Adventure of a Lifetime

Ok.. so I kinda got burned out on blogging the last few weeks, so I’m glad that the other guys have been keeping up with it pretty well. Nevertheless, we made it! We finally arrived in Boston last night, and it was a very surreal experience. It felt like last year when I was finishing the KC marathon (this time, on a larger scale). I got really excited as we were biking along highway 9 coming into the city. We were able to catch glimpses of tall buildings between the trees, and we knew we were getting close. It was like the last .2 miles of the marathon where I found I had more energy than I expected, so I wanted to push even more to make it there.

Downtown Boston was incredible. So much was going on, and the traffic actually wasn’t that bad for us. Aside from some frustrations trying to navigate to Pleasure Bay, we had a fairly easy time getting through the city. Today, we get to see more of the city and some of the historic, touristy stuff. We’ll eat at some local places to really get a taste of Boston, and hang out the whole day. No more biking. It is quite the feeling to not have to bike for 6 hours today. It’s great.

I’m really looking forward to making it back home after these couple days in Boston. It’ll be great to be back. I’ll definitely miss the camaraderie that we enjoyed on this trip. I won’t miss biking for 6 hours a day, but I will miss the freedom that  camping and biking gave us. I can’t believe we made it in 42 days. I never thought we would be able to do it quite that fast. It’s great to have the extra time here in Boston so that we’re not in a rush to get back home.

I have a couple other ideas for posts in order to wrap things up, and hopefully we’ll get the rest of our pictures and videos uploaded soon. So, stay tuned.

I felt better today and also didn’t have a choice, so I biked. Thankfully, because Eric and Ben had decided to push yesterday, we only had 68 miles to bike. We also had a tailwind again. This made for an easy day, which was much needed even though I did feel rested.

The morning got off to an interesting start. As I mentioned before, we didn’t have restrooms at the abandoned RV park, so when I needed to go to the bathroom, I had to find a place or take some toilet paper with me to some bushes. I preferred the former. So, I biked up to the gas station, but it happened to be closed. After that disappointment, I had almost resolved to finding a secluded bush, but I happened upon a Catholic church. I thought that a service might be in session, so I opened an unlocked door on the side of the church. As it happens, there was no service going on. In fact, there wasn’t anyone in the building. Despite that fact, I made my way through the building turning lights on as needed until I found the  bathroom. Quite the adventure.

Anyways, we got a fairly early start and biked uneventfully with our tailwind at 19 mph. We only saw 36 cars in the first two hours of biking. We doubled that number in the next hour. I realize I don’t have a number for comparison with a normal day, but 36 is very low.

For the first time on this trip, we made it to our destination city for lunch rather than dinner. We had some Wendy’s and I tried the new Coffee Toffee Frosty, which was delicious. We ran more errands throughout the afternoon. We stopped at a CVS for dinner items on the way to the The Great Northern Bicycle Company. The bike shop was really cool. Ben got his back wheel trued up again and Eric and I just messed around. Jeff would have loved to see this bike shop. They also had a coffee and gilatto shop inside. The  bike shop was in an old train station, so overall it was just a cool place.

Just after leaving the bike shop, I got my first flat… Eric kindly biked back to the shop to get the tire pumped up and get an extra tube. A small staple has been the achilles heel of the Schwalbe tire in all three of Eric, Ben, and I’s tires. I flatted another tube because I didn’t remove the staple at first, but I just patched the tube when I made it to camp.

KOA isn’t everything that I had hoped for, but it’s a campsite nonetheless. Tomorrow should be a decent day. We’re aiming for 85 miles. Hopefully we have similar weather.

So, yesterday I was still not feeling that great. It seems that the less rest and the more work I do, the less well I feel. I decided I wasn’t going to be able to make it for the day and I think that was a pretty good decision. Eric and Ben did 125 miles yesterday. There is no way I could have done that in the condition I was in.

