The Man
The Machine
Have you ever heard of Mike Horn? I hadn’t either until I read a book titled Conquering the Impossible, lame name but that’s a rant for a different day. You don’t conquer things when nature is involved, nature can’t be conquered, but it can be enjoyed in a state of coexistence. In my case nature worked out perfectly to my complete benefit while I rode my bicycle from Hood River, OR to Ketchum, ID.
I was reading the aforementioned book this past winter. The purpose of the book was to relay a story of epic proportions. This adventurer, (he calls himself an explorer, but really, is there much exploring left in our world…it’s a debatable assertion) Mike Horn, circumnavigated the Arctic Circle using only human or wind powered means of travel. He spent two full winters in the Arctic, nearly died various times, and generally had a hell of a time, in both a good and bad sense. So I started thinking that my life needed some spice. I thought, if this guy can walk, sail, ski, what have you, around the Arctic Circle, certainly there are many cool things I could do, albeit on a smaller scale, that would be much cooler than what I had planned, which was nothing. So I hatched the idea to ride my bike to Idaho to kick off the summer rather than drive (which we normally do as we visit ID each year just after school gets out.)
Next came the planning. I ran through different routes via Mapquest and settled on a route that took me through some of the least populated places in Oregon and up over some of the hardest hill climbs in south-central Idaho. The route promised to be just over 600 miles and I figured I would take 10 days at the most (this would be if I had mechanical or physical problems and needed rest days) or 8 days if I just rode straight through. I think I truly decided this was a good idea sometime in March or April. Sarah and I were a part of a 24 hour mtn bike race in May and that was good training for long days in the saddle. I also rode a couple century rides this spring and they seemed very comfortable. This all gave me reason to believe I would be successful in my trip to ID, even though I’d have nobody to talk to, nobody to help haul the 35-40 lb trailer loaded with food and overnight gear, and nobody to draft off of if the wind kicked up. Riding in a group is nice for many reasons. First, it’s safer, 10 riders make a bigger impression on cars than 1 lone rider in the middle of the boondocks! Second, when multiple riders are in a line only the first rider is working hard, all the others are enjoying a nice wind bubble where life is easy and speeds of 20+ are frequent. I wouldn’t have this luxury nor did I expect to bump into any other riders out in the middle of PNW desolation. I did however have my trusty iPod shuffle with a healthy variety of the best music known to humankind (and a charger, technology is great!)
We hadn’t had rain at home for a couple of weeks and wouldn’t you know it, the morning I planned to depart, the rain started. It was 6am and I had just completed my last day of the 2008-2009 school year about 15 hours prior. I looked outside and checked the weather again on the internet and sure enough, all the extended forecasts had changed in the last 10 hours. What had been sun was now clouds and what had been clouds was now rain. Now, I love riding my bike, I don’t however love riding in the rain. I have ridden in the rain, but I usually finish the ride with a hot shower. I wasn’t looking forward to wet clothes and over a week of tent camping with no showers. So I threw some rain gear in a bag and went to the neighbors. Lenny, our neighbor, was kind enough to drop me in Hood River, Oregon, 25 miles east of my house, so I wouldn’t have to tangle with the dreaded hwy 14 and it’s non-existent shoulders. I got out of the pickup in a parking lot under mostly cloudy skies and no rain, it’s amazing what 25 miles in the Gorge can do to weather (Sarah later told me it rained all day at home!) I stripped off my pants and proceeded to forget them with Lenny (the neighbor) and told him I thought I’d be ok without the rain gear. So all I would have from this point out would be one rain jacket and a couple of garbage bags, not what you might call a storm proof system if one were to get caught out 30 miles from the nearest town. I hoped for the best, and the best delivered!
What followed were seven days of the best weather I could have hoped for and road conditions that were usually ideal. In some areas the chip seal vibrated me to such a degree I would shout my disapproval aloud to nobody in particular. Some stretches were so boring I took to telling the drivers they should move from their own personal hell (of course this was also aloud yet I think my words fell on deaf ears as I was traveling about 16 mph on those flat stretches and even the slow cars were probably cookin’ along at 55 mph.) Oh well, letting them know of my disapproval for their home county made the time pass more interestingly than if I had kept my opinions to myself.
