Month: July 2024

• Late start getting out of Grangeville, after doing much-need laundry
• Great weather for biking – 70s and partly cloudy
• Had a crazy descent that was so fast/steep I had to stop several times to let my rims cool off for fear of heating my tubes and getting a blowout at 35 mph. I checked, and adventure cycling changed the route to use this road, which is why I don’t remember it being this nuts
• Met a brother/sister bike tourist duo who were slogging/pushing up the other side. They offered me some pizza they had on the back of their bike
• Started meeting other tourists left and right
• Started following the Clearwater/Lochsa River, which I remember as being nice, but holy moly what a beautiful ride! Thick forest, wide crystal-clear river, gentle grade, and low traffic
• Met a guy at my campsite (there were three of us cyclists there) who was doing the Western Divide trail – a mountain bike route over mostly gravel roads/trails from the Mexican to Canadian border. He told me a tale of a hill so steep he couldn’t even just walk his bike up it or else it would roll back down. Instead he had to inchworm his way up using his brakes. Oof! We stayed up late swapping tales

• The next day was another gorgeous, easy ride up the Lochsa River.
• Since I was almost a day ahead of schedule, decided to end early at a short trail to a hot spring
• Found an amazing campsite right next to the creek on the hot spring trail
• The hot springs were amazing – one of the largest pools I’ve seen (and several smaller pools). Met some pretty cool folks there

• On Monday, I started the day with another soak in the spring, then lazily made my way on a pretty easy ride up the river to a lodge where I got lunch
• Then I had to make a tough, but short, climb over Lolo pass. There was very little traffic though, so it was pretty nice
• Bombed down the other side -which took me into Montana – and found a pretty nice national forest campground

• On Tuesday, I slept in until 9, then I had an easy ride down towards Lolo, but it got increasingly trafficy/sketchy as I approached town. Then I hopped onto a great bike path that took me all the way into downtown Missoula
• Got some lunch, then made the pilgrimage to the adventure cycling headquarters. I searched through their shoeboxes for photos of when I had been there previously. Those folks are always super friendly
• Made a run to REI to sweep out my Nemo tent for a Big Agnes one… There were a few things I didn’t like about the Nemo Dagger
• I was then rescued from my solitude by the arrival of Alice and Anton! We got pizza, beer, ice cream, and more beer before calling it a night at our motel

Alice, Anton, and I are having a great time riding through Montana! Everything is gorgeous in Big Sky Country! The food is good, the beer is good, and the riding is amazing!

Just a quick update that Anton, Alice, and I are having a great time! We just left Yellowstone and are heading into Grand Teton. More info coming soon!

Okay, I’ll try to hit the highlights of the past week of riding:

• We visited the adventure cycling association headquarters, and they were impressed with our instrument collection and took fancy pictures of us – we had to sign a release officially declaring us as models. We will do our little turns on the catwalk.
• Camped at the fairgrounds in Hamilton, and were disappointed that there was no July 4th parade
• Had a big climb up into the Big Hole valley – my memories of the insane amount of mosquitoes there still hold true – if we slowed to less than 15 mph, the black clouds of little vampire bugs that were drafting us would catch up and attempt death by a thousand bites
• Caught a killer tailwind heading into Bannock – I hit 53.7 mph coming off the pass! We did the final 20 miles in less than an hour
• Twin Bridges had an amazing bike camping spot – a special shelter with showers on a grassy spot right by the river. We met some other cyclists and had a little jam session, and then did a pub crawl of all both bars. We only left the Lost Cabin bar after they sold us eggs
• Learned more than we knew we needed to know about brooms at the Nevada City historic ghost town. The broom maker was married to the tinsmith. Don’t buy brooms with yucca in them!
• Caught some live music at a pub in Ennis by the most facially emotive one-man band you’ll ever see
• On the road along the Madison River, we were thrice tempted with signs promising “cold beer” that only delivered disappointment. Luckily a woman named Tish empathized with our plight, and gave us some Modelos while her husband taught us the difference between wet and dry fly fishing
• Yellowstone was amazing – we took an off day there to see more sights and to rest a bit. We visited a ton of geysers and pools, saw some buffalo, and went for a swim with a whole lake to ourselves! Saw two great ranger talks – one on why Yellowstone has such unique features, and one on “Scumbags of Yellowstone” We met a westbound bicyclist named Orion and shared tales over beers.

Ok, I’ll have to catch up the rest later… We are still having a great time! Now, on to what you really want – pictures!

• We had back-to-back taco nights in Grant village, but the feature was the lemon tres leches cake – so delicious that it wooed a sugar-skeptical Alice. We may have also eaten ocho churros.
• We rode to Grand Teton Park, and scored an amazing hiker/biker site at Jenny lake – losers who drive there need to reserve a site years in advance, but bikes just roll in!
• We met several other bike tourists on various adventures, and marveled at their palatial tents
• A black bear wandered through our campsite the next morning
• We took a day off to do a hike – we took the ferry across Jenny lake and hiked up into cascade canyon – absolutely gorgeous! One of the top five hikes I’ve done based on effort vs reward! Frigid dips were taken, marmots were spotted.
• We rode the bike path down to Moose, closed out the bar, and then rode back!
• The next day we had a big climb, which would have been fine except for the hordes of biting flies harassing us. We found a gorgeous spot to camp at 9000 feet just below the pass. We spent ninety minutes setting up the most complicated bear hang. We went to sleep to the strange sounds of an unidentified bird that went “wub-wub-WUB-WUB-wub-wub”
• We bombed down the pass and left the trees and lakes behind for the high desert prairie. We met several westbounders, including a man on an electric recumbent with an elderly cat in is handlebar bag.
• We visited the national bighorn sheep museum and learned that cyclists should gene splice with bighorns to get their 340 degree vision. Also, all the bighorns are dying from pneumonia
• We visited Sacagawea’s grave site, along with a fleet of model-t’s
• We visited a very cool bike shop in Lander that gave us ice cream and beer. Also there was a very nice city park to camp in
• The Jeffrey City bar didn’t have the same color that it had 20 years ago, but it was still a cool place to hang out, with a very sardonic bartender. Also, the cyclist hostel in the church is amazing and I could spend a week reading all the messages people have written on the walls
• Caught another killer tailwind on the ride into rawlins, ate some delicious Thai food, and sadly said goodbye to Anton, who departed via u-haul to catch the train back to California (after u-haul told him there was no truck available for his weeks-long reservation and he was preparing to bike 180 miles in 1.5 days like a madman)
• Had a very beautiful ride to Riverside, seeing dozens of pronghorns along the way. We stopped at Saratoga for a quick dip in the hot springs (before they cleared the pool due to lightning), and also went to a very cool cowboy festival/sing-along in encampment (with an acai bowl food truck if you can believe it)
• Had a killer eggplant -based lunch in Walden, then found a wonderful campsite just below willow pass. Alice and I have greatly improved our bear-hang game
• After a long descent, we stumbled upon an amazing all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet in Granby (with like 6 different pies!) we then rode to Tabernash to meet our amazing warm showers host, Bill, before Alice catches the train tomorrow morning

Holy cow that was a lot of catch up… I’ll try to be better about updating from now on. Here’s some nice pictures:

• After sadly dropping Alice off at the train station, Bill (our amazing warm showers host) and I rode together for a few miles swapping stories. Bill has done a ton of touring, and may be the most BikeBum of them all because he will often plan his route as he rides!
• Bill gave me a great tip on a route through forest roads to avoid the highway – he even rode the first ten miles with me! The ride was steep, but beautiful the whole way. In fact, when I reached the top, I decided it was so nice – and I knew the end of the mountains was coming soon – I decided to pitch my tent early and just spent the whole day enjoying the meadows and watching the weather change.
• I made it to the closest campsite to the final pass pretty early, and had enough time to: catch a movie (a quiet place: day 1 – so so plot, but great acting), replace my deteriorating bike shorts at the pearl izumi outlet, fix the leaks in my air mattress, and get in a quick swim/rinse before making dinner and going to bed
• The next morning I met a guy doing gravel rides in the area – he’s connecting them all by taking buses! He said he got a bus from Denver to Frisco for like 15 bucks! Also, he lived in Key West, and had worked on the sail boats at the boy scout high adventure base like I had taken when I was in high school!
• From Silverthorne to Breckenridge, there is about 20 miles of amazing bike path – beautiful!
• Unfortunately, the bike path ends and dumps you onto a pretty unfriendly highway with little to no shoulder and lots of RVs and gravel/dump trucks all the way up to Hoosier pass – it got better as I approached the top, but the beginning was unpleasant to say the least.
• A quick note about riding in Colorado: this is a beautiful state with some top-notch opportunities for unforgettable riding and great people, but wow do these highways suck! There is often little to no shoulder, and a ton of traffic – including a huge amount of freight traffic on these tiny backroad highways. What’s worse, the drivers are insane. It’s one thing for me to feel like I’m in danger from a vehicle passing too close, but I have witnessed many times when a driver could not be bothered to wait ten to twenty seconds for a safe opportunity to pass, and instead pulled into the opposing lane and literally ran oncoming vehicles off the road – when after that car the road was clear for half a mile! It’s like their cars have high-voltage electroshock hooked up to their brake pedals. But, whaddyagonnado…
• Summiting Hoosier pass – 11,539 feet – was fun. I definitely felt the elevation and was huffing and puffing at the end. The descent was a great rocket-ride too!
• I camped behind the bar in Hartsel, where I met a guy named Ed who was riding westbound on an ebike. We spent the whole night swapping stories and yammering about this and that – super cool guy! (To my dismay, I was too early for the Hartsel rendezvous that Mike and I visited in 2004)
• The next day I dropped around 4000 feet into canyon City. I had planned to keep going, but I ordered some prescriptions to the pharmacy here (one of the last Walgreens I’ll see for at least a week), but although they were filled in time, it closed early for some unexpected reason. It was hot, i was tired, and there were no obvious camping options, so I checked into a cheap motel, did some laundry, and spent the day chilling out in the A/C.

