Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Monday June 29th

I never would have believed it. Someone sent a plague of mosquitos to greet us at our campground. We had heard other people talk about the mosquitos but figured they were just overreacting as they probably weren’t used to them. Why heck, we’re from Michigan! Now Michigan has mosquitos. Some of them big enough to carry away small children! Well the mosquitos here in Sula Montana aren’t nearly that big. But what they lack in size, they more than make up for in quantity. We’ve taken refuge in our tent so are safe for the remainder of the evening but you should have seen our dinner routine. And we even had mosquito repellent! The only defense if to keep moving so that’s what we did. We had to eat while walking around. We had to walk in circles to keep watch on the Ramen noodles. Fortunately it will probably be pretty cool in the morning so we should be able to make a clean getaway without having to deal with them. We currently are at an elevation of over 4000 feet above sea level. Tomorrow with a bit of pedaling we top out at our highest elevation so far. We’ll be climbing Chief Joseph Pass that will have us over 7000 feet high.

Now you’re asking yourself ‘What did they do during the riding portion of the day?’ An earlier than normal start had us away from the closed down motel/RV park/campgroung before 9:00. We hot-footed it into town to find an internet café and to get some coffee. This accomplishment meant we could now relax a bit. We took turns on the computer and read some e-mail. I had 4 or 5 cups of coffee, easily the most in one morning since leaving Shelton. Lewis and I walked the half mile to the post office to fetch the package that Moritz sent us. Everything was there as promised. Good job Moritz! It was after 10:00 when we finally pedaled away from Stevensville.

It was promising to be another beautiful day of cycling. There was abundant sunshine and as the wind picked up in intensity during the day, it was always behind us. We made good time reaching Corvalis where IceCream cones were enjoyed by Donna and Lewis. This was all of 16 miles. The next community we came to was a scant 6 miles further down the same road. In Hamilton we had some lunch, went to a playground (playground pictures), stopped at the Army Natiional Guard Armory (Tank pictures) and then hit my favorite spot in Hamilton, the local brewpub (Brewpub pictures). We had to have spent nearly 2 hours in town before getting back on the road. The remaining miles were covered with little or no effort as we are such superior athletes now (it also helped that the wind was blowing us towards our final destination). At just a bit after 7:00 we pulled into the Motel/RV/campground area that is doing a great job of keeping mosquitos. Total miles covered today: 58

That was our day. Tomorrow promises to be just a bit more challenging. We’re going to call it an early night so we can get an early start. Adios.

Monday, June 29, 2009

So long Missoula

Sunday June 28
I’m sitting in the lobby of the multiplex theatre in Missoula while Donna and Lewis are watching the movie that Lewis has been talking about for 4 weeks. I hope it lives up to his expectations. Donna was hoping to get him to change his mind and go for Ice Age 3. Aint gonna happen baby! Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen is it.
Donna and I had a quiet evening without Lewis. We were up and busy by 8:00. Breakfast and packing consumed most of the morning until about 10:00 which was when Lewis was supposed to be dropped off. Instead a phone call was made. The Doyles were delayed but were confident that they would get Lewis to us in time for the 12:30 matinee. They dropped him off at 12:10 which left us 20 minutes to pedal the 4 miles to the theatre. We made it with 3 minutes to spare,

The plan for the rest of the day involves a visit to Safeway, followed by a visit to Walmart, followed by a short ride of barely 25 miles to get to the town of Stevensville Montana. The reason we’re stopping there is because we had a parcel mailed to us from home general delivery at the Post Office in Stevensville. This package has a couple things that were lost during the fracas in Eugene. The most important item if you ask Lewis would be the charger for his game boy. He is still operating on the initial charge that he had when leaving Shelton. However, he’s used the gameboy sparingly as he realizes that it can’t be charged until we get another charger. Fortunately we had 2 spare chargers from other GameBoys that have previously been broken or lost. In addition the package should contain a pair of pajamas for Lewis. Also included should be a spare canister of asthma medicine for me and lastly a memory stick to use with this computer to transfer stuff. We have to thank Moritz and his parents for pulling all of these things together and getting them shipped off. Hopefully the package is waiting for us but unfortunately this is Sunday and we won’t be able to retrieve our package until tomorrow morning.

So that means that with a short day today, we’ll need to make up a few extra miles tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. Then we should be back on track. The topographical maps that we are relying on are looking easier and easier. While we will be steadily gaining elevation until we top out in Colorado at nearly 12,000 feet, the actual climbs are fewer and easier. Oregon and Idaho didn’t break us so we got it made!

We should be entering Yellowstone within a week. This was Donna’s initial break off point as she vowed to try and make it that far for Lewis’ benefit. Now that she has become conditioned, she’s gained enough confidence to actually think of completing this whole trip. It took her 3 weeks but we’re in it for the long haul now. I kept telling her that she would become accumstomed to the daily rituals of cycling and setting up camp and sleeping on the ground and breaking down camp but she was skeptical. Not any more.
I’m about ready to sign off and pack the computer back up. But before I do I’ll mention todays weather. Haven’t seen a cloud all day. The temperature is about 80. Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to put down just a few more words at the end of this short but beautiful day. No doubt I will be hearing quite a bit of what transpired during Transformers 2.

It is now about 8:00 in the evening and we are sitting in a pizza joint next door to where our tent is situated. Lewis is totally occupied with his new transformer action figure that was puchased at Walmart just after leaving the theatre. This was a promise fulfilled that has made his transformer day complete. Donna is in the restroom taking her “bath” and I’ll be going next. If you haven’t guessed, we’ve no shower tonite and also no bathrooms. The RV park that we were going to stay at is next door and yet it isn’t. It has been closed down. No one home. Nada.

After leaving the theatre we stopped first at Safeway and bought $30 worth of groceries. This is quite a bit to spend when you are traveling by bicycle. In fact, I believe it may just be a record for me. A 6 pack of Chicken Ramen Noodles, a couple boxes of Chicken Rice-a-Roni, a half dozen donuts, a half dozen bagels, a package of Oreos, a couple cans of tuna, 2 pounds each of green grapes and Washington Cherries, a package of Cherry Pop Tarts, a box of Quaker Granola bars, a pound of potato salad, and finally a 1 pound bag of sliced ham from the deli. We should be set for the next 2 days!

Our late lunch of ham and bagel sandwiches was conducted right in front of Safeway on a table that they put our their for people to use. So we did! The sandwiches were consumed along with the potato salad. Large doses of cherries and grapes followed. Four pounds of fresh fruit is a lot to haul around even if you’re not traveling by bike.

After our late lunch (after 4:00) we headed over to Walmart to make a couple purchases that can only be done at a Walmart. Besides the previously mentioned action figure, we purchased a replacement pair of casual shoes for Donna to go with her evening gown that has the pretty rose tiarra! Donna found some Birkenstocks at the St Vincent DePaul second hand store in Eugene and felt she had scored a win with this purchase. Unfortunately one of the clogs was split from the bottom of the sole and this was not obvious upon our first inspection. It was only after wearing them a few times that she realized that stones and grit and sticks and stuff somehow kept making their way into her shoes. So we didn’t score on that particular purchase but some of the other second hand clothing has become part of our primary wardrobe. I digress. Sorry. She bought some cheap water shoes at Walmart and I got some mosquito repellent.

It’s now 5:00 and we are still in Missoula. We have a short ride of 25 miles to get to Stevensville, so we get to it. This was a difficult ride for Lewis as he kept thinking about that action figure in his mother’s handlebar bag that was just begging to be manipulated into some other creature. He must have asked to stop every 15 minutes. The ride took almost 3 hours as we had to struggle with a headwind. Finally pulled into the RV park only to find it deserted as previously mentioned. I inquired about the RV park at the Pizza joint and they were the ones to break the news. They didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t stay there as no other options were available. We are now back in our tent after finishing a pepperoni pizza. The waitress was kind enough to let us throw the remaindeer of our pound of ham onto the freshly baked pizza, Man that was a good pizza! Tomorrow morning its Safeway Donuts followed by a visit to the post office, then we hit the road hoping to rack up another 60 plus mile day. Good night!

Bonus Material (installment #2)

Day #26
I get to go see transformers tomorrow. The Doyel family might come and take us to get pizza anyway. It was such a short day. We only rode to Missoula. We went by the headquarters of da!da!da! adventure cycling. I got to see dads long beard. Wait a second, ooow! Yay the Doyles just called and there going to pick us up. Maybe we get to sleep over at the friends house.

Day #27
I’m taking the day off. I got to ride a quad today and I almost fell for the second time. I try’d yousing a suzuki for going up hill side ways. My word of the day is equine. Its another word for a horse. Angela told me that. Angela is frejas mom. Freja is sams friend. Sam is my friend I met him at the cafiteria at school. He asked me to get him cetchup. I’ll change the subject. Wooh!!! 9-1-1! 9-1-1-!! Were surrounded by mosquitos!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Bonus Material (at no extra charge)

The following is an entry taken verbatim from the personal journal of our little man, Lewis Jackson. I only wish you could see the illustrations that he has strategically placed along the margin of the page. I also wish that his handwriting was a bit better as it is a struggle to identify a few of the words. We'll definitely have to work on that as he will be in fourth grade this fall. No more excuses!

I encourage each of you followers to comment on his work. Any encoouragement that comes his way will make this journal writing task that we've forced on him that much easier. In addition, I'm hoping that this will inspire Donna to finally add her two cents worth as well. Both Donna and Lewis have been keeping private journals and some encouragement may inspire the both of them to contribute on a more regular basis. This can only increase the satisfaction that you, the readers, will take away from this blog. And now without further ado:

day #24 48 miles

Im so excited for today and Ill be more excited the 26th. the 24th is when transformers revenge of the fallen comes out the 26th is when I get to see it. I saw some really cool rafters and some really small kayaks. The kayaks can flip and go right back up. Anjin and Lucia have kayaks and a fun game called bochi ball you roll the ball and whoever ends up closest to the white ball wins

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Trials and Tribulations and Suprises in Missoula

Friday June 26

Our day began with a whimper and progressed from there. As previously mentioned, Donna and I had interrupted sleep due to cold feet. So when things started warming up we were finally able to doze off. Too late! We awoke with a start when realizing that it was 9:00 in the morning. This is the latest we had slept since leaving Shelton. And we’re supposed to meet Julie at Adventure Cycling around 1:00. So we hurriedly pack up and get over to the bar where we spent part of last night. We were hoping to snag a quick breakfast and be on the road by 10:00 or so. This is when we realized the rumors of the water quality issues were actually not rumors. The Health Department had closed down the restaurant until further notice as the establishment has to install a chlorination system to insure the water quality. In an effort to keep customers from complaining too much they have instituted a complimentary continental breakfast. We had a few muffins and bagels and coffee and milk for Lewis which took all of 10 minutes. We made our self imposed deadline of 10:00 with 15 minutes to spare.

