last ice age? Aliens?
The other side of the pass was a different world. While the west side was lush and green, the east side was brown except for the occasional evergreen tree.
This other side is different in other ways as well. When I got into Dubois, the first thing that I saw was a pickup truck with a dog up front (almost every vehicle has a dog) and the back full to overflowing with elk antlers. A few minutes later, I saw another. When I checked into a motel, there was a pickup truck with a camper shell full of mounted elk heads, but instead of a dog in the front seat, it had a deer head. It turns out that the town of Dubois was hosting an "antler rendezvous", in which cowboys who have been harvesting shed antlers over the winter get together with artists who buy the antlers as raw materials for carvings, furniture, and jewelry. Judging from the 1000s of antlers I saw, this is a pretty big business around here. In addition to the antlers, there were horns of bison and bighorn sheep; skulls of everything from a muskox to an alligator; pelts of coyotes, beaver, and fox; jewelry and clothing created from these materials.
|
|
76 miles (935 total)
A long more-or-less downhill ride from Dubois to Lander, through a whole lot of arid nothing. In the middle 40 miles today, the only buildings I saw were a few in the village of Crowheart. I saw a lot of fences, but not even ranch houses. The land felt more isolated than any I have seen thus far this trip, even the last 60 miles of Idaho, which was all national forest.
The air was dry enough that the rain became virga, never reaching the ground.
On the ride, I became obsessed with not being able to remember the answers to two questions: What did Penn Jillette name his daughter? (Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette), and - Who sang "The Year of the Cat"? (Al Stewart).
|
|
59 miles (995 total)
Lander to Rawlins is 126 miles. Between them, there is exactly one motel (in Jeffrey City halfway between), one gas station/convenience store at a road junction 22 miles further (which was closed on Sunday), and only a couple of campgrounds. Stealth camping along the road is not really an option because there is nowhere to conceal a tent in the open desert.
With so few options for places to stay, I pushed on to Jeffrey City. Jeffrey City is a living time capsule, a uranium mining boom town in the 1970's having at its peak a population of 5000 that now had a population of under 100.
When I arrived at the motel, I was greeted by a rancher and a trucker sitting having beers outside the entrance. The owner was away for the afternoon, but the trucker was able to give me a room and a beer. We sat over beers talking about the future of the town and the prospects of the uranium mine reopening.
The room was a clean but shocking 1970's flashback, with two shade shag carpeting, lime green bed spreads, ancient plumbing, a plastic sink, fluorescent tube light fixture, pictures of hunting dogs, cheap wood paneling, and a black and white television made in the 1960's that might have been objectionable, except that there was no reception anyway.
|
|
35 miles (1030 total)
I had intended to ride the 66 miles from Jeffrey City to Rawlins in one day. However, the temperature was 85 degrees and the headwinds were intense.
At 1400 I arrived in Lamont and decided that I couldn't go any further. I was run down from the previous 3 days, I was running low on water, the visibility was poor because of dust being whipped across the road and into my eyes, and a combination of fatigue and dehydration was beginning to cause mild hallucinations. For example, I was startled a couple of times by black tar patches on the road, which I saw as crows taking off.
Grandma's Cafe was supposed to be open, but it too was closed (Grandma had two grand-daughters who graduated from high school that day). The map from Adventure Cycling said that cyclists were welcome to camp out in the back of the restaurant, so I walked around to discover the scene in the image above. I huddled behind the shed at the right to get out of the sun and wind from 1400 to 2000, reading, listening to my iPod, and talking to the dog and cats who lived there. As the sun was setting, I set up my tent beside a couple of picnic tables in high winds.
|
|
31 miles (1061 total)
I packed up by 0600 and had breakfast at Grandma's Cafe. Grandma told me that Lamont, like Jeffrey City, was a boom town in the 1980's when oil drilling was active. At one time Lamont had a motel, a gas station, and a store. But now, the cafe was all that was left.
I was on the road by 0640, hoping to get some miles in before the winds picked up, but no such luck. By 0730, the winds were over 20 mph. By 0900, the winds were over 30 mph, gusting to 50 (confirmed by the Weather Channel). To make matters worse, there was a lot of truck traffic which added their own gusts. As I was walking my bicycle up and over the continental divide (for the 9th time this trip), the drafts of trucks would bring me to a complete stop. I have walked the bike up steeper grades, and I have walked the bike in heay headwinds before, but the combination was brutal. I was making only about 5 mph.
