Jeff's Northwest TourJust another Myadventr.com weblog

I haven’t stated this up to this point but the reason why my parents showed up randomly in Montana (very conveniently I might add) is because they are taking me home now.  To answer your question of “Why would you leave such an amazing tour with such Awesome guys!?” I will explain.  And to your question I would agree, it does sound like a horrible to not continue.  But… it comes down to money.  I couldn’t really afford to spend the amounts of money that is required to finish the trip and afford the opportunity cost of not working.  It was a seriously tough decision to make but I chose to be thankful for what God gives me.  Even if it is only 2 weeks.  On the bright side of everything, I’ve never biked even close to this far in such a short amount of time and met so many cool/interesting people and shared so many laughs with a close knit group of brothers.

We woke up on day 11 and were slightly intimidated by the weather. And for gooood reason.  After breakfast we rode into the slight slight off-and-on drizzle on a road that lead directly to the continental divide. As we got closer and closer to divide the drizzle turned into snow and the temps dropped to around 30 degrees. We stopped for a photo-op at the Continental divide sign at the top and then it was time to decend.  For people who don’t bike much… decending is the coldest part of cycling on a cold day.  You aren’t pedaling (which keeps you warm) and you’re also being hitting by frigid air that cuts through several layers if you’re unlucky.  At the bottom of this 2.5 plus mile decent we stopped to asses the damage and found that most of us riders (including my dad) were underdressed and really cold.  As usual, we just pushed on in hopes that the sun was about to brighten up our days.  

We were dissapointed. The snow turned to rain again as the temps raised to around 35-38 degrees.  The wind picked up and the flats that we hoped for ended up being super long climbs that rivaled the continental divide climb itself that we had experienced earlier in the day.  I can without 1 doubt in my mind say that those last few minutes of biking that day for me were the hardest pedal strokes of the whole trip.  After only about 40 miles our team stopped to reconsider our options….Try to camp/ continue biking to Great falls Montana=freeze to death or get shuttled to a hotel in great falls by my folks= bruised pride but life.  The only hitch was, we had to leave 2 men from our team to suffer in the rain and cold while we drove 50 miles to the hotel and back to pick them up.  Scott and Ben chose to suffer for us. 
         John 15:13
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
I’m endoubted to those men for love us so well! By the end of the day we were all shacked up in a hotel for the second night in a row!

What a way to end an Awesome adventure! Sure it could have been nicer weather but is that what bike touring is all about? 

The night prior to this day left us at around 40 miles to get to Lincoln, Monatan, which was where we were going to possibly have lunch and meet up with my parents.

After less than 2 miles, our group stopped at a gas station to “water proof” and to layer up.  It was the coldest riding conditions that we had riden in up to that point and it was drizzling.  We did everything that we could to stay dry.  Those of us who didn’t have waterproof gloves (oh yeah, that’s all of us haha) slipped our fat gloved fingers into another pair of latex gloves that the sweet gas station attendant gave us.  I studiply put on two jerseys under my rain jacket. 

After we got to riding we stopped to “de-layer” which is a technical term for saying that we wore way too much clothing a gain and that we’re sweating like a pick so we have to take clothes off really fast! Long story short again, I stripped down to 1 jersey, I soaked it out because it steamy in my rain jacket, I changed jerseys and soaked that one too.  To be honest this was tough ride that we took on that morning.  I think that there was something in each of us young men that said “I really signed up for this!?! I must have been crazy”.  Wind in the face, cold, raining at times and steamy in the jacket. Rough! Luckily my parents drove up right when we all needed encouragement. 

Our group plus my parents stayed at Lincoln for the night because when we were about 3 miles to the town the rain came down with a vengence! We had planned to do 90 miles-ish and ended up stopping at 40 because the rain + cold (equation)= hypothermia (especially if you try to camp in it).  It was much needed rest though.  And rest that happened in motel room!!

We got to bike to Missoula Montana on this day.  It was quite a nice change from biking through what I would consider backcountry roads where we only see people when we stop at the very infrequent quick shop.  In Missoula we stopped at Walmart, McDonalds (for second-breakfast and for lunch items), a really cool bike shop and the Adventure Cyling headquarters. 

