Riding Bikes Across the West

Pacific City, OR– It seems that milestones always come in twos or threes on this trip. Yesterday, we hit 3,000 miles on the odometer and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. More importantly, we reached our fundraising goal of $10,000 for CF research. So we just wanted to send out a quick post, to say THANK YOU to all of our friends, family and supporters who donated. Seriously, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you and THANK YOU again. We have been deeply touched by your generosity. We have two more days of riding up the Oregon coast to get to Astoria, but it’s going to feel like we are riding on the clouds from knowing what we’ve accomplished. (Well, it may feel more like riding inside the clouds from the thick fog, but still…)

People grow-and pickle-a lot of asparagus in Idaho.

But not in Cambridge, Idaho. We arrived in Cambridge last Thursday, after a hot 50 miles from New Meadows. The kettle corn, corndogs, and lemonade booths were already set up at the arena and fairgrounds on our way into town. A poster at the diner where we slurped pre-dinner milkshakes confirmed that Thursday was indeed opening night for the county rodeo and fair.

We checked into about the last motel room in town–and there were more than you might expect in a town of 336 people–then gorged ourselves on hand-dipped corn dogs, homemade kettle corn, sun-brewed iced tea, cheeseburgers, and ice cream at the fair.

And what a fair it was. The exhibition hall brimmed with prize-winning cabbages the size of pumpkins, summer squash that could rival a small child, canned meats, fruits, and pickled vegetables, 4-H club binders showing off the agricultural accomplishments of local youth, and a booth recruiting new members for the Washington County Republicans.

A quick browse through the pig pavilion left us baffled as to what makes a prize-winning pig. Is it final girth, average weight gained per day, smoothness of skin, price fetched at market, or another mysterious factor beyond our suburb-slicker-bred minds?

What makes a prize-winning pig?

But it was the main attraction, the rodeo itself, that captivated us. Mutton-busting, of course, is my favorite spectacle. We also got a fair dose of bull riding, calf roping, bucking broncos, and the rodeo girls. Red necks, quite literally, also made an appearance on several of the locals who forgot to apply their sunblock.

The amateur county rodeo provided enjoyment on a more intimate scale than my previous experience at a professional rodeo in Montana. The mutton busters ran up into the stands with their families after the event, and most of the crowd had favorite bull riders. The rodeo clown even dressed up his son as a MiniMe for the mutton busting opening act, making it a real good family time.

I don’t think I’ll be roping any calves anytime soon, or eating any pickled asparagus, but I do hope to get back to a rodeo and a fair, real west style, sometime soon.

It’s true.  We crossed over after we crossed a dam over Hell’s Canyon yesterday.  The fresh fruit here is delicious and the temperatures are shockingly hot.  The afternoon heat has peaked at about 100 today and yesterday, and the surprisingly desolate landscape in this part of the state provides little cover.  Looks like it’s time to get back to extreme early wake-ups like we did in Kansas.

Last night we stayed in Halfway, Oregon, at the home of Tom and Linda Collier, a retired couple who have a farmhouse there.  We found Tom and Linda through warmshowers.org, a website for touring cyclists that has been a great resource for us.  They introduced us to a bunch of their friends at a cocktail hour that they happened to be hosting that night and fed us lots of local huckleberries.

Next notable stops will include Sisters, Eugene, and Astoria– with a lot of hills in between!

After following the Lochsa River downhill for 89 beautiful miles yesterday we stayed in Kooskia, Idaho.  While we were happy to knock out so many miles in a day, it was also a sad day, as we saw Martin and Peter, our English friends, for the last time.  We first ran into them in Guffey, CO, and we’ve been repeatedly crossing paths and sharing a few beers ever since.  However, they’re headed out to Seattle as we head south towards Portland.  This morning we’ve been asking ourselves how there can be so many mountain passes– we just climbed 3,000 feet or so to get up to Grangeville before we lose it again going downhill to Lucile where we’ll spend the night.  No headwind though!

We have something else to be glad for too: As of today, we’ve now biked over 2300 miles and raised over $8,600 for Cystic Fibrosis research.  A moment like this seemed almost inconceivable just a few months ago.  In two more days, we should be in Oregon, planning the last leg of our trip.  You can help us finish the last leg of our fundraising, too– don’t forget to donate!

Here’s the newest update of our map:

View Ben and Robin’s Bike Trip in a larger map

This week we hit the 2,000-mile mark, somewhere on the way down from Chief Joseph pass on the Montana-Idaho border. We hadn’t rested since Jackson Hole, and we’ve seen a lot through Teton and Yellowstone since then. Check out Ben’s pictures for some more details and narration.

We’re in Missoula now, where there are bike paths, bike racks, and the cars know how to drive around bikers.

Missoula Knows How to Treat Cyclists

We may even have to start getting up early again to beat the heat–something we haven’t done since Kansas. The temperatures in Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley have approached, if not exceeded, 100 degrees for most of the past several days.

In Missoula, we’ve stopped in for ice cream at the Adventure Cycling Association, stocked up on dehydrated vegetarian treats at the Good Food Store, floated down the Clark Fork river on innertubes, and enjoyed some especially delicious hometown microbrews. I’m trying to convince Ben he should go to law school here, while I could become a teacher.

It’s so nice, we may just rest another day.

