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After leaving walla walla, the landscape quickly changed from desert to endless rolling hills of golden wheatfields. The folks at the bike shop in walla walla put me on a great quiet road with almost no traffic. I had been getting a little bummed by the endless desert and relentless heat, but I think things turned around for me yesterday. Not sure if it’s the slightly cooler weather, the less foreboding landscape, or maybe I’m just finally getting into the swing of things.
I’ve been going through some really cute little farm towns. In the first one, I ran into a group of eleven boy scouts and two leaders who were riding from Maryland to Astoria! They have a blog at lucky13biketrip.com. Shortly after that, I started passing an organized bike tour group of about 300 people heading in the opposite direction! I was passing them for about 12 miles when I stopped at one of their rest stops to talk to some of them. They let me partake in their amazing spread of snacks, including deviled eggs, watermelon, bananas stuffed with peanut butter and Nutella, and homemade paydays!

Ok. Quick update before I go off the grid again. I made it into Lewiston – Clarkston, where I replaced my balding tire. Next I had a pretty tough 2000 foot climb up the “old spiral highway”, a welcome no-traffic alternative to the side-cut ramp of the main highway. Then the rolling grain fields slowly gave way to tree-lined hills, and then I suddenly found myself in the lumber town of potlatch (where the sign happily expounds how it was a lumber company planned town, where workers were housed right next to the mill, while “managers houses were built away from the noise and smoke”). From there, I snaked my way through old growth pine stands and into wide open valleys. Now I’m in Saint Maries, where I’ll head up the st. Joe river until I pick up the “route of the Hiawatha”, a much-touted rail trail that will take me over the border into Montana via a tunnel! I should be in big sky country tomorrow night!

Today began with a bikebums milestone. I was just riding along, trying to jump start my pre-breakfast morning brain, when suddenly to my right, Splash-Thwomp Thwomp Thwomp! A giant moose emerged from the stream next to the road an took off across the field, waddle swaying to and fro as it trotted away from me. Turns out the trick to seeing moose is being on the road by 6:30 am.

I had beautiful ride up the st. Joe river Valley, with barely any traffic at all. Absolutely gorgeous scenery. I then turned up the dirt road leading to the real trail, and in nine miles maybe saw three cars. Then, suddenly, after barely seeing anyone for hours, there’s like forty people with bikes lining up to get in a shuttle bus. Guess I made it to the trail. The trail is managed by a nearby ski resort, and they really do it up :they set up a shuttle to take people back to their cars, they rent bikes, and they have a while bunch of people riding up and down the trail making sure everyone is ok. The trail itself was awesome. It leads through like thirteen tunnels and over several railroad trestles, some of which are over two hundred feet tall. They have a whole bunch of informative kiosks explaining the history of the area and the rail line that used to run there – the “Milwaukee road”. I took four hours to go the fourteen miles of the trail because I stopped so often to read the signs or enjoy the scenery. The culmination was the final tunnel : 1.7 miles long, cold, damp, and dark as a mile long hole dug out of the earth. I got probably my best state line crossing picture ever in the middle as I burrowed beneath the idaho/Montana state line.

Long time no post. No fear – the bums roll on. Here’s a really quick update on the last week. I had a great ride through Montana. I even met up with my housemate Annessa’s parents – who are awesome – at the yak ranch that she grew up on in lovely Ronan. A quick ride up along flathead lake and I was in whitefish, where I picked up a rental car and picked megan up from the airport pretty much in schedule. We headed to glacier, did some hiking, and then grabbed max from his midnight arrival, and took him and his bike back to our campsite in glacier. We spent the next few days hiking and checking out the park. We saw a grizzly bear (from afar), more moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, a marmot, and a thousand hungry ground squirrels. We did an amazing hike up to a glacier – gotta see them before they’re gone – and max and I had a lovely dip in the lake at its base. Then megan took off on the train, and max and I returned the car and began our trek towards Spokane. It’s been a couple of days of beautiful riding, quirky towns, friendly people, and great conversation. The only real complaint I could have is that we had a nasty headwind all day today, but you can’t win them all. Tomorrow should find us back in Idaho after we ascend tompson pass, we many people have told us should be a great ride.