After I crossed the divide, it was level and then downhill the last 10 miles into Rawlins. However, I was sore and tired, with the muscles in the back of my neck burning and aching. Consequently, I was taking frequent breaks. About six miles from Rawlins, I came across a ranch road intersecting the highway, went up the road about 20 feet, lay the bicycle down on its side, and lay down to rest my neck on my backpack. I must have dozed off, because I was startled to discover that people were stopped on the side of the road and someone was talking to me over my shoulder. These kind people had worried that either I had fallen off the bike or that I was ill. I quickly sat up to reassure everyone that I was OK, that I was only resting sore muscles. Well, wouldn't you know that one of the samaritans was a nurse, and she proceeded to give me a neck massage while sitting on the side of the road.
Despite my assurances that I was OK (I'm actually not so sure that I was), the woman insisted that she and her husband put my bike in the trunk of their car and give me a ride into Rawlins. In the course of talking, they told me that they were from Paradise, Utah (an appropriate place for angels to come from). I asked if they were Latter Day Saints (aka Mormans), to which they replied "yes". They asked if I was also a Morman, to which I said no, but that I had a number of friends and teachers who were.
As we arrived in Rawlins, the couple, who are named Kelly and Sheryl Cronquist, offered to give me a priestly (or priested?) blessing, which is apparently infrequently offered to non-Mormans. I accepted, and we drove to a cemetary, where I sat down in the grass while Kelly lay his hands on my head and ministered the blessing. Then the three of us sat in the grass for another 15 minutes, just talking before they continued their return trip to Paradise and I found a motel.
I was amazed at how a stressful and miserable day can suddenly change into something amazing and special.
A short postscript, but the next day I ran into a couple of bicyclists in Rawlins. They too had stopped at a ranch road about six miles NW of Rawlins (maybe the same one I stopped at) about two hours after I had stopped to rest. Within minutes, someone with a pickup truck stopped to offer them a ride into town.
At one point Kelly, Sheryl, and I had talked about how it was important for me to let them help, to accept their gift, that giving was something that lifted their spirits. From them I learned that giving does not pass in one direction. It is a mutual, reciprocal act of connection and compassion between people.
|
|
64 miles (1125 total)
I must say, that I was happy to leave Rawlins. Every fourth store seemed to be a liquor store. Rawlins is the home of the Wyoming State Prison. The motel I stayed at was run by a Hindi family who were extremely bigoted against Pakistani, who advertised a continental breakfast and failed to deliver, and kept one of the most nasty motels I have visited.
The day's ride began with a 20 mile run on I-80. In the east, that would be very illegal, but apparently in the west a shortage of roads can leave bicyclists with interstates as the only alternative.
The picture above shows a clump of irises I found on the side of the road. They occured infrequently along a half-mile stretch of road.
I ended the day at the community of Riverside, which consisted of two bars and cafes, a general store, and cabins for rent. Riverside is a mile from the town of Encampment, which was the site in 1851 of a grand gathering of mountain man.
|
|
50 miles (1175 total)
As has been typical of second and third days since a day off, the ride was difficult with a lot of rolling hiles and a fair bit of headwind. However, I had a surprise boost. A couple of other cyclists caught up with me and stopped to talk for a few minutes. Once they left, they became a pair of pacer rabbits and I managed to keep them within a half mile for the next 12 miles. They outran me on a particularly steep hill and once they were out of sight, I lost my motivation. By the time I got to Walden, I was pretty tired.
Add to the list of animals seen: pelicans, prairie dogs, a hummingbird, deer.
I liked Walden. With a population of about 800, it is the largest community in 60 miles. It had a few nice cafes, a nice, cheap motel, and a museum. Since strong headwinds (30 mph, gusts to 40) were forecasted for the next day, I decided to stay over an extra day.
I'm reading a book given to me by Ann last Christmas called "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. One of his premises is that the thinking mind is like an addict that dominates our lives, and gets in the way of peace and serenity. In addition to meditation, one exercise that he suggests is to learn to witness yourself thinking.
I realized that the dialogs and arguments that I have been having with Deer Woman while I ride is a form of training to witness my own thinking. Its hard to explain, but there is a third part of my mind that is amused and interested in the dialog. This third part silently watches the dialog in my head.
|
|
98 miles (1273 total)
On the morning that I was planning to leave Walden, I saw on the Weather Channel that I was going to have another day of headwinds. I'm not sure what gave me the idea, but I realized that if I turned east towards Fort Collins instead of heading south through Breckinridge and Pueblo, then I would eliminate the climb up an 11,000 ft pass and save about 500 miles. I also was going to have problems finding a place to stay in the mountains during the Memorial Day weekend. I couldn't imagine Fort Collins would be a tourist atraction.
The one disadvantage of turning east is that I would no longer have the benefit of the maps I got from Adventure Cycling, meaning that I would have to do my own research of which small towns have motels, meaning that getting wifi connections in each town will be more critical.
I decided over breakfast to go to Fort Collins by way of Cameron Pass (10,300 ft). I am glad that I did, because the scenery was the most dramatic of the trip. The ride up to the pass was spectacular enough, but the road on the far side ran down Poudre Canyon was incredible. The canyon sides were steep and high. The vegetation was more lush with pine and aspen. The Cache de Poudre River was white water and waterfalls all the way down (a 5000 ft descent in 50 miles), with many kayakers on the river. The ranger station and visitors center handed out free coffee and cookies. A little community near the bottom of the canyon was having an outdoor concert.
The only disadvantage was that every campground and lodging in the canyon was full to capacity. Thus, I had no choice but to keep on riding until I reached Fort Collins, arriving at 2000, just be dark.
One remarkable sight was Sleeping Elephant Mountain (above). Many times you have to use a lot of imagination to see the reference. However, I saw an elephant even before I knew the name.
|
|
37 miles (1310 total)
What a difference a day and 30 miles make. From mountains, deep canyons, cool temperatures, trees and moose to flat, hot, grass and cattle. Oh, and nasty thorns that puncture bicycle tires.
In Greeley, the first 3 motels I stopped at were all booked up, which gave me a bit of concern. I discovered that in addition to it being Memorial Day weekend, there was a Cattle Breeders Convention in town for the weekend. The shortage of rooms was apparently local, because I found a suitable place with lots of vacancies on the far side of town.
|
|
52 miles (1362 total)
Another day of flat and heat, punctuated by a second flat tire and an AW rootbeer float.
I'm staying a second day in Fort Morgan to do laundry, to mail home all the winter clothes I no longer need, to catch up on the website and correspondence, and to have the bicycle overhauled (I got a third flat tire, presumably from the infamousthorns again, while riding 14 blocks to the bicycle shop).
When I commented about all the flats in the last three days to the bicycle mechanic, he said welcome to the plains of eastern Colorado. He also said that there are a set of modifications available, including thicker walled tubes, a tougher rim liner, and a slime for sealing whatever punctures do manage to happen. The package was about $30 and well worth it.
On the way out of town, I found this switch yard engine sitting in the town park. To me, it looked like Thomas, the toy train and animation star. Given that I have a young friend that is a Thomas junkie, the picture was a necessity.
|
|
35 miles (1400 total)
I was surprised to be going uphill (only a 400 ft climb), despite heading east, and facing a moderate headwind. Despite it being the first day after a rest day, I had a hard time. I had originally thought that I would make it to Yuma (another 28 miles), but stopped in Akron.
However, it turned out to be a good thing that I did stop. Within an hour after getting into town, a heavy thunderstorm developed.
On the way to Akron, I came across the sculpture of an Indian sentinel on horseback and carrying a lance, on top of a rise and about a quarter mile from the road. I wonder what the story is: who is the artist, and how did it find itself out in the middle of the prairie?
The other highlight of the day is that I stopped at a coffee shop/cafe for lunch in Akron and discovered salads on the menu, sans deep-fat-fried food. I had a wonderful mandarin orange, almond, chicken salad with a sesame seed dressing.
|
|
56 miles (1456 total)
An excellent day with 900 ft descent and tail winds so that I covered 56 miles in less than 4 hours.
Crossing the plains makes it hard to have interesting things to talk about each day, given that each day looks a lot like every other one. The one item of excitement is weather. As I write this, Wray is under a tornado watch with severe thunderstorms forecasted for the night. Given how hard Kansas has been hit so far this season, I'll probably see more.
Things that I've learned so far this trip:
Western drivers are a considerate breed. Nearly every vehicle will move over to the passing lane to pass me when there is no oncoming traffic. When there is oncoming traffic, the oncoming vehicles move their right tire off the road onto the shoulder, so that the traffic passing me can put the left wheels near or on the center yellow line, giving me as much room as they can. This is true even when the shoulder is as wide as the travel lanes.
Whenever I walk, there is a high likelihood of someone stopping to ask if I'm OK. Aside from the Morman couple who gave me a roadside neck massage and blessing, maybe 10 other times have people stopped and checked up on me.
Another thing that I've learned is that I should find out who manufactures bungee cords and invest in those companies. I usually see 3-6 bungee cords on the side of the road each day. I see even more bungee cords than flattened snakes (there is a morphological similarity, perhaps an example of convergent evolution).
Finally, cattle here are not particularly smart. I had another spooky episode with a herd of cows today. It started with several members of the herd staring at me as I was walking by. Then, one of the cows bellowed at me. Cows near me started to walk, then trot in parallel with my track. Cows from further out started running towards me. As they started milling around the fence, I got on my bike and took off. The tenor of the moos and bellows raised in pitch and sounded to my ears more distraught. I assume that they must be used to being fed by a person on foot. But I bet that they have never been fed by a person pushing a bicycle without a truck full of feed or hay in the vicinity.
|
| Copyright (c) 2007 by Dick Delanoy
|
|
|