The first 15 miles were slightly downhill with a pleasant tailwind. The clouds were abundant but non threatening. We stopped a bit later for a picture at Fort Fizzle where Lewis learned about entrenchments and how the US Cavalry used them in an attempt to wipe out the fleeing Nez Perce Indians. The tactic failed as the retreating Indians skirted the Army by sneaking around them. The placque describes this as a battle that neither side wanted to pursue. I guess that’s why they named the place Fort Fizzle.

We got back on the bikes and another 5 miles down the road we came to our first real town in several days. This would be LoLo Montana. Over 3000 people live in or around LoLo. We chose not to stop in order to pedal into Missoula for lunch instead. It was only another 8 miles and it was approaching 12:30. With a bit more effort than I expected, we pulled into Missoula at just a few minutes past 1:00. Our meeting point to touch base with Julie (Adventure Cyling Headquarters) is located in Old Downtown Missoula which is on the opposite side of town. This took us another 20 minutes but we managed to pull in by 1:30. They had been expecting us so were prepared to rush us through the usual routine that they have for visiting cyclists. When I mentioned that this was a return visit for me, Greg Siple (photographer at AC) went to the vaults and retrieved the pictures of me that were taken 13 years prior. Some of you have seen the photos of the Alaskan Adventure and will have an idea of what my appearance was. To the uninitiated, the closest resemblance would be to think of Charles Manson and add just a few more pounds. Lewis has seen these pictures before but was still surprised to see the maniacal snapshot of me that Greg pulled out of their vault.

We ate the complimentary ice-cream, filled out release forms and were just about ready to leave when Greg found out about our incident in Eugene. I have been intentionally leaving this detail out of any conversations that I’ve had since the day we left Eugene. Donna and Lewis are still reliving that by sharing it with complete strangers. Anyways, this might have been the trigger to get them interested enough in our trip to possibly put us in the magazine or at least feature us on their on-line version. Otherwise we were just another group of cyclists passing through. I’ll have to fill out the post bike ride questionaire that Greg said I failed to do after my first visit to Missoula. Oh well, I got enough publicity out of that bike ride to win the attention of one Donna Jean Wardin from Hemlock Michigan.

Julie was patiently waiting for us to conclude our photo shoot and then we all pedaled away from AC headquarters towards the house of Julie and Ron Huck. Julie rides to work as every good employee at AC does! A mile or so later we pull into their driveway and deposit our bikes in the backyard beside their deck. We will not be needing these for at least 36 hours and are looking forward to the opportunity to put our walking legs back on again.

Julie gave us a 5 minute tour of the house and then in a frenzy she began packing for her weekend on the water. Both Julie and Ron are avid outdoors people and their house is a veritable shrine dedicated to the adventurous lifestyle they lead. Whether mountain climbling, kayaking, or mountain biking; it’s obvious that they work and live in Missoula in order to enjoy the outdoors during their free time. We wished her a fond farewell and then she was gone. A half hour later her husband Ron arrived and it was pretty much the same routine. He spent a little more time around home but we were on our way out to get our late lunch early dinner so we likewise only spent a short while with him. We chose to eat at ElDiablo, a taco burrito place within walking distance of the Huck household. After our delicious pulled pork burritos we wandered over the the Harvest Grains bread store and puchased a loaf of Dakota bread for $5 and a package of scones and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Our last stop was at the Grizzly Grocery store for a dozen eggs and a package of ham. We were now prepared to spend the next day and a half in quiet seclusion in our own little house in Missoula.

When we returned to Ron and Julie’s place he was just preparing to depart. It is such an odd feeling that people could trust almost complete strangers with probably their most valuable posession. But for the second time now, it’s happened. When we’ve hosted bicyclists we have always accomodated them and included them in our lives. But if by chance both Donna and I have to leave before they do, the doors to the house have been locked. We may need to rethink this policy. Thank you Julie and Ron. Sorry we didn’t arrive a day earlier and get the opportunity to know you!

So we are prepared to settle down for the evening and do a little maintenance on the blog and maybe some e-mail. The first e-mail to be answered happened to be from Daimon Doyle. Daimon being one of our most dedicated followers and the husband of Katie Doyle(Donna’s closest friend in Washington) and also father of Sam Doyle (Lewis’ closest friend in Washington). Daimons message was terse and seemed almost desperate. Call me ASAP. It was sent while we were out having our burritos. I made the call and discovered that Daimon and Katie and Sam and Joshua (6mos old) were currently just outside of Missoula, ordering a pizza for dinner. I thought that they probably could have found a pizza place just a bit closer to Shelton but who am I to question someone elses thinking. Just as there are easier or quicker ways to get to Washington DC than by riding bicycles!

The Doyles had driven and rested and breastfed for a total of 18 hours in order to head us off at the pass. Literally, they had hoped to surprise us as we were struggling up LoLo pass. Unfortunately, we had beaten them to the pass by a full 24 hours. I hadn’t understood why Daimon was so interested in our particular route until now. And the fact that we were without internet for a few days made his prediction of surprising us (on his 45th birthday) just a bit off. He hadn’t expected us to make as many miles as we did.
Daimon has a good friend who lives near Missoula and that’s where they were headed with the pizza. He talked his friend Dan into picking us up and carting us back to his place. We had planned on a quiet restful evening which was now evolving into something different. However, in the spirit of what the Doyles had done in an attempt to surprise us, giving up a quiet evening for something else was the least we could do. So when Dan showed up, we hopped into his car and off we went to places unknown. A short drive of 15 minutes found us at the house of Dan and Angela (and 7 year old daughter Freya). Pulling into the driveway we first noticed the placards that the Doyles had intended on strategically placing along the arduos LoLo pass. Keep on pedaling, Sore butts, stuff like that. And then standing in front of the house was none other than Sam Doyle holding a bowl of our strawberries that had been picked from our very own garden in Shelton Washington some 24 hours previous. They were still wonderfully delicious!

We spent a couple hours visiting and sharing pizza and beverages before my asthma kicked into high gear. They have 2 indoor cats that were getting the best of me. We might have opted to spend the night there but it would have been a tough one for me. Instead it was decided that Lewis would spend the night so Angela drove Donna and me back to our house in Missoula. We would connect up with everyone on the morrow. When we stepped back into Julie and Ron’s place we were exhausted and immediately retired to the futon in the basement. I was out like a light and as far as I know Donna was too.

Saturday June 27

Since no riding was to occur on this the Birthday Daimon, I’ll not be starting a new entry. We’ll just expand on what occurred Friday night. Donna and I slept until 8:30 before crawling out of our sleeping bags to head upstairs and begin our day. It was eerily quiet without Lewis around. It felt strange, awkward, and just not right that he wasn’t beside us. But we were able to dismiss this feeling as we knew he was having a better time hanging with Sam and Freya than he ever would have had with Donna and me.

We spent the morning enjoying our pastries, drinking our own coffee still using our French Press, and using Julie and Rons washer and dryer to get our soiled laundry cleaned. It’s so nice to be able to start with all clean clothes again as we had been dragging around an assortment of dirty socks and shorts and t-shirts. I then proceeded to finish updating the blog and doing some more e-mails. It was while waiting for Katie or Daimon to call that the weird factor settled in again. Our only child is on the other side of Missoula and we have no way to get in touch with him. We still don’t know Dan and Angela’s last name and there’s no way we’d be able to find our way back to their house. I’m not even sure which direction it is from where we are. The calming factor was the knowledge that Lewis was with Katie and he’s spent the night at their place a handful of times. So it really wasn’t much different. And yet it was. We thought about calling Daimon on his cell phone like we did the night before but remembered that he had no signal while at Dans place. So we waited..

Eventually Katie called and plans were made for the rest of the day. The Doyles and Dan and Angela and Freya would meet us in Missoula. Katie and Angela and Freya were waiting for Daimon and Dan and Sam and Lewis to return from their male type expedition involving a couple of quads (4 wheeled buggies). The women eventually gave up and left a note for the men to meet everyone at the Carousel in town. See Photo. We were all finally gathered at the carousel by late afternoon. Several hours were spent wandering through the park and watching the Kayakers on the Bitterroot River. (Photo) The plans for the rest of the day were still up in the air although a barbecue was planned as Angelas dad was arriving from places unknown to me. We decided to opt out of this as I didn’t want to repeat the asthma episode from the night before. The final plan fell into place. Lewis would spend another night away from us at Dan and Angela’s with the Katie, Daimon, Sam and Joshua. The Doyles have obligations in Olympia that requires them to be on the road back by no later than 10:00am. Since they will be passing right by in the morning before getting on I-90 they’ll drop Lewis off on their way out of town. For the second night in a row we’ll be sans Lewis. But after tomorrow morning I don’t think we’ll let him out of our sight again.

We are now settling down for our quiet evening albeit more quiet than either one of us is comfortable with. We miss our little man! Tomorrow we get our son back, pack up the bikes, go see the movie ‘Transformers ll’, do just a bit of shopping at the Walmart and then Safeway before finally leaving Missoula behind. I’m just a bit antsy spending such a gorgeous day not making any positive miles but it certainly does the body and soul good. Yes, today was another wonderful day weatherwise. It seems a pattern has established where every day that is taken off turns out to be spectacular! Lets see how long this weather system stays in place. Honestly, another 70 days like this one and I’d be happy! Good night!
Thursday June 25

This morning started with us still alive after camping next to the river. Our neighbor Lucia walked over with fresh cantalope that Donna and Lewis enjoyed. Since lewis was actually eagerly eating this I donated any portion that might have been mine to him. Gotta get food into Lewis anyway possible says Dr. Amy, his pediatrician. An interesting sidenote here: since the start of this trip I believe that I've shed somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 pounds. At this rate by the time we get to Washington DC, I'll weight all of 98 pounds!

We packed up and were on the road by 10:00. Todays ride was going to be on the shorter side as we had a mountain pass to climb and then an easy 20 miles to get to our destination LOLO Hot Springs. The steady upriver/uphill climb that we did all of yesterday continued for another 15 miles. Then the pass. This is the last pass that Idaho has to throw at us. LoLo Pass was 9 miles long and had just one really steep section that we chose to walk. At the top of this Pass we entered our next state, Montana. A scant 8 miles into Montana is where we stopped for the day. It was just after 6:00 when we pulled into LOLO Hot Springs. We paid for a campsite and a dip in the heated pool. Total damages $33. For this reason we opted for Ramen noodles and sandwiches. After eating our fill, we headed over to the pool where I left Donna and Lewis to relax while I checked out the availability of wifi. Yep, in luck. I scanned our e-mails then got busy with the task at hand. This being to firm up our warm showers stay in Missoula.

