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!