The Day I Should Have Had In Missoula

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wouldn’t be so negative all the time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Across the Bitterroots

Moon over my camp south of Lost Trail Pass

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm always crossing the line

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

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

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

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

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

Salmon River, looking north toward the Bitterroot Mountains

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

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

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

Landscape shot near the Salmon River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitterroot Mountains as seen from Montana

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

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

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

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

Camp: undisclosed location, south of Missoula

100-Mile Push for Salmon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tent site by the Snake River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They had showers.

Bike portrait at Gilmour Summit