Prineville, OR

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.

Baker City, OR

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!

Cambridge, ID - raft trip writeup

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!

One of the guests shooting Snowhole Rapid (the decent size ones are often named)
She flipped half a second after that shot, but hung onto the boat and the paddle - bravo!

Once we were on the Snake River (after the confluence of Snake and Salmon, the Snake continues on,) things got a little different. Snake is a dam regulated river, so the level fluctuates by quite a few feet. Rather than just casually tying the boats to a rock or whatever, I had to make a pretty substantial deadman anchor to tie off to. Another reason for the big anchor is that jet boats (damn them) like to bring big boatloads of tourists up the river at considerable speed (and noise,) kicking up wakes that can make life interesting. Also, we started seeing more development along the river on the Washington side. There had been wildfires too (cross reference, although different section of the same river,) and when you get wildfires around development, you either get burned out homes or examples of wildfire fighting techniques. That's something else I want to do... Anyways, it was neat to see where they had dropped some retardant ("drop the retard!") to save a few houses from the fire - it's the red stuff:


We eventually got to the pull-out, where we were met by Kurt and his truck. The guests took another shuttle out, then we got to lugging everything out of the boats and into the truck, breaking down and deflating the boats, and getting everything strapped down for the ~4 hour drive home. Unpacking, cleaning, and putting away everything went fairly quickly with something like 6 of us working on it, then we went home. Clair and I got cleaned up and went to town for dinner (one of the best pizzas ever!) then by the time dinner was over, it was bedtime.
Fawn - kindof like Bambi. It was actually one of several on the trip, but happened to have the camera out for this one.

The next morning, I got my bike stuff packed up, and Clair gave me a ride back to the route. On the road again!

Fun sidetrip!

Didn't Drown!

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!

McCall, ID

Ended up pushing out a long day yesterday and made it to New Meadows last night, the closest town to McCall on the transamerica route. Called up my friend Clair and got a ride over to McCall just as it got dark out! Beautiful ride yesterday, decent climb first thing, a fun downhill on a very quiet old windy road, then the rest of the day was cruising along the Salmon river.

Lazy day today, taking care of random errands around town and eating food. Tomorrow, we'll be getting ready for the trip and leaving McCall, then actual river time begins the morning after that! Might get some pictures from the last few days posted on here sometime in the next few days, but forgot to bring my camera into town, so that's not going to happen right now.

Kooskia, ID

So, been riding my bike some more. Got a late start out of Missoula, left around noon, but made it up and over Lolo Pass before camping. Naturally, the pass was over-hyped, and wasn't that big of a deal. Nice ride up and over! The route parallels a river most of the way up, so there's neat scenery and the grade is very gentile. Saw a helicopter picking up loads of water to dump on a nearby forest fire, but couldn't see the fire from the road. I think I want to give the smoke jumper thing a try at some point :). Took a nice break at the top of the pass, then went for a very nice coast down the other side! The terrain is noticably different on the Idaho side of the pass - much like I had imagined the Pacific Northwest would look like. Not sure if I'm technically in the Pacific Northwest or not, but the scenery sure is nice! Waited out a thunderstorm with some spectacular lightening, but not much rain, at a little lodge type place, then rolled down the road to camp. Found what appeared to be a staging area for fighting fires - noticed it through some trees from the road.

Hit the road earlier than usual this morning, nice riding for the most part along a river all day long. I'm in Kooskia right now, but thinking I might go visit the laundromat, then head on a little down the road to camp at a place with free camping rather than staying here in town. We'll see what happens!

I should be getting to McCall this Friday, then heading off on a raft trip, so this might be the last post for a few days.

Another deadline!

Bought my plane ticket home - should be getting back to Boulder on the evening of August 8th!

Misadventures in Dillon, and more!

So, after that last post from Dillon...

