Deer Park Doorstep Return

The Deer Park Road with skis and bike

Heavy Pedaling

The faded pink nylon strap looped around the bike frame, just below the handlebars, behind the fork. The tips of my telemark skis and ski pole handles went through here. The panniers on the rack clipped over the skis’ midpoint and then the last couple feet hung off the rear of the bike like a pheasant’s tail.

Hold together.

I gave it all a big shake to see if anything wanted to come loose, but nothing budged. Ready for this?

It shouldn’t be that hard, the overnight trip. 

Yet, I shuttled back and forth between my room and the front yard for the umpteenth time like a compulsive. I was falling behind schedule again. I’d decided to play music the night before rather than finish packing, and now I was paying for it.

Parameters are always tighter than you think they’re going to be. If you spend too much time screwing around in the morning, where will you be at sunset? Cooking dinner by the fire at Deer Park Campground? Pedaling up the switchbacks praying that you put the headlamp in your jacket pocket? Lying in your room reading about someone else’s adventure because you were too lazy, you didn’t have it together and you blew it again?

I want these adventures to be fun, but it’s the hard work and suffering that ultimately make them worthy.

In this case, I could have saved hours and a couple thousand calories by just loading skis in my car and driving up the Hurricane Ridge Road to snow line. But knowledge is dangerous. I know my car is an emissions machine that turns beloved snow into runoff. I also know I can get to the snow under my own power. Better to save the carbon and mortify the flesh.

Clouds had opened to reveal the gleaming slopes of Klahhane Ridge above Port Angeles, a chill in the air that was crisp, not the soggy numbness of the earlier gray weeks. The sun was high enough so I could feel warmth on my shoulders. Hallelujah sun! Alas for late beginnings. 

It’s 9:30, you slacker! Move!

My first pedal strokes lurched. The skis on the side of the bike frame forced me to adopt a slightly bowlegged posture. It was a compromise, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the shaky A-frame rig I’d used with skis earlier. My back was also far happier than it was last year when I’d loaded everything onto my spine. 

The rigging got its first real test when I turned onto Peabody Street for a big descent through city traffic.

The brakes shuddered, and the extra weight meant more time needed to kick off once traffic lights turned green. It all felt stable though, and fairly safe. As usual, I noticed people giving me  second glances as I went past. I’m sure they thought I was unhinged. Who is this man with the enormous backpack biking through town with skis on his bike?

Pedaling through an urban space with my hardcore (or hobo-core) outdoor gear may seem dissonant, yet, I partly enjoy the out of place-ness. Even an asphalt street can be part of a narrative that climbs to jagged peaks.

Or at least finds an asphalt bike-path. The Discovery Trail, along the Salish Sea, was a nice improvement from city riding.

I got to enjoy a couple of miles of flats with the best scenery you could ask for. Mount Baker loomed above the San Juan Islands. The peak was 80 miles off, but hyper-visible in the cool, dry air. Further flung Canadian peaks glittered in the distance.

Eventually, the trail cut into the woods, across the old rail trestle above Morse Creek. Tiny green leaves sprouted out of branches — a disturbing development for early February. The forces of warming hard at work on Highway 101, which was glutted with weekend drivers headed for Port Angeles. The dip beneath the overpass would be my last downhill for a while.

Then, I’d be looking at nine miles of climbing to where the pavement ended at the beginning of Olympic National Park, seven more miles of climbing to the Deer Park Campground at 5,000 feet. Somewhere in there, I’d encounter snow, but I didn’t know when or if it would become skiable in this powder-lean year.

The first snow sign was the pine tree frosting at the top of the foothills, though I doubted it indicated anything deep enough to ski in. I took a short break to eat and drink, then started pedaling for the highlands. 

It took about an hour of climbing the pavement before I started seeing little traces of white in the shadows of a clear cut. Another mile later, I saw the gate for Olympic National Park. A few cars were parked there with people milling about. Some of them, I found out, hadn’t realized that the road would be closed here. Not closed to me though. I had miles to go, onward and — uhhh… why was the bike getting so hard to pedal? 

A tanker ship moves in front of Mount Baker as I pedal out of Port Angeles

Deflated expectations

I looked down to find the rear tire smushed flat against the pavement. 

Here it was, just as I’d feared: the snafu of the day.

I have switched out road bike tires without the aid of levers, and someone had told me that mountain bike tires are usually easier. Hence, I had not bothered bringing any levers with me.

As I struggled to get the bead of the tire off the wheel with my cold fingers, I realized that some nice firm levers (ounces of weight added to my load) would have pretty nice right then.

In some ways it would be better to have broken down in the remote mountains, more helpless, but without anybody to feel like an idiot in front of. A gray-haired couple ambled over to render assistance.

They didn’t have any levers, but they did have a pair of pliers with an end that I could jimmy beneath the tire bead.

 I combined these with my own allen wrenches (not good for the rim, but you gotta do what you gotta do). After I got the tire off, I put my replacement tube in and pumped it up. I gave the pliers back with a thank you and my benefactors who were heading back down the road.

As soon as they left, a new visitor arrived.

I had a new visitor who was a mill worker, just moved to the peninsula from Spokane to find a work and to try to get over alcoholism. He helped me push the tire back on, expostulating about how it was impossible to look at the beauty in the mountains around us without believing in God. I tried to explain, politely, that as an non-believer, I still found a deep measure of solace and wonderment in the mountains. There was a helpline for atheists at Alcoholics Anonymous now he said, but added (with satisfaction?) that a woman in his group had tried calling and found no one to talk to.

I reckoned that I probably disagreed with my new helper over a thing or two, but the rim of the tire was an almighty beast to get back on and the second set of hands made the job go much more easily. I mm-hmmed in the right places and started pumping up both tires extra full.

It was 3p.m.. I’d lost an hour. Hopefully nothing else blew, because I didn’t have another spare tube nor a patch kit.

I thanked the man, who got back into his truck to head back down to the coast, where the sun still shone brightly. The mountains above brooded in unwelcoming purple gray clouds. That was where the cellphone coverage ended and real hardship began.

