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.

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