New Meadows to White Bird: not all days can be easy.

Today was a hard day. It was supposed to be easy - I got a great night's sleep at the church on a soft couch, slept in an hour later, and was supposed to have a mostly film day of downhill, my first day without a pass or giant hill since leaving Eugene. And it was beautiful and downhill, descending from the cool New Meadows wet land plateu through a long canyon back in to the desert. However, in the same way that the river surged down the gorge, with rapids and we eddies and other rivery things, the wind surged up.

Wind. Headwinds strong enough to force me to work the entire 64 miles (4.5 hours on bike) to maintain basic speed down the hill. I turned around one to go uphill to get something a saw on the road, and found that climbing with the tailwind was actually easier than going down the hill. Bullshit.

My brain eats hills. Cycling is all mental providing your aren't actually injured. My brain has trouble digesting headwinds that blow you up hill, but this alone is generality not enough to get me out my mental game. Today was rough though.

I haven't mentioned this because I want it to go away, but it seems that my body decided this trip was going too easy for me to be able to use it in my "if can do xxx I can do anything" file. Starting around Halfway or Baker City I started developing a consistently worsening toothache.  I've been hurt and injured a variety of ways, but if you've ever experienced it you know tooth pain is the worst. I managed to contact a dentist in Missoula who'll see me the same day I roll in (tues) so I won't lose any days. At this point I just need to keep riding and wait it out. "I will not worry about things I cannot control."

Well, anyway, it's screwing up my mental game while riding, but getting a cavity or whatever filled without missing a day (I hope), as will as climbing Lolo Pass with a toothache, will certainly bolster my "I can do anything" confidence file. The stupid thing is I almost went to the dentist before this trip just to make sure this didn't happen, but I was low on time and deprioritized it. Stupid! Haven't we ago seen Castaway!?!

I sleep tonight in a nice park with likely no rain in White Bird (pop. 90ish). Tomorrow I climb the daunting White Bird Hill.  It's spectacular here. I think I'm going to go join some locals in the tiny bar after I finish my phone typed update. No open library or cell service here, but I can get some WiFi.

ILYI

Inside! #biketour

Cambridge to New Meadows photos

This picture describes the following picture. I'm going to share this story with my students later. (Click to embiggen to read)

The Methodist Church, my home for the night out of the storms.

Post storm double rainbow!

New Meadows, ID

Going to church! #biketour

Cambridge to New Meadows: Choices, and how to rely on strangers to get yourself out of the rain.

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!

Halfway to Cambridge photo part 2

Home for the night in Cambridge.

Rod and Stewart, rode the whole Trans Am so far!

Calvin has walked across the US a bunch of times pulling a little cart.

My bike is pretty and back winded and lit

This gun shop hates Obama a lot. That's what every sign is about.

Halfway to Cambridge photo part 1

Click to embiggen!

The top of the pads heading out of Hell's Canyon. It started to rain as I took this picture.

The store near the bottom of the hill.

One of the dams. See the picture from the previous wordy post to compare. Same toilet?

Hell's Canyon

 

There is lots of twisty columnar basalt here.

Entering the canyon

Near the top of the exit

Leaving the canyon

Awesome chalkboard sign on a building in Cambridge, Id (pop 328) #biketour

Halfway to Cambridge: Hell's Canyon ain't so Hellish!

Hell's Canyon, located between Halfway and Cambridge, sort of has a reputation among bicyclists as being a magma-filled bicycling melting-smelting pot of doom in a handbasket, with days frequently over 100 degrees and little to no shade.  When I rode it in 2003 with my Bronies (Bike Homies, in case you haven't caught that yet) it did not disappoint.  There is an extremely steep 7-10ish mile hill to climb out of the canyon that took us all our water to climb, and we took breaks on the way up standing in the little circular shadows cast by the balls on power lines, as it was 100 degrees or so and that was the only shade.  There were also murderous clouds of grasshoppers the jumped into our faces while we rode.  Not kidding. Terrible.