Left the library and made some phone calls - talked with the family and left a message on Clair's machine about raft trip logistics. Took care of some errands, then shortly after I started rolling out of town, I got a return call from Clair. Turned out I was right beside a park, so pulled into it to sit and talk logistics. At some point in the conversation, Clair mentioned something about my stupid bike, and I'm pretty sure it heard...

Anyways, got plans figured out for this rafting thing - I'll have to pay a little bit for food (about the same as what I've been spending on the road for food anyways,) but will otherwise basically be a guest on a rafting trip next weekend on the Salmon River. So, that's pretty cool! Ended up calling the town police to see if I could just sleep in the park that I had pulled off into, they eventually decided that it would be OK, so I setup my bivy and went to bed.

Woke up a couple hours after dark to a bright flash of lightning directly overhead, and soon was in a nice, windy, thunderstorm. Discovered that my trusty old bivy isn't really waterproof anymore, but didn't get too wet. Anyways, the storm quickly rolled through, I opened the solid door (generally sleep with just the bug door shut to get some ventilation) and went back to sleep. Sometime around 1am, I was rudely awakened by a jet of water spraying my feet, then my legs, then after a brief moment of realization, right in the face. Turned out there were some sprinklers in this park! Quickly pulled the solid door shut, waited until the sprinkler made another pass, then jumped out of bed, grabbed the bivy, got nailed by another sprinkler, then ran James Bond style, dodging sprinklers, across the park in my boxers and dragging the bivy to get to a patch of grass that wasn't being sprayed. It was quite rediculous, and a little frustrating, but in hindsight pretty funny. Anyways, dropped off the bivy, then made another pass to get the bike out of the spray. Went back to sleep for another hour or so, then had another T-Storm roll through. Not as bad as the last one, but it packed a fair bit of lightning and did add to the moisture content of my environment a bit. Was getting a little frustrated at this point, but managed to get back to sleep shortly after battening down. Then, sometime after 3, another salvo of sprinklers went off - turns out that there were actually several different systems running in that park - surely designed by some sort of evil genius! Got a little more damp this time than the last one (as all the grass that I had to run through, James Bond style, had been wetted thoroughly by the first sprinklers and the following thunderstorm.) Found a better spot, and slept until the sun came up.

Decided to go to a diner for breakfast - needed some coffee and felt like poptarts weren't the proper way to start the day after such a frustrating night! Found a diner easily enough, then managed to spill my cup of coffee within maybe 25 seconds of getting it. Stupid stupid Ian. Had a nice breakfast burrito, managed to drink a cup of coffee, and got out of dodge!

The ride later in the day ended up being pretty nice for the most part, generally nice quiet roads with a couple decent climbs to keep things interesting. Hit my new speed record for the trip coming down from Big Hole Pass, had nice smooth pavement, a little bit of a tailwind, and a long grade down. Made it up to 54mph. Then, just a little bit past there, I started pedaling again and the chain hopped off the cassette (the cluster of sprockets on the back wheel) and jammed. Not cool. Couldn't figure out what exactly was going on until I pulled the wheel off and discovered that the little lock nut thing that holds the cassette onto the hub had somehow unscrewed itself. Not cool.

*flashback to installation of new cassette last year*

So, this new cassette that I put on the bike is exactly the same model/style as the one I replaced, but for some reason is just a teeny bit narrower than the old one. Not abnormal apparently, when you're replacing parts on an old bike. Found a shim to take up the extra space, but it was a little bigger than ideal, so the lock nut nut thing couldn't catch more than a couple threads. But, that seems stable enough, and it doesn't have to hold back any force, why not?

*return from flashback - hot sun beside rt 298, cussing at bike*

Managed to use my little multi-tool to put the wheel back together, without the too-fat shim, and get back on the road. The bike works without the shim, but the fact that the cassette is loose make shifting pretty nasty. At any rate, I made it to Wisdom, MT without further incident.

The ride from there on to Missoula over the last couple days was pretty uneventful. Did see a forest fire yesterday, watched that and took some pictures for a bit. Had a bunch of traffic coming into Missoula, but it was to be expected - usually happens around bigger towns, and the map had warnings specifically about this one.