Well, dear readers, every tour has its high points and its low points, and I sure hope today was this trip’s nadir. Here begins my tale of a series of Very Unfortunate events..

• Packed up out of the hotel and grabbed breakfast before the pharmacy opened at 9. Everything was looking towards a great day of pretty easy riding
• I spent twenty minutes searching for one of my medications all over the Walgreens, convinced I had somehow dropped it or thrown it away, when it turns out there was a miscommunication with the pharmacist and he had not actually given it to me. Not a big deal, but the beginning of my stress level rising
• I admittedly am guilty of great hubris for thinking, as I rolled out of town on another beautiful bike path along the Arkansas River, that everyone was going so smoothly and that I had zero mechanical issues with my bike in 2100 minutes – not even so much as a flat on the tires that had 2000 miles on them before I started!
• I noticed my chain wasn’t running as smoothly as it had been – it was skipping around every so slightly. I was about to turn around and ride three miles back into turn to the bike shop when I finally diagnosed the problem: one of the plates on a chain link was slightly bent. Aha, I thought, I can fix this pretty easily! I got out my trusty chain tool and removed the bad link, thinking it would be no problem to make it the fifty miles to Pueblo and one of its several bike shops to assess if I needed a new chain. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for diagnosing and quickly resolving the problem in less than ten minutes!
• When I got to Florence, I noticed a cool bike shop/rock shop and decided to take a peek inside. The guy who ran it was cool and very talkative. He used to do custom Harley motorcycles, but got out of that biz when his clients started going broke and “I was suddenly in the storage business”. Now he collects old bikes from all over and fixes them up. He had a huge collection of bikes, including a Finnish army bike from 1918! Anyway, this shop becomes relevant later
• There was a long, gradual climb out of Florence, but I was making great time and feeling pretty good (despite the previously mentioned insane drivers) when just before noon, “clunk!” my chain broke. I checked and it looked like another link was damaged, probably I had not gotten the pin set right when I fixed it before. No big deal, I just popped off that link as well.
• Half a mile after that and my chain fell completely off. I removed another link, but while threading it through my bike, I lost the pin. After some attempts to use a pin from the link I had just removed (I found it nearly impossible to push in a new pin with only two hands) I decided to try removing another link. At this point I was hot and frustrated and moving faster than I should have been, and managed to bend the pin setter on my chain tool. And now I was really in a pickle, because I had no way to get my chain on my bike, and bikes don’t work so well without a chain
• My first thought was to try and skip-push (like a scooter) my bike the two miles to the next town, but I checked the map and realized the only thing in that town was a post office. So I figured my best bet would be to try and hitch a ride back to the funky bike shop in Florence. I called and verified that he had a nine speed chain, and threw out my thumb. I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to catch a lift, since it was only about 12 miles and literally everyone on that highway was heading there, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I was wrong. After about 40 minutes with my thumb out, and escalating to the point where I had my busted chain in my thumb hand, and the other hand holding a sign saying “Florence” and a twenty dollar bill, truck after truck passed by. The weather was starting to look like rain, so I figured I might as well start trying to coast downhill back towards Florence, pathetically holding my thumb and busted chain out as I rolled. I actually made it about 3 miles this way (half coasting, half walking up the rolling hills) when finally someone stopped, and gave me a lift to the shop. Salvation! Everything would be fine now!
• So, the guy at the shop was super nice, and I appreciate him helping me out, but I asked him a few times to just pop out a link and put my own chain back on, but he insisted that the whole chain was shot, and instead put on a slightly used one. He charged me five bucks, I gave him ten, but as soon as I rolled out I could tell something was wrong. I went back and we found one of the links was stiff. We worked out it, and I took off again.