If I turned back from the challenge, it would only be a half hour downhill riding to get back in the warmth. I’d get back home just before dark. Easy. Then I would have to pretend that I never bothered with this crazy trip.

Otherwise, it would mean that I’d truly softened up, that perhaps it was time to put away my self-image as an adventurer or as someone who pushes himself.

These thoughts swirled around as a group of armed men began shuffling past me toward the unofficial gun range next to the road — the place where I’d camped last summer.

They set up and commenced to engage the enemy with a fusillade of black powder and semiautomatic firepower.

I exited the perimeter via the Deer Park Road gate, onto the road where no trucks would pass. It felt like I was escaping the third world war. Up the switchbacks I went toward the clouds, into the snow. Blam! Blam! Blam!

I pedaled until I was warm again and had to peel. Snow was now dusted on the salal leaves and hemlock boughs. Snow on was starting to gather on the road surface as well. This was still too shallow for skiing, but it was just deep enough to make extra work for my bicycle.

The effort of pedaling kept me warm in the way that you feel when you know that you can go to freezing cold in an instant. I was nervous I would end up setting up shivering while trying to set up camp.

Circumstances had been similar for the suffering-rich night I’d spent in the outhouse at the Heart Lake Campground, an ordeal that had also stated when I started pushing the clock going uphill in cold weather.

At least if I made it to the Deer Park Campground, there would be larger, handicap style outhouses — a Ritz Carlton for the dirtbag camper. The sound of strong winds rustling the trees above gave me second thoughts though. It was 4:15 and I was still far from such sumptuous accommodations. The higher I climbed, the more exposed I’d be. If not the outhouse, I would need the tarp and I’d need time to set it up with everything else..

Camping along the roadside was its own challenge. Other than the road itself, the land was tilted steeply. Also, I had neglected to refill my water at the last stream, and now there was nothing nearby. Here in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, there were very few options to refill my water supply. Promising gullies that would gushed with water in Port Angeles were bone dry. The best water source was the thin dusting of snow on the ground.

I found myself climbing up an embankment so that I could find flattish place to camp on the ridge line. I pitched tarp over some dry moss on a moderate slope between some narrow spruce trees. I walked among pines, knocking snow off of the boughs into my bear can, scooping more of it off the salal.

The heavy fuel canister that I’d had in my closet had been a reluctant add-on to my burgeoning gear collection leading up to the trip. It turned out that this was exactly what I needed that evening: abundant fuel that I used to melt down the powder. The bits of bark and goatsbeard lichen that I’d dislodged garnished the pea soup I boiled for myself. I nestled up into my sleeping bag and went to sleep on the tilted ground.

Tarp tent camp

A shot at Blue Mountain

The morning after, it was the usual sluggishness, reluctance to leave sleepy warmth for cold elements. I spooned breakfast of lichen-enriched oatmeal, then proceeded to march all my gear back down to the bike. 

I pedaled hard for a couple miles uphill with the weight of skis and gear through the shallow snow. A pall of frozen mist ghosted through the trees. Here and there I had to get off my bike to push it up a deeper section of snow. Though it was tempting to just ditch the bike and start skiing, there would inevitably be another section of road up ahead where the wind had blown the snow away to bare gravel.

Then it was back into the deeps. I gritted my teeth and aimed for a brown plastic marker staked into the road, I was going to make it there, dammit. Tires slowed; neck veins popped out.

“C’mon! C’mon!” 

The pedals stopped and the bike toppled. I fell off the seat and over the snowy embankment. My slide stopped ingloriously with my feet above my head and bare belly resting on the snow. The hill sloped down steeply, so it was tough work squirming my legs back under me to regain my feet.

I got back to the bike, reset the twisted bike-rack and started pushing through the powder.

Five minutes later, the snow was just as deep. I was ready for a break.

I threw on the layers, sucked down water, and started gathering snow to melt. 

The stove gave me a reviving warm pasta meal.

Suddenly, the cold gray miasma broke open. There was blue sky. Just 50 feet above, the mountain slope burst into brilliant color — warm light on the snow, diamonds on the branches.

The sun shone on the road just a hundred feet up. It was time to move.

I took the skis off the bike, put my telemark boots on, clipped in and started shuffling up the road. I was climbing without skins, favoring kick wax smeared on the ski bottoms. This gave me enough grip to take on the moderate slope angle, and gave me better speed than skins would have.

Skinny nordic skis would have carried me even faster, but I would have maxed out their capabilities with the steep icy turns waiting when I went back downhill..

Ice clouds drifted in and out, half veiling the light. Even the compromised sunshine was spiritual balm. I remembered what a joy it was to be in bright light over white snow, took pleasure in the way my surroundings popped in the crisp illumination. I thought of other smiling days I’d spent on mountains in Wyoming or Colorado, or in the Whites back east.

The warm rays also brought my core temperature up again. I was beginning to roast in my many layers, but rather than peel, I just skied slower. I was sure the cold would come back soon enough. A dark cloud mass was bearing down out of the west trailing gauzy curtains of white flakes. The trees were thinning now. Whatever was coming, I would get it full strength.

The sun opens over the valley below Deer Park Road

The wind-scoured zones above the road

Clear skis and cleared out slopes — Watch what happens in 15 minutes though

And the snow came in

I finally skied into Deer Park Campground, pumping my fist in victory. This had been the furthest point I had skied to last year. Now, there was less than a mile to go until I hit the summit of Blue Mountain. I was gliding along nicely on the skis, making good time. Yet the clouds were closer now.

The road climbed into an alpine steppe, with shrubs blasted free of snow. Only the gravel road held onto a residue of white — barely enough to ski over. I had to shuffle so I wouldn’t scrape up the bottoms. 

A blast of wind nailed me and whipped flakes into my face.

Visibility dropped to perhaps a hundred yards. The road was difficult to distinguish from anything. I started worrying about about how I would retrace my steps if the weather deteriorated more. I shuffled on anyway, into a cluster of pines where  snow was deeper and I had a short respite. The wind showed no sign of calming, though. Soon I was out of the trees again, in the teeth of the storm. The view to the west was endless gray.

