//Uploading note: I'm uploading this the next day, and the riding today so far (30 miles) has been pretty good once I got off the shit-dirt rode 10 miles in. I've enjoyed it. This was written after 2 days of terrible roads, and I was processing a lot. I'll upload it as it, just know I'm in a better mood now. I justed need to process some thoughts, and I use this blog for that. I'll post my revised thoughts on it in the next post. //
Well, I'm at upper Lake Campground, at The Red Rock Lakes Wildlife Refuge, a place set aside to bring back the Trumpeter Swan. That's pretty cool. It's super windy here, and they saw a bear near here today, but I'm too tired to ride 30 miles over a pass to the next camping area. Especially in this wind.
The ride report is simple. 57 miles, 5 hours on bike, was on the road from about 8am to 2:40 pm. It's 5:20 now, so I've been hanging here for awhile, resting, patching a hole in my sleeping pad, being annoyed at the wind, eating, reading, etc.
So, today kind of sucked. It was supposed to be easy since this is my first day without a major climb, but the roads were super rough, as usual, and a crazy headwind picked up, as is often usual. It was sometimes a side and even sometimes a tailwind, but when it was a headwind I could barely move. I'm not really enjoying the riding on this trip, and that's becoming a major issue.
See, road bike tours are different in several ways that I'm learning:
1) They are on pavement. Riding on dirt has several disadvantages besides just being harder and more exciting:
a) You can't look around. I'm spending most of my time looking at the road itself, picking my line. I much prefer glancing at the road every now and then for potholes, and sight seeing while riding.
b) Even when I pick a perfect line, it's still rough. Even with my tires super deflated, it's still rough. My hands hurt all the time. It's distracting from my mind wandering - not that it can wander much because, again, I have to keep watching the road and picking my line.
The only real break is during climbs, when I'm going slow enough that I can look around as well, and my weight is back a bit and less on my hands.
c) Downhills and Tailwinds aren't breaks. During these times, especially downhills (which are amazing and super fun) I'm still putting stress into my hand and knees to deal with the rough road.
2) It's almost too remote.
One of the things I absolutely love about bike touring is exploring small towns. I've written in this blog before that to truly know a place, you have to explore it and the people in it. I'm only getting half that here.
At the end of my 2014 solo tour I wrote a post about why I love bike touring. If you go find that, and skip all the parts where I wrote about my ex, you'll see that much of what I love about bike touring isn't a part of this particular tour (at least not yet).
I've stayed in a couple towns, yes, but often I've been too tired from the hard riding to do much. Instead, I'm spending a lot of time alone at campsites. Maybe if I was someone like Thoreou (sp?) that'd be awesome, but I'm not.
I live in a place where I can get lost in the woods whenever I want. I'd much rather be hanging at a place like this with Andrea and the dogs. Nature is accessible. What's not easily accessible is the treatment you get being a vulnerable traveler in a strange town, which is why I bike tour, but - again - it's just me and the birds out here. Also, this tour route is heavily biked, so I'm also not that special when I'm in a town.
Furthermore, I'm out in this nature all day, which is awesome, but also camping in it is overkill. I'd rather explore some crazy small town with some crazy history and meet some interesting locals and have great stories to tell later. Do you know what story I'll have after today? I sat at a picnic table, fell asleep a bit, watched a lake from far away, and did camp chores. I also spent a lot of time missing my loved ones back home. That's not what I'm out here for. This isn't adventure, it's just painful and kind of dull.
I did see those two other southerbounders today, but we are about a 1/2 day apart, so they are camped 30 miles down the road. Booooring.
I don't know what I expected from this trip. I think, foremost, I didn't expect the riding to be something I disliked. If I don't like the actual biking during a bike tour, and the adventures are far between, it's not that fun for me. I could see this being fun if I had someone to do it with, for sure, but alone... it's just starting to become masochistic.
Not that there haven't been highlights: Bannack was cool, and I have met a bunch of cool people in a small amount of time, but that's not enough to overcome the rest of it, and especially the not that fun biking. Normally I get at least a few moments of bliss while riding every day, but I'm not getting that on dirt. Those moments are much rarer.
I don't know. I need a rest day but there aren't any good spots for that, so I'm cutting miles to see if that helps. I'm feeling out of it, and plan on sleeping most of the afternoon to see if that helps. I'm very worn out.
I've never quit a bike tour before, but I've also never been in a state of mind on when where I'm ok if it stops on it's own. Usually the worst thing in the world is something that would make me not able to complete it - like an injury, or getting sick, or a catastrophic bike issue, or wildfire. Now I'm like "Meh, sure, that'd be alright."
Honestly, if the riding was just super hard but the rest of it was fun, I'd be more into pushing through, but - holy shit - this bike tour is kind of boring.
I'm definitely going to stick it out until Denver because 1) it might get better and 2) I need to, mentally, not quit when things get hard. However, after RAGBRAI is up in the air for me right now. Maybe the Divide is something I'd rather do in sections, with other riders, which also allows some other variety in my life. I could have a lot of different adventures Eugene during August, and my friends would be around for them too.
I've biked across the country 3.5 times, I don't really have anything to prove. Unless my hands break I know I can do this, but if it's not fun, what's the point?
I'm disappointed that this isn't as much fun or adventurey as I expected it to be. I put a lot of work into this trip, but it's not turning out to be worth the sacrifice of all the other fun shit I could be doing. This trip has been a dream of mine for so long, but now that I'm finally doing it, it's sort of a let down. I remember now that the original version of this dream did not include me doing it alone. That's an important difference.
Oh well, maybe the adventure is out there to find on this trip still, but doing it in sections and with buddies would be pretty great too.
Who knows? By the time I get into service and post this I'll likely have even more thoughts.
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