We’d been warned about all kinds of things before starting our ride.  We’d been told that we’d be riding uphill through Kansas; that it would be impossible to climb mountain passes with 75 pounds of bike and gear; or that the winds on the midwestern plains would blow us back to St. Louis.

While none of these challenges have been as great as feared, the single toughest obstacle has been the winds of Colorado and Wyoming.  For the last week, the wind has been against us at almost every turn, contrary to the forecasts and conventional wisdom about prevailing summer weather patterns.

While climbing a mountain pass road isn’t easy, it lets us build our own steady rhythm and rewards us at the top with a view and a thrilling downhill ride.

The wind gives us nothing to look forward to.  It is only an invisible, punishing foe that robs you of your momentum and promises only to get worse as the afternoon wears on.  The video above was taken between Rawlins and Lander, Wyoming, one of two days where we rode into a 20+ mph headwind.

If bike touring teaches us anything, it’s the necessity of improvisation, and we’ve picked up a few ways to beat the wind.  Here’s what we’ve done so far:

• Rise early:  The wind has picked up as early as 10:30 AM, so we’ve gone back to rising around dawn to get in as many miles as possible while the air is still.
• Draft: I’m the bigger of the two and the stronger rider (just barely nowadays), so I’ll get in a low gear and ride just a couple feet in front of Robin to shield her from the wind. It really makes a huge difference for the person in back.
• Hitch a ride: Every now and then, fortune smiles upon you. The day the video was taken, the wind had slowed us to a crawl and was only getting worse when we happened upon an RV being driven by the Wyoming highway patrol.  They offered to give us a lift for the final thirteen miles–and then to our next day’s destination. While we felt a little unethical about skipping a day ahead, we missed staying in Jeffrey City, Wyoming–and trust me, you wouldn’t want to stay there.

A killer tailwind, a 13-mile stretch of I-80, and some mineral-tasting Wyoming water carried us into Rawlins today, where the RV parks are treeless, just like the landscape.

There are more motels in this town than in any other we’ve seen. In fact, there are more closed motels in Rawlins than there are open ones just about anywhere else. The effects of the recession, or at least of the decline of small towns in America, can be seen in most of the towns we pass through in the abandoned storefronts, faded for sale signs, and reduced hours at public libraries, not to mention the decaying, partially inhabited trailer parks. Rawlins is no exception.

In the past week, we’ve strayed farther from the welcoming towns of Kansas, with their libraries and public pools, and into the craggy peaks and alpine meadows of the Rockies. We biked through South Park (namesake of the tv show), over Hoosier Pass, and into Breckenridge and Summit County, where our friends Chris Newton and Laura Duerkson drove up from the Denver-Boulder area to camp with us and we lingered for a morning in fancy grocery stores, the Pearl Izumi outlet, and a delicious bakery.

We climbed and climbed, happy to have scenery that wasn’t heavy farm machinery or grain elevators, and discovered that anything is possible if you have a low enough gear (I didn’t even know it was possible to stay upright on a bike at 3.5 miles per hour). Coming down made the climbing even more worth it: 45 mph is exhilirating on a deserted road in Wyoming, with nothing but cows and pronghorn to hear you whipping past the Platte River.

At some point between Kansas and Colorado, it finally started to feel like we were in the West. At what point, I’m not sure, but more on that later.

Today we rested in Pueblo, stocking up at Walmart and watching fireworks. We’ve been staying with Jim Dale and Mig Aucone, who have been showing us the sights of Pueblo and graciously letting us relax. Tomorrow we head up into the Rockies, where the terrain will finally start to look pretty different from the plains. We haven’t uploaded any new photos lately, but we have been sharing the road with a group of bikers called Bike the US for MS. They took this excellent photo of our backs way back in Eastern Colorado. Their photos will also tell you a little more about what we’ve been seeing the last couple days.

We’ll write more soon about mountains, feedlots, and wheat harvesting, especially once we learn how a grain elevator actually works.

Hello from western Kansas! It’s time for the first wheat harvest (they have 2 per year), so we’ve been seeing a lot of these:

Despite the perils of being passed by farm equipment that fills up the entire road, we got to Scott City fairly smoothly.  Tomorrow we’re crossing into Colorado, and a new time zone, with a 102-mile ride to Eads, CO. 

Also, click the picture to see some more scenes from this part of the state on flickr.

The last few days have been long and hot. Since Missouri, we’ve passed from the corn and soy fields into a few far Ozark hills, which have then flattened out into more farmland and then the Flint Hills of Kansas. As we head farther west, things are going to be very flat and open as we start climbing up to the high plains. We’re taking our first 0-mile day after nine straight days of biking. Judging from the fact that I slept about 11 hours last night, I think we needed it!

El Dorado is a city of about 12,500 people in south-central Kansas. Even though there are still a lot of trees, it’s starting to feel a lot like the West, as there are oil wells popping up everywhere. While El Dorado has a big lake, some historic landmarks and the Kansas Oil Museum, the feature that we’ve appreciated the most has been the large public pool, which we’ll probably be visiting again today. Other things we’ve appreciated have been an ample supply of Mexican restaurants, custard, and a restaurant that bills itself as ” The Best Little Veal-house in Kansas.” (yet to be visited, but I want to make a stop there.)

Oh, and despite their questionable labor practices, the local Wal-Mart grocery section is amazing.