Been home for a bit now, bike made it home in good condition (except my saddle - got some scratches because of the packing job) a few days after I arrived by plane. Just finished posting all my pictures from the trip online here. I haven't gone through and deleted dupes, bad, or boring pictures - you've been warned.
Touched down in Denver this evening, took the bus to Boulder, grabbed a pita and a six pack, and went home.
Getting back is bittersweet for sure. Most of this trip has gone really smoothly, glad I got started with it. Seeing the width of the country was interesting, and I really enjoyed a lot of the small towns along the way. For the most part, the weather was beautiful, or at least tolerable, and The Infernal Machine handled things well. Except for some knee issues on the first couple days, some road rash in Wyoming, and an annoying respiratory bug, I've stayed pretty comfortable for the last couple months. To answer the constant question - the butt is, and has been, fine :) (Brooks B17.)
Visiting with family and friends was really good too, I'm proud to know some really great people, and spending time with them is always good. Met some really cool folks along the way - far too many to list here (that's cheezy anyways,) hopefully I'll be able to keep in touch with some of them. And, of course, the conversation with bunches of random people in gas stations, diners, and parks along the way was fun. It's all about the people.
Getting a break from the 90mph pace of the previous year at school was good as well, last spring left me a bit fried after 20 credit hours and working a lot to pay for them.
When it boils down to it, I feel more at home on the road/trail/mountain than pretty much anywhere else. It's always good to be home.
But, now it's back to 90 for a while longer, probably more than two full years this time around, and only a small part of me is looking forward to that. I'm hoping to get this degree knocked out in three years, which is going to require heavy course loads, bending some rules (prerequisite stuff,) and taking classes next summer. School is generally interesting, but that long of a stretch could be tedious.
Some days on the road, I had to deal with bad drivers and occasional assholes - glad that's over. I feel strongly that most people are good people, but I think the sheer number of people, in the form of drivers, that I was seeing everyday was exposing my to more of that small percentage of jerks than in previous adventures. Plus, you don't generally take note of people who do a good (correct) job passing a cyclist, but the bad ones definitely stick out. Never before have I put my life in the hands of so many people. Not the most comforting thought, but I'm still here.
I'm glad that I'll be around more familiar people for a while too. The ride was a much more solitary trip than I had anticipated, and some of the longer stretches without any familiar faces got pretty lonely. Finally, my string of good luck appears to have had a hiccup over the last few days too - a few things happened that have me down a bit. One of them is that the guy who was subletting my room isn't going to be able to get his mess (and it is a mess) out of my room for another 8 days.
But, it takes a bit of bad to appreciate the good I suppose, and really my complaints about the trip are fairly trivial and meant just to show that it wasn't a complete joyride. On the whole, life is good.
As far as this blog goes, this is gonna be the last post most likely. That said, previous posts definitely aren't set in stone and I have plans to go through them to finish and edit text in some places, and add quite a few pictures. The editing might take a while since I've got more pressing things to deal with than getting the blog polished up. If you're incredibly bored, there will be more on school and such over at ianr44.blogspot.com.
We'll see how it goes.
Done. 4432.7 miles (Newport News, VA to Lincoln City, OR)
Wednesday: Lazy morning reading, then went on a failed mission to a couple different brewpubs before heading to the airport. Couldn't find one of them in a reasonable amount of time, and the improvised backup plan was closed. We decided it wasn't meant to be and headed to the airport. Pretty standard airplane trip from Portland to Denver, nice scenery on takeoff and a wind-buffeted landing, but nothing else to mention.
Tuesday: Did a couple more brewpubs and drove out to the Columbia River Gorge to check out a waterfall and the general scenery. The waterfall was really tall - think it's the second tallest in the US, but not too much flow. Still, it was an impressive fall, and we hiked up to the top of it on a very busy paved path. Nice to stretch the legs a little after a few days of relative inactivity. Saw some really nice old cars in the parking lot - four or five Bentleys and Rolls-Royces complete with an armed guard. One particular Bentley was really neat - looked like a 1940s model if I had to guess, and still had a right hand drive. Cooked up a nice little dinner back at the house, then we went to see the new Bourne movie - first time I've been in a movie theatre in god knows how long. Neat film as far as "action movies" go! 