Anyways, back in Missoula...
Had a nice afternoon hanging out with Matt (Rubberbandman) and Annie (Haiku) here in Missoula. T took my bike over to a bike shop and got the wheel issue straightened out with a smaller shim. Also got to stop by the Adventure Cycling office and had a quick tour, used their computer to make the last post on here. Matt and I went on a hike up to the top of a hill near town, it was a nice little hike and had some good views from the top. Cooked pizza for dinner back at the house - or rather sat back and watched Matt cook pizza for dinner :) Went over to a neat little ice cream shop here in town for ice cream and a game of Cribbage, then back to the house for some hanging out, more Cribbage, and eventually some computer time!

I'm guessing that this blog isn't going to get updated again for at least a week. Between here and McCall, the route sounds pretty rural, then once I get there it's going to be an evening of prep stuff then river time for a few days!

Missoula, MT

Will likely be posting more later, but while I've got internet access... Made it to Missoula! Pretty sure this is the farthest north I'll end up on the trip, should be in Idaho tomorrow and hopefully rafting by Saturday. Things have been going alright, although it's been quite hot (mid 90s - low 100s) and I've had a slight mechanical issue. More on that later as it ties in with my sprinkler/thunderstorm misadventure and Clair's jinxing of the bike (cause of mechanical issue) that happened after my last post here. Off to find ice cream!

Dillon, MT

It's kindof funny - just had to look at my map to remember what town I'm in to put a subject on this post :).

Nice ride today, although quite hot. Moderate traffic, but generally nice roads, not too many climbs except for one nice long one this morning. Had a couple packs of poptarts for breakfast this morning, then stopped in a little restored old town called Nevada City for an awesome breakfast burrito. As I was chatting with the wait staff and waiting for food, my TA from Calc 2 last semester, McCall, walked in for breakfast. Turns out she works up there during summers waiting tables and fly fishing. Small world!

Not too much else to report really. Still on track to get to Missoula on Monday and on track to go on the rafting trip in a week or so! Looking forward to both of those things.

It's nice to have goals within reach. I'm within days of friends and a big change of scenery (or at least mode of transport ;) .) Definitely something to look forward to rather than just riding to get to another random small town. I've also been looking forward to getting done with the trip and back to Boulder. Things out here are definitely enjoyable, but I do sometimes miss the comforts of home, seeing friends, having a real kitchen, all that good stuff. Looking forward to getting back into the grind of school too. Not so much because it's fun, but more because I want to get it done. That said, this next semester has the potential to be pretty interesting - am lined up to take some neat classes that should be fairly challenging as well.

Ennis, MT

Alrighty, so this is going to be another completely non-comprehensive, photo-free post for the moment, but hopefully I'll be able to get back on later this evening and at least put up some pictures!

So, made it out of Lander, eventually. That town has a very strong vortex! After the last post, I ended up wrecking my bike while still in town - warped the front rim pretty badly, scratched up the bike a bit (mostly handlebars and saddle,) got some road rash (left knee, elbow, and hip - neither too bad,) and a series of little punctures from the chainring on my right calf. Fun stuff! Moral of the story - don't hold on to moving vehicle while on a loaded bike...

Anyways, I had to wait around all day Sunday and into Monday until the bike shops in town opened up to buy a new front wheel. Fortunately, one of the shops had a suitable wheel, and the other one (where my friend Ben works) had some available space for me to get the bike straightened out! Got everything put back together and re-adjusted, had lunch with Ben, then bought a new helmet (somehow managed to loose mine in town) before finally getting out of town around 2pm.

After Lander, it was a long day of riding with strong headwinds and very few resupply options before the next town. Eventually made it in to Dubois, WY by 10 pm or so, just a little after dark and stopped into the bar to get some food and figure out a place to crash. Found out where the town park was and that there was a fire crew camping there, which was somewhat fortunate as the town park wasn't listed as being a camp site. Probably meant that bikers usually can't stay there, but I figured there wasn't any harm if a lot of people were camping there already :). Found the park, setup, and slept.