Our first two stops in that city need no explaination.  But afer we got to  bike shop (Missoula Bicycle Works) I found that Scott had a broken spoke. Amazing timeing to find that out! That got that fixed and some of the guys bought a few things as well as all of us getting our drive trains cleaned up.  Now this may sound really strange but I really relish the chance to go into a cool bike shop and this one was really cool. Props to Missoula Bicycle works! They had cool bikes, a cool setting (in the monatana mountains, surrounded by loads of single track trails (super jealous!)), and they had a lounge comple with tv (playing a sweet mtb video), barstool seating and a couch.  My only concern is how they ever get stuff done with cool videos always playing a couch that calls you to it. haha

The Adventure cycling stop produced an equally cool vibe.  The people that worked there gave us soda, ice cream cones and cookies abundant upon arrival.  A tour of their facilities followed.  It was reall neat to see how the maps that we had been using/trusting our lifes with the last couple weeks were made. 

Missoula is a college town.  This is probably why the vibe was different in some ways.  There were tons of people riding bikes, which is always a plus in my mind.  Missoula is a place that I want to visit again if I’m up North.

The few days prior we had some pretty hard riding days, especially on the 8th day.  We rode over Lolo pass, which is about a 7 or 8 mile climb. You think the thing is never going to end! Eric decided to really drop the hammer and left us in his dust before the climb even started.  This played psychological games with me the whole time I was suffering up the pass.  As I climbed in a slow-going/ light gear, I would start to feel a little bit of power build up in my legs and I’d think “maybe I can up a gear so I can catch up to Eric”.  That never happened. In fact, each time I’d surge to go faster I only fatigued myself more. This fatigue lasted for several days unfortuneately.  By the end of that day we had climbed around 3,300 ft. Yep!

“Wala Wala”

The night of the 3rd day happened to bring quite a funny story that I should probably touch on. We managed to do 88 miles on the 3rd day, ending up at Plymouth Washington.  This is where we met a very interesting person.

As we arrived at our camp ground for the night we stopped at the camp ground checkin and met Billy Jones, the man at the check in booth. He didn’t seem to like us one bit regaurdless of how nice we were to him.  It was actually pretty funny.  This man warned us about his sprinklers.  He told us several times that we should pitch our tents on a specified “tent pad” and not on the grass because the sprinklers kicked on ever week night.  The only problem that we had with that was that the “tent pads” were gravel bottomed. Gravel would be horrible to sleep on and wouldn’t allow us to stake our tents.  Finally after aproval and a small smirk from him we tented up right next to the tent pads. We thought, worst case… our tents get a little wet like they had the couple days previous.

The story picks up at 1:30am… 

Sam, Scott and myself are in our tent and are awken by a violent spray screaming across our tent.  The water was angry and was trying to tear its way in.  Moments later we hear Eric say “Oppp, I’m wet I’m wet.” Eric and Ben had planted their tent just a couple feet from one of the high powered sprinklers. What we all hadn’t accounted for was that sprinklers spray up; hence, spray right up the vent in your rain fly haha.

The tent that I was in was luckily placed far enough away to evade the internal moiture like Eric and Ben had to deal with.

This particular morning (Day 4) we woke up at the sprinkler war zone, after it had subsided, we had a good laugh about the battle that occured the night before, then hit the road. We quickly found our first obsticle of the day.  We needed to cross a large river and it was looking like we had to take a really dangerous (and when I say dangerous I mean really dangerous. Us ”invincible” college kids felt threatened) road to get to the other side. So before we took off for our Evel Knievel ride we decided to do what we do, pray.  As we road down the highway towards scariness, God delivered like he did with Isaac and the Lamb.

Most of the rest of this riding day was just kinda blah.  A few of riders even had a conversation where all agreed that something really cool was going to have to happen in order for the day to be a very memorable one. And boy did it!

First- we discovered how unbelievably gorgeous Washington can be! As we rode our bikes we found the terrain to change again, as it often had the few day prior.  The lanscape turned into nothing that I had ever seen before.  We were riding down country roads, in between farm fields on either side, for as far as you could see.  The thing that was so different than Nebraska or Kansas fields that I’ve seen in the past is how hilly this land was.  But it was hilly in a way that could still be farmed.  Really the only way that I can describe the scenary is to say that is was right out of a Dr. Seuss book.  I also suggest that you check out our pictures on our picasa site.

From here we met some super cool people at a brewery. Ree, Todd and Eric. After a couple hours of visiting, beer and Pizza they had decided that it was too dark for us to safely navigate our way to our camp site.  So they did a few better than that.  They put our bikes in Eric’s truck and drove us to their friend Joan’s house.  This is where I suggest you cross read some of the other guy’s blogs and watch the videos because I can’t really do justice to how crazy this story actually got. Long story short, Joan let us stay in a Sauna that resided on her property behind a feild of goats and a chicken coop.  We then got to eat an amazing breakfast at her house complimentary of her boundless hospitality. Thanks Joan!