Julie and Ron (our hosts in Missoula) are going to be gone all weekend but have offered us the use of their home while they are away. We only have to make it to Missoula before they leave tomorrow. With this taken care of I can relax a bit so I do this by sampling an India Pale Ale on tap that was only $1 a glass. After 2 more of these I’m now ready to tackle the hot springs!
Donna and Lewis were enjoying the therapeutic and socializing aspects of the hot springs. Donna enjoys the hot pool while Lewis plays in the temperate pool. I joined Lewis for a while before finding my way to the hot pool. Man was that hot. Just prior to paying for our stay here, we ran into another cyclist. We were uncertain if he was staying or moving on. I ran into him again in the hot pool and had a chance for some conversation. Brad left Missoula that day and is on his way to Portland. He previously worked in the home construction and remodel industry. We are running into quite a few out of work carpenters.

The hot tub area closes at 10:00 but the bar (where my laptop has been charging since earlier) will be open until at least 11:00. So at a quarter to 10:00 we exit the hot spring pools and wander on over to the bar. The bartender assured me that Lewis was welcome. Donna immediately got onto the computer and started e-mailing. She remained busy for the better part of 45 minutes while Lewis was being schooled in the finer aspects of billiards (Photo). I enjoyed a couple more of the $1 IPA’s and continued talking to Brad the cyclist. One weird coincindence that came to light while conversing was that we both knew the guy we had camped next to the night before. Brad and Anjin are good friends! Small world.

By the time we were ready to walk back to the campground, I was feeling the effects of at least one too many of those IPA’s. It was nearly midnight before we crawled into our sleeping bags to retire for the night. Both Donna and I slept fitfully as the temperature dropped precipitously and we both had cold feet all night long. I made the mistake of going to sleep with no socks on as all my footwear had been soiled. Donna actually had socks on and in addition in the middle of the night she slipped the stuffs sacks over her feet as well. I wish I had the camera to capture that image when she crawled out of the sleeping bag with the big orange sacks on her feet. It would have been worthy of a top picture in the blog. Lewis never seems to complain about being cold and usually has the opposite discomfort of being too warm at night. Go figure!

Friday, June 26, 2009

A Day in Reverse?

Wednesday June 24th

I’m going to be wild and crazy here and do this day from end back to its inception.

We are officially Guerrilla camping. That means that we are staying someplace without anyones knowledge of us being here and not paying anyone. It’s not as daring as it sounds as we are not on private property and someone else is camped just a bit down from us and people have camped here for years. So it’s sort of lame Guerilla camping. But we’re not paying anyone!
How did we sink this low you ask. Easy, there were no other options. If there were, then Donna would have insisted on it. We knew we were entering a stretch of Idaho with no services but we were counting on a certain campground to be open. It was going to be a USFS campground which means no showers, a hand pump for water, and pit toilets. We found out about the closure of this campground after having ridden our first 30 miles of the day. This was a pleasant ride with multiple photo opportunities of White Water Rafters, Kayakers, and us looking out on the wild and crazy Lochsa River. All day long we rode along this river but in the opposite direction of the flowing water so we’ve actually gained over 1000 feet of elevation during the 48 miles that we rode.
Let me tell you a bit about the people who are camping in the same vicinity as us. Lewis was the first one to go down and meet them. Anyone new is a novelty, a treasure to be explored, a transformer to be manipulated into some new robot. So when Lewis didn’t return in 15 minutes Donna decided to go see if maybe he was going to be some evil River Rats dinner. When the vehicle pulled in I caught only a glimpse of the truck, not who was in it. Donna returned a few minutes later much relieved. A young couple, Anjin and Lucia, were playing Bocci with Lewis. (Photo) They were doing some kayaking and were going back to Montana in the morning. They shared some pasta salad with us as we were dining on Rice-A-Roni with chicken chunks and carrots. They also had an extra 5 gallons of water that we used to replenish our almost exhausted supply. Two really neat young people that happened to be in the right place at the right time to help us out. When I finally went down to meet them they had progressed to the celebration part of their day by cracking open a couple of beers. Not being a shy neighbor I asked if they had an extra and lo and behold, I was rewarded for my quick thinking. This would be the third beer of my day. Very nearly a record for this trip.

You are now asking yourself ‘where did he get his first 2 beers if he is in the middle of a 66 mile stretch with no services?’ Nope, I wasn’t carrying it with me. Just 10 miles back down the road we stopped for lewis to explore a footbridge that lead to a trailhead for hikers. (Photo) While Donna and Lewis explored the bridge, I relaxed next to the bikes and ate a granola bar and some prunes. Out of the blue a white pickup truck came roaring through the parking lot right at me. My initial impulse was ‘is this going to be trouble?’. Fortunately the guy driving the truck had seen Donna and Lewis walking the bridge and when he spotted Donna’s loaded touring bike he felt he had to stop and talk. The reason Donna’s bike drew his attention was that he was an employee of REI and he recognized her bike instatntly. He is from Kent Washington (just outside of Seattle for those who don’t know). Once we started talking and our story fleshed out, he was duly impressed. A few minutes later Donna and Lewis returned and that’s when he made the offer of a beer. When he asked us where we were spending the night and we responded with ‘We don’t know’ he thought that was so cool! On the side of the road I had a cold Coors and Donna had a Mikes Lemonade and Lewis had an ice cold Root Beer. In addition he gave us each one more to take with us. That is the story of the first 2 beers!

We had lunch on this backwards day at about 3:00. This was Hickory stick and carrots and fruit and was devoured at the historical ranger station. There was a volunteer ranger working who was the one to break the news that the Jerry Johnson campground that we were hoping to stay at was no longer open. This guy is also the one responsible for putting the idea in Donna’s head to camp anywhere along the river. There were literally dozens of places you could pull off the road and find a suitable private place.

The rest of the day going backwards escapes me now that I’m 2 days removed from this. But the total miles ridden this day 48. I;m also just a bit tired and it's so hard to think strait. Good night!

The Bird is the Word

Tuesday June 23
Wow was this a long day or what? We were awake and enjoying our breakfast of porridge and coffee by 8:00. The breaking down of camp took us until 9:30 and then we pulled away from the RV place. Didn’t like the guy who ran this place. But everything was very clean. $20 got us a spot of grass alongside the river and warm showers. We also did laundry illegitimately by washing our dirty clothes in the sink of the bathroom and then hanging them from a clothesline that we carry with us. Of course they didn’t dry overnight but we drape them from the back of the bike and by the end of the day we have rotated and dried an entire load of wet clothes. I’ll have to snap a picture of the bike sometime with all of the laundry stuck to different straps and bungies.

Our objective today was to get over the Bird. This is the highest elevation that Idaho has to throw at us. The total elevation gain is something like 2700 feet and it’s non stop. So we left the RV park and headed for the town of White Bird a mile away. We had a choice of following the same highway 95 we’ve been on for the better part of 2 days or following the old highway 95 that is loaded with switchbacks. The old highway is the one that is shown on our map but it has quite a few extra miles and more steep sections. We opted for the direct route that was constructed in 1975 instead of the old highway which was built in the 1930’s. Just before jumping back onto highway 95 we pulled into a coffee shop and had a few cookies and pastries and Donna had an Ice latte thing and Lewis and I had water. We spent a half hour procrastinating and enjoying the fresh baked cookies.

Now we’re ready for the Bird. We put our bikes into our lowest gears and begin to spin. Two and half hours laters we’ve beaten the Bird. This was a distance of just over 8 miles and it took that long to cover it. We stopped 3 times to rest and drink liquids and twice opted to walk for a bit. Probably walked less than a half mile total. So it’s another 8 miles to the next town which is called Grangeville and is actually a substantial place as over 3000 people live there. It was after 2:00 by the time we got there. Our first priority was to get some groceries to last us a couple days as we’re about to hit a stretch of no grocery stores or services for 66 miles. The city park was a mile down the road so that’s where we headed to enjoy our late lunch.

Big bonus for Lewis in Grangeville. The city park also has the city swimming pool. We gave him the $2.50 and an hour to enjoy the water. Donna and I ate turkey sandwiches and chips while Lewis swam. He didn’t have as much fun here because he didn’t know anyone and the place was crawling with kids. But swim he did. He’ll undoubtdedly have more opportunities like this later on where either Donna or I join him but we were reluctant to after our ordeal getting over the Bird and realizing that we had quite a bit of cycling yet ahead of us. Lewis was unfazed by the Bird as he has been pretty much unaffected the entire trip.
So we feed Lewis a half a sandwich and some prunes and apricots and some chips an we’re once again on our way. We’ve got 18 miles in and it’s after 4:00. How does this keep happening to us? We decide to try and put in another 42 miles and stop at a place called Syringa Idaho. Guess what? We made it. Just barely. It was five minutes to 8:00 when we pulled into this haven for white water rafting. The café that allows camping was bristling with activity. We paid the most to date for camping here. With tax it came to over $25. I Had considered getting a cabin as they had some vacancies but when I inquired about the rates I was not prepared to pay $180 for a one night stand. After quickly setting up our tents we grabbed our toiletries and clean clothes and headed for the shower. We stopped by the lodge on the way and if there was any chance of us getting fed. I had noticed on their chalk board that they were advertising a beer and a brat for $4.50. Since it was already 20 past 8:00 and they officially closed at 8, I didn’t hold out much hope of food. But the waitress went back and asked the cook if he could feed 3 more people and he agreed, but only the Bratwurst. So we each had a brat and a beer and felt much better about staying there. Lewis couldn’t finish his beer (or even start it for that matter) so I got an extra one.

Have you noticed that I haven’t once mentioned the weather? That must mean that there was nothing to complain about and this is precisely the case. We had a perfectly gorgeous day with loads of sunshine and high temperatures in the mid to upper 70’s. It doesn’t get any better than this in Idaho. They are more used to scorching hot and dry.

I have one more item to discuss then I’m done with this day and will never revisit it again. Well, not for a while anyways. Towards the end or the days ride as we were approaching our final destination, Lewis very nearly ended our adventure or potentially derailing it temporarily. He came a whisker away from falling off the tandem. Had he not caught himself at the last second he might have been run over by his very own mother who was following just behind us. Thunk, Thunk goes Donna over Lewis! You ask yourself what was Alan doing that would cause Lewis to very nearly become more roadkill not unlike the countless squirrels, rabbits, oppossums, raccoons and family pets that we’ve encountered on this trip. The answer is nothing unusual. We were travelling along on a flat road, no bumps, no curves, no distracting dogs, probably going no more than 13 miles and hour and Lewis picks this opportunity to very nearly land face first onto the pavement. I was unaware of the occurance until the point when he desperately grabbed for the handlebars as he was perilously close to losing it. This lunge caused the entire bike to swerve and my heartbeat to skip a beat. I have been schooling Lewis on proper riding techniques since we began this trip and the importance of not causing the tandem to swerve as one never knows when a vehicle might be passing. His mother didn’t witness what he was doing either. We didn’t even have to yell at Lewis as he realized how close he came to really hurting himself. Previously Donna has gotten after Lewis to pedal with 2 feet, He sits back there and unless I’m after him on some steep hill, he’d be playing games by switching from right foot pedaling to left foot pedaling to no feet pedaling . Then he might hold his arms out like airlplane wings and pretend we were getting ready for liftoff. And he’s done that while we’re racing down steep descents. No more. From now on he has to have at least one hand on the handlebars at all times! There are still no rules on his feet though. Boy am I a taskmaster or what?