Tuesday had a lot of road construction, including 4-5 miles of dirt construction site where there had been road. Cars were being led through by pilot vehicles, and cyclists were being shuttled in the back of pickup trucks. So, long story short, I had to ride in a truck for a part of the coast-to-coast journey. Not too concerned about that though, it's only .1% of the total distance anyways :).

Anyways, I've got 2 minutes left on this round, will see about getting more posted later!

....and back after a short break. Posted some random pictures - time frame on those is roughly from Breckenridge to now. Haven't had a chance to look through them and pick out the best ones, just posted a few that caught my eye :).

So, I'm in Montana now - crossed the border yesterday evening. Spent the last couple days rolling through Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. The scenery was pretty neat through both, but the traffic was hellacious and I was pretty glad to be getting away from that today. Lots and lots of vehicles in general, and a very significant portion were RVs or huge trailers. Plenty horrible driving to go along with the heavy traffic too, and it wasn't usually people being put into bad situations by other traffic. Bad drivers, plain and simple. I don't like RVs.

Did get to see some neat stuff though! The Tetons were very scenic, would definitely like to come back at some point and spend some time hiking/climbing around in them. Yellowstone wasn't quite as interesting as I would have anticipated, but the geothermal stuff was pretty cool. Got to see Old Faithful go off twice - rolled in right before it went off, then wandered around for an hour or so and saw it go off again before leaving. Also saw some big wildlife; a couple moose in Grand Teton, and some big elk in a few different places in Yellowstone. No bears, but lots of little rodent type stuff.

Speaking of bears, my first night in the woods in "grizzly country" got off to a funny start. I think some of my stupidity from Lander was left over. Was cooking up some dinner (one of those Lipton side dish things) and first off, without thinking about it, I opened up a big pack of tuna and dumped that in. Wasn't planning on cooking up a bear magnet first thing. So, after feeling a little stupid about that one, I managed to spill my pot of tuna noodles. Brilliant. Didn't loose too much dinner, but that table sure was fragrant by the time I was done with it! Cleaned up things (after eating, of course,) and didn't have any problems by morning.

Montana has been beautiful so far. I've only been riding in the state for ~80 miles (5 yesterday, 75 today,) but it's been nice rolling terrain with lots of stuff to look at in the distance. Service stations and towns have been a bit more frequent than they had been, but it's still much less populated than the eastern part of the country. Looking forward to more riding around here, and getting into Idaho soonish! I'm planning on nailing down a return date and buying a plane ticket when I'm in Idaho - want to see how this rafting trip pans out first. My next big stop should be Missoula, MT where Rubberbandman, a friend from the AT, lives. The Headquarters of Adventure Cycling is also in Missoula, so I'll stop by there and check it out too. With any luck, I'll also have a chance to check out Big Sky Brewing :).

That's all for now!

Landarctica

Well, rather than bumping into the WMI instructor (John, who does indeed live in Lander,) I was standing in line to order some food and my friend Deneen walked over and said hi. What a random small world thing! Turned out Kish and Deneen (an ice couple that I met in McMurdo) happened to be in Lander as well! Some other ice people live here in town, so they were up visiting and climbing. Naturally, a bunch of us stayed out late hanging out at the bar. Good times! I suppose I'll be rolling on towards Dubois, WY later today, but at the moment it's nice to sit around here and visit with some really neat people!

Lander, WY

Yay for amazing scenery! Sixty-ish mile day, took it easy and still got into Lander around 1pm. Rolled past some pretty scenery today - mountains in the distance and neat deserty-rocky stuff closer up. There's an interesting mix of very red rock and white rock around here, makes neat contrast between the sky, rocks, and plants. Unfortunately, the library here closes soonish, so I'm not going to get any pictures posted right now.

