Freezing My Asphalt: Bike commuting in the raw weather.

 

This is the second entry in The Commuter Chronicles.

I have been writing about how I have been getting to and from work as a bike commuter (and sometimes as a runner) in order to exercise more and pollute less. This entry explores how I deal with riding in the darkest, coldest times.

Thick frost on the glass frames darkness, a streetlight, the mountain of plowed snow across the street.

The phone says it’s 7 degrees outside. My body says, no way in hell, I’m biking through this to work. But then I think about how I’ll answer the question waiting for me when I walk in the door: “How did you get here today?”

Thirty-six hours have passed since the last flakes fluttered out from the monster blizzard that pile-drove its way into Connecticut. The roads are cleared — sorta. Just don’t count the 100-foot patches of compacted snow. Also, ignore the frozen canyon walls the plows left behind and the buried margins that leave a non-existent gap between the bike and traffic lanes. I sip my coffee, and I factor in the extra time I’ll need to take the less-trafficked back roads. I unseal the handwarmers.

Visibility

Learning to deal with weather has been the most consistent, and interesting challenge I’ve faced as a New England bike commuter. It is a challenge I relish. I have learned new ways to dress, and to anticipate what my body will need exerting itself on a freezing January morning versus a June afternoon. I dance with the changing seasons. Those who encase themselves in climate-controlled vehicles, complete with headlights and seat warmers, are sitting it out.

In the sun’s absence I rely upon technology for seeing and for being seen.

There’s a bicycle light, a $60 gadget, and literal pale imitation of what the sun provides for free. Other than the bike itself, it is the most expensive item in my bike commuting arsenal. For years, I used either a cheap headlamp (not so comfortable when combined with a helmet) or a rechargeable flashlight attached to my wrist with rubber bands. The latter, was actually, better than the headlamp, but remained a consummate pain in the neck.)

Note to people just starting bike commuting: you absolutely don’t need a bike light if you want to save the money. It sure is nice to have one, though. I’ve found that lights that were perfectly serviceable for a night hike simply don’t cut it for a bike ride, where the faster speeds require a brighter beam to see the road ahead. Now that I have a stronger light, I pedal with more confidence, and find myself hitting the brakes less cruising down hills.

I still haven’t bought myself a similarly high-end taillight, for the excellent reason that I am cheap. I usually rely on a blinking solar lantern that I have rigged off the back rack and a red blinking wrist band. Neither of these will help me be seen better in daylight, though I do wear bright colors to help me stand out.

Dressing warm, dressing weird

I begin the roll down the crunching street by the headlight. Orange glow pools along the southeastern sky; stars, then planets dissolve in the flood of dawn.

The frigid air stings the exposed flesh around my eyes. I’m dressed for the cold ride, though not in comfort. My body is encased in a menagerie of equipment, including kayak gear. These include a neoprene balaclava hood, designed to keep me warm in frigid water immersion.

The hood is thin enough to fit easily under a bike helmet, but it still creates a bombproof layer against the wind.

Pogies are another piece of kayak equipment that has served me well biking. Also made of neoprene, pogies wrap around a paddle shaft and create a toasty pocket for the hands. They fit imperfectly around bike handlebars, but they buffer the wind, and work well with mitts and handwarmers.

Then there is the surgical mask. Not only do these tragically politicized symbols of pandemic times protect against airborne viruses, they also can take the edge off a brutal draft. I’ve only worn surgical masks on the coldest days. I accept the fact that it will be half-frozen and ruined by the end of the ride, but it is a cheap item to replace. I generally ride with masks that have reached the end of their useful lifespans. One disadvantage: fogging makes it impossible to ride with both glasses and mask on, so I end up stowing the former item in my fanny pack.

I can steer a bike competently enough as a two-eyes and accept crappier eyesight in exchange for feeling in my cheeks.

Moving from head to torso, my garments are more conventional. I have a flashy neon windbreaker over a puffy layer. Warmth, plus visibility. I don’t always wear the extra reflective vest, but do today, due to the reduced margins and dangerous driving conditions.

So far, the few cars on the roads have passed slowly and left ample room. Here and there, the tires crunch over fresh snow, and I stay in low gear. Nothing has stopped me yet.

The snow pants I wear are almost overkill. I can feel sweat beading on my legs as I crank the biggest hill, but I am infinitely grateful for them as wind whips around me when I swoop down an accompanying grade.

Footwear turns out to be my biggest gear mistake. My slides, perfect for dressing and undressing quickly, are simply not up to six miles of riding in the coldest conditions, even though I am in my warmest socks. I scold myself for not wearing boots as the stinging wind lashes helpless toes.

Door to Door to Door

By the time I reach the last uphill, I am happy for the warmth of effort.

The back wheel spins out on an icy drift. Clenching teeth, I hold the handlebars in place and inch my way past.

I crest the hill and the destination is in sight. I think of all the days when I’ve ridden my car and my coworkers tell me, “Of course you rode in. You can’t ride your bike in this!

I hope someone asks me today. I’ll let them know the score.

The beams of sunrise play through the spectral winter branches. I almost feel the warmth. There are hints of spring, in spite of the obscene cold. Earlier in the year, it was still dark when I got to work. The bird songs seem new and decadent to me. I crouch down for the final descent.

The parking lot is empty. I don’t bother locking my bike, but key myself directly into the building and pull out my phone. Of course, there was an email — sent out about the time that I was taking my bike down the apartment steps – explaining that the poor road conditions have bought everyone a day off.

I stomp around until I get some life back into my extremities. I climb back into the saddle, going home. Woodsmoke, lit DayGlo orange from morning light bright, billows up from a chimney. I ride along the frozen Mystic River where plates of brine ice have shattered up against the rocks in lucent piles. I feel my brows frozen too. At least my legs are still moving.

I think about warm blankets.

 

“

 

Bed to Bike in 40 minutes: Applied psychology has helped me remain faithful to my bike commute.

Photo: Farrah Garland

Note:

This is my first entry in the Commuter Chronicles.

In the coming weeks, I will be writing about how I have been getting to and from work as a bike commuter (and sometimes as a runner) in order to exercise more and pollute less.