We’re still trucking along! We’ve successfully picked up Sarah from Spokane, and are mere miles from the Canadian border. Some brief highlights from the last few days :
* max and I woke up one morning to find ourselves being bombarded by pine cones being dropped on us by a very angry chipmunk – this continued for an hour until we removed our tent from his territory
* the couer d’Alene bike path was awesome. We saw five moose while riding along it!
* we had some great chit chat with the locals at Fredneck’s bar in Rockford, and even were presented with t – shirts before retiring to sleep on the stage in the town park. Breakfast at the harvest moon, however, involved the usual hash browns, toast, and casual racism.
* we had an amazing warm showers host in Spokane, who took us out for a great night out on the town. When Friday night rolls around, the city of Spokane shows up!
* when we stopped at This Bike Life bike shop in North Spokane to get some bar tape for max, they went above and beyond, saving Sarah from certain day by fixing her handle bars, giving us beer while we waited, and sending us on our way with the world’s largest zucchini cudgel.
* the tiny town we are in now, metaline falls (currently being pummeled by a thunderstorm) is super cute, and it has a movie theater! Con: The Wolverine is terrible

See ya in Canada (if this storm doesn’t take us to Kansas)

Okay… We’re still rolling through. Canada has been beautiful. Lots of lakes and mountains. There’s many highlights to tell, but too much to type into phone right now. Suffice it to say that we are having a great time, and are nearly to Kamloops to meet sasha in Saturday

hey everybody! Just a quick update to let y’all know that things are still going smoothly as we trek our way Westward to Vancouver! We met up with sasha in Kamloops with no problems, though we barely made it over the wall they’ve set up apparently to discourage bicyclists from leaving their town. Here’s a few highlights. We got caught in a hail storm at the top of a mountain pass, sufficiently strong enough to make us abandon our bikes and run into the trees. As we continued riding, cold and soaking wet, we were invited into the home of the very generous Monashee Bill, who let us warm up by his fire as we looked out over the beautiful waterfall he built his around. Last night we stayed at a gorgeous provincial park that featured beautiful grassy tent sites, a natural swimming pool off the river, and train tracks on both sides of the campsite! Pretty awesome to swim in the river as trains rumble above you.

Geez – I sure did get lazy about posting towards the end there. Well, blame Canada I guess. Anyway, we all made it back to Oakland safe and sound. The ride over the coast range and into Vancouver was astounding. I successfully navigated myself and all four bicycles back to Oakland via Amtrak with minimal headaches, and had a great time hanging out with my friends Ashlee, Jeremy, and Beryl in Portland on the way back. Overall, this was a great trip! I’m still surprised we handled all the meetup logistics as well as we did. Go Team Bums! Final mileage tally for this ride is 1,795 miles! Whee! I’ve uploaded all my pics to the Photo Gallery, so check ’em out!

This is just a quick little update to let folks know that the road trip has ended and I am now on my bike pedaling towards Portland! Will give more details and pics soon!

First off, let me just summarize and say that the road trip with Megan went great. Lots of fun happened, but I won’t cover that here.
The bike trip started by Megan driving me to the top of trail ridge road in Rocky Mountain National Park, from which I joyously coasted back down to Estes Park. Is that cheating? Most definitely! But I say it’s justified since the last time I rode down that road, it was during a whiteout blizzard in August, and I was too focused on not being blown off the side of the mountain to really enjoy the 4000 foot descent.
I met Megan in town, and then made my way south out of town (unloaded, like a wuss). I met Megan again at a campground, but it was too early to start dinner, so we drove until we found a bar – the mill site inn in Ward. Thus began the first adventure of the trip!
We’re sipping drinks in this  mountain town bar, when Rebirth’s Do What You Wanna comes on the jukebox. This is the last place I expected to hear New Orleans second line music. Megan goes to investigate and meets Charlie, a jazz guitarist from New Orleans who loaded up the jukebox. We tell him about the BLO, and he invites us to play music with him at a potluck down the road. (we brought our horns on the road trip). So we end up having out all night with these folks around a fire barrel, having drinks and trying to follow along with Charlie’s guitar keys. I think most folks had had enough drinks that they didn’t mind how sloppy we were. It was pretty amazing.
The next morning Megan left to return the rental car, and my ride began in earnest. Along the way, I stopped by Mike and Sherry’s (our potluck hosts from the night before) to say hi. Further down the road, i ended up back in the mill site inn for lunch, when in walked Mike, soon followed by Sherry and most of the folks who had been at the potluck, otherwise known as the “3:30 crowd”.
Even though I was taking lots of breaks and trying to take it slow and easy, it was a pretty tough day. There were a couple of pretty tough climbs, and I’m really just not in very good shape right now. My average speed for the day was only 8.9! Hopefully, I’ll get up to speed soon, because I’ve got the 4000 foot climb over Loveland pass coming up!
Okay, that was an epic post. Over and out!