Slept at Jeffrey City last night - a modern ghost town that formed around a Uranium mine that ended up closing in the early 80s. Kindof a weird place - all the buidings look relatively modern, but nearly all of them are empty. Stopped into a little bar first thing to cool off and get a soda, first thing I saw was a decent size decapitated pig layed out on a table getting dressed up to roast. Unfortunately, they take a good while to cook, so I didn't get to eat any :(. Also didn't quite get a chance to pose with it for a picture because they started wrapping it with foil right as I thought of getting a pic. Oh well.

I've been thinking for a couple days that I know someone who lives in Lander, but couldn't think of who it was until this morning - pretty sure one of my instructors from a wilderness medicine course a year ago lives here. Going to find out in a little bit, turns out the WMI/NOLS (organization that ran the course) office is right around the block from the library where I'm typing this. Convenient!

Rawlins, WY

So, nothing much to post, just posting because I can. Made it into Rawlins, WY - 114.6 miles today! Tomorrow probably won't be as long. Staying at a commercial campground tonight - laundry, showers, and internet access!

Saratoga, WY

Made it into Wyoming! Things have been going much better today than yesterday - feel like I'm getting over my case of SARS, but it's still around a little bit. Made it into Saratoga just before 1pm, average speed (not counting breaks - just what my speedometer spit out) was over 17mph, pretty quick all things considered! Although I had been planning on spending the night here, I'll probably head on to Rawlins, WY to make up for the rediculously short (~18 mile) day yesterday. Talked with my friend Clair yesterday from Steamboat Springs and made tentative plans to get to McCall, ID by the 20th, so that puts me on a schedule for the next couple weeks.

The scenery lately has been nice, plenty stuff to look at, but the hills are generally quite gentile and not too long. Most of the area I've been riding through has been pasture land with occasional cows and horses, this morning there were some fields of hay. The mountains are looking less familiar than a week or so ago, definitely in some new territory for me! I'm looking forward to getting up nearer the Tetons and Yellowstone, should be getting around there in a week or so. Not planning on spending much time off-route in those areas as I need to keep moving to make McCall on time, and get done with the trip before school starts, but it'll be nice to at least see the scenery from the road and campsites! Lately, towns have been quite a lot farther apart than most of the rest of the trip - it's often 50+ miles between towns with resupply options - so I've been careful to carry plenty of water and "camel up" in towns. Roads have been mostly very quiet, and since crossing into Wyoming this morning, have had nice shoulders too!

A little more on yesterday:
Woke up at a funky little rental cabin/RV park/camping place feeling pretty low energy and generally unenthused, but still ended up getting on the road reasonably early. A little over an hour into the ride, my chain "sucked" up into the front derailer and jammed, not by itself a huge issue - just backpedaled a little bit and everything sorted itself out. A couple hundred yards later, the chain just came undone and was dragging behind the bike - bad news.

My guess is that the section of chain that got sucked in had the special "master link" in it, and that it got disconnected when the chain jammed. Then, when I started pushing on it again, half of the master link wasn't holding onto anything, the other part bent, and suddenly my bike was non-functinal. Anyways, half the master link was bent and the other half looked fine. I made an attempt at straightening out the bent half of the master link using my little multi-tool thing (which, naturally, doesn't have pliers,) but couldn't get it quite good enough to reconnect. Thought about trying to use my chain tool to just cut out a link and reconnect things to end up with a shorter chain, but decided that was a halfass solution and that I'd need to get a new chain at some point anyways. And, I wasn't feeling particularally motivated, so I just packed everything up, changed into sandals, and started pushing.

A few short hills and coasting sessions later, I was just shy of Walden. Saw the first pickup truck heading my way since the chain broke, so I stuck my thumb out and it stopped! Had seen a couple passing cars, but didn't even try hitching with them as I didn't want to leave my bike beside the road that long. Anyways, the two guys in the truck, Mark and Randall, were heading over to Steamboat Springs for an outing, and convinced me to come along with them to Steamboat, where there are a few bike shops, to get things fixed. About an hour later, we were at a bike shop in Steamboat, I had a new chain (and another master link to repair my old one,) and we made plans to meet up at the truck a few hours later to drive back to the route. Lucky ride!