While this may seem like a step away from much of the adventure writing that I typically post, I have also found that the bike commute serves as a daily mini adventure, an adventure that presents challenges and rewards, an adventure that connects me with the surrounding nature and community in Southeastern Connecticut.

This first post will discuss ways in which routine helps me to get out the door faster and better prepared for the world. Some future topics that I will explore include, dealing with challenging road conditions, managing sweat, how bike commuting has changed my relationship with work, bike repair, and why I think small choices remain relevant in our era of big problems.

I hope you stick around and enjoy the ride!

As of a few months ago, I began taking my bicycle into my bedroom. We’d entered a new phase in the relationship.

It is not that I love my steel-framed diamondback hybrid so much that I can’t bear to be apart, or that I want its graceful lines to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning. Ours is a marriage of convenience.

The bike takes me to work most days. It needs to be ready to go, with nary a dilly, even a dally. I have 6-miles of road to cover door to door. I have to be in the building, professional, and presentable, by 7:30am. Assuming that I don’t want to get up at an egregious hour, mornings will require tight choreography, not me stumbling down to a freezing basement to pick at the combo lock with numbed fingers.

The fact that I keep the bike in the room is only one of a series of morning habits that I follow in order to get on the road quickly over the years. Mornings vary, but I generally get out the door 40 minutes after I wake up. I now go down a checklist, and I have organized my apartment to facilitate speedy egress.

This is no easy feat considering my abstract-random personality and corresponding aversion toward structure. “Life hacks” and other self-optimization strategies often seem like Trojan horses from the work worship culture. Nonetheless, I hate getting bogged down by poorly shuffled gear. The motorless commute succeeds for me, not only because I am committed to decreasing my impact on the environment; it succeeds because I have planted that commitment in a larger ecosystem of habits and routines.

Habits are more powerful than principles. One need only look at how New Year’s resolutions go askance. The toughest habits to break, tend to be “low friction,” according to psychologist Anne Wood. This means that they only require a few easy steps. If I wanted to stop wasting time on the internet, it would be much harder to break the habit, if time-wasting sites were just a click away (this is a hypothetical example, obviously.) The vice is practically frictionless. Driving also has low psychological friction. I need only get in the car and turn the key.

Biking to work, with its many steps, is high friction. Sure, you could just get dressed, hop on the bike, and roll out – if you like jeopardizing your paycheck.  Arriving, clean, and professional, at the end of the ride, involves steps that driving doesn’t require. These steps include packing work clothes, loading a bike rack, checking the weather, and dressing properly for the conditions. All of this is long before I start pedaling up the first hill.

So how is it that I choose not to spend an extra hour beneath the covers when I wake up in the early morning dark? Why don’t I just drive to work with everyone else? My answer is that I reduce friction. Preset routines are like oil on the bike chain. They enable me to glide through my morning with as few steps and as few decisions as possible.

Here are some strategies I use.

·         The Checklist.

I have a laminated checklist on the door telling me what to do throughout the morning. At one point, I would have thought that it was infantile to remind myself to brush my teeth or gather The Trinity (my keys, wallet, and cellphone.) from the bedside. I have finally accepted the truth: I can forget almost anything. This is especially true when I am groggy or feeling rushed in the morning. I make this easier by putting key items in exactly the same places, the night before. I feel much less anxiety, and move faster in the morning, when I know that there is a hard copy on the door to guide me right.

·         Workout Pajamas

Sleeping in workout clothes has been a common trick for the morning exercise crowd. It not only helps get things moving quickly; it also spares me the cold shock of changing clothes in a chilly room. I drape my riding jacket over the handlebars, so that I can slip right into it, along with my helmet and fanny pack.

·         The Fanny Pack.

The keys, wallet and cell phone go into a forward-facing fanny pack. The dorkiness is severe. However, I prefer this to the discomfort of cycling with all that stuff in my pockets. The fanny pack also allows me to drop keys and mask somewhere quickly when I lock my door. When I inevitably question whether I have forgotten one of these crucial items, I can spot them quickly without patting or digging.

·         Packing, Charging Ahead of Time

It is easy to load my bike up ahead of time when I keep it in the room with me. I make sure it is packed with all the clothes, food, and equipment that I could want. Putting things on the bike rack is preferable to using a backpack because I am less liable to sweat. I also have recently invested in a rechargeable handlebar light. It’s great, but also a hassle attaching and detaching the thing. Since the bike is already inside, however, I can just use an extension cord to charge the lamp in its place.

·         Pre-made breakfast

The fastest way out the door would be to grab a Clif bar or a banana with no cooking. However, speed is not my only goal. The pleasures of hot coffee and warm oatmeal are vital motivations on a cold morning. I economize time by pouring out my instant oatmeal ahead of time, along with peanut butter, raisins, and instant coffee on the side. All the water I need is already waiting on a hot plate near the bed. I just plug it in. I can finish last-minute chores while the water heats. (Pro-tip: Pour the instant coffee before the water boils. It not only saves time on the stovetop; it will also be ready to drink sooner.)

·         Slides over Sneakers

Yes, I’m lazy to the point that I would rather slip into my shoes than tie and untie them. This is also helpful when I get to work, and I have to change pants again.

·          Gear at Work

I try to leave as many supplies as possible at work. Often, I bring extra clothes or provisions in on days when I have to drive, due to weather or other circumstances. I don’t have much space to store goods in the building, but I have found that I have room to stash rolled-up dress shirts, freeze-dried coffee, and meals. In a previous model of the bike commute, I had arrived to work early and breakfasted in the breakroom. It seemed to work out just fine. Unbeknownst to me, however, my early arrival had been triggering a silent alarm — and a police department visit. This went on for weeks until I discovered what was happening. My employer did not encourage the arrangement. I now eat breakfast at home.

Following these routines may make mornings easier, but based on the number of steps involved, you can see that they are far from frictionless. These procedures have added value to my life in other ways, however, including helping me become a better planning. For a long time, I have seen procedure as stifling, antithetical to the fun creative person I perceive in myself. Over the years, however, I have recognized that procedural minds have a talent for getting things done. By borrowing their systemic mojo, I add value to my own unconventional ethos.

Unfortunately, many of the lowest-friction routines in this country also hurt the environment. It is easy to drive to our jobs, purchase pre-made meals, and remain disengaged from public life or personal responsibility.