Now there was a turn in the road.

Wait? Was that the road over there? Or was that it to the right? The washed out snowscape offered few clues. There was a notch in the hillside above me that looked road like, so I started side climbing towards it. The snow was ice hard. I squinted from my new vantage point; it looked like a road, yes, but maybe I was wishful thinking. One thing I knew: finding my way back down in the current visibility would be tough. Meanwhile, my watch said it was 1:50 — ten minutes before my designated turnaround time. How much further up was the mountaintop? 200 feet above? It had to be close. The western view was only more flakes and darkness.

I decided to call it.

Descent and the validation of the doorstepper 

I cut my way down the crust face on my metal edges, then it was a fun glide over the road. I ski-walked delicately on the shallow snow, then regained my speed at the Deer Park Campground. 

A blurred group of forms stood in the road. I approached, realized that they were a group men and woman on a ski trip.

They were as surprised to see me as I them. 

“Say, how much further can you ski down this road?” one of the men asked.

“What, didn’t you see my bike? I asked.”

It turned out that they hadn’t seen my bike because they were coming from the other direction, via the  They had skied from the Hurricane Ridge Road, and over Obstruction Point Ridge, where they had camped the night before.

I broke the news that they wouldn’t get to ski much longer. Beyond my bike, they probably had about a five-mile walk back to the park entrance where their vehicle was waiting.

They had enjoyed an enviable blue bird day up on the Obstruction Point the day before, but I didn’t envy the long walk they had ahead of them, fully loaded with skis and boots. They’d be huffing for hours under the load, while I cruised out of there on wheels.

They seemed like fine people, but I’ll admit it; I felt a little smug. 

They burned the gas driving from Seattle. They had driven to the top of Hurricane Ridge and back up the Deer Park Road to the gate. They’d had their fun skiing, but now they got to pay the piper, while the doorstep adventurer sat pretty.

Before I left, a woman asked if there was a good spot to get food and beer in Port Angeles. I knew a few places.

“We’re going to need it after this.”

I skied down ahead of them, but they passed me as I loaded the skis on my bike. I heard the collective groan go up when they found out where the snow ended. I turned the bike around and started pedaling. It was sketchy going in the deeper snow, but I could stabilize myself by putting a foot out outrigger style. I also had to watch out for the occasional ice patch where I’d avoid turning or braking hard.

Within five minutes, I re-encountered the skiers, who were trudging down the road under heavy packs. I cruised by.

It felt awesome, honestly. 

“There’s a smart idea!” Someone called. “I like your rig.” 

“Thanks,” I said. “But, to be fair, it was a real bear getting it up this far.”

Another humbling reality was that I was only one flat tire away from having the worst slog out of everyone. I really hoped I didn’t blow a flat.

Going down the mountain road made for fun riding. The snow smoothed out a lot of the teeth-chattering bumps I had weathered last summer. Another improvement: I didn’t have to worry about cars bearing down on me and could cruise where I pleased. It was a nice payoff for the hard work needed to get up the hill.

I was cruising down into a corridor of salal, highlighted nicely by the snow on the green leaves.  The flakes had stopped at this point.

I passed the park gate and back onto the paved road, where I had a prime view of the sunlit strait, still far below.

I just needed gravity to take me there. The struggles of the past hours faded as I gave myself to the exultation of the ride.

Sure, I hadn’t quite made the Blue Mountain summit, but I blamed it more on circumstances than a failure of will. It would have been different if I’d turned around the day before. I’d made it further up the road than I had last winter, so that was something.

I rolled down into rural suburbia, where the snow ended, the sun was shining and most people were dressed casually. The mountain chill was still with me and my parka and ski goggles stayed in place.

Finally, I got to the shoreline, where I parked my bike to go touch the water. Little wavelets were coming in golden on the afternoon sun — above them the luminous slopes of Baker. A stipe of bull kelp startled me when it popped beneath my ski boot. Funny that not long ago I had been at almost 6,000 feet in the snow world. Tragically, the view to the top of Blue Mountain was clear as crystal.

I sighed. Maybe next time.

I got a second glance when a passing biker saw me, still in a parka, still in ski goggles.

“Hey!” I almost shouted. “I know I this looks crazy, but I was really using this stuff! I was skiing two hours ago.” 

I saved my breath. She probably would have thought I was crazy anyway.

Back at sea level

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Howdy readers,

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I finally got around to getting my own website. It's tomsonthemove.com. Basically, it's the same thing as before, but I nixed the ".blogspot" out of the web address. It cost me over a hundred bucks for the privilege, but I thought I might do better pitching my writing to folks if I had a more professional-looking website. Of course, as for whether the writing itself becomes that much more compelling, that's for you to judge.

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Tom

The Last Miles

The clouds break.

Paths of sunlight fall to the damp moss.

Whose golden breath

Billows up from a chalice of shadowed pines?

October 8, 2013 — halfway between Seattle and Portland, Ore.

I stood for several minutes atop the highway overpass.

Lanes of rush hour on Interstate 5 traffic screamed down the tarmac and beneath my feet, swarming out of the city like hornets from a nest.

The lanes into the city were gridlocked in a river of taillights.

The Seattle skyline glinted dull orange in the hazy, late-day light. Its skyscrapers could have been alien sentinels, some metal form of life tapping an invisible energy out of the atmosphere.

Still the cars came, dashing for the suburbs. Maybe some of them had been through California, covering the same number of miles that had taken me almost a month, in a couple days.

Mt. Ranier towered above it all, the epitome of massiveness. The volcanic cone begins almost at sea level, then climbs to over 14,000 feet above the proud city.

A narrow ring of forest circled the base of the beast followed by two vertical miles of snow and ice, set ablaze in brilliant, pinkish hues.

I stayed for a couple days in Seattle, crashing at a friend’s place in the University District. Between the steep streets and my crappy brakes, I had plenty of excitement on the hills. In one instance, I used my shoe to drag myself to a stop along the pavement right before I went careening through an intersection.