One of the things that every Eastbound cyclists says, at some point on the way to Hell's Canyon, is that they hope it will be rainy that day - but it rarely happens.  It's the desert after all, and the canyon is named after Hell for a reason. However, today bikema smiled on me!  It was overcast when I left the church in Halfway around 7:30.  I easily cruised 20ish miles to the start of the canyon, and thoroughly enjoyed it on this overcast, 55 degree day.  There were almost no cars but tons of mule deer who frequently ran along with me and across the road in front me, jumping straight up the canyon walls like... well.. mule deer.  At 10:30ish around mile 35 I reached the terminus of the canyon and the crazy-steep 7 mile climb out.  There is a shop there, and in 2003 we filled our bottles with ice and they melted in something like 10 minutes. For me, it was 60 degrees, overcast, and occasionally drizzling.  The climb out of the canyon was still brutal and steep, however, even it was cool, and it tested me more than anything has since Day 2 on Mckenzie Pass.

I reached the top at Mile 42, took a picture of the pass sign, and then the rain and tailwinds came.  I had a great 15 mile, tailwindy, rainy, downhill flight in Cambridge for the night.  The rain let up right before I reached town (it's staying up high, apparently, desert again) and I arrived sort of soggy but happy a little after 1pm. My rain gear works great (I do ride in Eugene every winter), but I put it on while soaked in sweat for the cold downhill. Gross. Better to be warm and sweaty-wet then cold and rainy-wet though.

Cambridge (pop. 328) has a nice park where we can stay in for free - the same park where we met "The Keg" in 2003 - for those of you who were there.  The Keg was so named because he was a bike tourer who looked like a keg of beer on toothpicks.  He claimed to have ridden across the US and Canada several times and was heading the other way. He carried mountains of stuff on his bike, including a tent, tarp, giant metal stakes, and other things I can't remember. The pile on his bike reached up to near his upper back.  The tarp, incidentally, was ripped apart in a storm that night while our tiny tents survived.

So far my Cambridge stay has been great.  I treated myself to a hot meal meal because soggy me craved coffee and cheeseburgers, perused the local museum and all it's pioneery goodness, had a few good conversations with locals, and now am chillin' in the library talking to you folks.  In a few minutes I will head to the park where I hope some Eastbound cycle tourers I just met will camp. They've toured the entire Trans Am Adventure Cycling route starting on the east coast in late April.  Seeing as I've left the Mitchell crew behind, it would be nice to have some company tonight.  Only a few more days and ton more mountains until Missoula!  I'll try a picture upload later tonight.

By the way, remember that covered wagon picture I posted a few days ago? Here is the 2003 version! I am in the purple jersey and blue helmet.

Also, in the picture update I will be uploading a very similar photo to this one, taken of our crew in 2003 as well.  You can see all our 2003 pictures at our older pretty slow photo site. That trip, incidentally, is why I move to Eugene in 2006.  The 2007 trip also has a slow gallery, but I won't be hitting any of those same towns until Lowell.

ILYI

Made it to Idaho, now I can pump my own gas! #biketour

Baker City to Halfway photo part 2

This is what I've done since Eugene (top left). I am where the pen points.

My host at the church runs the Halfway (pop 288) artist coop.

Home for the night, out of the rain!

The Wallowa or Granite mountains

Click and Read

Part of why I'm doing less miles out here is I stop at all the roadside kiosks, signs, and interesting things.

Baker City to Halfway photos part 1

These get bigger if you click them!

Panorama of a big desert pass half way up

Winning the pretty game

Top of the pass in to Halfway

This is s land slide (on the right) that buried the old road in the 80s

Dude drove this to the store

Same landslide as before, notice the road heading in to it.

Baker City to Halfway : no longer a dot com

I'm saying at a church in Halfway (pop 288) that regularly hosts bikers, relegated to another phone update due to a library that is closed on Wednesdays. Back in 2003 this town sold their name for a year to Half.com for 75,000 and computers for their school. So... There's that...

Last night Rob and I were awakened at 1 am to cops shining flashlights at us, but just 'cause they had to. We were allowed to stay there unofficially and they had to pretend it wasn't ok for ten minutes and then they left. It was less scary than the spider I found in my sleeping bag earlier that night.