Politics, societal inertia, and commerce have put the least psychological friction around driving and the most friction around all else. Creating a community that welcomes non-drivers requires far more coordination than my morning routine. It requires people working together to create research, interviews, arguments, laws.

We are half-awake and have barely pulled the covers off. We’ll be hard-pressed to get to work on time. A checklist is a good place to start.

 

 

 

The Dark Road, The Cop and The Free Room

      The sun was going down and I didn’t feel lucky.

About an hour ago, I’d taken a “shortcut” biking west out of Spokane, Washington and now I was mired on a hilly back road between endless grain fields, beginning to suspect that I was nowhere near where I wanted to be and not getting any nearer.

No, the road that I figured would take me south along a diagonal had turned in the opposite direction. I faced the unappetizing choice of continuing along a road that was going nowhere, or admitting that I’d screwed up and pedaling miles back the way I’d come. Also, where the hell was I going to camp?

As I pondered these possibilities, I heard an engine coming up from behind. A guy in a beater sedan wanted to know if I could point him to the Route 2. I laughed. You can’t make this stuff up.

The guy in the sedan decided to turn around. I decided he had the right idea.

I retraced two miles with the sun at my back, then turned onto a road headed due south. I didn’t know for sure if it was going where it needed to, but didn’t have the stomach to go all the way back to Spokane.

Where to camp? Where to camp? The next town probably didn’t have a camp area. So I’d camp in the woods then. Only there were no woods.

If not for distant mountains, the landscape could have been mistaken for Iowa. Everything was someone’s farm — tilled soil where a marauding ninja camper would be in plain sight (or the gun sites) of an irate farmer.

I ate the rest of my snack food in a gulp of sesame seeds. Still hungry. Still exhausted. Still nowhere near where I needed to be.

The cars had their headlights on when I finally got back on Route 2. I had several miles before I got to the probably camp-less town of Reardon.

No, make that the definitely camp-less town of Reardon. I sagged into a booth in the fast-food joint. The teen behind the counter there didn’t know about any camps in Reardon, but thought there might be some in Davenport, a mere 10 weary miles through the darkness ahead. At least there was a decent-sized margin on Route 2, but I was still less-than thrilled about having 65 mph traffic flying by me in the dark

I ate French-fries joylessly and sucked down cola.

      After I’d finished and paid, I stepped outside to embrace the suckitude of my situation. There was a reflective vest in my dry bag and I strapped it to the back so I would be more visible to oncoming headlights. I’d have felt far safer if I had invested in a blinking taillight, but like so many things on this trip, I’d voted for thrift above comfort, sometimes safety.

Fortunately, the traffic was sparse along the highway. Every time a car went by, my shadow started out long and straight in front of me, then rapidly shrank and whirled to the side as the headlights drew closer. Sometimes it would feel like I was moving backwards. Fortunately, the wind from earlier had dropped and it hadn’t gotten bitter cold yet. I pedaled furiously from one mile mark to the next, until I finally reached the edge of Davenport.

The town was dark and empty. I took a quick swing down Main Street where there were no signs for state parks or public camping. I decided to see about the motel/ RV park near the edge of town.

As luck would have it, the motel manager was walking up to his door when I pulled my bike up. Could I set up tent in an RV site?

He thought about it.

He normally didn’t let people tent camp because he had no bathrooms outside. RVers could do their business and flush their wastewater directly into the septic systems.

Well, I probably wouldn’t have to take a dump that evening, if that was what he was worrying about. I’d make sure to urinate in the empty lot across the street so that it wouldn’t be his problem.

I could tell the guy wanted to get to bed and wasn’t interested in staying up talking for much longer.

Finally, he acquiesced and said I could put a tent up near the side of the motel.

I dropped my bike near an antique wagon outside and crossed the street to take a leak. It was a relief to have a place to stay — and a relief to relieve myself for that matter. Midway through the stream, I became aware of a light shining in my face. That light was coming from a cop car.

I quickly hid the offending object and shot the officer a cheerful wave. I began to walk away quickly but casually. Hopefully, I’d lose track of him between the RV’s. I rounded the corner of the motel to find myself face to face with the motel manager.

“Was that the cops?” he asked.

 I told him it was.

“Here” he said, and produced a key from his pocket.

I’d be welcome to crash in an extra room, he said.

It was music to my ears.

We went back together and got the bike (I made sure to give the cop another polite wave) and I wheeled it into the room. There would be no charge, the manager said. Then he left and I shut the door.

Standing in the immaculate room with its plush bed and quaint railroad paintings, I felt a bit like Dave Bowman in “2001 a Space Odyssey,” who emerges into a similarly incongruous room inside an alien sun after he emerges from an extra-dimensional voyage through a monolith.

In lieu of Bowman’s orange spacesuit, I had my black rain jacket, oversize dry bag and bristling wild man beard, which were slightly less out of place.

I shed my layers and went for the shower — the first in almost 300 miles.

Wet roads and wind

The brightest orange

Is the highway median

Laid out on wet pavement

Beneath autumn leaves.

          ------------

Clouds of gray drift in

Above still-green birches

Of the bitterroots

To wash away the summer.

                ------------

“REG. 3.07”

The sign flashes red and green

Outside Ron’s Gas and Go

As the trucks push on

To Kootenai National Forest

In clouds of dirty mist.

The hours of wet, cold and monotony are fine times for philosophizing and poetic musings. I’m in a better mood when the sun is out and the road is easy, but I can only go so far exulting over beautiful sunrises and pristine landscapes before the writing gets damn boring.

So now that I’m sitting comfortable in a warm, dry place, I’ll go ahead and thank Mother Nature for being such a burr in my ass in the days that I pedaled out of Northwest Montana, across the Idaho panhandle into eastern Washington.

I got to enjoy about 12 miles of steady biking after I left my campsite north of Missoula before the brutal wind set in. It was like someone had put superglue on my tires. I could crank for all I was worth and go maybe a mile an hour faster.

Highway 200 follows the wide and blue waters of the Clark Fork through pastureland and stands of conifers. The wind kicked up whitecaps on the river, meeting the rain-swollen flow head-on. Unfortunately, the thousands of cubic feet of flowing water were much better equipped to resist the blustery air than I was.