Needless to say, the day ended up being one of the most memorable of the trip.

Today was rather eventless. We had a delicious tail wind the entire time that we road.

Random things: We’ve been able to eat an unbelievable amount of food each day and continue to eat whenever we find a place to pick up some extra food.  So to anyone who was nervous about us not eating enough- we sure are!

- Sleeping has actually been amazing despite what many may think.  Not too cold,  not too hot, not to hard either.

- I found a funny dynamic amongst our group.  Sam and Ben have gearing on the bikes that make them attack the hills out of necessity.  While Scott and Eric have a huge gear range that allows them to slowly and wisely spin their way to the top of each accent. I however find my most comfortable climbing right in between both extremes. So, I usually get to climb all by myself, which is good for my pray-life.

I think the other guys hit on most of the highlights in there blogs but I was given the task of writing about one of my own personal highlight of the day.

We woke up from a fairly rainy night and got “on the road again.”  In the previous blog I mentioned how impossible it is to dry wet clothes in a wet environment; it’s at this point, when we riding that we can dry our stuff out on our bikes. We just strap anything that’s try to the outside of our racked items and let them dry as we ride.

That morning we got to ride on some really nice bike trails.  They are like normal bike trails but they went through rain foresty areas. Yeah, they kick the local Kansas bike paths butts! They’re windy and moist, and covered in green moss, and surrounded by huge trees and water falls. Amazing!

While we were on one of these bike paths we came to an obstruction which we were notified of by the person who was riding at the front of the pack at the moment.  The obstruction ended up being a flight of stair.  Now I bet you’re sitting at your computer thinking, “a flight of stairs, no problem. Just pick up your bikes and carry them down guys!” Anyone who thinks that clearly doesn’t understand how heavy our bikes are.  It’s a complete jokes! We each have around 50 pounds of gear plus a 20 plus pound bike. We’re a bunch of college guys and we have a tough time maneuvering these bikes around small spaces (ie not in a straight line, going down the road).

Back to our situation… We quickly figured out what was supposed to do. Along the stairs was a small  groove that we had to place our tires in and walk our aforementioned heavy bikes down about 5 small flights of stairs. You’ll just have to see the pictures of this one!

Today we got a real taste of what this whole touring thing is all about.  We got rained on most of the day and found that there are a few difficulties that come with the precipitation.

1. Rain jackets (for some of us) aren’t very breathable. So you can wear your rain jacket if it’s raining but if you’re putting forth much effort at all you’ll start to sweat all over the place and you’ll be wet no matter what.

2. Rain makes the ground wet, which makes it hard to set up camp without getting everything wet.

3. If you have a wet towel or have already wet clothes from riding in the rain it nearly impossible to dry them out. There’s now where to hang it outside and even if there was it’s way too humid to get anything done in the way of drying.

As for riding on the first day. We got to experience what it’s like to take on a rather long climb. 8 Miles up we rode until we got to a look out point.  It was here that Scott discovered that he was already missing a rack bolt. Luckily again, we were prepared with extra rack bolts.

The decent for the day way magnificent.  Swooping curves through practically a rain forest. I can’t find words to really describe how beautiful it was.  Also, the speed is quite stimulating.  We don’t get going fast enough to put ourselves in danger but it’s really nice to coast at around 25-35 MPH for up 10minutes down hill!!

Adventure, mixed with a little discomfort from the rain, equal more than we had even dreamed of.  It doesn’t get much better than this

My adventure started off monday morning pretty well; or at least until we got to the airport. Before we even checked our luggage I realized that I had forgotten one of the most important pieces of gear, my helmet. Luckily my dad, who was still at home was able to spring to action along with my mother to deliver my helmet to me just in time for me to board the plane.  That was a close one but even in this is was obvious to see God’s hand at work.

The plane ride itself was eventful in itself as well.  On our flight we made conversation with our friendly flight attendants Susan and Jane; who late, very graciously gave us a little extra protein in the form of about 3 lbs of airplane peanuts and pretzels. haha Needless to say, we’re still working on those on the 4th day.

On our way to Eric’s relatives house we got lost in the unbelievably kind and helpful city of Portland. In mid transit we also got soaked in down-pour and also encountered the steepest hill I’ve ever seen in my life.  I’m not kidding, this thing rivals the infamous Brass Town Bald in George which I’ve walked up too. To be really honest, it was hard to walk up. But that was the end of our long trip to get to our host family for the night. We quickly swallowed our pride of having to walk up a hill on our first day of our epic tour and also swallowed a lot of curry, rice, and pineapple in preparation for the days to come.