Monday, June 22, 2009

Alan and Donna and Lewis reach 1000 miles today!

Monday June 22
This day is now history. Or nearly so. I’m sitting in the laundry and shower area of the Swiftwater RV park just outside of White Bird Idaho. They have wireless baby! This day started out pretty much the way the day before ended up. Last night we were situated at Zims Hot Springs and it was raining. The rain continued throughout the night and then mysteriously it just stopped about the time the skies began lightening. I felt this might be an omen. We took our tired selves into the office area of Zims at about 7:45 and helped ourselves to some coffee and I finished writing yesterdays blog. See, the day started out just liked it ended the day before!
Dang it was cold. The overnight temps had to have been near 40 and we noticed there was fresh snow on the adjacent mountains. This is supposed to be Idaho where it’s hot in the summer! Lewis got the opportunity to swim again and Donna joined him. I finished writing and then went out side to pack the bikes while they relaxed in comfort. I had everything ready to go by 10:00 and went back into the comfort of the lobby of Zims. When Donna and Lewis joined me in the lobby ready to roll, the skies opened up again. With temperatures in the middle 40’s we decided to wait out this rain. We had heard several forecasts predicting clearing skies and cool. No mention of rain. So we were confident this was just a fluke shower passing thru. Forty five minutes later the fluke shower was intensifying. Not to worry. Today we were mostly riding downhill to get to White Bird. So we relaxed and had our lunch, I did some e-mail and checked out weather dot com. I saw the satellite image of these showers that kept popping up right where we were. That’s weird. Thank God for technology! So the showers were kind of isolated but not really cuz they kept happening to the area around Zims. Lewis got the chance to go swimming yet again while Donna and I sat down to read some magazines. Finally at about 1:45 the rain stopped.

We were on the road by 2:00. Worst start of the trip. Miles to go today: 60.

The first 30 miles we covered in an hour and a half as we flew down hill with a great tailwind. This is what touring cyclists live for. We stopped for lunch in Riggins and then immediately got back in the saddle. The next 30 miles took just over 3 hours and we pulled into our present accomodations just before 8:00. We’re camped next to the Salmon River which we’ve been following most of the day. I almost forgot to mention the weather after we left Zims. Within 20 minutes of departing we noticed the temperatures increasing and the cloud cover decreasing. By the end of the day, the skies had cleared and the temperatures ended up approaching 70 degrees. Perfect cycling if only a bit delayed. Can you imagine what we might have accomplished had we gotten started at say 10:00? I’m guessing that we probably could have ridden at least 65 miles!

What happened to Summer IDAHO?

Sunday June 21st, Fathers Day! Or the first day of summer?
This was supposed to be a nice day in Idaho. We went to bed with with clearing skies. Donna and I both got up after midnight to use the bathroom and the stars were splendid. Shortly after the first light of dawn came the first rain of dawn. We moved everything to the covered picnic table area and got stuff drying out so we could pack up and head on down the road. A little after 9:00 we were as ready as we’d ever be and pedaled away from the Water Tower Park in Downtown Cambridge. We returned to the café where we had dinner the night before to enjoy a Fathers Day breakfast. This consumed an hour. The rain persevered. So we did what dedicated cylists do, we got out there and rode the road in the rain. The rain tapered a bit over the next 2 hours and by the time we got to the next communtiy, Council Idaho, we had 18 miles in. This was pretty easy riding as the terrain was mostly rolling up and down but the tailwind is what helped us along.

So we decide to have lunch in the Council Café because it is Fathers Day but mostly because it was raining and we hoped it would stop while we ate. It didn’t. They were very busy at this café feeding people like us who also wanted to the rain to stop. It seems that this part of Idaho has had an abnormally wet spring and now that summer is here officially, perhaps a very wet summer too. Anyways, we spent an hour and a half waiting for our food and also waiting for the rain to stop. Our food finally came and the rain persisited.

Our destination today was the town of New Meadows Idaho, population 815. This was another 28 miles down the road. Not too ambitious a day but there was a minor climb towards the end. Donna and I were both miserable as we chose to wear our rain gear which is almost always a mistake. You end up perspiring inside the rain gear and getting just as wet if not more than if you had left the rain suit off. But you feel good for the first 15 minutes after putting it on. The the first real push of the day causes the pulse to race and the heart to thump and the sweat to pour and Bang! You’re soaking wet! The only time rain gear is a good thing is when you aren’t doing anything physical. If we were only riding our bikes downhill, then raingear would be a blessing. We aren’t that lucky. So we suck it up and get to work on riding those 28 miles.

The elevation increases throughout the day until just 8 miles from New Meadows, we’re at 4300 feet above sea level. The temperature has been steadily dropping all day as we’ve gained altitude and being soaking wet doesn’t help matters much. We stopped at a small restaurant/convenience store to buy some Gatorade and use this opportunity to check out our options as far as sleeping accomodations tonight. There is another city park (Free but Donna says NO WAY, she wants a shower) there is also an RV campground that lets bikers pitch tents. A third option that I threw out there was that if it was still raining when we pedaled into New Meadows, I would spring for another motel. Reading a bit further on the map I discovered a fourth option: Zims Hot Springs, 5 miles outside of town. This one caught the interest of Donna and Lewis. I would have been OK at another city park, cheapskate that I am. The rain at this point is now stopping intermittently and then resuming again. Lewis made the final call and Zims Hot springs was it. So we pulled into New Meadows just before 6:00 and found the grocery store where I made a few purchases for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. I also managed to place a phone call to Zims to make sure we could count on a place to stay. $10 for a tentsite, and $5 for anyone who wanted to use the pool. That city park kept looking better and better to me! But we had promised Lewis and he had chosen Zims over the chance to sit in a motel and watch Nickelodeon. So we went for it.

This was probably the best decision we made today. The rain returned just as we pulled into Zims place. They have a covered picnic table area with enough room for our tent so that’s where we set up. Dinner was skipped in order to get our cold aching bodies into the hot steaming pools. I cant remember feeling as blissful as when I dropped my shivering aching body into the 105 degree water. I could see the huge smile on Donna’s face as well. Lewis was off into the swimming pool which was a more tolerable 80 or 85 degrees. We swam and soaked until almost 8:30 until hunger got the better part of Donna at which point we took turns exiting the pool to dry off and get changed all using the same towel. We have gotten pretty good at using one towel for all of us when bathing. I failed to emphasize how quickly we exited the pool. We DASHED from the pool to the heated indoor recreatioon/office area because we could truly appreciate the cold now. While we swam there were non-swimming grandmothers outside watching their charges. They were protected from the rain undercover, wrapped in blankets and still they were shivering. When I located a thermometer I realized why. The temperature indicated all of 48 degrees and the wind was sending the rain sideways.

Once I had dried off and was waiting inside the office/recreation area I struck up a conversation with the owner guy who had seemed just a bit gruff when I talked to him on the phone. He was anything but gruff after I took the time to talk to him. It turns out he’s a cool guy. His name is Al! That is usually enough to warrant someone being a cool guy but he had other qualities that elevated him into being an A-OK alright and hep dude. When we first got here I felt that he had finagled an extra $5 out of me as I was going to skip the hot tub and just shower. Before paying for the dip in the steaming water I asked if Lewis would be able to return in the morning for a few minutes on the same $5 or would I have to pay again. His response was ‘If you all pay tonite, he can use the pool tomorrow. In fact you can all use it for a bit.’ I shrugged and ponied up the money. It was a good thing too as later he became a benefactor. While waitiing for Lewis to finish up, Al came through with a 16oz Coors free of charge. He called it a wife beater. A sense of humor this guy has. I soon found out that he had worked in the Olympia area years ago as a Lineman stringing high tension wires that go on those really big towers. He also spent some time working on the now defunct Satsop Nuclear power plant that is about 25 miles from our house. He’s worked all over the country doing these dangerous things involving large amounts of electricity and heavy wires and helicopters and climbing on great big steel towers. I asked if he’d had any friends killed while he was doing that kind of work and he responded that he’s been to a lot of funerals. 13 to be exact, Now he sells pop to teenagers and tries to prevent them from spawning in the larger of the pools. But he seems relaxed. His own boss (other than the government Bosses who try to make his life difficult!). Zims has been in the family for over 30 years and he’s been running it for the last 20 after his dad asked him to come home and take care of it because no one else wanted to.
So now we’re looking at going out into the 46 degree darkness and heat up our Ramen noodles(Lewis) and Chili (Alan and Donna) over the backpacking stove when Donna realized that a microwave was on the counter. She asked if we could fix our dinner inside and he didn’t hesitate. Sure, I’ve got to keep the place open until 11:00 for the teenagers. So I made the mad dash outside to get the food and computer as the rain was coming down in torrents now. Good move we came here! As we were eating our dinner Al came over with another offering of beer. This time there was

Idaho is starting to really BUG me!

Saturday June 20
This day is now over. And we are in Idaho. Goodbye Oregon. Couldn’t happen soon enough. I’m hoping that things improve now that we’ve left Oregon behind. The scenery throughout Oregon is spectacular and there are certainly more nice people than not nice people so what am I whining about? It must have been the weather! Speaking of weather, today was not so bad considering we spent about half the day riding in Oregon before crossing the Snake River and entering Idaho. The skies were friendly and the predicted thunderstorms never materialized. We rode into a tiny sprinkle just as we approached our destination but it was inconsequential. The high temperature had to have been somewhere in the low 70’s which is very fortunate for us as the Hells Canyon area of Oregon and Idaho typically has summer temps topping out in the 90’s and above.

Todays ride (58 miles) was a bit trying at times especially once we entered Idaho. In fact Idaho was bugging me today, literally. I inhaled some small insect that just wouldn’t leave me alone. And not an hour later while we were screaming down the backside of a mountain, a bee of some kind smacked me in the face, right on the lip where it decided to deposit it’s stinger! Initially it was thought that I had just encountered a large bug but when my lip started throbbing and my gums became numb, I figured it out. This is when I finally pulled out the stinger which was still embedded in my face.