Monday: Beer happens to be one of my interests in normal life, and Portland happens to be the city with the most breweries per capita in the US (likely the world, but I'm not sure.) Chris, one of the guys from the beach who's house I've been crashing at, is also a beer fan. So, we spent a good chunk of the day just going on a brewpub tour around Portland - even got a couple souvenirs! We also went to Powels Bookstore, which is the biggest bookstore in the country. Five stories and it takes up an entire city block. And, most of the technical books are in another store a block or two over. Unfortunately, I didn't know about the technical book store until later, but was pretty much overwhelmed by the main one already. Picked up a couple books, one on a guy's travels in Mongolia, and a Mongolian/English dictionary and phrasebook. Yup.
Realized that I loaned my phone charger to Smiles in Pacific City, then forgot about that while packing up. Oops. Had to start rationing battery life, then talked to Smiles and found out she wasn't going to be able to make it up to Portland afterall, so I've gotta stretch this charge out until Friday or so when the charger gets to my house by mail. Oops.
Sunday: Got up and decided at the last minute to pack the bike in with the guys who were heading up to Portland rather than hanging around Pacific City until Wednesday. Smiles has to work between now and then, I'd like to check out Portland, and there's really not much to do in Pacific City other than be on the beach. Went for a quick tour of St. Johns, the neighborhood where the guys all live, with Ryan, then went over to the bar Ben works at for some beers with the other guys. Smiles planned on driving over to Portland after work on Tuesday to visit.
Saturday: Spent the entire day being a beach bum, watching a longboard competition (favorite bit was overhearing a competitor talking about his run with a friend and mentioning he was waiting for his grandkids to get there,) drinking a lot of beer, and visiting. Blurred my magnificent tan lines a little bit, but got a picture first :).
Friday: 133 miles to get from Springfield/Eugene, OR to the coast at Lincoln City, OR. Ran out of sunlight before energy, but my friend Smiles popped down from Pacific City to give me a ride up to there where she had several friends from Portland already. Excellent beach party with some neat people on a nice beach. Never got around to taking the bike to the shoreline to do the wheel dip thing, but whatever. Rode something like 30 miles right along the shore. Riding wise, the traffic was hellacious all day long. About got clipped a few times, pulled off to avoid tight spots several times, and just raced through a lot of turns to minimize time in scary areas. Nice scenery though, and it was good knowing the coast was so close.
Thursday: Nice riding day! Got my first smell of the Pacific Ocean from a little hill about halfway through the day. Met another cross country biker, Jeff, who was just leaving on his eastbound journey, so we sat down and chatted for a good while. Jeff normally lives in Springfield (basically part of Eugene, OR) and invited me to stay in his house that night with a German couple who are spending a year or so traveling the world. They're going to drive around the west over the next couple weeks, and might be coming through Boulder, so maybe we'll get to visit some more later. Nice evening hanging out and chatting with them, much better than staying in another RV park! Hadn't had a shower at all in over a week at that point, so it was good to get cleaned up too! Cool people are neat :).
Wednesday: Weird day. After a fair bit of debate, I decided to head out early from Sisters, OR to try to get over McKenzie (or is it Mackenzie...) Pass before the construction crew got there to stop me from going through. I got started later than I had hoped, and they got to work a lot earlier than I had guessed, so I couldn't make it through. Beautiful ride up to the pass, with lots of fresh volcanic rock on the top from an eruption just a thousand or so years ago. Good views of the Sisters, and Mt Hood off in the distance. Made me think about Colorado a bit.
Anyways, after getting to the beginning of the road closure (a few miles on the other side of the pass, naturally) and chatting with the flagger girl for a bit about what was going on with the landslide that closed the road, I ended up riding back over the top to spend the day sitting in the woods near the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail - one of the three long trails that make up the triple crown; Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail.) Didn't meet any thru-hikers as I had hoped, but I suppose it's still a little early for them to be that far north. Read a lot in my book, slept a lot, felt bored a lot, then eventually it was time to roll. Managed to get through the construction zone relatively unimpeded, got confronted by the second to last truck out, but talked my way through that. The landslide area most definitely wasn't passable on wheels, but wasn't too big of a deal to get through on foot. Beautiful ride down from there through some nice woods with beautiful sunset. 
It got dark fast as I rode farther into the valley and into the night, but fortunately the road was very smooth and there wasn't any traffic on it (the first half past the pass to my destination was closed ;) .) Made it by headlight to a campground, but was disappointed to find that it didn't have any potable water source, and that it cost $10 (or maybe $12 - memory is fuzzy on that.) Ten bucks isn't that bad of a fee for a nice campsite with toilets, water, tables, and such, but without water it seemed like kindof a ripoff to me. All I really need to camp is water and enough space to lay down...