Eventually, I managed to get an appointment at a bike shop, where I paid to have my gears fixed too.

Maybe I needed some repair as well. My knee had started jabbing little pain tweaks at me every time I turned the pedals. I had less energy when I got on the bike than I’d had at the start of the ride. Fatigue set in as soon as I started going anywhere.

I realized that I was lonely most of the time. Somehow, I hadn’t been psychologically prepared for solitude, especially not as I carried feelings from a dwindling relationship. They lingered. They knocked around my cranium as I tried to think of other things.

Coming into the city was a welcome break from the tedious miles that I’d spent alone. My friend Josh must have worried when it began to get dark and I still hadn’t showed up at his apartment. Seattle may be a bike friendly town, but I found its suburbs to be pure hell.

A highway that I’d planned to take into town turned out to be a four-lane behemoth with on ramps and a steady flow of traffic. My atlas didn’t have detail maps for the area immediately outside the city, so I used guesswork instead. I kept my compass needle pointing south and followed a river, thinking that it would take me to a familiar landmark. It took me to a dead end, forcing me to retrace my steps for three miles.

The burbs gave way to another highway, then more burbs and more hills.

All the other cyclists had turned on their flashers to make themselves more visible to traffic. I had my reflective vest and that was it.

Seattle had to live up to its reputation, of course, and it started raining. Gouts of water ran down the streets, reflecting the neon storefronts and headlights. Cars whirled around a traffic circle in a malicious carnival as I feebly attempted to get around.

Finally, I hit a bike path and promptly lost 20 minutes pedaling around a big loop. By the time I figured out the route it was full night with miles to go. A steady stream of city bicyclists whirled by me, their lights coming up quiet and ghostly through the trees.

Hope sprung when I realized that I was crossing the Washington University campus. I couldn’t have been far from Josh’s apartment. My phone rang right then. Josh wanted to know just where the hell I was. I told him.

“Hold on a second man; I’ll come out and find you.”

He came out and found me.

I bummed around the city over four or five days, taking walks, playing music with Josh and his friends, enjoying local beer and food.

I also got to see my friends Rachel and Dustin who had just moved to the area from Wyoming. I didn’t want to break my own-month streak of not using motorized transport, so I ended up pedaling up to their place in Lynnwood. I went back to Seattle the next day and got a flat — the first on my trip. Luckily, I was near a bike shop where I got it taken care of. It was pretty lazy, considering that I had the gear to do the job, but I wasn’t in the mood for the time and effort, nor the possibility that I would screw something up.

Later, I met Rachel and Dustin at the state park along Puget Sound. They’d brought bicycles so we could pedal around together. We ended up sitting on a driftwood log by the beach with the Olympic Peaks in front of us across the water and Mt. Ranier rising behind us and to the south. It occurred to me that I’d never swum in the Pacific Ocean before, so I stripped down to my running shorts and took the plunge. The rush of cold was a welcome stimulant, so was the warm prickly feeling on my skin as I boogied out of the water. Aside from a mild brain freeze, I felt great.

It might have been best to call the trip right then.

Even before I started this trip back in Utah, I’d decided that I could be satisfied with Seattle — even though my full plan called for going down through Oregon and eventually coming back to my start point at the boathouse in Jensen.

I looked at myself and asked how much more I was really capable of doing.

“Well, I could at least make it as Oregon,” I thought.

Some family friends, Mike and Margie, lived in Eugene. Mike, who knew I was a runner, said it was basically required for me to see Hayward Field, the most famous track in America, home of Steve Prefontaine amongst other running legends.

I left Seattle the next afternoon. My course took me beneath the Space Needle, then along the waterfront. People were in their summer clothes, strolled out among the ships and docks, soaking up the October sun.

I made several miles of progress along bike paths, followed by suburban streets. There were several hills along the water that afforded spectacular views of the breakers coming in along the miles of shore. Having a new set of brake pads added peace of mind on the down grades. 

I ended up quitting early at a state campground, then going through Tacoma the next day.

The rain started when I was pedaling along the shipyards along the sound, let up around noon, then poured with gusto as I entered the forest. The knee tweak pinged each time I turned the pedals over.

There was only a light wind, but I could barely make the bike move against it. I swore like a madman, trying to make my legs work when nothing else would.

Sign near Elbe, Washington (transcribed approximately):

Mt. Ranier Closed.

Thanks Federal Government.

Let’s take your paycheck and give you an IOU.

I could have quit at a campsite near a reservoir, but decided paying the $15 fee would be a cop out with all the national forest land nearby. Plus, I’d barely done half the miles I’d planned for that day. I pushed five more miles to a forest road and ended up camping by a stream in a soaking hollow.

It was misting gently the next morning. The temperature must have been in the 30s and I couldn’t get my hands warm for the life of me, not even when I wore all my laters and pedaled myself into a sweat.

“I’m going to quit in Portland,” I kept repeating to myself. The idea of getting off the bike for good was a comforting one.

To celebrate my capitulation, I pulled into a rest area and sat inside for two hours, downing hot coffees and eating frantically as it misted outside.

“Fuck this trip.”

I walked outside with the food and coffee lurching inside my belly. It was kind of enjoyable to hate every moment of the ride. Once I accepted that every mile would be shit, I was rarely disappointed. What would be next? Sleet? Some dickhead trucker splashing me with a wall of dirty water?

The cloud break to the south gave me pause. The sun shone down in golden beams above a bowl in the hills, illuminating drifting whorls of steam. It looked like someone’s breath coming out of the hills. I knew I had to shut up for a second and appreciate it.

I had become regimental about enjoying such moments, taking them in the way some people pop vitamins. It felt like they were keeping me sane. If I didn’t make an effort to appreciate them, I would go pedaling right past in an unbroken string of miseries.

It occurred to me that this was the way to get through life itself. Most people’s lives are a train of tedious tasks, insults, and thwarted expectations.

Amidst this, the clouds will break sometimes. Seize that moment! Cherish it and hold it close, just as you would cherish someone close to you.

If I could remember these moments, better yet, to write them honestly, perhaps some of this trip would be worth salvaging.

5 p.m. light.

The rain wet fields

Behind the tractors

Set ablaze.

Each blade of grass

A green flame.

I couldn’t decide if aiming for occasional happiness was a realistic goal or depressing defeatism.

I camped out in a strand of trees by the highway.

The next day, I hoped to make it across to Oregon, if not to Portland. I began to think about whether I could make it the rest of the way to Eugene.

Such thoughts faded when I woke up to yet another cold, misty morning. The route took me to the west side of Interstate 5. It was a straight shot down from there to the Columbia River where I would cross into Oregon.

Even so, there were plenty of hours of biking ahead.

The blue sky broke through the clouds. This would be a lovely time, I thought, to munch on those graham crackers I just purchased.

I pulled of the road, enjoying the pastoral environment. Suddenly two other bikes came down the hill. They had panniers clipped to the side to hold gear — like they planned on traveling a long way.

“Howdy,” I said.

“How’s it going man?” the lead bike asked.

“Not too bad.”

“Where you headed?”

“Portland.”

The bikes slowed.

“Do you want some graham crackers?” I offered.

They swung around.

Mike and Cree were also going to Portland. From there, they planned to bike down through California and then power east all the way back to Kentucky where they’d grown up. If this wasn’t ambitious enough, come spring they planned to start along the Appalachian Trail.

Like me, they were four days out of Seattle. Cree had worked at a bike shop — a useful guy to have on this kind of trip. His bike was loaded down with a couple dozen pounds of repair gear.

Mike, an ex-coast guard guy, had been reading up on survival knowledge.

We agreed to ride together as far as Portland where they would split off on the way to Hood River, which was further east. I still wasn’t sure if I would have it in me to pedal all the way to Eugene.

Of course now that I’d agreed to bike with them, it meant I had to keep up. The two set a brisk pace that kept me working. I didn’t want to drop out though. It was the first time on the damn trip that I’d had any company on the road.

We cruised into a town where the boys were jonesing for some Wendy’s. Our bikes blitzed through several intersections, and bounced up onto sidewalks as one of them checked his smart phone to confirm the directions.

There was an A&W that was close by, so we parked our bikes their and ate outside. I had fries with root beer, while the others gobbled down grease bomb sandwiches.

All of us decided it’d be a good plan to hit a Safeway to restock our supplies. It would be a mundane detail if not for the fact that we saw two other bikes with panniers outside the store. They were an Aussie and a Canadian pedaling from British Columbia to San Diego. The two were logging 100+ mile days — more ambitious than the three of us who were more in the 50 to 60 mile range now. It was probably best to let them beast it down to Portland, while we would hang back and camp somewhere between Portland and the Oregon border.

A bunch of teens were out of the local high school on lunch break.

“Where are you guys coming from?” one shouted.

“I’m coming outa, Utah. “ I shouted, “but these two bros are going all the way to Kentucky!”

The chorus of whoas and holy shits brought a smile to my face.

A long steel-truss bridge spanned the river between Washington and Oregon.

The group of us pedaled like hell up the span, only a couple of feet from heavy car and truck traffic on our left. Big chunks of bark off of logging trucks littered the breakdown lane, forcing us to bounce over them or weave hazardously around.

From the crossing, our road went east. It wasn’t too late in the day, but no one had a problem with quitting early before we came into Portland.

We ended up at a state park where camping was prohibited and the woods were full of poison oak anyway.

The park caretaker recommended a $5 a night place at a marina two miles down the road. Sold!

We were pedaling back for the road, when I heard a groaning from the back of my bike. I got off and found that part of my rack was rubbing against my rear wheel.

Cursing generously, I tried to bend it out of the way. Eventually, Cree managed to undo the bolts that held the rack in place. We tied it off to a different place using cord, hoping that it would remain in position, away from the wheel.

Our camp area adjoined a convenience store and some moorings. 10-story ships would come chugging down the river, trailing enormous wakes.

We enjoyed some beers out of the convenience store while one of my new friends hollowed out an apple.

“You know that’s not legal on this side of the river,”

“I’m not too worried about it? Want some?”

“Sure.”

Cree and Mike were taking a smell the roses approach to the trip, planning several stops along the way. They figured if they took it easy, they’d have a better chance to stick with it. Considering the state I was in, I thought this made a lot of sense. Since they were south, they hoped to avoid the time pressure of an encroaching winter, though I was sure they’d have a cold time for some of their journey.

We took a leisurely start the next morning. It was ironic that now that I planned to kill the trip, I felt unusually energetic. Some of this could have been Cree putting the proper amount of air in the tires — something that I’d overlooked because I’d gotten used to squeezing them in a slightly under-inflated state. I stayed up with Cree and Mike no problem and genuinely enjoyed pedaling.

We grabbed some street food and ate it near the riverfront. They still planned to high-tail it on the way to Hood River, though they would need to haul serious ass if they planned to make it by nightfall. I had my eye on a campground south of town. Yes, I’d changed my mind again, deciding that I might as well take my push all the way to Eugene.

I pedaled up the thoroughfare out of town only to have the groan come back again. The bike lurched and I got off to the side to try and fix things. Try as I might to wrangle the rack into a decent position, it seemed all the more determined to rub the tire. I must have spent the good part of an hour trying to fix things, then said to hell with it.

I posted up for the night at a cheap motel, handing the manager my debit card in disgust. I called my friend Mike in Eugene to see if he’d be willing to take me in if I came in on a bus the following night. He was game, and better yet, excited to have me down there.

If there was anything I felt at the end of the journey, it was relief to have it over. There was some regret, like I’d bowed out but there was also the relief that I cold get on with life. Along the way, I’d envied people I saw working in stores or having a day out with friends, just living their lives without the compulsion to break themselves on some kind of hard-core trip.