We were staying at Eric’s Aunt and Uncle’s house for the night, so that gave me some options. I decided to go to the hospital because I felt like I should be feeling better at this point and if nothing else I would figure out exacty what was wrong. Eric’s mom thought I may have been dehydrated. Anyway, Janet was nice enough to take me to the small Harvey, ND Hospital.

They did the full range of tests on me including: vitals, blood work, urine analysis, and x-ray of my belly. Turns out that my vitals were fine, my red blood cell count was a little low, my white blood cells were definitely working, I was well-hydrated and my electrolytes were good for the most part. The x-rays didn’t show any parasites lurking in my stomach so that was good too. After about two hours there I went back to Janet’s house, ate some lunch, and took a three hour nap.

Janet had graciously offered to drive me to Hope, ND to meet up with Eric and Ben because I couldn’t bike. So, we drove and it was great being able to talk to her in the car. We saw an awesome full-length rainbow, and then even a double rainbow as we were entering some darker clouds! However, we didn’t realize that te rainbows we were entering merely gateways into some of the worst rain/hail I’ve been in! It poured. And I was hoping the guys hadn’t biked through this stuff. Fortunately, it didn’t last long and it was clear the rest of the way.

We ate in a small diner in Hope, ND and settled in an abandoned RV park (no water, toilets, or electricity).

I had no choice but to ride. And we woke up in the the middle of a huge rainstorm… We were planning on getting an early start by leaving at 7:30 because we had 90 miles to do today. When we woke up to the constant pitter-patter of rain on our tent that early start got pushed back.

We hoped that the rain would pass but after a look at the radar, we knew there was no chance. The storm covered almost all of western North Dakota. This also meant we would be facing rain for most or all of the day. Eventually we started getting ready and had some breakfast in the safety of our tent. We regretably took down the tent and packed up. We would have a long day ahead of us.

Adorned in our rain gear, we endured the rain for 43 miles to the small town of Stanley. It seemed to take forever. The rain acted like the blinders of a horse–it tunneled my vision, and I was only concerned about going forward, one slow mile at a time. We averaged no more than 12.5 mph this first stretch. Finally, we found refuge from the cold rain in a small restaurant called Frostee’s Treats. There we were greeted with a smile and a warm towel. While waiting for our order, we shot the breeze with some local oil workers. One guy was a trucker that said he worked 157 hours a week. Pretty intense–definitely not the kind of life I would enjoy.

We again, reluctantly, left the warmth and comfort of the restaurant and went back to trudging along the noisy highway. It was no easy task going another 50 miles. Most of the time we were riding on a shoulder 8 inches wide between the jarring rumble strips to our left and wet gravel on our right. This is some of the most mind-numbing biking that I’ve done. At least this time, I was armed with an ipod to distract my mind a little. The afternoon went a little faster as the hills flattened out and we picked up the pace, averaging about 14 mph. At around 4:15, the rain relented and the sun started to peek through the clouds–how glorious this was! So, after about 7 hours of rain, it finally started to clear and our spirits definitely lifted, but it was still a grind to finish the day.

We finally made it into Minot, ND and heard of a great Chinese buffet, so we went to China Star for dinner. It was indeed a great Chinese buffet along with a Mongolian BBQ station too. We stuffed replenished our bodies and left quite full. Sam definitely missed out (he loves Chinese food and has been hoping for a buffet for quite some time). It was a fitting end to a long day, and then we went to our homestay that we arranged for the night.

We stayed at at house thanks to the hospitality of a lady named Cindy. I took one of the best/most needed showers of my life, hung around chatting, and did our laundry for the night. We retired in comfy beds to our great pleasure knowing that the next day would be much easier.

Today we have been sitting at a Starbucks, waiting for the bike shop to open at 9. We have 73 miles to put in, it is sunny, warm, and we have a tailwind. All good things. Definitely looking forward to today a lot more.

Also, I am feeling a lot better. I’m not 100%, but I was at least able to ride not-too-uncomfortably for 7.5 hours yesterday, and will probably be fine today.