Quickly noticed that one campsite was occupied and awake, so I put on my invisible yogi hat and went over to see if they had change for a $20 (another small issue with the fee.) Brought up the water question and almost instantly the campers were forcing a gallon jug of water on me - people are great. They didn't have change, but mentioned the ranger came by every morning at 9, so I decided to just write a note on the payment envelope and drop it in the box so I could get change from him in the morning. The note was something to the effect of "Sorry I'm a biker and don't have exact change. Will meet the ranger in the morning and settle up, or failing that I'll drop a $20 in the box." Hoped I wouldn't have to do that, but it seemed likely that I'd be able to meet the ranger in the morning and get it straightened out.
Chatted a bit longer with the other campers, then went over to my campsite to get changed and cook up some dinner. Before I could get out my cookpot, the guy from the other campsite had come over and invited me over to dinner at their site! Turned out it was a family with one young child and a friend of hers out camping, and that they had anticipated more people coming that hadn't shown up. Ended up playing a round of checkers with one of the kids, chatting a bunch with the parents and kids, and eating some freshly caught trout and bratwurst. Super cool people!
Tuesday morning: I woke up at 6am or so as usual, and slowly ate some breakfast and got packed up and ready to go. Then read my book for a bit to wait for the ranger to show up. Sure enough, right around 9am, he pulled in and went straight for the money box. I hopped up and started walking over there, by the time I got to the self payment kiosk, he was reading the note and had a decidedly unhappy look on his face. I interrupted his reading to say that I was the guy who wrote the note and had my payment in hand. His response was a not too friendly statement to the effect of "it's a $250 (or something like that) citation if you don't pay the fee within 30 minutes of arrival." So, I kindof ignored that and went back to the change question, which he grudgingly made for me and reminded me about the citations. I mentioned something about trying to be honest and not having planned to stay there, but heard more about the citation. Anyways, this guy was a jerk. Pissed me off a bit too because I was going out of my way to pay the (in my mind, inflated) fee to use a campsite. Especially because my sleeping there left virtually no impact on the campsite, and I could have just as easily camped for free, legally, at any of a number of unofficial sites coming down the hill. Only reason I went to this place was that I thought it would have potable water. Only stayed because of the nice people who gave me water there. And, the thing that irked me the most, was that this guy didn't seem to understand that his citation threats were completely hollow - they didn't have anywhere near enough information on that envelope to track me down had I left early without paying. And, had I not written the note in the first place, they never would have even known I was there! Stupid.
Anyways, after the jerk got done whining about citations, I went over to a nearby creek to rinse off. Incidentally, that same creek ran right by one of the unofficial sites, so I could've gotten water from it and camped for free, but didn't want to wait 30 minutes for the bleach to work it's magic before I could cook. But I digress.
The creek was honestly the coldest fresh water I've ever been in (Ross Sea takes the cake on coldest,) which means something from a kid who grew up on Dukes Creek. Anyways, by the time it took me to hurriedly rinse off, my feet were mostly numb, and my toes definitely were numb.
Hopped on the road and rode on!
Once again, slightly rushed to get 'net stuff done in a library time frame. Also, once again, I've forgotten the little things I was going to remember to write about...
Anyhoo, the ride has been going nicely. It has still been pretty hot during the days, but not so bad lately as it was before. The nights have been nice and cool - this morning was actually a little too cold to go more than 10mph or so without fingertips freezing. I'm within 300 miles or so of being done, haven't added it up in a couple days, but the tentative idea is to get to the coast this weekend!
Planning on heading on down the road after this library stop, not sure exactly where to though because there aren't any campsites listed for a pretty good ways on the map. The next town listed as providing camping is Sisters, which is a little further than I'd like to go, but it's definitely within reasonable range. From there, I'll get to decide between two routes to get on to Eugene. The regular route goes over McKenzie Pass, the longer (by 20-something miles) alternate route goes over Santiam Pass. Problem is that McKenzie pass is apparently closed due to construction work and a rock slide. Heard through the grapevine that the road was closed to cars, but open to bikers until the rock slide. Also heard that the slide wasn't all that big, so I'm thinking I might just give it a try anyhow. But, that decision doesn't come until tomorrow, so I'll try to get some more current, local, information when it gets closer.
Baker City was a neat little town. Ended up getting in touch with Mike, another biker who was in town, and he showed me a little park to crash in for the night (his friend's place where he was going to invite me, was full with him and other family types visiting.) The park worked out well, except for another early morning (3:30) sprinkler session, but fortunately it wasn't nearly as bad as the one a few weeks ago. Killed several hours in the morning waiting for a bike shop to open up so I could get a couple innertubes. Bought a couple interesting books to read - one on a guy's travels with a Kayak and one on Genghis Kahn, had a coffee, and read for a bit. The kayak book only took a couple days to get through, but I really enjoyed it. It got me to thinking about international travel ideas. Definitely want to get out of the country more in the future.