I hadn’t packed enough water. The Clark Fork was a tempting refill option, but I was reluctant given the number of farms in the area. Eventually, I pulled up at a farm stand that was closing down for the season.

I asked a guy loading stuff into his pickup if he had a hose out back.

“There’s a spring down the road,” he told me. “It’s the best water in the world.”

The water ran out from a faucet in a rock wall beside the tracks.

A BNSF train thundered by as I filled my bottles. I took a drink. Indeed, the water was pure, almost sweet.

A truck pulled up with a bunch of empty jugs. I got moving again.

The wind let up a bit by the afternoon, allowing me to finish the day with about 75 miles of progress. I did an additional four miles of pedaling to get to my campsite, located along a tributary. A sign said that there was potential chemical contamination in the water, so I skipped the boiled pasta dinner I’d planned for myself.

I was the only person in camp excepting for an RV parked at the other end.

That changed around 8 p.m. at night when an SUV pulled up about 100 feet from my tent.

I peered out and saw the guy in the cab. A light was on, like he was reading something. I was a little annoyed, but figured he’d drive off soon enough. I made note of my bear spray nearby. If he was thinking about doing a little axe murdering he’d get a face-full of capsaicin. 

I felt a certain reluctance to go to sleep with the truck out there and its little light. Finally, I decided I had to see what was up. I walked over and waved through the window. The guy waved back.

I introduced myself and asked how he was doing.

He was out of the house because he’d been in an argument with his girlfriend and didn’t feel like staying at her place. The argument had been going for a couple days, he said, and he’d been parking in the same spot where my I’d set up the tent.

We talked for a while about different parts of the west where we had traveled. It turned out that he had rafted the same section of the Green River that I had guided that summer.

I was reasonably convinced that he was not the axe murdering type and went back to the tent.

There was a cold drizzle the next morning. On the way back from the campground’s outhouse, I saw the guy walking outside with a handgun holstered at his belt (for the bears, he said.)

I started down the road again with numb fingers. Double dump trucks and logging rigs flew by, kicking trails of spray up off the pavement. The Clark Fork was a dead fish gray under the rain-swollen sky.

I crossed into Idaho for the third time on the trip and kept going to the massive Lake Pend Oreille, whose shoreline I’d be following for almost a day.

The map showed me a campground that was about a mile and a half out on a peninsula. When I got there, I found that it had just closed for the summer. I ended up camping on some public land on a wooded hill across the street.

I went into Sandpoint the next day, a city that my Rand McNally atlas identified as the most beautiful small town in the U.S. Much of the scenery, such as views across the lake, was shrouded in the fog. Traffic was busy along the narrow road and made for a harrowing pedaling until I got to the bike paths.

I splurged on some hash browns and hot coffee in town then peddled across the lake on a two-mile long highway bridge. When I got to the other side, I realized I’d been going the wrong way. Rather than face a stiff headwind, I decided to go on the south side of the lake and rejoin my course near the Washington border.

One disadvantage of this plan was that the south side of the lake turned out to be relentlessly hilly. I was exhausted by the time that I got back on course.

Finally, I got back on the main road and crossed the border to Washington. The area was wooded and it was easy to find a tent stop. It would only be a couple days until I got to visit friends in Wenatchee and Seattle. Now that I was out of the mountain states, I figured there would be easier going and looked forward to some more leisurely days ahead. I soon found out that Washington would have plenty of challenges of its own to throw at me. 

The Day I Should Have Had In Missoula

 

The University of Montana M as seen above campus. This photo is not from my bike trip, but rather from my earlier visit to Missoula. You don't get to see any new pictures of Missoula because my camera got busted.

The day I should have had in Missoula would have started with me waking up to a perfect sunrise above my campsite, not a freezing fog.

If it were that perfect day, I would have pondered the ethereal beauty of the moment and felt reassured that my bike trip was a chance to reconnect with simple pleasures that most people divorce themselves from as they go about their day-to-day lives.

Then I would take my camera out from a dry place, where it hadn’t been drenched by rain that soaked into my partially collapsed tent, to take a memorable picture of the moment. If it had been my perfect day in Missoula, my camera wouldn’t have been busted forever, and I would have plenty of stunning pictures to post from the rest of my trip.

On the day I should have had in Missoula, I would have cooked myself a hardy breakfast off my stove, not  grudgingly swallowed peanuts and bread. Nor would I have dreaded the 20-something miles I had to pedal to get into town.

No. On my perfect day in Missoula, I would have felt energized and inspired by the distance I’d traveled so far.

Both my real and ideal days share my goal of kicking back a little. I'd  have a beer with a good plate of food and mingle with those fixie-riding hipsters who populate the town, even if I'd normally ridicule them for being fixie-riding hipsters.

Both my fantasy day in Missoula and the day I actually had would be colored by the fact that this was a place I’d visited senior year in college when my thesis on contemporary Irish lit was the center of my world. I got a free ticket to present my work at the National Collegiate Undergraduate Research convention at the University of Montana.

Right after I finished speaking, I decided to do the hike up the hill to the university’s famous concrete “M.” Then I kept going to the top of the 5,000-foot Mount Sentinel in my khakis, tie and loafers. It hadn’t been so great for the clothes, but it’d been a great time.

If I’d had my perfect day in Missoula, I’d have done the hike again just for kicks, not call it off on account of rain and that I had other stuff on the to-do list.

If it had been the day I should have had in Missoula, the county would have finished the bike path going all the way to town and I wouldn’t have ended up riding in the highway margin again with traffic kicking up spray.

If that sounds like too much to wish for, I’ll dial it back and say that I wish I’d shown up any other day of the week but Sunday.

Then when I happened upon the Adventure Cycling Association’s national headquarters on East Pine Street, I would have gotten solid advice about the roads ahead, maybe even bought one of their guides, which would have information about where to camp and other stuff that would have helped in the days ahead.

On my actual day in Missoula, the headquarters was closed, but at least they had a map that listed bike shops and breweries that I could hit in town.

I peddled through the cold and tragically real drizzle to a bike shop that was closed (surprise!) on a Sunday. Another bike shop was open, but not fully staffed for the weekend and didn’t have the time to give to my gears, squeaky axle and worn-down brakes.