I pedaled back into Portland the next day to see about getting a bus. The rack kept rubbing against the bars, and I had to keep readjusting. As I crossed one street, I heard something honk behind me, a trolley bearing down right at me. As I whirled to steer away, my tire caught on the tracks, sending me flopping onto the pavement. I grabbed the bike and dragged myself away quick as possible, though the trolley stopped before it reached the point where it would have flattened me.

There was a stab of pain, in my rib, definitely a bruise.

Someone helped right my bike.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I’ll make it,” I said.

I got on the bike and almost flopped over again. The pedals just spun in place without turning the wheels.

I dismounted, and started pushing the bike toward the train station.

The trip was over. 

Thanks for the Love, Boston

 Without love, where would you be now?

The Doobie Brothers may not have been asking runners specifically when they pose that question in “Long Train Runnin’” but I had an answer anyway:

Probably running a lot slower and not having nearly as much fun.

I was pounding my way through the streets of Newton, en route to Heartbreak Hill in my second Boston Marathon.

The screams of the spectators rang in my ears. Miles of outstretched hands reached across the metal barricades for high-fives. Often, I’d hear someone yell my number.

“Yeah 683! Let’s go 683!”

Every time I heard that, a goofy grin would crack across my face. Sometimes I’d throw up a fist pump, a salute or just my pinky and index finger raised for heavy metal rockitude. Whenever I slapped a high five, it felt like a power-up.

Carbs and oxygen might have kept my body going; the love from the crowd sustained my spirit.

You’re going to need it, boy — if you’re going to stay alive over Heartbreak.

Take the Wellesley Scream Tunnel just before the half-marathon mark. Students at this woman’s college maintain a venerable tradition of lining up to kiss passing runners. Forgetting the obvious incentive that I’m a single man, with no guarantees about the next time I’ll get a chance to kiss a woman outside a 26.2-mile race, I went in for a set of lips knowing it would it would help me run the next couple minutes without thinking about the burning on the soles of my feet, or the fatigue leaking drip, drip, drip into my system with every mile. I’ll take a little love over pain any day.

Love and pain, as anyone who studies this will tell you, go together as often as the rose goes with thorns.

The pain of last year’s bombings at the finish line was never far from our minds, yet the memory of those killed and injured had brought the crowds and the runners back in droves: 36,000 registered entrants this year, a million spectators lining the course according to reports. The racecourse parted a sea of humanity that thundered with whoops, applause and noisemakers. Spectators waved “Boston Strong” signs. The slogan appeared on banners and T-shirts in Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham — all the way to Copley.

Tighter security hadn’t checked the crowds’ enthusiasm, not for the kids giving high-fives, not the musicians along the course. As I walked down the street to the Hopkinton start, I noticed a couple of entrepreneurs offering samples to passing racers.

“Free beer!” they shouted! “Free donuts!” “Free cigarettes!” I didn’t see anyone go for the cigs, but some stole sips of beer.

The enthusiasm of spectators met with determination from runners.

I know some of the bombing survivors had returned this year to run or wheel the course. I saw several runners hammering out the miles in prosthetic blades, though I wasn’t sure which, if any of them, had been in the blasts.

Plenty of runners in my start corral already wore Boston Athletic Association tattoos. As the elite runners went by our corral to take their positions up front, we swarmed up against the barrier to give them high-fives. Then we got back in place waiting for the gun. We were back and we were here to kick some ass.

For my dad, the return to Boston meant the chance to cross the line after getting within a mile of the finish in 2013 before the explosions forced the remaining runners off the course. Last year was the 10^th time that he’d run this race, and he planned for it to be his last. The explosions on Boylston Street changed that view. He wasn’t about to end his Boston career without an official finish; and he wasn’t going to end it on a day darkened by mindless acts of violence.

Though Dad was further back on the route, I thought about him when burning pain cropped up on the bottom of my feet.

Think that’s bad eh? I thought. Count your blessings that you’re not running this race with a kidney stone.

Leave it to the old man to get a stone in his kidney and then decide he’s going to run a marathon anyway. When he’d announced his troubles the morning we left for Boston, I figured that he would stay home.

“Well, it’s going to take a while to get help for you if something goes wrong,” I told him, “Even if you’re just watching the race.”

Our neighbor, Bob, a retired doctor had another opinion: if he could handle it, he could go for it. A kidney stone might hurt like hell, but it wasn’t an immediate threat.

“I would have recommended against going to anyone not as stoic as your father,” Bob told me later.

Stoic. I was trying to be stoic, to keep everything in balance as I flew over the first ten miles in 59:30 — faster than I’d run a 10-mile race in Albuquerque a month ago. Only 16 miles left to go champ.

I couldn’t decide whether I was shooting myself in the foot by going out too fast (as many runners do in a race that starts on a downhill) or taking a worthwhile gamble that would give me a finish time worthy of my months of training. Though it felt like I was going a bit faster than I should, it is also true that not every day is the Boston Marathon, and that makes a difference. I decided not to decide on my pace, and just hold onto a comfortable cruising speed.

Comfortable cruising speed didn’t feel quite as comfortable at the 20-mile mark when I started up Heartbreak Hill. A sharp cramp pushed into my right side while my feet burned and chafed. I cursed myself for wearing cotton socks in old running flats. My breaths came in fast and shallow. I wondered if I was going to puke, if everything was going to fall apart right then.

My hand gravitated to the pain in my side and my steps started to slow.

The hand and the twisted expression must have told the crowd all it needed to know. A bunch of other spectators called out my number.

“You’re almost there man!” I heard.

Eventually, the nausea and my breathing stabilized. I picked up the pace another notch. It was no heroic effort. If I hadn’t worried about falling apart, I might have tried going a bit harder. All I wanted now was to maintain.

At the final turn onto Boylston Street I looked down a corridor of screaming fans to the finish line where those all-important numerals ticked down across an LCD screen. I felt my feet go over the timing mats and threw up my hands.

The wave I’d been riding since the start line crashed there with its all its tension and anticipation.