I passed through some of the most unique areas I’ve ever seen. Oregon is a beautiful and diverse place with long stretches of sparsely populated country and roads that are nearly vacant of cars yet delightfully smooth and clean road surfaces, THANK ODOT! John Day Fossil Beds; Clarno, OR on the John Day River; Prairie City, OR in the foothills of the Blue Mtns (where incidentally it had snowed and rained a little the day before I arrived; he hills still had a dusting on them) a double mountain pass in the Blues that was beautiful and difficult, many smaller passes that slowly increased the overall elevation, and some downright dirty redneck filled places like Spray, OR; Unity, OR; and don’t forget Shaniko, OR where you can’t go too far without seeing a rattlesnake, a for sale sign, or a building that looks like it should be given bonefide ghost town status, were some of the highlights of my trip.
I slept for free the entire way, pitching my tent in lawns outside closed milkshake shops, schools, city parks, and my best night of the trip, the woods along the SF of the Payette River just north of Garden Valley, ID, followed by a shower in a nearby hot spring! Sleeping for free doesn’t come without it’s costs though. I battled with a sprinkler that threatened to tear into my tent like a Howitzer, rolly-polly bugs that must have loved the stink on the butt of my riding shorts because they were all over them one morning when I opened the tent door and grabbed the clothes I had left outside to “air-out.” Lights that came on right outside the tent door and were bright enough to rival aroura borealis, transformers and ballasts from security lights that hummed like Mack trucks, locals giving me the eye as if to say, “are you going to sleep there?” But for the most part, people were nice if sometimes clueless, drivers were generally very respectful of me and my right to share the road. Only 3 or 4 cars were closer than I would have liked, but still not dangerous…that’s amazing since the trip was over 600 miles! (Three cyclists were killed by motorists in Boise alone in the last month!) The first few days were through pretty desolate stretches of Oregon, so I was careful to find out where the next water stops would be as I only had two water bottles with me to cut down on overall weight. Because of this lack of grocery stores along the way, I ate raisin bran and milk for dinner and breakfast the first two days. It worked ok. I had good lunches each day that definitely helped me go the distance. I also had a massive stash of various energy bars and additives for my water that would all add much needed calories to my diet and offer me a sense of self-sufficiency if I happened to not pass a store for an extended period of time.
Miraculously my ass only became annoyingly sore on the last 100 miles. I rode the route fairly aggressively, doing 93 miles, then 75, 83, 102, 96, 85, 63 to finish in Ketchum and get some lunch. Sarah met me for the final 20+ miles and that was awesome. As soon as she met me the wind kicked up something fierce so I hid behind her and tried to keep up with her fresh legs (she’s becoming a pretty strong rider!) I gave myself a day off and bounced around town meeting friends and running errands then did a short mtn bike ride the following day with another the day after that. I hope to keep up the momentum as I have a ride on July 30th that circumnavigates Mt. Rainier, 155 miles and over 10,000 of elevation gain in a day. I was pretty intimidated before, now I think it’ll be a fun challenge as I won’t have that pig of a trailer nagging at me up each hill. I’ll be light and fast and hopefully the weather will be as good as it was for this little adventure.
Although I can safely say I never want to ride through the Midwest as I think all that flat farmland might force me to crush my own head between two hard objects, I have been looking at other routes to beautiful places. Seeing our world via a bicycle is a unique experience, and one doesn’t even have to travel far from home. It’s slow, yet fast, interesting even when there’s very little to see, and the ways in which people interact with bicycle travelers has generally proven to me to be much more amicable. Cars make people irritable as they promote a sense of urgency. Life should be simple, enabling people to focus on what is important, and slow enough to realize when and where that importance can be noticed and appreciated.
For now I’m in Idaho with Sarah and the animals for another couple weeks, hoping to bike my brains out on the great trails that are here. We also plan to have countless awesome dinners with great friends that we see too infrequently, then I’m back to WA for some raft guiding and kayaking, more riding, and maybe some climbing, that forgotten sport I use to enjoy so much! Take Care, get out and enjoy life. You never know when you might kick the bucket!
More pics here, hopefully the link works:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jarredjackman/WAToIDSoloBikeTour2009#