On my perfect day, I wouldn’t have lost my balance at an intersection and struggled to pick my fully-loaded bike off the pavement in front of cars at a green light.

Hipsters wouldn’t be able to pedal bicycles faster than me.

I would get a beer and sit outside in warm weather, not shivering inside drinking my beverage out of a sense of duty as opposed to real pleasure. The place would have served delicious French fries and veggie burgers — not just bar peanuts, which I shoveled down in vast quantities anyway.

I would have stayed in town if it had been my perfect day. I might have dished out the money to be at the local KOA, maybe couch-surfed somewhere.

Even if I had left town, I wouldn’t have taken a wrong turn that lead to an on-ramp for I-90, then said “the hell with it,” and ended up peddling four miles in the break-down lane of a busy thoroughfare.

It wouldn’t have been getting dark as I was climbing that massive hill into the Flathead Reservation. It wouldn’t have been pitch dark when I got into Arlee. I would have bought some blinking gear at one of the bike shops so cars would see me. I wouldn’t have had to pedal two more miles on the dark road before I got to the campsite.

I wouldn’t be so negative all the time.

Even though it wasn’t my perfect day in town, the following was kind of cool:

*A bunch of people in their early twenties cheered for me when I was on the bridge above the Clark Fork. “We saw you in Darby yesterday man! Keep going! You rock!” I went a high-five that almost swerved me into the path of an oncoming van. It was pretty sweet.

* The Adventure Cycling Association did leave useful paper maps for visitors. I used mine to find the brewery and try (unsuccessfully) to get my bike fixed up.

*Though I might have enjoyed the beer more in better circumstances, it was still the best I had on the trip that far. (The other beer was the baby spit lager I’d drunk in Idaho.)

* A guy in a car gave me a thumbs up as I was climbing uphill toward the Flathead Reservation.

* I arrived at camp late, but no-one ran me over. I was a big fan of the warm showers and that no one was up collecting fees at that hour.

Across the Bitterroots

Moon over my camp south of Lost Trail Pass

I didn’t feel half bad considering that I’d pedaled 100 miles the day before.

It was another shivery morning, but I was able to spare myself some suffering by warming my hands in an electric drier inside the camp bathroom. Spoiled.

I definitely felt stiff as I got back on the bike but the air was invigorating. The road followed a riparian zone of trees and farmland below the sparse, arid hills above. In a few miles, I came upon a sign marking the 45^th parallel — exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. It brought me back to childhood summers in Rangeley, Maine, which happens to be at the same latitude and has a colorful sign up outside of the Pine Tree Frosty to mark the invisible line.

While Rangeley was a couple thousand miles to the east of me, I was excited to pull into Salmon, Idaho, which I’d already heard stories about over the summer. Specifically, I’d heard about the Salmon River, a.k.a The River of No Return, with its hardcore whitewater. I’d join fellow raft guides around someone’s laptop and watch hours of rafts and kayaks going up against the massive waves, rocks and keeper holes, often getting stranded, flipped and generally carned-out by the river’s fury.

I counted down the mile marks to Salmon with growing anticipation. My priorities included buying some real food at a grocery store, and maybe grabbing some Internet time for myself as well.

Going back on the busy roads was a bit of a shock after having minimal traffic for over a hundred miles. Cities also tend to have steeper hills than wussy highway grades, so I found myself puffing hard to get to the supermarket, which was maybe a hundred feet of climb from the river in the center of town.

I'm always crossing the line

I loaded up way more food than I needed and set off for a quiet riverside park where I could gorge myself in peace.

I discovered that my brakes were getting worn when I went back down the hill and found that it took much longer than it should have to come to a complete stop at an intersection. It occurred to me that this might be something I’d want to look at before I went down the next mountain pass.

That was, if I could make myself stay in town that long.

Being amongst civilization again was disorienting rather than reassuring. Suddenly, I couldn’t just take a leak wherever. I had to worry about colliding with people and vehicles again. I felt self-conscious about my oddball bike rig with all the gear hanging off as well as my scraggly appearance. I sat alone at a picnic table by the river where I ate more food than most people go through in a day.

It was about 45 miles to reach the Montana border in the north. I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it over the 7,000-foot Lost Trail Pass that day, but I was already feeling restless with the time that I’d spent in town. I decided to skip the library or finding a good bike shop in town. It could wait until Missoula.

Salmon River, looking north toward the Bitterroot Mountains

I left town under a broiling sun, feeling bloated and lethargic after the picnic table food binge.

The Salmon River was a beautiful traveling companion. It wound blue and sparkling through the dry hills and canyon cliffs. I’d see fly fishermen here and there standing out in waders. One thing I didn’t see was Epic River Carnage: no massive standing waves or homicidal cataracts. The most adrenaline I could see in this section was little fast water riffles, which would barely make Class I.

Every once in a while, I’d see the familiar sight of a trailer loaded down with rafts, but none of them were in the water. The good stuff must have been somewhere else.

Landscape shot near the Salmon River

My showdown with the Bitterroot Mountains started with a gradual incline on the way to Lost Pass at the Montana border. For several miles, I kept going up steadily. I stopped at a couple historical signs to catch my breath and get water. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had been in the neighborhood when they’d crossed the Continental Divide. Being on a known map and more or less contained within civilization, I felt a bit coiffed compared to these grizzled historic forebears. No doubt, Meriwether Lewis had smelled a fair stretch worse than I did at this point in his expedition.

Camping looked like it might be an issue. The road was hemmed in by private summerhouses, which made me worry about finding find a tent site without trespassing.

The got steeper, and soon I was in low gear standing up on the pedals. The road switched back again, and again. When was I going to be in Montana?

As tired as I was, I still thought I might be able to crank it the rest of the way up the pass by nightfall. I even went past a turnoff to a national forest campground so that I could make more distance. After a couple more miles of grinding uphill struggle, I decided that Montana could wait another day. I'd done close to 80 miles.

The best place I could find that wasn’t on an impossibly steep slope or in someone’s backyard was a patch of forest in the edge of a new subdivision. I dragged my bike over a guardrail and guided it past the trees with plastic ribbons around their trunks. In another year, my tent-site might be the living room for yet another roadside mcmansion.

I started the next morning with a five-mile grind up to the 7,000-foot Lost Trail Pass into Montana. Each time I got to the top of a switchback, I expected to see the top — only to see more road winding up ahead of me.

Several drivers coming down from Montana shot me thumbs-ups and gave me inspirational honks. It was late morning by the time I reached the crest of the hill.

There was a visitor station and a small ski resort set up on the border. If I’d have wanted to bike a couple miles out of my way, I could have made it to the Continental Divide, but decided I’d rather use that time to get closer to Missoula, which was 90 miles to the north.

One important priority I took care of was checking my brakes. I adjusted the clamps so that even if they weren’t the best, they would put out enough drag so I could slow down and steer myself out of trouble. I practiced stopping a couple times, took a deep breath, and then started down the other side of the pass.

Finally!

The rhythm of the wheels turning blurred into a constant thrum and I felt my eyes tearing up in the wind. I didn’t turn a pedal, but every muscle was clenched as I flew down the curves. It was awesome.

I tried to use the brakes as little as possible. I leaned hard on the curves (though maybe not as hard as I would have if I’d been riding without gear.) Sometimes, I let myself drift over center line in order to make a turn. Every gram of my concentration was locked on the asphalt stretch in front of me, the dashes on the pavement coming at me slowly at first, than speeding up, finally rushing past in a blur of gray and yellow.

The mountain forests gave way to farmland. I’d gone through 10 miles without pedaling a whit. The next four miles were a more gradual downhill and I barely worked at all.

The road eventually flattened out to a scenic ride along the Clark Fork River. The Bitterroot Mountains towered to the west.

One thing that I wasn’t a fan of was the traffic. Vehicles coming and going from their ranches and vacation houses flew by my left side. There was precious little margin to work with and it cut into my enjoyment.

As I worked my way further north, I found bigger towns with strip malls and cars backed up with stoplights.

Fortunately, there was an intermittent bike trail that let me avoid some of the mayhem. Even so, I found a tough wind that started shoving me around. I started to slow down.

It got later and later in the afternoon, and all I could find was commercial development and nothing that was available for camping without going way off course. It'd been about 85 miles so far. I was so tired that it was turning into a colossal effort just to go another mile

Bitterroot Mountains as seen from Montana

.

Finally, I took a road to a recreation area in a canyon to the west. There was no camping allowed, a sign explained. Well, screw it.

I trundled my bike up steep bluff where I hoped it would stay out of sight and set to getting my tent set up. Of course, as soon as I set to work, I saw a couple hikers coming down the other side.

I sort of shrugged my shoulders at what I was doing. They moved on. I didn’t think they were about to turn me in.

Finally, I threw my bag inside my tent and fell into the sleep of the dead. 

Camp: undisclosed location, south of Missoula

100-Mile Push for Salmon

The road toward Salmon going through the Idaho National Laboratory (Sept. 2013)

My hands were so cold I could barely make myself enjoy the sight of the sunbeams playing along the mist rising off the Snake River nearby.

It was another shivery, dew-drenched morning. I walked out onto a dock, dipped my pot into the fetid water with its gray floaties and set about making oatmeal. My numb fingers barely worked the stove.

If there was something to be grateful for, it was that there was no wind. It would be relatively flat going today. With any luck, I would be able to make a good part of the journey to Salmon, Idaho, another 145 miles ahead of me. Towns, camping and water would be few and far between.

I pedaled out from my campsite wearing several layers and heavy mittens, peddling hard for warmth. I veered across some railroad tracks and through the tiny burg of Roberts, Idaho where I’d bought beer the day before.

A mile later, I went over I-15. A local had suggested some back roads that I could take north, instead of peddling in the highway breakdown lane. The route didn’t appear on my map, so I was going on faith that I would eventually intersect Highway 28 after 12 miles and be on the right track.

The landscape was farm after farm, most of it had been harvested recently, so they were acres of nubs. 20-foot stacks of straw bales flanked the massive parcels, like buttresses against an attack. I could look across the fields to the traffic on I-25. Beyond lay snow-capped mountains to the northeast.

Hawks wheeled in the blue sky, searching for voles or field mice.

Tent site by the Snake River

By the time I hit Highway 28, I was feeling warmed up and in a pretty good groove. The sun chased off the morning chills as it climbed higher. I flew past Terreton without stopping, but pulled up at a convenience store in Mud Lake to refill water and satisfy a junk food itch.

Only a week into my trip, I was already beginning to develop a disturbing pattern around gas stations. It was easy to leave my bike unlocked outside where I could see it, go in and spend cash on some plastic-wrapped commodity, bombing my body with simple sugar and fat. Usually the stuff was overpriced too.

Even when there was a supermarket on the relatively isolated route I’d chosen, such stops cost time. I felt wary about leaving my bike with the tent and other gear outside.

Convenience stores, with their ease of access and ready supply of quick, prepackaged foodstuffs were the go-to.

Long miles have a way of building up an insatiable desire for industrial, extruded polymers like Oreos or Twizzlers. Some of this can be explained by the fact that burning mad calories on the road, lends itself to a craving for the most calorie-dense foods available. That isn’t the whole story though. No, I was trying to fill something.

There were the lonely hours at the pedals with no company but my bored and often restless mind. The satisfaction of a good day of biking is hardly a guarantee; not like the guaranteed sugar rush and endorphins from that first slug of Dr. Pepper — however fleeting that satisfaction might be.

Even walking among the store shelves with their flashy colors and dazzling variety was a kind of escape, a denial of the austere nature of my journey. The fact that I got so caught up in this, speaks to the fact that I was going about something wrong. I wasn’t keeping my mind on the ride. I believe that giving up comforts and finding the strength to thrive without them is an important part of adventure. Yet, every day I undermined the sacrifices made on the trip stuffing my face full of soul-drugging crap straight out of the bowels of commercialism.

The question was whether I could ride beyond the gravitational pull of these desires, or whether such needs would begin to accumulate around me like dead weight until they finally dragged me down to right where I started.

When it came to weight, I decided to revisit my original model where I took my dry bag off my back and strapped it to my backboard with the rest of the gear. Though this meant more risk of weaving, I figured it was an acceptable trade for the flat, empty stretch that lay ahead.

It was one of those infinite desert roads that stretches straight out to the vanishing-point on the horizon and summons all those Americana fantasies about the open highway. Two desiccated mountain ranges rose up on either side, the faintest hint of snow around the tall peaks. It was maybe 100 more miles to Salmon. There wouldn’t be so many distractions for a while.

One constant companion that joined me somewhere around the Idaho border was the squeal of my front axle. Even after I applied graphite lube the night before, it continued its loud, high pitch shrieking as I went along, like a dull blade bearing down into my sanity.

Another mechanical woe was the fact that I could no longer get into my highest gear. Every time I made the last shift, the chains made pissed-off grinding noises and the pedals spun around helpless.

I’ll be the first to admit that going into this trip with more bike mechanic knowledge would have been an unquestionable improvement. As it stood, I figured I was better off on a noisy bike that I could pedal pretty well, than screwing around with it and making things worse in the middle of nowhere.

Shifting all the weight to the back of my bike was great as far as my spine was concerned, not so great when it came to the risk of flipping ass over tea kettle and getting flattened by an oncoming semi. I focused on mitigating the bike’s desire to wobble and cause trouble. The gear was obviously uncomfortable jammed together on the backboard and wanted to slide to one side or the other. Much as I wanted to make adjustments, I also knew it would be a colossal pain to stop peddling, find somewhere to lean my rig and do the necessary tweaks. To slow down was to lose control, and this kept me peddling steadily for many miles.

 Not that there was anywhere to stop. Both sides of the highway belonged to the Idaho National Laboratory — a facility for nuclear research amongst other things. Not surprisingly, this land was off limits for camping.

I refilled water again at a small convenience store that may have been the only reason why there was a town on the map. I bought a hit of Fritos too.

Whether I was traveling in the right kind of Zenned-out bliss or no, one thing for certain was that I was kicking ass in distance with 70-something miles down by mid-afternoon. A bit of tailwind helped considerably, so did my frustration about the pathetic 30-mile day from earlier.

The town of Leadore was in 30 miles, a sign announced. I figured I’d camp somewhere in the backcountry before that, then go the rest of the way to Salmon on the next day. The thing was that I was feeling uncommonly good. I powered up a gradual incline to the 7,186-foot Gilmore Summit, where I put my dry bag on my back again, then I flew down the other side — drunk on gravity and the wind on my face. Even so, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. My legs were already tired, and were bound to ache like a mother later that night.

I kept seeing great places to camp and kept passing them. The mile markers kept putting me closer to Leadore, which would be just about 100 miles from where I’d started peddling that morning. Maybe I’d camp at the other side of town.

So it might have been had it not been for the $5 camping spot in the center of the town. I looked at the freshly mown lawns, thinking about how nice it would be to have water and all the other conveniences right next to me. Still, I could be the badass who did more than 100 miles and still slept on a bed of gravel. I leaned against a picnic table, caught up between whether I should peace out or pitch tent. The camp owner came out and I finally decided on the latter.

They had showers.

Bike portrait at Gilmour Summit

The Big Climb: Out From Utah, Into Wyoming.

Capt. Jackass and the Flaming Gorge Reservoir

The cold, gray morning hours were exactly what I needed to wake up feeling uninspired.

The night’s rains had slipped past my cheap rain fly, successfully dampening about a third of my sleeping bag. The tent was a claustrophobic, dripping place, but right then I preferred it to whatever lay outside. Finally, I wriggled my way outside and flopped onto wet clay. 

There was my bike, flopped on its side in the mud. There was the desolated plain of ATV tracks and scrubby juniper that I'd camped in. The low clouds overhead looked like they would be happy to dump some more water on me if they felt like it.

I packed up my gear slowly and with little enthusiasm. I lashed my backpack onto the backboard under a waterproof nylon then hoisted the dry bag behind it.

“Don’t fall.” I told the bike.

The handlebars bucked left and right as I wheeled my bad idea over the dirt ruts toward the pavement. I felt some resistance coming from the back wheel. It was the brake pad. Sonofabitch.

I eased the bike down on its side and used my Allen wrench to let out a little more slack in the mechanism. It took time because the bolt was already pretty stripped. For a while, it looked like I wouldn’t be able to loosen it at all. Besides, this was usually the kind of thing where I just made things worse. Maybe I would just have to peddle back to the bike shop with my tail between my legs. Maybe I would just go back to the car and call off the trip, which had been half-baked from the start.

 But no! After the appropriate amount of turning and threatening the bike, I got the bolt loose enough to pull the cable and guestimate the right distance between the bike pads and the tire. I righted the beast and wheeled it again. It seemed to go OK now, and when I squeezed the brake I found it clenched the tire acceptably.

I put grundle to the seat and started for the pass.

The first quarter-mile was on a downhill. Enjoy it now, I thought. I tried to keep as much momentum up as possible before I took the 90-degree turn onto Highway 191. Within a minute, I was barely managing five miles an hour against the steep grade. I shifted to low gear, forcing my legs to turn the peddles over as my lungs burned for oxygen and my heart pounded in my head.

Each of the many switchbacks in the road took me approximately one lifetime to climb. Every decade or so, I rolled by another dash in the passing lane. A steady drizzle froze my hands to the bars, while I roasted underneath my rain jacket.

Sounds pretty crappy, right?

I didn’t mention that this must have been RV Clusterfuck Day in Utah. Every minute several of these mcmansions on wheels roared up from behind me and flew by in a wash of fumes and destabilizing wind. Also, I was lucky if I had more than 18-inches of breakdown lane at the edge of the road. Not much of a margin for error. It was worse considering that many of the drivers weren’t very interested in moving over.

All the weight on the back of the bike meant that it had a strong tendency to swerve, a tendency that was especially strong on the uphill. Then some retirees in their Wilderness Advantage RV would barrel past, bringing me within inches of a speeding wall of deadly metal. I would clutch the handlebars in desperation, praying that my wheels wouldn’t swerve left. Each vehicle left a vacuum behind it that yanked at my bike toward the center of the road and oblivion.

Finally, the vehicle would pass and I would puff out the breath I’d been holding in. An instant later, Death would get a second swipe at me when the inevitable pickup truck or motorboat pulling behind the first unit flew by.

The road got steeper I was strained to the utmost keeping my bike upright and moving in a straight line. The sound of another engine coming up from behind was like the wasp buzzing in your ear while you’re trying to haul a filing cabinet up a flight of stairs.