I hugged another runner right there and grabbed a bunch of hands. We were giddy, drunk really. I was happy for all of them and them for me. We were bonded because we’d broken ourselves and wound up here. We’d thrown huge chunks of our lives into training, and finished with times that we wanted, at least the time that I wanted: 2:38:19 chip time from start to finish and 269^th place.

We reeled down the street as volunteers handed out water and put medals over our heads. Someone pointed up at a white message board. Holy crap! Meb Keflezighi won? The guy’s almost 40! And an American to boot! It was first time an American   had won the race in 31 years. With a time of 2:08, the guy from San Diego had scored a blow for Boston. 

Later, I heard how he had written the names of the victims who died in the bombings and subsequent shootout on the four corners of his race bib. Even as I staggered around the finish area, I felt damn proud and happy as hell.

This was healing. It was breaking ourselves down, mind and spirit so we could grow back stronger.

The family meeting area was several city blocks away from the finish. We had barricades on either side with instructions to keep moving. Lightheaded and exhausted as I was, I didn’t feel like moving anywhere. I resisted the temptation to just crash into a wheelchair. Finally, I made it to where I needed to be and eased myself to the curb.

I spent 15 minutes doing nothing until my friends came in. Once again, I was feeling the love. I was stoked to see the guys who I’d busted my guts with running cross-country and track in college — not to mention our victorious racing days as the North American Distance Squad.

“Dude, are you still wearing those racing flats from the NADS?”

“He’s Tom. And he would be wearing mismatched socks on race day.”

I got a hand up off the curb, and would have fallen right back down on the sidewalk if another buddy hadn’t caught me.

Another NADS runner was crossing the finish line, so we met him up at the Boston Commons. It had been more than a year since I’d seen most of the guys; for some it had been even longer.

Before and after the race, I ran into several people I’d known from Connecticut, Wyoming and New Mexico. Sometimes, I felt less like I was at a competition, than at a big reunion.

The one guy I hadn’t seen since this morning was my dad.

I worked my way back to the meeting area to see him coming in. I saw our friend Phil, who we had driven up with the day before. My dad was a bit further back, but eventually I got him on the phone.

He’d gone the distance and was waiting for us back at the Commons.

The two of us at the finish with the medals around our necks made a nice addition to the years and miles that we’d run together. It’s basically his fault that I’ve been a runner most of my life and that I’ve been to Boston. Now that I’ve done the marathon twice it is no mystery to me why this race has had a hold on him.

My Dad, Phil and I went back to the car soon after we regrouped. As we left town, we basked in the stories of how smoothly the marathon had gone, how it had brought catharsis to the town after last year’s pain. I felt privileged that my footsteps had joined so many others on the run for Boylston Street.

As our aching bodies recuperate from the hard miles, we will carry the excitement from this day with us and the love from Boston. The feeling of a million voices ringing in our ears while our hearts thudded wild in our chests reminds us that our nature demands this competition from us, that even as we compete, we still run together on one course, as one pack, it reminds us that we run together through our hardships until we reach the line at last. 

Good Will To Travelers

The Skykomish River ran high and wild with cold rain.

Shivery as I was in the early morning, it was a pleasure to behold the thundering rapids and the foam leaping up from boulders.

I shook my fist at the raging waters as I looked down on them from a bridge.

“I loveya, you crazy river!” I shouted.

So did locals apparently. Many of them had plastered bumper stickers on the back of their rides, speaking out against a dam proposal.

I had a good feeling about being on the west side of the Cascades.

In the past couple of days I had biked through Coulee City, Washington, crossed the rolling Columbia River, stayed with my buddy in Wenatchee, then climbed from 780 feet to the top of 4,060-foot Stevens Pass where my bike tires touched snow for the first time on the trip. I made great time bombing down the other side, though I was thoroughly chilled by the time the road leveled. I spent a night with my tent pitched beneath some enormous trees along the highway. There were some perfectly good Forest Service campgrounds nearby, but all of them were closed due to the federal government shutdown. Washington State was many miles from Washington D.C., but not far enough to escape the stupidity of its leaders.

The gates were drawn over the entrance to the campgrounds. Later, I’d read that the Sheriff’s department had gone into the campsites and removed the campers who’d stayed in place in defiance of the rules (I’d come close to camping there myself.) I thought it was funny that the Sheriff’s department had done the removals instead of the Forest Service, but then again those employees weren’t drawing a paycheck now. The Forest Service office I passed nearby was closed up with a sad message taped to the door explaining that they couldn’t help anyone as long as their funding was dried up. I can’t fault the rangers for not volunteering to throw out campers on their own time.

There was a small café down the road done up like a Bavarian cottage. “PCT Hikers Welcome,” a sign announced.

The café was only a dozen or so miles from where the Pacific Crest Trail goes over Stevens Pass. The pass was just over 100 miles from the Canadian border — the end of the line for the hikers who had spent about half a year hiking up from Mexico through California, Oregon and Washington. I wondered if any of them were around.

Sure enough, when I walked through the door, I saw several bearded faces and well-worn outdoor apparel on the guys and girls alike. All of them looked fitter than the average folk that you see on the street. They looked like people who had been walking.

They had been walking — all the way from Mexico — but not so much over the last couple of days with all of the snow moving in over the Cascades. This I learned after introducing myself to several of the thru-hikers and warming myself over a big mug of coffee. I’d been on the road for a couple of weeks at this point; they’d been on the trail since the spring (it was the first week of October now.) My adventure was small fry compared to taking on the PCT.

Still, the group seemed happy for the company. They wolfed down enormous plates of pancakes and home fries. No wonder the café welcomed thru-hikers. They were good business.

It turned out that one of the guys was going to work at Gray Nob hut on New Hampshire’s Mt. Adams — one of my favorite mountains back east.

 Despite the laid-back atmosphere, the weather in the mountains was never far from anyone’s mind. The seasons were turning against the hikers. The snow in the passes would get deeper, the wind more treacherous, the cold more brutal. The trail to the north of Stevens Pass would probably be harder than anything they’d faced yet.