Well, I was feeling a little better this morning, and I really wanted to bike into North Dakota, so I decided to bike and see how I felt at lunch. We rode over a lot of rolling hills which for whatever reason aggravate my stomach cramps, so that wasn’t too great of an experience and then I really just felt fatigued–I could only a fraction of what I felt like I should be doing. Nevertheless, I pushed through the North Dakota border and into Williston, ND where we stopped for lunch at McDonald’s.

I could only eat two McChicken’s where the other guys easily spent $5-7 on $1 items. The only reason I really eat is because I know I need to. Although for dinner, chicken noodle soup and applesauce goes down really well. I decided to ride out the rest of the ride with Ryan because him and Sam are headed back to KC for a wedding and I won’t have a ride tomorrow. I will either feel better or I will have to suck it up. Ryan and I got to camp early in the afternoon and I just napped in the tent for a while and he did some work. The rest of the evening has been fun taking some epic pictures and hanging out near the lake. We got lots of food at Walmart because you feel like you can buy so much there compared to the small town groceries. I bought almost twice as much stuff at half the price. It makes our panniers heavier, but it’s probably worth it.

Hopefully tomorrow goes well. I think we are looking at 90 miles for tomorrow and an early start. Early starts are definitely better though–it’s never much fun getting into camp at 7 or 8 o’clock. It seems like we’ve been doing this for a long time, but we’re only a third of the way through the trip and still have a long ways to go. It’s definitely become more of a lifestyle and a lot more comfortable.

So, my sickness did not abate even after 11 hours of sleep. Fortunately, Ryan was right on our heels, so I was able to wait for him to catch up and just hitch a ride. It really sucks being sick and missing out on the ride, but I know that riding while sick would be even worse. Hopefully, this day of rest is enough to get me back on the bike, but we’ll see.

So far, Ryan and I have just gone ahead to the next city. First, we stopped in Wolf Point, MT for lunch. We sat at the restaurant until the guys arrived, then ordered our food. I couldn’t even finish my burger and hardly ate any of my fries, but Sam, Eric, and Ben were happy to clean my plate. Next, Ryan and I drove to Poplar, MT where we turned on our iPods to search for a wifi signal. We found a couple and decided to settle in at Frostees where they have a pretty decent wifi connection. So, now we are downloading LOST because we are probably the only LOST fans in the world who haven’t seen the finale yet.

So, this day I woke up in our hotel not feeling so well. I had had some cold chills during the night and woke up with a headache and a lot of soreness not related to my legs. But we had 70 some miles to go anyway and I didn’t have any other option but to go on. After a while I was also experiencing stomach cramps early on in the ride. These cramps sucked, but I fought through them all day. They only occurred occasionally, buy I felt out of it all day. At some points on the bike, I almost felt like I was going to faint and I wouldn’t have been surprised to have thrown up at any given point.

We also had some mechanical problems. Eric sheered off his rack bolt 10 miles outside the next town. So, he carried his right pannier on his back for those 10 miles (which didn’t seem too comfortable).

From Montana

When we go to Saco, every store was closed because of Memorial Day. We met a group of men touring west on the Lewis and Clarke trail with their sagg vehicles. These men were all in their 70s, so even though they were travelling light, they were still pretty hardcore. They weren’t able to help us out with Eric’s hardware issues, so we split up Eric’s pannier between the rest of us so it would be light enough on his rack and pushed to Glasgow where Eric could get some help from a hardware store.

Ben also had some issues of his own. He thought his back tire was losing pressure, so he stopped to pump it up several times. Eventually, he and Sam stayed behind to possibly change the tube, so Eric and I went ahead to Glasgow to set up camp. Ben and Sam weren’t too far behind. We stayed at the Cottonwood Inn Suites which was a motel/RV park. So it was kinda weird camping next to a parking lot, but at least we had hot showers and electricity.

I went to bed around 8:30 or 9pm because I felt like I was dying or something. The sunset was pretty great, but I didn’t want to get out of the tent because it was so cold, so I just poked my head out.