After Baker City, I rode to Austin Junction, where there is a convenience store/restaurant type place that lets bikers camp out back for $5. It was a little bit strange, nothing major, just odd customers, weird (indoor) plumbing, strange attitudes, etc. The next morning, I had to fill up my bottles with a garden hose outside as the store hadn't opened up yet. Nastiest tasting hose I've ever drank out of - kept tasting rubber after several rinses down the road. Made some instant pudding for dinner thinking that the powdered milk and chocolate might mask the flavor. Nope! But, did sleep well, bought some gummy worms, and had water, so that's really all that I needed.
The next day after Austin Junction was neat riding. New mountains on the horizon, neat geology closer to the road. Still hot and dry out during the day. Stayed in a city park in Dayville right beside a small creek that was chock full of crawdads of all sizes. Thought pretty seriously about catching enough to cook them for dinner, but decided against it.
Monday morning I left Dayville and rode through the "John Day Fossil Beds National Monument" - didn't see any fossils unfortunately (probably because I skipped the visitor center.) Took a nice long break for lunch (Mountain Dew, granola bars, some chocolate, and an entire bag of Goldfish) in Mitchell, where I had a fun conversation with a couple local middle/highschool kids about cars, bikes, music, and other random stuff. They told me all about the campground at Ochoco Pass, a few miles further on, and mentioned that it had water, so I ended up heading there to camp last night. The campground was a USFS self-pay type deal, fee for a single vehicle/night is $12, but I only had a $10 and some $20s, ended up paying $10 and leaving a little note on the envelope, hope that my shorting them $2 doesn't end up causing a problem :). Seems like the fee should be less anyways for a single guy on a bike rather than 6 people in a big SUV, but that's just my opinion. Anyways, it was a nice campground with lots of shade provided by huge pine trees. Got pretty cold overnight, guessing somewhere in the lower 40s.
OK, so this is going to be another super-rushed posting from a library.
Got out of McCall yesterday morning via a ride up to New Meadows with Clair, then biking from there to a campground on the Snake River, which is the Idaho/Oregon border in that area. Ride was scenic, but quite hot. After that last post, I found a thermometer outside - 103 in the shade. At the end of the day, as the trail dropped down into Hells Canyon, I had some rediculous wind - sagebrush and sand blowing everywhere. Had to get into lower gears and push a little just to keep going downhill. Nice little campsite for the night with showers!
Today has been really hot. I don't know exactly what the temps were, but they were damn hot. And, just for fun, there's been practically nowhere to stop for a break. No shade either. It's been pretty, but I've been having to somewhat ration water, which isn't much fun. I'm about done with the arid/semi-arid climate thing for a while - think the coast is going to be a nice change in a few days!
On that note, I've been thinking about where to end this trip, and today think I came up with a good destination. I'll be flying out of Portland on the 8th, but hadn't decided how far to ride the bike. The official transamerica route finishes in Astoria, OR, but also has a spur off to Florence, OR which is a bit more direct route to the coast. I'm not set on following the official route the entire way, although I do definitely want to make it to the Pacific. Today, I called up a friend from the AT, Smiles (aka Laura,) who moved to the coast of Oregon fairly recently and found out that she lives right on the transam route! So, at this point, the plan is to ride transam to Smiles' place, then probably mail the bike home from there and head on to Portland one way or another. One benefit of that plan is it gives me a bit more time between riding and getting to the airport, so I might be able to spend a day or two in Portland on the way home. All that is subject to change, of course :).
Finally, just got an email from Mike, a biker I met a few days before the raft trip, saying that he's in Baker City as well and to give him a call. Yay for local contacts!
Man, it's really hot out.
That was in Cambridge, before dropping into Hells Canyon, wanna guess what the temps did then? Yup.
And, I'm way behind on this blog thing. Most of this was written up 8/11:
The raft trip was a lot of fun, and a lot of work - very glad that we managed to work it all out! Got to spend a zero day in McCall getting errands taken care of and getting my stuff ready to go on the river trip - think that was Friday.
Saturday was spent getting the gear and boats all ready to go over at the HCR (Hells Canyon Rafting - Clair's raft company) place, then getting that all out to the water. I helped out a bit with the packing to the extent I could without knowing where everything was stored in the shop. Ended up just doing a lot of heavy lifting once the boxes, coolers, and boats were ready to load into the boat. Kurt (HCR owner, guide, and cool dude) asked me what I was doing next summer - to us transient types that's a job offer! Still planning on doing summer school next summer in order to graduate sooner, but it's a damn tempting backup plan!