I’d already got a taste of the Cascades’ cold and wind at 4,000 feet on Stevens Pass. The trail would climb to 8,000 feet before it reached Canada.

I stepped out on the café porch to look at the cold drizzle coming through the pines. The Cascades rose straight up like knives, thrusting themselves into the low-lying clouds. It was sure to be blowing snow up there.

A large bearded guy had also stepped out on the porch, his face grim as he watched the spectacle unfolding thousands of feet above us. It was going to be a helluva hike to get to Canada I told him.

He agreed, though he wasn’t hiking the trail. In fact, he had devoted the last months to following the PCT hikers up from California. He met them at the trailheads in his truck, brought them food, helped some of them find work after they got off the trail and cheered them up when they were in the pits.

It felt like a calling to him, he said, in the same way that some people felt like they had a call to hike the trail. I nodded. Both the Pacific Crest Trail in the west and Appalachian Trail back east are known for their “trail angels,” people who go out of their way to help hikers. I’ve enjoyed a cold can of soda out of a crate that an angel left in mountain stream for passerby to enjoy; sometimes they give rides or let dirty hikers crash at their place for no charge. In this case, being a trail angel had become a way of life.

Now he was worried. Most of the hikers didn’t have the gear to take on the blizzard-type conditions or the deep snow that lay ahead. He had already heard horror stories of people not being able to make it through the drifts or flirting with hypothermia in the high passes.

They were so close, he said. I thought he might choke up. The café below Stevens Pass was probably the end of the trail for them, even after they’d managed to make it this far all the way up from Mexico. He had already scored some donated winter gear for the group, but it wasn’t likely that he would be able to scare up the thousands of dollars of clothing and equipment necessary to outfit everyone — especially not snowshoes, which can cost a couple hundred bucks a pop.

So that chapter in their lives would be over soon. It’d be over for him too. As much as he hated to see the hikers abandon their journey when they were so close to Canada, he was even more afraid that some of the hikers would try to take on the last miles without the right gear, risking injury or death.

I felt humbled by how much he cared about his charges, who were right behind us in the café, wolfing down pancakes and making plans.

As it happened, the trail angel helped me as well. I didn’t have any work lined up for after the trip, but found a farm gig through a website he recommended.

I enjoyed hanging around the PCT guys, but alas, my journey was not at an end having about 60 more miles to go until I reached my friend’s apartment in Seattle.

It is important to note that PCT hikers are not the only ones who benefit from acts of charity.

My free motel room in Davenport jumps to mind.

Later the next day, I was biking on a windy stretch of road east of Coulee City when a truck in the other lane did a U-turn and the driver pulled off the road. A guy in a U.S. Marines uniform with a blonde ponytail jumped out, holding something in a paper bag.

“Hey man! Where are you biking to?”

“Seattle from Utah,” I said.

“That is so cool! Hey do you want some cookies? My grandma made them for my birthday.”

I wanted the cookies. Technically, I had just become a vegan and they most likely had eggs and milk in them. Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to turn down this earnest young marine who u-turned in the middle of a busy highway to give his grandmother’s homemade cooking to a stranger.

“Thanks man!” I said.

 It crossed my mind that baked goods made in a state, which had recently legalized pot might contain other ingredients beside chocolate chips and peanut butter. It had been a long trip so far and I decided that anything offered with good intentions was fine by me.

“These look like great. What a great coincidence that he had vegan cookies right next to him while I was biking down the highway,” I lied to myself in a fit of shameless moral relativism.

The next day was another trial and saw me climbing two tall passes up from my campsite west of Coulee City.

I spent a couple of hours pedaling through whirling fog, feeling disoriented, discouraged and cold. Occasionally the sky would clear and I’d get a glance at a barren scrub landscape with red rock cliffs that reminded me of Utah.

The highlight of the ride was bombing down from a 2,000-foot pass down to the Columbia River at 700 feet. I would have hit the turns harder if it weren’t for the water on the road.

I followed the wide river waters the rest of the way to Wenatchee with the landscape dominated by apples and pears.

There was a park near the outskirts of town where I took my cell phone out of my pack and called my friend Jon. He knew I was coming to visit, but didn’t realize that I was biking.

“I was wondering why it took you so long to get here from Montana,” he said later.

Lucky me, I got a place to crash in his apartment and went for a night on the town in Wenatchee. 

For the first day on the trip, I didn’t pedal a lick.

I took most of the rest day off, heading out mid-afternoon to begin the climb up Stevens Pass. My initial plan to camp in the national forest that night sank when night fell and I was still on the highway. I turned into a KOA Kampground instead, where I paid the $27 fee like the sucker that I was.

At first, I didn’t think Stevens Pass would be such a big deal. It was only 4,000 feet, half as high as the 8,000-footer I’d tackled on the second day of the trip. No prob. A glance up at the imposing white wall of cliffs rising up to the west of me made me reconsider this position.

If a storm swooped in while I was still in the mountains, I’d be in for a rough time of things.

The climb was gradual but long. I got world class views of the Wenatchee River, with its crashing, reckless waters that mirrored the Skykomish on the west side of the pass. It was entertaining trying to figure out what line I would take if I was trying to navigate a kayak or a raft through the chaos.

I stopped at a rest area at around 2,000 feet to refill my water bottles. A big truck pulled in as I walked over to my bike, brimming with fresh-picked apples.

“Hey, help yourself if you want anything,” the driver told me.

I was more than happy to oblige, snatching a tasty golden delicious that was crisp and full of juice.

A few people asked me about where I was going with all the gear. When I explained the trip, most of them thought it sounded like a cool thing to do. In fact, it seemed like the further west I got, the more people seemed to think I was doing something worthwhile as opposed to deranged a la the “are you ill in the head?” woman that I met in Manila, Utah.

There were more thumbs ups on the road, and more acts of charity to keep me going, even as I felt like I was running out of steam.

Thankfully, the threat of storm never materialized and I made it over the pass just fine.

20 hours after I wiped the apple juice out of my beard, I was leaving the café and headed for Seattle.

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.