I woke up early and got on the road by 7ish to avoid headwinds that never showed up. The day was beautiful, overcast mostly, and I rode through amazing open spaces, canyons, hills, and among rivers for 42 miles before my first stop in Richland at 10. I met Jim on the road but Richland was the last I saw of him. I then climbed a short pass and got in to Halfway around 1.

Jim will take a rest day here, and Bob took one in Baker City, so I think I'm officially in front of the Mitchell crew now. I will miss their company.

In 7 days I've ridden 400 miles, over 7 mountain passes, and will enter Idaho tomorrow in Hell's Canyon. I'm not even close to being done with mountains. Good. :)

Mountains in the desert, I #biketour them.

AJ to Baker City Photo Post

These get bigger more if you click on them

Top of Sumpter Pass

Proof I am alive in Baker City (it's windy)

Home for the night

Tipton Pass

Baker City is weird

Good night sun

More Baker City (these pictures never upload in order)

Rob rode this Iron Horse all the way from Florence to Baker City. Trading in for a LTH here in Baker.

AJ to Baker City: Mountains, Headwinds, and... Headwinds!

I'm sitting a library in Baker City, Oregon - and I have a keyboard to type on! Look at all these extra words I can type because I'm not typing on a phone!  blah blah wacko blah blah see! It's not even hard to type now! Yay!

I also found out that my pictures weren't uploading in hi-rez, so starting today when you click on them you'll get hi-rez pretty panoramic awesome versions.  If you are just waiting for facebook to see when I update, you won't be seeing the picture updates, so go to the main blog to see them.

Last I updated I was bedding down for to sleep in AJ, having pitched a tent due to a slight worry of rain.  Around 1 am the wind in the trees woke me up, and my rainy-sense started tingling. I got up and brought all my bags in my tent just in case, so I was well prepared when the rain came at 4 am.  I decided to sleep through it, rolling out of my tent at 7 am to a damp but rain-free forest.  Bob and Jim were long gone. I didn't hit the road until 8:30.

There were two rather large passes today in the first 22 miles (Tipton and Sumpter), but I made it the top of the last one by 10:30 am and took a hour lunch there. I passed Bob going up Sumpter and eventually he met me at the top.   Then there was 15 miles of downhill tailwind followed by 15 miles of crazy headwind through a beautiful canyon wind-tunnel of doom - which opened into a beautiful wide-open wind plane of doom.  On that wind plane I caught Rob, who actually hasn't left our route after all.  He is buying a LTH in Baker City and trading in his full suspension bike.  By the way, you may have noticed that most of the towns, passes, and mountains around here (Dixie, Sumpter, etc) were named by southern sympathizers during the civil war.

Despite the headwinds, I finished my two-pass 50 mile day by 1:30.  I ran in to Jim in town, and he and Bob are at different hotels.  Rob and I are camped for free near a Y in a windswept field, and Tim is still in John Day.  It looks like I may be parting from most the Mitchell crew soon since Bob may be taking a rest day, Rob is staying to get his bike, and Tim is way behind.  Jim may be the only one continuing to Halfway, Oregon tomorrow.  I bought some sidewalk chalk so I can leave them bad jokes on the long hills.

All-in-all I'm feeling really good.  I'm riding hard, but getting in to town so early that I can really heal up and relax.  I haven't had too much trouble finding a place to stay, and I already have a place Halfway figured out. I've ridden 7 mountain passes in the 6 days since I left, which is why my days have been only 50-60 miles. I've also enjoyed pacing with the Mitchell crew and want to take it easy early in the trip so I don't injure myself.  I'll need to up my miles in Eastern Montana and South Dakota if I want to catch RAGBRAI by July 19th.

Baker City has been a pretty fun town to walk around in. Also, I also pooped in the woods today.

Day 5 pictures: Mt Vernon to AJ

The awesome summit of Dixie Pass

On the way up Dixie

The view from the road

These are the Strawberry Mountains

Ranches like this litter the area. There was a little girl by the sign talking to the cows. I think she is a future Iris.

Where we stayed in Austin Junction

Bob and Jim might be hiding behind trees.