From Montana

We started out the day only expecting to do 41 miles, so we got a late start from our nice hotel. We dominated the continental breakfast, then took some time getting ready and saying our goodbyes to the Koehler’s. We were so grateful for their help the last two days and we’ll all miss Jeff a lot. He was such a servant on the trip and a huge blessing to us all.

So, we finally got out of the hotel around 11am and set out NE toward Fort Benton, MT. We were expecting the same conditions as yesterday but we were pleasantly surprised to find parting clouds, intermittent sunshine, and only a slight amount of drizzle! On top of that, we had a really strong crosswind that at times acted as a tailwind. This helped speed up the trip to Fort Benton and we were all feeling fairly good so we decide to keep going farther.

We stopped at a gas station to figure out the best place for lunch in town. We were pointed a place called The Clubhouse and had a nice, reasonably priced meal. Our waitress was a huge help in helping us figure out where to go on to from Fort Benton. We were advised several times not to camp in the Indian reservation, so we finally narrowed our options down to Big Sandy or Havre. Havre was another 74 miles away so Big Sandy sounded good. We also talked to the judge of the town and he was pretty helpful figuring things out as well. Aan offered for us to sleep in his grain silo ah Big Sandy if we need but we were planning on staying in the city park.

So, we set out again, somewhat recovered. My knee/right leg were hurting some. It was a weird pain, not like I’d had before, but I fought through. Unfortunately we encountered more hills after Fort Benton and more crosswind rather than tailwind so it was slow going andy knee was hurting worse. Eventually, I popped four Ibuprofen, which coupled with a nice downhill and some tailwind helped my leg feel a lot better.

After making to Big Sandy, we looked for some food and talked to some of the locals walking the streets. They recommended the Mint Cafe. It was a nice enough place and it just so happened that the people that recommended it were eating there to and decided to sit with us! They were Muriel, an elderly woman, and Jessica, Muriel’s soon-to-be granddaughter-in-law.

After finishing our meals, we headed over to the city park to set up camp, however the ground was completly soaked. But just before we could complain, Muriel stopped by and asked us if we would like a shower. Of course we would! Soon after we finished our showers, we had an offer to sleep in their garage (which happens to be heated), and we gladly accepted. The generosity of the people we meet along this trip has continued to amaze us. It is so great. So now we have a warm place to stay and mattresses to sleep on!

Tomorrow might be another long day. We can either go 50, 100, or 125 depending on the weather and how we feel, but hopefully we’ll get an early start and have a tailwind to take us farther. The days should be getting warmer and that will definitely be a welcome change.

By the way, internet is very limited out here so pictures will have to wait.

Worst day of riding yet, although we had a good start and finish.

We planned on eating breakfast at one of the restaurants in town. So, after checking out the first one for prices (they were way too high), the waitress actually recommended that we check out The Pit Stop at the other end of town.

From Montana

So, we did, and what a great decision it was. I got a huge portion of biscuits and gravy, two slices of french toast, and coffee all for $7.50 including tip (the coffee was complimentary with food!).

From Montana

So, after eating and once again gearing up for the cold, we were ready with high spirits to tackle our next pass.

From Montana

And we did tackle it quite well. With the panniers in the Koehler’s van, we were limber and nimble as we fought through rain, sleet, and snow to make it to the top of Roger’s Pass and the Continental Divide.

From Montana

From Montana

Nature Break…  From Montana

From Montana

From Montana

From there, the ride went downhill–both literally and figuratively. As we descended Roger’s Pass, we were freezing and shaking and pretty much hating the weather. Ben’s extremities were too cold so he rode in the van for a while. The rest of us trudged on through some more (unexpected) climbs through Montana.

From Montana

And the rain never stopped. The cold never warmed. And our hands and feet remained numb. After a period of time, we conceded and let the van shuttle us off to Great Falls. However, we couldn’t all fit, so Ben and I volunteered to continue biking until the van could return from Great Falls to pick us up.