We packed an amazing amount of gear into the back of Kurt's truck and headed out for the put-in. Inflated the boats and got them in the water, then Kurt and Meg (the other guide for the trip) left to take care of other stuff. Clair and I camped out there for the night after getting the gear all set to go the following morning.
Somewhat surprisingly, the beach stayed pretty quiet all night - apparently it's a common place for local kids to go party, and given that it was a Saturday night, we anticipated there being a lot of noise. Also got to see some amazing stars with the clear air and low light pollution! Suppose that there had been plenty nice nights leading up to that, but with the high daytime temperatures, I had been going to bed early in order to start riding in the cool morning air and get to the day's destination before it got super hot.
Sunday morning, we did some more gear shuffling after breakfast (Poptarts!!) Meg, the other guide for the trip, showed up and got her boat setup the way she likes it (every guide has their own packing style and preferences on how to inflate the boats) The guests arrived by shuttle van and got a briefing from Meg on some basic rafting stuff in the parking lot. I stood back and listened to the talk, then we all got our lifejackets on, hopped in the boats, and were off! Two of the guests took the duckies (inflatable kayaks,) two hopped in Meg's boat, and Clair and I took the other boat.
For the first day, the river was relatively flat, with a couple little rapids, but as I recall the biggest was a class 2 (more on rapid classification here). We stopped after an hour or so and setup a "water bar" for lunch.
A water bar, in this sense, is just a folding table setup right on the shore, with the legs pushed down into the sand, so that you can keep your feet in the water while serving up food. These guided trips are very nicely catered; lunch had plenty of vegetables, multiple types of bread, meat, and cheese to make sandwiches, plenty of beverage options, and a choice of desserts! Apparently, some guests refer to these trips as "roughing it," but the food we had on the trip was, on average, better than what I tend to eat at home during the school year.
After a few more hours of rafting, including breaks to swim and cool off, we made it to our campsite for the night. Meg, Clair, and I quickly had tents going up, a kitchen being assembled, a toilet tent getting setup, and a table and chairs to eat at. Roughing it.... Fortunately, this group of guests turned out to be really cool and helped us with setting things up a little bit. As the trip progressed, they got more and more involved with the setup and breakdown of the camps and lunch breaks.
We took a nice break to go swimming, mess around with the duckies, and walk around. Dinner started with an appetizer of fried *** cheese and crackers, then the main course was salmon (gardenburgers for the vegetarians,) veggies, and chocolate cake (with confetti!) for dessert. After cleaning up, the guests had a game called "catchphrase" that they invited us to play. One of those annoying little electronic gizmos, but it turned out to be entertaining despite the annoying noises it was making. Not a big fan of electronics in the outdoors. Visited for a while, then the guests went off to their tents and the guides and I cowboy camped a little way down the beach. Another day of beautiful weather outside!
The other three days of the trip were more or less the same theme, but with different scenery. It was interesting watching (and I suppose being a part of) the guides and the guests get to know each other better and have more in-depth conversations on things. One interesting angle on this trip was that Meg is going down to work in McMurdo, Antarctica next October - the same place I spent the austral summer '05-06 (blog.) While Meg was picking my brain on Antarctic stuff, Clair was talking with one of the guests about doing recovery work in New Orleans (two of the guests coordinate reconstruction efforts over there,) I was talking with the guides about their jobs, and the three of us were talking retirement plans with one of the other guests, who is a financial planner. A floating career fair!
For most of the trip, I was just a passenger, but did row one of the boats for a few little sections. It's tough work, but I'm sure part of what makes it seem hard is not having good technique down. Got to take a spin in one of the duckies through a few rapids on the second to last day when there was too much headwind for the guests (who, to their credit, had kept the duckies occupied for the entire time up to that point. I was pretty amazed that they stuck with it that long given their desk-job type careers. And, they were damn good paddlers for their first trip!) Paddling through the confluence of the Snake and Salmon rivers was a lot of fun - reminded me of sea kayaking on a rougher day with the standing waves and wind combined with some weird (for a river) currents right around the confluence area. Hadn't tried a ducky before this trip, think I'm more of a hardshell guy, but they're fun fun!
Another quick post - just got back from the river trip earlier today! Had a really good time - we had four guests, who were pretty cool and very helpful. Neat scenery, fun conversation, exciting rafting, good weather, and getting to hang out with my friend Clair - all around fun! Would post more, but it's time to get food!
