There is a lot that goes in to a decision about how far to ride in a day. It's an easy thing to waffle on. After all, what else are you supposed to think about while riding for hours and hours? Scenery? Math? Computing how many times your wheel turns in a mile? Why that livestock truck felt the need to pass so close to you? Food? ... Food is often a topic of thought-versation... but so also is how far to ride that day.
Sometimes it's easy to make the decision, today it was difficult. I need to shave 3-4 days off my planned schedule to make RAGBRAI in time, and I daily have to resist the temptation to attempt that in these mountainy areas. This is the prettiest part of the ride I keep telling myself. Don't rush the best part I keep telling myself. Bah!
Last night I camped with Rod and Stewart in Cambridge who are riding the entire Trans Am East to West. They plan on being in Astoria in 7 days. They have a blog here. We also camped with Calvin, a dude who's being walking all over the US pulling various carts for years.
Today I rode only 48 miles to New Meadows, arrived by 1pm (I got a really early start), and a large part of me really wanted to continue on another 60ish miles to White Bird and shave a day off my schedule. However, miles aren't nearly as important as "on bike time," which is how long it takes to complete those miles. Today was all uphill, some of it steep, and mostly in 55 degree rain. Traffic was heaviest since leaving Eugene, and on a scale of "blissful" to "slightly less than blissful" (that's the appropriate scale for bike touring) I was certainly feeling the "slightly less than blissful" side. It wasn't hot and headwindy, but it wasn't great either and I'm feeling a bit jet lagged from the time-zone change anyway. It was mostly through high forest though, so that was cool and pretty. I didn't take any pictures due to rain, however.
Anyway, today I had about three and a half hours on bike.
I prefer my rides to be less than 5 hours on bike, and 4-5 hours is a good range, 6 hours being doable, and more than that getting a little silly. With breaks, that's generally less than an 8 hour day riding and resting. It doesn't really matter how far I go in that 4-5 hours - it could be 40 miles or 100 miles depending on the conditions. Mileages aren't as important as on-bike time. Today, if I wanted to cut out a day I'd have had an 80 miles day and close to 6 hours on-bike time. But, much of the latter part would have been downhill... Considering 3 our of the next 4 days will be hard uphills, I figured I should do the easy day today... but oh did I waffle. Waffle waffle waffle waffle waffle. Like I said, what else am I going to do but sweat the tiny details?
New Meadows is a nice little town with a pop. around 800. They let you stay in their city park for free as long as you check in first with the city hall. I did that, but that park didn't have a nice shelter to hang out under and the weather is poopy. Seeing as I had some extra time, getting in around 1pm, I figured I'd root around for something inside and out of the rain. I toured the town a bit looking for churches and community centers, and found one church but no-one was home. I went to the store and bought dinner to cook, and casually mentioned my predicament to the friendly person checking me out, but she didn't bite. Undeterred, I went to a coffee shop that had a great back porch, ordered some coffee, and at check-out got the conversation going about my trip and eventually brought up my predicament again. She didn't invite me to sleep back porch as I hoped she would, but mentioned that the same church I had checked earlier sometimes puts up bikers. Aha! Lets try that again!
I went back to the Methodist Church but it was still empty. The house next door had a similar motif, however, so I gathered my courage and knocked on the door. Jim answered with a very cute dog, and confirmed that he was associated with the church, and said that I was welcome to stay there. I believe he is the pastor (minister?), and he is crazy nice. Not only am I able to sleep inside, but I have my choice of several couches in a very nice living area of the church, and I've been encouraged to eat the left over brownies that they have. Winning! I now have an afternoon to figure out how to thank him! The bike tour life is a simple life.
Tomorrow I ride 60ish miles to White Bird, the next day over a huge hill to Lowell, following that up a long long hill to Powell, and in four days I ride over Lolo Pass into Missoula, Montanna! I'm about to do what I believe to be the prettiest riding that I have ever done. It's also where they had planned to send those mega-load tar sands things, but that got stopped. Yay!
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