There are quite a few steep sections of the route that involve elevation changes of 3000 feet. We did one of those today but it turned out to not be as steep as the climb we did yesterday. I’ve discovered our threshhold of climbing and it appears that in our current state of conditioning, we are able to maintain our cadence while climbing if the grade is at 7% or less. All new highways in this country are constructed with the grades not exceeding 5%. Unfortunately we are riding on quite a few older roads and highways. We dismounted and walked twice today. It doesn’t bother me in the least. Donna seems to think that if she has to get off and walk then she’s failing. I tried to get that ridiculous idea out of her head. She equates riding a bike with running a road race. Totally not the same. She remembers having to walk in a couple of the longer races (half marathon) and felt that was some kind of failure. I reassured her that in nearly every instance that we’ve walked, I was relieved when she made the call. Now that I’m in touring shape, I leave it up to her to decide if the road is too steep to continue. In the beginning of this trip I was the one to get off the bike first. Especially when I was pulling the Bob Cart trailer which only added to my struggles.

So we are currently situated in Cambridge Idaho. This is a small community of 360 persons. We didn’t pull into town until nearly 7:30 so were unable to purchase any groceries as the towns only grocery store closed at 7:00. Time for a restaurant tonight. We ate Mrs. G’s place. They specialize in chuckhouse style food. I had a burger (half pounder with fries) while Donna enjoyed a taco salad and Lewis had the mini-corndogs and tots. They actually called them tots on their menu. This brought to mind one of our alltime favorite newer movies that was set in Oregon. Napoleon Dynamite. If you haven’t seen this one yet, do so. We’ve seen it at least 3 times and it is now tradition that we have to share it with our exchange students while they are with us. Lewis decided that he was Pedro and not Napoleon.

Our sleeping accomodations for tonite are just a bit austere. Donna isn’t too thrilled with camping in the city park but it is a tradition that cyclists have been doing for years. We have flushing toilets but no running water. Which means no shower. I had expected this and took the extra time after dinner to sponge bathe in the restaurant (the restrooom, of course) with our community wash rag and the restaurants warm water. I put on a clean t-shirt and even managed to wash out the filthy t-shirt I’d been wearing for 2 days now. I try to impress upon Donna how this is the way it is done but she is just not on the same page with me, yet. I think that if she’s sees this adventure through to the end, she will have been converted into a bonified touring cyclist! As of right now, it’s one day at a time. I can’t ask for anymore than that.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Baker City we miss you already

Friday June 19
If you didn’t notice, I skipped Thursday June 18 because we didn’t do any riding. We spent the day wandering around Baker City Oregon and just enjoying a beautiful day off. My legs were very tired yesterday just from walking around but my knee has stopped bothering me for the time being. Miraculously Donna has had no ill effects from all the exertion that she has put forth. This is probably the most strenuous work she has done since I’ve known her and she’s up to the task. I was concerned about her neck from the surgery she had 10 years ago but that is not an issue. Similarly, the last time we rode together she had knee and hip complaints. This time, nothing! What a gal I picked. Not too many 51 year old women out there would be able to keep up with her. I get kind of goose-bumpy when I look in my helmet mirror and see her right behind me spinning those long legs for all she’s worth.

Lewis got to enjoy his day off by spending a couple hours in the outdoor heated pool. This would not have been his idea had there not been another boy who was also outside with him. He would have been content to sit in front of the TV and watch Sponge Bob Squarepants. But when an opportunity presents itself to actually play with other kids, he jumps at it. So he gets a sunburn. Here we have been protecting him from the sun everyday that we’ve ridden and the sun was present. We forget to put sunscreen on him and wham, he’s fried. Not too bad but painful to the touch. Probably will peel in a week or so. But if you ask Lewis he’d tell you it was worth it.

So after we finally get him away from the pool (2:00 ish) we began our strolling around town. First we went to the Post Office and sent a box of stuff to home. This would be things we have collected and things that we decided that we could do without. The package probably weighed all of 5 pounds but it’s not something we need to carry another 3500 miles. Donna is even agreeing with me on this! I have been trying to lighten our load in every way possible and have thought of another great idea. I’m going to cut the handles off our toothbrushes and just leave a short nub of a handle instead of the 7 inches of plastic! Probably not. I’m guessing Donna would draw the line on that one. I’m still hearing about the shampoo that I used as dish detergent which left our dishes with a spring mountain mist aroma (which means spring mountain mist taste when you put food in them and then try to eat the food).

Ok, back to our walk. We meandered to the wonderful city park in Baker City and the whole time we were walking Lewis kept whining about going back to the motel so he could swim some more with that kid. Once we got to the park (I knew it was a great park as I rode by it the night before when I went to Safeway to get some groceries) Lewis forgot all about the kid at the pool as there were easily 20 kids playing in the huge playground area. At least 4 or 5 were in his age group too. He worked his way around the playground until he finally got up the nerve to join 4 other kids who were playing on the merry go round. This was Lewis’ first time to experience a playground version and it didn’t take long to realize he wasn’t going to leave here without being pried away. Photo.
By the time we returned to the motel, it was time for dinner (leftovers from the fabulous pasta feed the night before) and the long process of packing that would speed us on our way in the morning.

Now I’m ready to talk about today. We awoke to overcast threatening weather. The forecast was for a 30% chance of showers in the afternoon with the likelihood of thunderstorms later. Before we could leave the parking lot, the rain started. This would have been around 9:00. It appears as though the weathermen in Oregon aren’t any better here than anywhere else. Our plan was to visit an internet café and have some pastries and coffee then hit the road. We found the perfect café and Donna and Lewis were able to relax and enjoy themselves while I tried to get the stupid computer to hook up to the internet again. It stopped working the afternoon of the day before and I easily spent 2 or 3 hours on changing settings and playing with the tools functions. I hate computers! Fortuantely it seems as though the problem was with the wireless and not my new computer but I wasn’t able to determing that yesterday.

So we spent 45 minutes there and I sent out a few e-mails and the rain didn’t stop. So we began our ride for the day. We stopped less than 5 minutes later when we came to the public library. I had promised Lewis some computer time when I got the computer fixed but we still weren’t able to hook up to the Webkinz site. So the public library was a second chance. We were able to get a computer as soon as we walked in but they had some kind of filter that wouldn’t allow him to do the games at the webkinz site. So he wandered off dejectedly until he stumbled across a couple of older kids playing computer games. They got him started on his own game and instantly webkinz was forgotten. Donna took the opportunity to do some e-mail from the library and I read part of a book. We stayed there over an hour before finally deciding we had to put some miles in, rain or no rain. So we left the library at nearly noon and stopped 5 minutes later at the Safeway so I could get some donuts as I didn’t get to eat in the café like they did.
Ten minutes later I returned from shopping in Safeway and our bikes were stolen. NO. Just kidding. I returned with a dozen donuts, a footlong sandwich, and 3 individual milk bottles. Donna and I are actually drinking quite a bit of chocolate milk on this trip as we heard about the benefits for athletes who get recharged after drinking chocolate milk. And we like the taste too! I snarfed down 3 donuts outside of Safeway while Lewis had just one more. Donna nad none but she did polish off her choco milk. So at 12:20 we were absolutely going to start pedaling. We were currently about half a mile from our motel.

The rain quit before we did our first 20 miles and it was never a really intense rain anyways. The remainder of the day was perfect cycling weather as we seemed to be chasing small blue patches in the otherwise overcast sky. It looked as though it might rain or thunderstorm at any time, but it never did. Hight temp today was middle 60’s. This is very fortuanate as Eastern Oregon is typically in the high 80’s and above this time of the year.

We pedaled most of the rest of the day (54 miles) and at 6:30 we pulled into Halfway Oregon. It’s gotta be halfway to somewhere but we know not where. Our warm shower host didn’t pan out so we’re staying at the Halfway Motel and RV Park. Camping next to the motel for $5 a person which includes a shower but no coffee. They do have wifi so I’m sitting outside the office with the computer while Donna and Lewis are probably already sleeping. I’m going to join them now as it’s nearly 11:00 and it gets light real early here. Goodnight.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Tuesday June 16
I didn’t sleep so well in the house of the lord. Donna reported a similar occurrence. Lewis slept the sleep of the innocent. Take from that what you will. I am blaming all of the different noises for my restlessness. I’ve grown accustomed to Donna’s snoring and snuffling sounds. Last night I heard a cacophony of strange nighttime symphonies from 4 strange adults all sleeping in the sanctuary with us. In addition I was certain I heard noises out back of the church where our bikes were locked together. There was at least one dream where I awoke to discover that both of our bikes had been stolen in the night. When the bikes are within sight of our tent I don’t have these same thoughts. I was the last one to retire and did so around 11:00. I was awake every time someone got up to go use the bathroom and this happened 4 or 5 times. The first cyclist awoke just after the sun rose and immediately put on her biking shoes and proceeded to walk around with the clunk, clunk, clunk noises that occur when the hard plastic soles stuck the hollow floors of the old creaky church. This would have been around 5:00 in the morning. This was going to be a long day. I knew I was done sleeping at that point but I remained in the sleeping position until just Lewis and I were the only ones there.

I finally joined the other cyclists in the community area of the church where the kitchen and socializing area was. This would have been around 6:30. The coffee was gone so I made another small pot and sat down with a couple of packaged donuts for my breakfast. This mini-meal gave me enough spark to begin the morning ritual that is now becoming sort of routine: packing of the belongings. We were the last to leave the church but everyone left within a 15 minute span. On the road before 8:30! It really speeds things up when you don’t have to deal with the tent. Today we planned to go for Austin Junction Oregon.

The ride today was 53 miles of climbing followed by 7 miles of downhill to end up at Austin Junction. The first 44 miles we gained a little over a thousand feet of elevation which at times is barely noticeable that it’s climbing. The final 9 miles of climbing there was no mistaking the fact that we were going uphill. We gained over 2000 feet of elevation. That 9 miles took us almost 2 hours to accomplish. We got off the bikes to rest a couple times and a couple other times we got off the bikes to push them up the hill. Lewis has come to realize that pushing the bikes up the hills ends up being more work for him than when we pedal up the hills. Donna and I have the opposite view. When we’re pedaling up these passes our pulse and respiration jump dramatically to where conversation is difficult while Lewis is sitting behind me and is still talking up a storm or singing or just making strange odd little boy noises. We encourage him to pedal on these challenging parts of the ride and he always responds by putting forth 20 seconds of hard work. The difference is noticeable and it’s also noticeable when he stops putting forth the extra effort. Fortunately Donna is struggling with these inclines just as much as I while her bike and gear has to be 40 pounds less than the tandem not including Lewis. But conquer this pass we did. Our final elevation of 5277 (3 feet short of mile high) is our highest to date and will be the highest that we’ll encounter in Oregon.

The reward of climbing a pass is always the descent. Todays descent of 7 miles allowed us to coast into our final destination, Austin Junction. There isn’t much to say about Austin Junction. It is the junction of Highway 26 and Highway 7. There are no houses, just a combination store, restaurant gas station which is closed today and tomorrow. Fortunately I called the owners yesterday from the church and got permission to camp there. The owners may or may not be around to sell us something but they did leave me the gallon of water that I requested. Tomorrow we will have to pedal 50 miles over 2 more passes to get to Baker City Oregon with no services until we get there.