Something told me that the driver wasn’t about to make room. The engine grew louder. It sounded like it was headed right for me.

I veered off the road just before the monstrous trailer flew past at top speed. The bike bucked like it was going to veer left, but I fell over instead. I got up shaking with adrenaline. The driver barreled on oblivious, disappearing into the mists above.

This wasn’t working at all.

I looked at my set up, trying to think of something I could change to make things safer.

Finally, I unstrapped my drybag from the backboard and put my arms through the shoulder straps to wear it like a backpack. I didn’t relish the extra weight on my shoulders, but figured that taking some of the weight off the back of the bike would help with stability and steering.

When I got going again, I found the weight put an uncomfortable strain on my back, but I also felt more in control of the bike than I had before.

My heart went like a jackhammer as the wheels slowly carried me up the switchbacks. The fog got soupier; ghostly stands of aspen appeared as shadows in the mist.

I heard a series of moans and bellows from somewhere up above: a cattle herd. The river of bovines clomped along a soggy ridge while cowboys on horses shouted them along. So there was something out there that felt worse than I did.

The long climb topped out at a small rest area. I wheeled over to the outhouse and leaned my bike against it, taking shelter from the drizzle beneath a tiny overhang. The bellowing and clomping of the cattle stayed my ears like a weary dirge. The cowboys guided the sorry lot of them right up to the edge of the rest area and then started herding them across the road. One calf had other ideas and broke out of line, stumbling for the fields. A couple of cowboys spurred their horses and rounded him up.

It must have taken about 15 minutes for the herd to make it across the highway with traffic stopped on either side. Finally, an ATV at the rear ushered the last of the animals across the road. It was time I got going as well.

I peddled slowly out of the parking lot and back onto the road. The bike began to accelerate. I was going downhill! How sweet it was to move without doing work! Soon I was whipping at over 20 miles an hour and freezing cold with the sweat from the last hours evaporating in the wind. The sensation didn’t last. In less than a mile, the road went up again and I was back to working my weary legs against the mountains.

The top of the pass was at 8,422 feet in the midst of a lodgepole pine forest. I had climbed just about 4,000 feet from where I’d started that morning. Now, I could enjoy a long downhill on the way to Flaming Gorge — or would have enjoyed it if not for the icy rain. I flew down the wet pavement, squinting against drops of water and trying hard not to wipe out on the turns.

I turned left just before the Flaming Gorge Dam so that I could follow the west shore of the reservoir on the way to Manila, Utah. The town, which sits just south of the Wyoming border, was another 28 miles ahead. My downhill lasted for a couple more miles and then I was going up again. The road never seemed to flatten. First, I would be sweating as I pumped the bike against gravity, immediately after I would be shivering in the wind on the next downhill. 

I took a quick break at Moose Pond to eat lunch and took what warmth I could from a feeble sun breaking through the clouds.

And we go down again

Not long after I got on my bike there was blue sky and the mercury was climbing. Soon it was like any other hot, sunny, summer day. The landscape became dry again as well. The lodgepole forest gave way to fields of sage and desiccated mesas. I forced my way up a series of massive hills, until I finally came to an overlook. The Flaming Gorge Reservoir lay below, with its dark blue water framed by desert cliffs.

The bike and I flew down a series of switchbacks, losing at least a 1,000 feet in just a couple minutes. It was funny to think that it would have taken me a good chunk of an hour to cover the same distance had I been going in the other direction.

Of course, right after my break, I started into another massive climb. The veins bulged out of my neck as I struggled to keep my momentum. A pack of motorcycles came thundering down the other way. One of them gave me a thumb’s up. I was glad I was doing something crazy enough to be worth noticing.

At the top of the hill, the desert landscape gave way to green, irrigated farm plots. The town of Manilla lay just a few miles ahead, but it took a monumental amount of energy just to drag myself that far.

The sight of a puny gas station convenience store on Main Street was like oasis in the Sahara. I filled my canteens up at a faucet outside and shoved my face with Oreos and Fig Newtons that I bought within.

“Are you ill in the head?” the woman behind the register asked when I told her I was biking from Utah to the Pacific Northwest.

I peddled out of town with rubber legs on an uphill grade. There was a KOA campground nearby. Tempting. If I just paid out the $25, I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a tent site on the rangeland up ahead, most of which was bound to be private property, with few places to hide from well-armed ranch owners.

Still, I was only another four miles to the Wyoming border and I was determined to wake up in the next state, if only to prove to myself that I was making progress. I peddled on.

Dark clouds had gathered in the northeast by the time I crossed the state line. I watched the dark bands of rain with trepidation. Normally, I would expect bad weather to come from the west of me, but this was marching right for me. I needed to get the tent up, pronto.

The problem was that all the land that I could see was wide-open ranch land, within view of the road and the ranch houses up above. Wyomingites are not famous for their love of trespassers.

Tall barbed wire fences cut the land off from the road. It was a super fence with sturdy wire mesh on the bottom and strands of barbs at chest-height. Usually, I see fences that are just three parallel wires and are pretty easy to duck through. This stuff was going to be a challenge.

I peddled furiously for a couple miles, looking for a break somewhere. All I saw were empty plains and the unbroken fenceline. The clouds marched closer. Finally, I saw a small gulley behind a clump of trees: 10 square feet of land where no one would be able to see me. It looked like I’d have to hop the fence after all.

I dismounted and lay my bike behind some sage. Then I tossed my drysack over the fence. Getting myself over was a little more challenging. I climbed the mesh and then grabbed hold of one of the posts for support when I swung my leg over the top. The operation brought my crotch within an inch of the wire skewers. Finally, I landed gracelessly on the other side and went down into the gulley.

Cow shit everywhere. I pitched my tent away from the center of the gulley in the hopes that it would be out of the path of any run off from the storm. If I moved five feet to the left or right, I would be in clear view of the ranch house nearby. I still worried that someone might find my bike near the road so I went back and heaved it onto my side of the fence.

I ran back to the tent and zipped myself into my sleeping bag. Two minutes later it started raining like all hell.

Is there a place anywhere in this view where I won't get shot?

Saturday, September 14, 2013 — about 69 miles