Spent a few hours relaxing in Steamboat Springs after fixing the bike, ate some food, and picked up some random other bike goodies (a tube and a new bottle of lubricant.) I was feeling pretty sick with this case of Dengue Fever most of the day, at one point I was standing in line to get a bagel (yay! first fresh bagel of the trip!) and started feeling really weak and had to sit down for a couple minutes. Not fun, but after that passed, the lunch was excellent!

When we got back to Walden, I met some other bike tourists who were heading the other way, we wound up camping together at the city park and having a good time visiting over dinner. One guy had a little PDA with Wireless capability, so I used that to post the last update here, neat little machines! Got some reading in before going to bed early (no fireworks to be seen in Walden) to try and kick this case of Bird Flu that I've been trying to get over for a few days.

I've been reading a very interesting (although somewhat geeky) book lately on modern physics, by Brian Green and is called "Fabric of the Cosmos." In mostly plain english (very little math,) it goes over how physicists understand the universe from standpoints of Newtonian Physics, General and Special Relativity, and Quantum Physics, and on to how the views all tie together, how time fits into the picture, a bit on entropy, and some other neat stuff. Very well written book, and it has definitely helped me tie together a few different concepts that I "knew" but didn't really "understand," and plenty of interesting theoretical stuff as well.

Anyways, my time here at the library here is about up, and a little thunderstorm has come and gone, so it seems like a good time to hit the road and roll to Rawlins!

Walden, CO

Super quick update as I'm typing from a PDA and the battery is going out. Short day today- been kindof sick for the last couple days and I broke my chain 20 miles into the ride. Mnaged to hitch (w/ bike) into and out of Steamboat Springs (~65 miles) no problem and got a new chain there. Have been feeling pretty lousy -thougt it was just allergies, but I've been very low energy and got petty faint around lunchtime. Feeling better for the moment, so I'm oping it'll go away. Wyoming tomorrow!? Batteries dying...

Update from Boulder, CO

So, naturally after my longest break to date on the trip, I've left updating the blog to the very last minute :). Got into Breckenridge Thursday afternoon and spent a few hours eating, drinking, running some errands with Chris, making an alcohol stove, and then eating some more before Max rolled in to pick me up and drive me down to Boulder! Had a really fun, busy, and even somewhat productive stay in Boulder between Thursday night and now (Monday morning.)

Spent Thursday night hanging out with my friend Isis, who was celebrating her birthday, and a bunch of other friends from the house and elsewhere around Boulder! Had a good time, but it was the first night of several that would go far later than my usual 8pm bedtime lately... Friday included errands and more visiting with people. Picked up a new bike pump (mine's a pain with road tires) and a new chain because the old one is wearing out, also went up to campus to deal with some more financial aid crap. I can't get away from those people. After all that, went out with Max, Ela, Ana, Alex, Isis, and a few other people to hang out on Pearl St - stayed up too late again. Saturday was mostly spent on Boulder Creek tubing. At one point, we had something like 16 - 18 tubers linked together in a long chain going down the rapids. After enough tubing to leave most of us bordering on hypothermia, we dried out and cooked out again, then stayed up too late. Sunday had some more errands, a visit with the family up in Longmont, and a pool party at Matt and Tina's house in south Boulder that turned into an Ultimate game, then more pool party. Somehow managed to get home and to bed at a relatively reasonable hour.

So, today I'm kindof tired, but will be getting back up to Breckenridge and continuing on with the bike ride. Things fell into place nicely to get a ride up to Breck with Roslynn, aka Skirt, an AT person who recently moved to Boulder, so we should be taking off within the next hour or so. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a few hours of riding in before the day is over!