Wednesday June 17
Now this day is over and it’s time to give the progress report. We did end up meeting the proprietors of the Austin Junction store shortly after I signed off last night. They invited us into the store to make any purchases we needed and as soon as some money changed hands from ours to theirs, they were much friendlier. They suggested we move our tent out into the pasture where the soft grass and the picnic table was situated. We had already set up on the side of the parking lot in a gravelly area and would have loved to have set up in the pasture but shortly after we arrived it began raining. So now the grass was all wet and we would end up getting our feet soaking wet in the process of dragging everything out behind the store. We chose to stay in the gravel beside the store.

We were awake and at em by 7:00 and at 8:30 we took time off to go into the store and buy a couple coffees and use the restroom (a pre-arranged meeting with the owners). This was the first night of camping where a bathroom was unavailable during the off hours. Lewis and I have no qualms about peeing outside but Donna has progressed above that since we’ve built our house. But she had no choice but to relieve herself behind a tree as she couldn’t wait until 8:30. Prepared a breakfast of oatmeal that was just perfect. It is so satisfying to be able to use our backpacking stove and some of the oatmeal that we’ve been dragging around for over 700 miles.

We were all packed up and were on the road at exactly 10:00. This seems to be the usual time for us when packing of tent is required. The first pass of the day was accomplished before noon and the second pass immediately followed. By 2:00 we had done all of the really hard work of the day with only a 25 mile ride into Baker city remaining. This ride was a gentle downhill and would have been an absolute pleasure if not for the wind which turned around on us and was blowing in our faces. But no rain and no chance of rain. We pulled into town just a bit after 4:00 and immediately found a hotel to stay in. This is a reward for 3 mountain passes in two days. There is also a fatigue factor as this is our 7th day in a row of cycling since leaving Eugene. Donna and I both have severe soreness on the bottom that by the end of a long day of cycling leaves us happier to be standing up than sitting down anywhere. I also spent most of the day grimacing when I put too much pressure on my right leg. A sharp pain in the knee that was probably a result of cooking dinner last night on the parking lot. I was squatting on my heels for about 20 minutes while simultaneously stirring our Rice-A-Roni and tuna fish. The final 10 miles of the day were much better as the pain finally disappeared. Lewis is not complaing much but he seems to be the happiest about getting a room instead of more camping. For him it’s the television and cartoons.

We took a walk into old Baker City and discovered a wonderful historic district with most of the buildings over a hundred years old. We chose an old hotel with a restaurant as the place we wanted to dine. What a treat. They had a pasta bar where you get to pick out all the stuff you’d like on your dish and they put it all together for you while you wait. On the way back to the hotel I realized that it was really nice to be walking and not riding. I decided then and there that a day off was called for. Nobody disagreed. We’re now looking at another 36 hours here with no bicycling except maybe for some groceries.
Sunday June 14
Our Saturday night at Dennis and Kims was another positive thing that will help balance out negatives. We made ourselves comfortable and relaxed with a couple bottles of beer. I worked on my blog while Lewis and Donna worked on their journals. A couple hours and a couple beers later, Dennis and Kim showed up. We bonded a little bit and then hit the hay. We set up our sleeping pallets in Kims yoga studio above their garage. Lewis had a blast up there as the room was one big space approximately 30 by 30 feet. And Lewis lucked out because they had an extra twin mattress that they threw up there for someone to use. Wouldn’t you know it, Lewis picks this night to not want to sleep next to his mother. When we stayed in the canvas house of Jim and Patty he had a fit because he couldn’t sleep on the bed with his mother. I gave him the opportunity at Dennis and Kims and he rejected it soundly. Huh!

In the morning Dennis fixed a hearty lumberjack breakfast of eggs (from their chickens), bacon (not from their pig) and fried potatoes and onions(probably from their garden). Donna and Lewis also enjoyed some more of the ice cream we bought the night before. This was of course topped with some of the fresh strawberries that I think Kim grew. Kim is the primary worker on a tract of land that they cultivate to produce vegetables for consumption as well as for sale at the farmers market. We pedaled away from our first ever experience as a guest of a warm showers host. Thanks Dennis and Kim for doing what you do and for being there for us when things haven’t been going all that well. But now that I mention it, things actually have taken a major pendulum shift and we have been pretty fortunate (other than the hellish climb and descent in the rain of Santiam Pass).
We pedaled away at just a bit after 10:00. Todays goal was an easy 50 miles to get to the town of Mitchell Oregon. It was a day of modest climbing to get over Ochoco pass (about 2000’ total elevation gain). This was followed by a screaming descent into Mitchell where we managed to beat out the rain by all of 5 minutes. The rain didn’t amount to much but we beat it nonetheless. Had a covered picnic area to hang out at until we set our tent up in the free city park. Quite pleasant all in all.
Camping next to us was Chris. Photo? He was on a motorcycle and was on his way to lake Tahoe. He is from Seattle and is recently retired from Boeing. Don’t know what he did there but whatever it was, he did it for 32 years. An interesting sidenote on Chris is that his Grandfather was responsible for the founding of Simpson Timber Company, and his mother was born in Shelton! Small world.

We made coffee before packing the bike for todays adventure, Monday June 15.
About the coffee. After losing all of our personals we’ve had to do a bit of modifying. Previously we had a small container of dish soap and another small container of shampoo. These disappeared. When I went to replace them at Rite Aid, I couldn’t find small containers, just big ones. We don’t want big containers of both so I only bought the shampoo with the intent of using it to wash dishes too. So I washed a few dishes last night with the shampoo using cold water at the city park. This morning our coffee had a distinct taste of mountain mist that left us just a little less than perked up. Perhaps I should have bought a dish soap to use as shampoo? Who cares if your hair smells like Dawn for Dishes! (Donna does)
We had a great breakfast in a small café before leaving town. Today we rode almost 7 miles up hill to leave Mitchell before spending the rest of the day descending or just flat riding. We intentionally chose our destination for today to be Dayville, Oregon. Just before reaching Dayville we took a detour to visit the John Day Fossil beds. This was worth the extra 4 miles as we got to learn a lot of neat stuff about fossils in Oregon. And this is quality ‘stop and smell the roses time’ not ‘hurry hurry hurry time’.
We rode 43 miles total on a gorgeous summer day in Oregon, finally! And the forecast is for more of the same. We’re spending the night at a Presbyterian Church in Dayville that takes in cyclists. We arrived in town just before 5:00 and had the church to ourselves. We will actually be sleeping on the floor of the Church in our sleeping bags. There is a full kitchen, laundry facilities, 2 bathrooms (one with a shower) and internet (dial-up). Since we arrived here, 2 other couples have shown up. The first couple were women going to Portland and the second couple was a couple also going to Portland before heading to SanFrancisco. This place is hopping with activity. We had a frozen pizza for dinner (but no beer as that is a no-no in this church!). Tomorrow we have a long day planned and don’t expect to have internet again until Wednesday. By Thursday we might be leaving Oregon behind. We’ll have to see how everything goes. And now for the first time since starting this adventure, I am totally caught up! Good bye for now and Good Night!
Thursday June 11
So I never got to mention June 11 in the last update. We pedaled away from Eugene by 10:00. We took a wrong turn 3 or 4 times and an hour later we were right back at the Campbell House. This was unintentional but what happens when the navigator is from Washington. It didn’t help much when we asked for directions from people on the street. The first person would tell us to go this way 3 blocks then turn left. After following those directions we would once again find ourselves where we knew not. The next person would send us back in the same direction we just came from. Is this some cruel joke that people in Oregon do to bicyclists? Regardless, we eventually found the bridge that took us away from Downtown Eugene.

The thing that I have to mention and will probably mention again is we have become minor celebrities everywhere we go. When people see a group of 3 cyclists, 2 on a tandem and one of them is a kid about Lewis’ age, it clicks for them and they yell out’ Hey you’re the cyclists who got your bike stolen’, or they yell out ‘Good luck on the rest of your trip’ or they yell out ‘better learn to lock your bike or you’ll never get to Washington DC’. We must have had 30 or 40 people stop to say something to us on Wednesday while we were shopping or just walking around downtown Eugene. It was beginning to annoy us but we remained polite to the bitter end. We made the front page of Eugenes daily newspaper, the Register Guard (or Guard Register) for the second day in a row. This time it was not because of the theft but because of the miraculous recovery of our bike. Less than 10% of stolen bikes are recovered here and yet ours was.

So we are pedaling out of town again and now it’s nearly 12:00 and we’ve already put 9 miles in just getting lost in Eugene. We did do the last bit of shopping that we absolutely needed to do before leaving. This was at RIteAid and we replaced our hairbrush, shampoo, barsoap, fingernail clippers, washrags, and baby powder. What’s up with the baby powder? Baby powder is a cyclists shower substitute when a shower is not available! You ever try going to sleep when you’re body is all sticky from sweat and your legs stick together and your arms stick to your sides? Try it sometime.

So we are really out of Eugene by 1:00 and are on our way to our as yet unknown destination of the day. We end up doing 68 miles total and find ourselves at an RV park outside of Blue River Oregon. Yep, they knew our story too. The proprietor of this place joked that we’d probably have to get out of the state of Oregon to regain our anonymity. Previously I would have eaten dog turds before staying in an RV campground. I’m actually OK with these now as there usually are trailer park kids who live in these and it gives Lewis an opportunity to hang with kids for a bit. We feel sorry for lewis having to spend so many hours sitting right behind his dad with nothing to do except once in a while pedal a little. But mostly he sits back there singing songs that he has made up or has remembered from some movie or cartoon. His favorite of the trip to date happens to be ‘Transformers, more than meets the eye. Transformers, Robots in disguise”. Poor kid! But overall his ability to do this day after day seems to be just a bit more advanced than Donna’s. But of course, she has to pedal!

Friday June 12
It rained just a bit overnight but not enough to even leave things wet in the morning. This was going to be a trying day as our first major climb of the trip was just a few miles down the road. We left the RV campground by 10:00 and pedaled an uneventful 10 miles to get to McKenzie Bridge, the unofficial start of our climb to end all climbs. We had no choice other than to tackle Santiam Pass as the McKenzie pass highway was closed to all vehicles until April due to a road construction project. But we did have a choice and Donna made it. Every cyclist that I talked to suggested taking the McKenzie pass route as it is more scenic and less heavily travelled. In our case, the road would have been deserted as no vehicles were allowed. The officials at the National Forest Service attempted to scare us off the McKenzie Highway by saying the snow hadn’t melted yet and there was highway construction going on. I found out from other sources that 2 weeks ago an adventurous sort of cyclist actually rode to the top and had no difficulty. But Donna was having none of that adventurous stuff. We stuck to the heavily travelled Santiam Pass. This route has an elevation gain of nearly 4000 feet to reach the pass but does a lot of up, then down, then further up then down a bit followed by more up then down abit again before the final push which was all up. The ride of 25 miles took us at least 6 hours and we had probably walked our bikes at least 3 or 4 miles of the steepest parts. We just don’t have the gears (or leg muscles) to push all the weight we have up these inclines. But I’m OK with that cuz we’re still using our own power to get this done.

The Rain started after a couple hours and remained moderate until just before we got to the actual pass and then it became good old fashioned hard rain with a little thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure. This really sucked the life out of us as the temperatures at 5000 feet were only in the low 40’s. Our reserves were running out as we hadn’t eaten a real meal all day. We had some Hostess Donuts for breakfast and some Orange Juice at the last store before we began the climb. For the next 6 hours we survived on some Gatorade, a few granola bars and a candy bar apiece.

The absolute worst part of the ride turned out to be the downhill! While we did come racing down that pass in good time, the rain intensified and the wind from our velocity stole the last bit of body heat that remained in our tired selves. Donna was complaining, Lewis said his whole body was numb except for his head and I would have complained too if I had someone to complain to. But I didn’t. This is all my fault. After a quick 7 or 8 miles screaming down the other side of Santiam pass, we then had to dig down and pedal another 18 miles to get to our final destination of the day. Sisters, Oregon.

We pulled into Sisters just a little after 7:15 and a pit stop at good old McDonalds helped revive everyone. Lewis devoured 2 cheeseburgers, ate some fries and was still hungry enough to eat part of a chicken sandwich. This was a record for food consumption on his part. We tried to make contact with a warm showers host but his number was unlisted and we without wifi. I crossed the street from McDonalds and checked at the sisters Inn and rooms were going for $135 a night due to high demand caused by the rodeo which was starting that night and running through the weekend. That’s just a bit too steep for just 12 or so hours of comfort.

Our cycling map indicated that there was a ranch just a few miles outside of Sisters where they take in cyclists only. I made a phone call to see if they could accommodate us on such short notice. Initially the lady I talked to was offering only some space on the grass to pitch a tent as they presently had family members visiting who would be occupying the facility that they normally offer cyclists. I would not be deterred. I explained the situation with Lewis approaching hypothermia (not really)and a really pissed off wife (really really) and asked if we could pitch our tent in their garage. The reason being that we no longer had a ground cloth to place under our tent and with all the rain that was falling, it would inevitably lead to another wet night and wet sleeping bags and soggy spirits. Patty must have heard the desperation in my voice as she then said OK. We’ll find someplace for you. Just get over here.

It was all I could do to get Donna and Lewis back out in the rain again as they were no longer shivering with blue lips thanks to the heat of the deep fryers at Mc D’s. But pedal they did. We managed to pull into Jim and Patty’s place just before dark. Total miles for the day, 68!

Saturday June 13

Jim and Patty’s place was a much needed tonic after the miserable conditions we encountered towards the end of Friday. Jim is an old California Beach Bum whose done pretty good for himself. They have an absolutely gorgeous house with a tremendous view of the 3 sisters (mountains). We severely inconvenienced them as they had a houseful of family members and were planning on having some of them sleep in the cyclists cabin that we ended up in. I’ll try to post a picture of our splendid digs. We had our showers in their house and a bit of conversation before retiring for the night.

The cloudy drizzly skies were gone by morning as we awoke to perfectly clear blue skies. We had coffee with the family before they all departed and left us to finish up a load of laundry and pack our bikes. We pedaled away from their place by 10:30 and made pretty good time. Our destination today was a modest one. We hoped to make Prineville, home of Les Schwaub. This was a short ride of about 40 miles as the next day was going to involve another mountain pass. We stopped for an early lunch in Redmond Oregon at a neat little café that had wifi. That’s when I finally got to update the blog as well as enjoy a wonderful sandwich and a groovy potato soup. Lewis had a blast in Redmond as we stopped 3 times and he enjoyed each one for a different reason. The first stop was a Starbucks and it seems he has developed a taste for the better things in life. Two caramel frappacinos were purchased along with a plain old chocolate milk for the little man. He snarfed down his chocolate milk and then proceeded to finish off part of his mom’s fancy coffee before killing the last half of mine. I had expected to do some internet stuff there but their wireless is not free. You have to pay ATT to use it. I will never go to another starbucks! I did get directions to the café where we had lunch from one of the employees but I spent over $15 to find out that they don’t give you internet for free.

Our second stop in Redmond was in front of the towns statue of their mascot. I think it was an eagle. It was made entirely of welded metal things including old garden shovels, old snowmobile skis and even old silverware. Lewis was majorly impressed. See photo! The next stop in Redmond happened to be the Army national guard building. The reason for this stop was the vintage WWII tank that was parked in front of the building. Lewis got to crawl around on it and we had to pry him away from it. See photo!

I already mentioned the lunch we had immediately following the tank excursion. I sent an e-mail and made 2 phone calls to a potential warm showers host (Dennis) just before we left the café. Our beautiful sunny day was now beginning to cloud over. We left Redmond behind and set out for Prineville, barely 25 miles away. The wind picked up a bit and seemed to be blowing in our faces but the gentle terrain helped tremendously. We pulled into Prineville by 5:00 and began searching for a free wifi spot so I could see if Dennis had answered my e-mail. No luck. Stopped at the city park and I went over to 7-11 to buy a couple of Gatorades and used their phone in the process. I called the 2 numbers I had for Dennis but he didn’t answer either one. We had really hoped to stay with a warm showers person and once again, my inability to predict when we would be passing through as well as my unpreparedness in having phones numbers available as well as our lack of a permanent cell phone had doomed us to missing another opportunity to meet our first warm showers host. I returned to the park to pass along the bad news. We decided to head out of town where a campground was available approximately 6 miles away. The last thing we needed to do before leaving was use the restrooms. We do this in shifts now as we are so dang paranoid about somebody taking our bike again. So Donna went first and then it was my turn. When I returned I noticed Donna talking to someone. She had a big smile on her face. She was talking to Dennis!

He had checked his e-mail and was expecting us. He wasn’t able to get to his cell phone in time when I had called just minutes before. When he called the number that showed up on his cell, he got the cashier from 7-11 who told him some guy just used the phone and had just left. He hopped in his car and drove to the 7-11 and noticed the tandem still parked at the park and figured he had found his wayward travelers. When he approached Donna he said ‘You must be the Jacksons’. Donna incorrectly assumed that he was just another person who had seen us during all the media coverage in Eugene. He gave us directions to his house and said to go make ourselves comfortable as he and his wife were attending a birthday party just a few blocks away from where we were currently standing. They expected to be home in a couple of hours. They had left the front door unlocked and set out a bowl of fresh strawberries on the counter.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