From Montana

We rode for at least another hour and half. I felt good through most of it (my rain jacket is a champ!), but eventually I was longing for a hot shower and warm clothes.

We finally got picked up and shuttled to the Hampton Inn where we were greeted with hot showers, a dryer to dry our clothes, a hot tub, and golden corral for dinner. Definitely a nice way to end a miserable day of biking. Abel refused the shuttle and made it to the hotel at 6:30pm and is staying with us for the night. Hot breakfast and possibly 2nd breakfast in the morning, then another 41 miles in this nastiness, but we have another motel awaiting us, so hopefully tomorrow won’t be so bad.

Update 5/28/2010 10:47pm: Finished Day 9 and Day 10 summary and pictures!

Okay, so I haven’t been able to update recently, but the other guys have been doing a pretty good job. A lot has happened, and I’m going to try to put up a quick summary and my thoughts for the days that I haven’t posted.

Day 4: Plymouth, WA to Dayton, WA

We had a pretty nerve-wracking day–riding on the highway with heavy traffic was not fun and added to that was some miserable, dreary weather. We stopped at a winery finally (we had passed up several others), and it turns out that it was a very good decision.

From Washington

We tried seven different wines and finally bought a bottle of Semillon for $13.

After climbing through some beautiful hills on Middle Waitsburg Rd, we went on a incredible descent into Waitsburg, WA where we encountered a “Caution: Brewery Ahead” sign and just had to stop. Sam does a good job explaining the encounter here. It really is incredible the people that we meet and the generosity that they have given us. It truly makes us want to return that generosity when we are able.

From Washington

From Washington

Day 5: Dayton, WA to Clarkestown, WA

After making a delicious breakfast courtesy of Joanne’s kitchen and checking out the goats/cheese farm, we got a late start (but it was definitely worth it). We biked for a while and and had a picnic in the Powell, WA city park. I was really hurting at this point and could’ve really used a rest day, but we were pressing on nonetheless. We had planned a really hard climb for the next day, but it would be shorter. I was both mentally and physically exhausted this day and the climb up to Alpowa Summit after lunch was extremely demoralizing. It was one of the hardest things of the trip up to this point, but I made it.

From Washington

It was a long and fun descent and honestly quite a relief. We had a warmshowers host awaiting us and that really kept me pushing. Our host, Laura, was so great. We camped in her backyard, had dinner, beer, wine, dessert, did our laundry, got a good rest, and then had a great breakfast prepared for us in the morning!

From Washington

From Washington

Laura was such a blessing and it was great to meet her and her son Kyle. She was so generous and helpful, and it was a lot of fun hearing all of her touring stories!
Day 6: Clarkeston, WA to Kamiah, ID
After talking to Laura, we figured out that we definitely did not have to go through the hills in order to get to Lolo Pass, but we could go through the river gorge on Highway 12. This meant that we would have a super-flat day that was so much easier than what I was expecting the day before. This was a huge lift to my spirits. I was sore, but going through the river gorge was gorgeous and definitely not as dangerous as others had made it out to be. We had prayed for safety especially with a supposedly dangerous highway, and we had very little traffic and anyone that did pass us gave us a generous amount of space!

From Washington

From Washington

Our Kamiah RV Park campsite turned out to be really nice. It had benches by the riverside and I was able to get some much-needed alone time to journal and think and pray without all the distractions that the bike trip offers. It was a great night.

Day 7: Kamiah, ID to Wilderness River Park, ID

Once again we were blessed with easy traffic on Highway 12 as we continued through Idaho. We stopped for some much needed lunch at one of the infrequent stops along the way in Powell, ID.

We had some excellent lunch and added to some of our awesome experiences. From Sam:

1.) The guy sitting behind us (who had an awesome truck) didn’t finish all his fries.. so we took them off his table after he had left and finished them off..
We were a little tired at the time.. so it was hilarious..