• At this point it was 3:00 (over three hours after the initial break) and I hadn’t eaten lunch and had gone through all my water, so I just wanted to get into downtown Florence for some food. In just that half mile, I realized that this ‘new’ chain wasn’t working well – most likely because it was a thicker chain made for a seven or eight speed drivetrain. I didn’t want to take it back to the funky spare parts shop, and decided it was safer to backtrack 9 miles to the small bike shop in cañon city vs trying to ride 40 to Pueblo. I called the shop, and confirmed they had a proper, new 9 speed chain… But now it was 3:15, and they close at 4
• 9 miles in 45 minutes isn’t that hard over the mostly flat terrain, but I knew it was going to be tight, especially since the chain kept skipping, auto shifting, and even occasionally getting stuck when I shifted. So I rode as fast as I could, ignoring the trucks that had no regard for my life or the lives of the oncoming traffic.
• I finally made it into cañon city with about 12 minutes to spare, when, while turning on to main street, and only three blocks from the bike shop, I shifted and the chain got stuck again. I did what I had been doing.. pedaling backwards and shifting around to try to get it unstuck, when CRUNCH! pieces of my rear derailleur went flying through the air! At that point, I was at my wit’s end after everything that had happened and having not eaten anything for seven hours…I didn’t even try to figure out what had happened or collect the pieces of my surely ruined derailleur from the road. i just skip-pushed my bike to the shop as fast as I could and collapsed into a defeated heap
• As I waited for the mechanic, I assessed the damage: the chain was looped multiple times between my cassette and spokes, the half of the derailleur remaining was bent to hell, and at least one spoke was wrecked. Unfortunately, this shop didn’t have a derailleur that would work in stock. I called a shop in Pueblo, and they have one, but they are only open tomorrow. The mechanic came up with a plan wherein I return tomorrow, he tries to repair my wheel and sets me up with a nine speed chain, but shortened so my bike essentially becomes a single speed, and then I try to ride the fifty miles to Pueblo like that with hopefully enough time to get the repair done. Long odds, but thems the cards I’ve been delt
• The only silver lining is that, while eating my feelings with a much-needed pizza, I remembered that Ed, the westbounder I met the other day, had told me he had stayed with a great warmshowers host here. And so, after some back and forth texts, here I am at Matt and Gina’s wonderful house. Well, Gina moved to the Netherlands, and Matt is soon to follow, but in the meantime he said he’s hosted about 20 people so,far this summer, including a few westbounders I had met earlier in the trip! We had a few beers, I took a shower and managed to get most of the grease off of me, and now I am staying up too late writing this overly-detailed post. Good night!

What a turnaround in 24 hours! First off, I’m so grateful to Matt for letting me crash at his place, and for all the ways he helped me out!

The amazing mechanic at the Red canyon bike shop, Daniel, opened early, and replaced my broken spoke, trued my wheel, and bent my derailleur hanger back into place.

Matt had some errands to run in Colorado springs, and offered to take me and my bike to a shop that had the right derailleur for my bike. After calling several shops – it’s getting harder to find nine-speed components – I found the Great divide bike shop in Pueblo, and they even were willing to do the install that day! We drove there, dropped off the bike, and then I hung out with Matt while he ran errands, getting some tasty boba tea in the process. Then we drove back to the shop, and found my bike back in tip-top shape! Matt then continued to be a hero and drove me back to where I originally broke down so I wouldn’t miss a beat or need to backtrack. We caught the tail end of a pretty epic rain storm, and then I was back on the road, bombing into Pueblo!

I’m now rolling along the eastern Colorado prairie. I can still just barely make out the shadows of the mountains far behind me, but before me is nothing but flat, open country – and thankfully I’m finally off the busy highways! Looking forward to hundreds of miles off backroads!