June 11
And we’re back at it. There is so much to talk about I don’t know where to start. I’ll start with today since that is still fresh in my mind. And this is just my stuff. We have to get Lewis involved in the writing again. He was doing so well and then it happened. We won’t talk about it yet. We’ll be talking about today. I woke up remarkably refreshed after our second night in the Campbell House in Downtown Eugene. This would have been around 6:15 am. I went to the lobby with the loaner laptop that the Campbell House loaned me 2 days ago. The wifi signal is so weak in the carriage house that internet explorer keeps shutting down. But in the lobby the signal is full strenght. So I’m awake and have a million things to do so I begin doing some. Most of the morning was spent taking care of the visa fraud paperwork that required I go through every transaction for our Visa credit card for the last 30 days. I had to identify all of the charges that I didn’t authorize. There were over $13,000 dollars worth. AHHH! This all began a week before we left on this adventure. And now I’m dealing with it while sipping coffee at a luxurious Bed and Breakfast in Downtown Eugene. I don’t think I’ll be liable for any of the charges but it is not something I want to be doing when I should be relaxing and enjoying the luxurious Campbell House in Downtown Eugene. All right, now I’ve mentioned the Campbell House directly or indirectly 3 times in this paragraph. What the heck are Alan and Donna and Lewis doing staying in the Campbell House in Downtown Eugene? Well Alan is trying to fix his Visa account while Donna and Lewis are still sleeping in splendor!
OK, I’ve got to go back a couple days so we can explain how we ended up at the Campbell house. I really need to go back about 9 days but I just don’t have the patience or determination to try and remember what transpired that long ago. But here goes. Day 3 we ended up in Astoria Oregon where we decided to change the gearing on the tandem and also to leave the BOB Cart trailer behind. Too much weight to be lugging up all the hills. This was around a 43 mile day due to a late start and the ferry ride that we didn’t coordinate very well. Stayed in our first motel of the trip Day 4 we rode from Astoria to Canon Beach Oregon. This was also a 43 mile day as we were wet and miserable I think. And the wind was wickedly vicious rigtht in our faces all day along with cool temps and rain and more wind and then some more rain. Day 5 was a short ride from Canon Beach to Point Lookout in Oregon. It rained a whole bunch. Again we rode around 40 miles. It rained all night and in the morning too! Everything got wet. Day 6 we rode to Pacific City Oregon because we decided that we needed to dry our our wet sleeping bags and wet mattresses and wet clothes and our wet bodies and Pacific Beach was the only town we would hit all day. Total miles in a positive direction was 18. We made a wrong turn halfway there that added another 9 miles so we actually rode 27 miles. We stayed in our second motel in Pacific City because we really wanted to dry out. I’m starting to think that maybe we won’t be able to ride the 45 to 60 miles a day that we need to in order to be able to reach DC before December. Day 7 we rode from Pacific City to the county fairgrouond in Rickreal Oregon. This was back to a 66 mile day and not any walking the bike up hills. We were getting stronger. Day 8 was when the wheels fell off or rather the chain fell off. We got off to our best start of the trip and were all packed up and on the road by 8:30 am. Had our first restaurant breakfast of the trip in Monmouth Oregon. The chain broke on the tandem just a few miles out of town. The nearest bike shop was in Corvallis which was almost 20 miles away. Used the cell phone to call 2 different bike shops and all they could say was ‘get the bike here and we’ll fix it.’ We picked a house at random where the garage door was open and walked up the driveway to encounter Mike. I told him of our dilemma and asked if he would be able to drive me into Corvallis to a bike shop. He was initially reluctant saying that he had plans to go to Salem and Corvalis was out of his way. But my charming demeaner eventually won him over and he ended up taxi cabbing me for the better part of 2 hours while Donna and Lewis entertained his wife Margaret. Our best ever start had us at 15 miles covered and it was approaching 2:00 pm. How had this happened? So we say goodbye to our first good samaritan of the trip and hot foot it out of there in an attempt to reach Eugene before nightfall. Had a late lunch in Corvallis as we rode in (my second visit of the day) and spend 45 minutes at Burger King while I sent out a half dozen e-mails to Warm Showers host in Eugene. The plan was to see if anyone responded once we got to Eugene. So we’re at 32 miles and it’s nearly 4:00. We put on our afterburners and added another 40 miles, pulling into Eugene at 7:30 pm. Over 70 miles and this was a day when 2 hours were wasted getting the chain fixed! Yes we can make it to DC!!!!!
We encountered a group of cyclists out for some exercise and they escorted us into town. Dean Martin got us to another wifi spot but to no avail. No one had responded to my e-mails. We were disappointed to say the least. After all the cyclists we have taken into our house, we have yet to taken in by someone else. I tried to get Dean Martin to let us sleep in his back yard but he said something about Jerry Lewis stopping by later and he wouldn’t have room for us. So we headed into Downtown Eugene and were prepared to get our 3rd motel of the trip.
We hadn’t eaten since Burger King so we pulled into a Safeway to buy a few groceries that we could consume in our motel room that we hadn’t yet found. This is the ugly part. I’m having a hard time writing about it. We left the bikes unlocked outside of Safeway. Donna was going to use the restroom and then return to keep watch on our stuff. I was to do the shopping. By the time Donna and Lewis had located the restrooms and relieved themselves, 10 to 15 minutes had passed. When she returned to the bikes, the bikes had become the bike. Only the tandem remained. Gone was her $1200 Novara touring bike, along with whatever was strapped to it. Here is an inventory: All of our clothes, the computer, our sleeping mattresses, her billfold containing $100 cash and credit card and license(don’t ask why she put that into a pannier), $500 worth of panniers, and a miscellany of personal stuff that is too numerous to mention. You can see the damage was severe.
I was still in the checkout line when Lewis came in to tell me that Mom’s bike was gone. Initially I thought he was trying to be funny. Then I was hoping that he was trying to be funny. Then I freaked out. I left our groceries on at the register without paying as that was what I was in the process of doing. I ran outside and yep, no joke. Donna was ashen in appearance and trembling. My initial thought was; we’re not going to make it to DC!
This is when a passerby noticed the agitation in our midst and asked if anything was wrong. When we informed him that our bike had just been stolen he said “Hop in. We’ll go look for it.” I wonder that if knew what can of worms he opened by getting involved with the Jacksons, would he have ignored us like the rest of Eugene was? I hopped in. I raced around Eugene with Rich Bolen for 10 or 15 minutes but I knew it was futile at best. Most likely it was under cover and never to be seen again. We talked about this and that and the other thing while racing around. When I explained the warm showers concept and how we had hoped to sleep in someones backyard in Eugene that we didn’t know, I also planted a seed in Rich Bolens head. If Rich had ignored that seed, or plucked it out of the ground I am fairly confident that this adventure would no longer be in progress. I would most likely be on the way home to Shelton soaked in misery.
Rich returned me to safeway where Donna was talking to a few employees after having called in the theft to the Eugene police. He stuck around for a bit and then left. We were instructed to wait where we were for the police to arrive and take down the pertinent information. After 40 minutes they hadn’t arrived but did call to say they had been delayed with more pressing matters. We were preparing to begin the long walk (2miles +) in the dark, in a strange city, to a motel that we didn’t know the name of when Rich returned with his wife in tow. Being not only a good person, but a good husband, Rich went home to make sure it was OK with Carrie if he invited us to sleep in their back yard.
When Rich made the offer, it was immediately accepted as we needed to be around people. If we had sequestered ourselves in a motel room it would have been like a morgue. Donna and Lewis hopped in the back of their car while I tried keeping up with them riding the tandem solo. I did pretty good plus the ride was relatively short as they lived only a half mile from Safeway. Rich and Carrie and their two daughters Holly and Amber welcomed us into their home. We joined them for a really late dinner of pasta and spaghetti and grilled chicken breasts along with a beer for me and a glass of wine for Donna. Once we had eaten we sat around with them and Rich began throwing out ideas about strategies that might help to get the bike back. I was more or less brain dead by this point after having ridden over 70 miles and the emotional turmoil that was raging inside my head. Rich put out some info on Craigs list about the stolen bike in order to inform people in Eugene what had happened. He even added a photo from REI. Then it was his turn to plant a seed in my head. His suggestion to get the local media involved was brilliant. That was about all that happened that day as our hosts went to bed but not before they made us comfortable not in the back yard but on their living room floor. Just as I was preparing to call it a day (a very long and bad and yucky day), the police finally showed up. It was now nearly 1:00 in the morning and I let the officer into their house where he took all the information. Officer Ryan didn’t hold out much hope in us getting our bike back but he also was instrumental in getting the snowball rolling which eventually morphed into a 45’ tall abominable snowman. The police also have a public relations officer who get news out to the public and they jumped on this story.
The phone calls started coming the next morning. There must have been 15 or 20. By noon we had agreed to and been interviewed by 2 different local TV stations and 1 local country music radio station. By the end of the day we had one additional TV story and the local newspaper also jumped in. This all occurred in the house of Rich and Carrie Bolen. It was a circus to say the least. But good things started happening almost immediately. The country music radio station has a morning talk show with 3 really nice DJ’s: Tracy Berry, Bill Barrett and Tim Fox who is a bicycling enthusiast. They decided to run a fundraiser the following morning in an effort to get us back on the road and also to help restore the image of Eugene, It had to have helped that I resemble (in name only) a certain tall blonde dude who is well known in the country music circles. It is about time that I benefited from sharing my name with him. I am the original after all. The other Alan Jackson is about 6 months younger than me!
In addition to the planned fundraiser scheduled for Wednesday, the folks at 93.3 also offered to set us up at the Campbell House for 2 nights free of charge. We jump at this opportunity in an attempt to get Rich and Carries lives back into some sense of normalcy. While we have known them less than 24 hours, we had turned their peaceful routine upside down. Tim Fox (the DJ at 93.3) transported us to our new surroundings later that afternoon.
The Campbell House is one of those old Victorian places that reeks with charm. It is way beyond anything that I would ever do for myself. Maybe as a special gift to Donna someday? As previously mentioned we were placed into the carriage house where we had privacy and room to move about. Our room had 2 beds, jetted bath, TV fridge microwave and the whole place was filled with antique this or that or bric a brac. Just out of curiosity I inquired as to the current rates for the room we were in. $289 a night!
After unpacking our meager belongings we set out on a walking tour of Eugene specifically visiting a bicycle shop that Tim suggested, ‘The Wheel Works’. We picked out a replacement bike for Donna along with all the necessary accessories. An hour later we were back on our way to the Campbell House. The remainder of the day was spent flipping through channels from one news program to Nickelodeon to the next news program and back to Nickelodeon. We caught just one of the interviews but Lewis got his fix of cartoons on Nickelodeon.
The next morning (Wednesday June 10) I awoke earlier than the others (as usual) and went to the lobby for the breakfast portion of our bed and breakfast. Almost immediately I was connected with the DJ’s and was interviewed yet again. This was during the fundraiser that ran for their entire morning talk show that runs from 7 to 10:30. The gang from 93.3 wanted to give us the proceeds so we agreed to meet them at the Cambell House just before noon. We ended up receiving approximately $1700 in cash and checks from the generosity of people in Eugene whom we don’t even know. Just a bit later we got another phone call from the gang at 93.3. This time they were calling to report that someone had found our bicycle!
This of course deserves another round of media attention so a bunch of people with cameras rolling were waiting outside the Campbell House when the Police Swat Truck pulled up with Donnas bike in the back. A young lady who recognized our bike from one of the news pieces discovered it next to a dumpster outside her apartment just a block away from Safeway. Miraculously the panniers (like saddle bags for bikes) were still on the bike! They had been emptied of the contents except for a few small things left in the zippered compartments. What was similarly strange was the fact that the seat had been exchanged with a beatup one and the wheels had been swapped out as well. The bike in its condition was almost rideable. It couldn’t be shifted as the gear shifter did not match the freewheel but it was more or less intact. I have speculated that the thief had a smidgeon of conscious and intentionally placed the bike somewhere it would be seen as the media circus surrounding the Jacksons and their interrupted trip to Washington DC was one of the biggest stories of the day in Eugene. I wish everyone could have seen Lewis when one of the reporters threw him the question of ‘what would you say to the person who stole your bike?’ He didn’t falter and responded “whoever took our bike should give it back so that we can keep going to Washington DC.” I was so proud of our little man Lewis!
When the media circus was concluded, we began our day of mad shopping. First we went to Wheel Works and cancelled the bike we would have bought. Then talked to the owner who agreed to have our bike road ready by the end of the day with new wheels, new tires, new seat, and a general tune-up, Next we hit the St Vincent DePaul thrift store where we all purchased quite a few things. Donna actually bought second hand underwear but she probably doesn’t want me telling the world this. Next we did lunch followed by a trip to REI. This was perhaps the least savory aspect of our day of shopping in Eugene. One of the employees recognized us from the news stories and contacted her superior to see if any deals could be made on our behalf. It would have been some good free publicity as we are REI members afterall. No luck. REI bad, REI bad! The purchases at REI came to just over $650 as we had to replace our sleeping mattresses, cycling shorts, and some camping miscellany.
By the time we left REI (REI bad, REI bad) we were due back at the bike shop as they closed at 6:00. The refurbished bike along with another couple pairs of bike shorts and a new bike computer costs us $575. The last thing we hoped to accomplish today was some shopping at Target followed by a new minilaptop (I’m using it right now) purchased at BEST BUY. This was not walking distance from Downtown but our now good friend Rich agreed to pick us up at the Campbell House and do some shopping with us before we all got together for a final good bye dinner. We spent another $75 dollars at Target and the new computer and a card reader for the camera came to $300 at Best Buy. I haven’t done the math yet but it appears as though the incoming and outgoing cash flow was almost a balanced amount. How the heck did that happen?
After concluding our shopping and having replaced most everything that was missing, we joined Rich and Carrie and Holly and Amber and their family friend, ?????, for dinner at one of their favorite establishments. When it came time to pay the bill I was opening my wallet when Rich informed me that my money was no good. What’s up with that? Thank you Rich and Carrie for taking us into your house and I hope we haven’t scared you away from ever doing a good deed again. Rich is such a good sport. He had to go through almost as many of the interviews as we did. His role being that of the good Samaritan, which he fit to a tee! But he did get a phone call from the mayor or Eugene on our behalf which probably wouldn’t have happened any other way!
After dinner we returned to Rich and Carries to watch the interviews which they had captured with their high tech gadgetry. Lewis got in a couple more episodes of Chowder on Nickelodeon before we said our final goodbyes to Carrie and the girls. Rich was going to do one last favor for us which involved transporting the tandem to the Campbell House from his garage where it had sat since that night so long ago.