2.) We met a rep from the Jelly Belly company and she gave us a bunch of bags of jelly beans! She said that if we wanted to bike the extra 60 miles to her house that she would give us as much as we wanted..! we considered the offer pretty heavily.. but decided that cycling the entire day just for a bunch of jelly beans might not be completely worth it.. But we were pretty pumped for the ones she gave us!

We eventually made it to our most low-tech campsite so far where a shower did not await us. We did have our first chance to set up “Tarp City” and get away from the rain. This was the first time we were really in the “backcountry” because we had no cell phone service and any good/services were becoming few and far in between.

From Idaho

From Idaho

Day 8: Somewhere in ID to Lolo, MT

We set out to complete our first major climb and it was a doosy. It took 40 some miles to even make it to the approach to Lolo Pass. We did eventually make it Lolo Pass and entered the Mountain Time Zone but only after we stopped for another great lunch at Lochsa Lodge where we met a fellow cycling tourist, Ed. It was great talking to him and hearing his stories. The people that we meet along the way are definitely making the trip so much more worth it.

From Montana

From Montana

Day 9: Lolo, MT to Harper Lake, MT

From Montana

After leaving Lolo, we had a short ride into Missoula where we had some fun and took our time in the city. We first stopped at a Missoula Cycle Works to work out any kinks in our bikes and buy some energy packs. Turns out that I had broken a spoke a day or so earlier so I was able to get it fixed within the hour at the shop–very convenient.

After the bike shop we biked over to the Adventure Cycling headquarters where we were greeted with free ice cream, pop, a picture on their wall, and a tour of the map making process. Missoula turned out to be quite the stop. We also met Rich, a retiree biking from Astoria to Michigan. We had heard of him from Ed so it was cool to meet him and hear his story.

From Montana

After leaving Missoula around 1pm, we had a tough headwind (one of our first) to fight through in order to barely make it to a gas station on the corner of a highway junction where we learned of a campsite a couple miles north on Harper Lake (although the lady said it was a quarter mile..). Before we made it we stopped by the river for lunch (the McDonald’s cheeseburgers that we had bought during 2nd breakfast earlier that day). This was a much needed break.

From Montana

Finally, we stocked up on food at the gas station and headed to camp, but we forgot to fill up on water, so we had to make do with reserves at camp. Sam, Jeff, and I had canned chili which was actually pretty good. I’m not really sure how it affected us later, but it seems like everything you eat on a bike trip is bad for the digestive system. We were getting an early start the next morning, so we hit the tent pretty quickly to journal. I found out that it is nearly impossible for Sam to journal if someone is looking at him, so I had a fun time bugging him by just staring at him (or at least seeming to be staring at him). Jeff, Sam, and I joked around for a while before finally falling asleep on probably the coldest night outside yet.

Day 10: Harper Lake, MT to Lincoln, MT

Our first really nasty Montanan day started out around 30-some degrees and raining.

From Montana

We immediately stopped at the same gas station from yesterday and stocked up on 2nd breakfast supplies, hand/foot warmers, water, and latex gloves that the cashier was kind enough to give us. Ben used an innovative method to waterproof his hands…

From Montana

So, we endured the cold, wet day as much as possible. We were fighting the wind once again and were just trying to make it Lincoln for lunch.

From Montana

From Montana

Jeff’s parents, David and Kathy, were going to meet up with us sometime this day and they did with perfect timing about 9 miles before Lincoln. They took our panniers to lighten our load and we were very grateful.

By the time we were entering Lincoln, it started pouring and everyone was pretty much dead. There was no way we were going to make it any farther that day, so we splurged on our first motel after having the best lunch of the trip at The Montanan Steakhouse. We ventured to the local laundromat to wash/dry our clothes. There we met another cycling tourist, Able, who is coming from California along the same route as us and heading to South Dakota, his hometown. He seems to be much better outfitted than us (front panniers and a kickstand, which we are figuring out is quite handy). Otherwise we just hung out at the motel for the rest of the night. We got some microwave dinners for supper and updated pictures, blogs, and videos. A good, warm night.