Thursday, January 31, 2008

Day 6

Winthrop to Okanogan 29.8 miles

Today was a nice ride. Got a little sunburned, but it was OK. Made some sandwiches from the store in Twisp, there were hundreds of bikers in town for a criterium there. I considered entering actually.

Turns out loup-loup pass is a legitimate pass, hillbillies and everything! Riding down the back side of loup loup was so fun, probably the steepest descent in the whole trip, wouldn't be surprised if I was going sixty, and it was windy too!
The view from the top

I slept in a hotel that night with my mom and my step dad... it was luxurious.
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Monday, January 14, 2008

Misty Mountain Hop

Diablo to Winthrop. more than 9,000 miles.

Day 5 was hell. I spent the night before not sleeping in a freezing thunderstorm. I started sleeping as the sun came up, and woke up around 11 in a late morning mist. Immediately upon rising I realized that some sort of critter had made my breakfast into it's breakfast. Fresh picked mountain strawberries and white rice. I sure hope they enjoyed it.

Let's face it. I wouldn't remember that particular breakfast if they hadn't eaten it. I ended up eating some oatmeal with cinnamon.(blech).
Oddly enough, this campsite had no running water. I found this strange as it was less than a mile from the Seattle City Light town of Diablo.



So I got some water out of the river, and added one iodine tablet to it. This is about half of the recommended amount... however, it proved to be too much for me.

I started riding uphill, figuring there would be a roadside stop with water. After three turnouts, this proved not to be the case.

It started to rain once I got past the dams. My jacket was not really waterproof, and my pants definitely were not, nor my shoes. I considered going back to my last campsite to try again the next day, but decided to try to get over the mountains.



The road was this steep the entire way. Eventually my toes got so cold that I stopped at a trailhead, stole a trash bag liner and wrapped it around my freezing wet toes. It was disgusting.

I kept going up, eating my disgusting oatmeal and drinking my burning water. (Iodine sterilizes your tongue too.)

I eventually made it to rainy pass, and was so happy that I was over the hill.

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Actually I had to go up a few thousand more feet, but they didn't seem long at all after knowing it was over, it had stopped raining by this point too, which was quite nice. Even though I was still wet with snow everywhere, I felt warm because I was going uphill in the sun.

Then I saw a Marmot! Made it all worth it.
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I eventually made it down the mountain... by the bottom I was miserable again, I slept that night right on the river in downtown Winthrop. one of the best campsites all summer.

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Day 4

Concrete to Diablo 40 miles uphill.

The Skagit runs right through Concrete.





Dead Farm Society.


Typical tunnel. Typical redneck.

This days ride was unduly extended by the inadvertent unloading of my groceries about a skip, hop, jaunt, peice, and bit down the road from my campsite.

I had to ride back through that stupid tunnel.

Day?

Bellingham to Concrete. 52 miles. (uphill)

Me on my way down Chuckanut drive in the rain, with greasy hands from a fallen chain. As I was fixing this chain, a bird shit on me. I suspect the bird shit on me because I had eaten so many eggs the night before. We don't respect animals near enough.




Today was cool. I went to Food Pavilion and bought some tofu rueben supplies. Then I gorged myself. Gotta be strong for the pass ya know?

Long Day

Greenbank to Bellingham 70 miles.





Rode over deception pass, revised the cuttin' and taggin' artwork.

Day One


Today I rode from Belltown to Greenbank. 45 miles.

I found a lighter on the ground.

Interestingly enough, if you ride a bike long enough, you get an unlimited supply of lighters. Even more interesting is that most of them work...
I also had some other sweet roadscores during the trip. The lighters just became gifts to anyone I saw smoking.

Just after the ferry I got passed by 3 bike tourists. They were traveling ridiculous light with one tarp between them as shelter, very sparse planning, and little to no money. Parker, someone and that other dude. Parker is friends with Drew, who is friends with Elias. It's a rare breed that's awesome enough to bike tour. In the beginning this nonchalant touring seemed rash to me, but I later adopted most of their ways:

Dirty clothes, veganism, and ultralight shelter.

We found a sweet beach fort and just camped out on the beach. It was good fun.

Day Zero


Home always looks the most beautiful when you know you won't be back soon, and when you come back after a long time.

Elias gave me a ride in his truck to his house from the ferry. This was kind of ironic, in that he was the instigator of the epic-bike-tour concept. Here he is at the gates of hell, driving a car, and expanding on the reasons why he cannot go through them.

Day minus one.


As it sits right now, I do not have my ride journal, it is somewhere in storage. In light of this unfortunate fact, I plan to blog the events of this summers bike tour purely from memory. This is, as we all know, the best way to tell stories.

I set out on a journey, the goal, to ride a bicycle, all alone, to the other coast.

I will abstain from using semicolons anywhere in this text, all they prove is that you went to college. I paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut.