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Daily Journal - June 30th - July 4th
| Tuesday, June 30th, 1998 - Day 16 | |
Hit the snooze button 3 times this morning. Hotels are made for sleeping in. An air-conditioned room is just too hard to leave. We finally haul ourselves up and take a real shower before packing up. Synchronize the web site with the laptop so we can show people on the ride what it looks like even when offline. A shuttle awaits us and takes us back to the campgrounds. It looks like it was a hot day off for everyone who didn't get a hotel - which many people seem to have done. We take our time. It is a 50-mile day - one of the shortest on the trek. Spirits are jubilant. Everyone was expecting a huge climb or something to justify the short day - but instead it was simply that there aren't many places one can plant 700 people. After fighting rush our traffic on the outskirts of Billings, we start a 10-mile medium climb winding our way over the hills outside of town. We arrive at pit 1 at 10:00 - the halfway point. Do we eat lunch now? Sure why not. The terrain is getting dryer and starker. Much less eye-candy that a few days ago - just fields of wheat, rock formations, and a few scattered cows. My camera is not inspired. How many shots of sky can you take? Any tree or shack offers itself as Ansel Adams possibilities. We start making up songs - "Lone Cow" sung to the tune of "Born Free". A steady headwind makes the next 20 miles harder and hotter than it should be. Rolling hills bring us past the Custer reenactment site - a true disappointment. Nothing more that a sign and a wheat field. I guess you have to be here at the right time. We get a status on the injuries from yesterday's accident - she cracked a rib, and dislocated a shoulder. One more reason to wear a bike helmet. We roll into camp at 2:00 and wash some laundry. A 120-mile day looms ahead of us. People are talking about it hoping the headwinds shift a bit, otherwise it will be tough for even the most seasoned bikers. It is hot. The bigtop becomes the gathering places for card playing, reading, and nodding off. Our tents are just too hot in the early afternoon. At least the laundry will dry quickly. | |
| Wednesday, July 1st, 1998 - Day 17 | |
After falling asleep to blue skies, we are awakened by a shower of big droplets falling through our uncovered tent fly. Luckily we wake up to put on the rain fly at 2am. We heard later that many people sleep right through the storm and woke up soaked. Today we leave Montana behind and enter Wyoming. Cathy is not liking the heat. I hate the hills. Luckily we have different nemeses. We ride through Crow Agency. The culture would be worth a long stop - but we must move on. We had been forewarned about the poverty - but we didn't see much evidence. By pit 1 we are covered like a Shell no-pest strip with aphids from the morning ride. Pit 1 is at a Gulf station located on the site of Battle of Little Bighorn. We book the first 20 miles along a country road and make pit 2 by 9:45am. We have been losing items from our bikes. My odometer, my blinking caution taillight, a strap off my bike- now that I think about it we seems to be losing everything from MY bike. I borrow Cathy's odometer. She has stopped using it once it switched to kilometer mode, and does not miss it, saying she was suffering from "odometeritis"-too much time spent staring at the odometer rather than the landscape. I spent hours trying to push the right buttons in the right sequence to move back to miles but fail. Why are these devices so hard? For days I start dividing by 1.6 and such to estimate our mileage and speed. In the end we give up and just ride. As we enter Wyoming it is amazing that the scenery actually changes - colors in the rocks, the types of trees. You would think there was a line in the sand. Most of the day is spent on a frontage road to I90 - but a few miserable miles are spent climbing on I90 itself. Nothing quite like being passed by trucks doing 80mph. As we ride into Sheridan a brief stop a McDonalds gives us the energy to climb the hill into camp. | |
| Thursday, July 2st, 1998 - Day 18 | |
Windstorm hits in the middle of the night and threatens to blow us away. Putting all our luggage on the windward side of the tent appears to be the only way to keep our Walrus 2-person from doing a Mary Poppins on us. Really wish it would rain - it just spits at us. It is going to be a long hard day - 113 miles with numerous 2 mile climbs. It is more humid than I expected Wyoming to be. We climb out of Sheridan with a 20 mile climb out of town which is balanced with views to the snow covered Big Horns. Why are all these towns surrounded by hills - aren't the villages of Europe built on the hills? There isn't a right answer - I'd be complaining about having to ride up into town if it were switched. We have grown to wince at words like "Mount", "Pass", and "Hilltop". Clearmont proves to be a wonderful small town. We stop and talk with a schoolteacher about what it is to live in town with a population of 200. Lunch is a special treat at the Spotted Horse Café - which hosted several hundred of us for a buffet lunch. I think they were surprised how much we could consume. This was the second hottest day in Wyoming this year. The heat started bothering Cathy early - being the Seattle native she is. I wasn't bothered at all - but have spent many a summer in 100+ temps playing tennis in S.C. Between pit 2 and 3 the Martin family had setup a wonderful refreshment center along the roadside - with Kool-Aid and iced tea. They had a notebook to take all our names and where we were from. They placed placards starting a ¼ mile back that you read as you rode - this gave me the thought that if you placed "Moby Dick" a sentence at a time on every mile marker we could probably finish it before we get to Minnesota. It is certainly easy to understand why books on tape are so popular - when you leave 30 miles from the nearest paved highway - which is another 60 miles to the nearest "town" you have a lot of time to spend in a car. The 95-degree heat finally gets to Cathy a mile out of pit 3 - and a "meltdown" follows. We make it into pit 3 at mile 75. Cathy is dizzy, and we decide the right choice is for her to sag. I decide I want to try and make it to Gillette - another 39 miles with no pit stop. The hills don't let up, but I grind away the miles. A huge storm cloud that looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud looms to the left. The rain starts about 12 miles out of town. It turns to pea-size hail. The high winds are swirling around. This has the potential to be dangerous weather. I am thankful I have a helmet and jacket to cover me from the stinging hail. As I enter Gillette I duck into a 7-11 just as the hail grows larger. Once the hail stops, I push on for the last 4 miles. There are only a handful of us still on the road, it is getting dark, and the flash flooding has filled the right lane with 8 inches of water. Wish I had my Kayak. Finally I arrive at camp in the dark, and am greeting by cheers. A few hundred riders are greeting the later arrivers with a standing ovation - what a rush. I wolf down dinner before it closes - hovering over my hot pork chow mein like an animal over a fresh kill. I can't find Cathy. Then the announcement is made that funnel clouds have been sighted - and we are moved to the exhibition hall. There I find the remainder of the riders - including Cathy, who had made it back to camp just in time to set up the tent and tarp the bags. We wait out the storm for over 3 hours. As I cool down from the ride, I start to shiver and realize I am soaked from the rain and am freezing. A Mylar blanket does the trick. Some smart people have ordered carry out pizza as many people didn't get a chance to eat. By 11pm the storm has passed and those who want are allowed to sleep in the tents. Most people choose to sleep on the dry concrete floors of the center. We choose the tents - and find our tent covered in mud - but dry on the inside. We sleep wonderfully - exhausted. Tomorrow we will read that 14 inches of rain fell - 2 inches more that the expected annual rainfall. | |
| Friday, July 3rd, 1998 - Day 19 | |
Everyone sleeps in - but the ride goes on. It should prove an easier day - only 75 miler to Newcastle. Hard to believe we are only crossing the Northeast corner of Wyoming. This is another "monster" state. We pull ourselves out of the mud, pack up, and push on by 8:30. We want to find a phone to get a room in Rapid City - a day away. We hear it will be a zoo with all of the 4th weekend traffic. We ride with Rob in the morning for several miles. We stop at a hole in the wall bar/convenience store run by a chain-smoking woman and her 3 teenage daughters - a few with kids in tow. We are far from our plush life on Seattle's Eastside. We wait to use the phone, but after 20 minutes, give up and move on. For lunch we forgo the usual bag lunch, and treat ourselves to a small pharmacy/soda fountain in Upton. I recall all of the Sinclair Lewis' novels I have read - including "Main Street" - and wonder whether life in towns like these has changed since Sinclair's biting slice of life. The pharmacy claims to serve the best malt in WY - and it proves a great change of tastes. We are a mix of locals and strangely dressed crazy bikers are gathered around the food counter talking about yesterday's weather. Coming into pit 2 a minor squeak in my left pedal sounds like a nutcracker with each turn on the crank. At pit 2 Chris opens up my new pedals (as of Missoula) and finds that the rainstorm from yesterday has removed my pedal cover, washed out the grease, and gotten sand in my bearings. Chris the bike tech is kind enough to remove the now cracked bearing, and regrease. We cover pedal with duct-tape. They better take good care of our tech-crew or we will all be bikeless soon. The afternoon push is relatively flat - but 20 mph headwinds turn normal into monotony. Winds make it harder to shift position - shoulders and wrists begin hurting with a few miles. The highway is busy requiring our complete attention to the road. We arrive in Newcastle at 7pm. It was supposed to be an easy day. Hamburgers and hotdogs put us in a celebratory spirit. The camp is at a school - with railroad tracks along one side, and an oil refinery across the street. Trains sound their horns every 15 minutes. We passed several coal mines along the ride today. The constant white-noise of the factory reminds me of Eraserhead. Everyone is talking about the rider tomorrow - deemed to be one of the hardest - 3000' of climbing over the Black Hills of S.D. We go to bed early to rest up. | |
| Saturday, July 4th, 1998 - Day 20 | |
Last night a busload of riders went off to see the fireworks above Mt. Rushmore at 9am. We hear in the morning that they return at 3am - no fireworks to be seen - fogged out. Today we climb over the Black Hills. 30 miles all uphill - 20 miles down. There is a sense of urgency as camp breaks early. People are talking of sagging if it becomes too difficult. Many people did not sleep well with the local firecrackers, trains, and refinery generating a cacophony of sounds through the night-and many did not sleep well the night prior on the concrete floor. Ear plugs and exhaustion give us a good night sleep. We cross into South Dakota early in the morning with mandatory stops at the border crossing for pictures. We reach pit 1 after 3 ½ hours. A strong and constant headwind turns a difficult climb into a real hellclimb. After pit 1 we must travel with a vehicle guide following us for 4 milers - the road across the top is too narrow and without a shoulder. Fourth of July traffic brings a convergence of campers and RVs. Cathy is reminded of her high school track meets as they announce the countdown each minute. We are one of the last groups to depart. We are not pack animals. I hate being paced on hills. It turns out to be just a few miles of climbing, no worse than before. And having a car blocking traffic for us gives us a nice quite ride across the summit of the Black Hills. We descend into Custer - a tribute to American kitchey tourism - petrified rock museum, wood carving museum, reptile park, world's largest salad bar. We choose a local fast food chain Taco Johns for a quick lunch and spend time talking to a Minnesotan about our ride. How un-American to eat Mexican on the 4th. We continue our descent. Luckily we find a phone and are able to find a hotel in Rapid City despite the holiday. We have conquered the last of the summits until we reach the Appalachians and are feeling great. But by mile 50 my seat sores are starting to hurt. I believe I have discovered a new weak force in the universe. Gel seat with gel pants. Never again. This is the second time. These pants are being sent home. I try turning my pants outside out - a real fashion statement. We decide that instead of pushing the pain will sag the last 20 flat miles from pit 3 and start our rest day early. Sagging gives us a chance to observe the breakdown of a pit. We both help disassemble the tents and tables. In Rapid City we are picked up by Barry the taxi driver - who turns out to run a non-profit group and its web site. The Ramada brings us shelter from the rain, and a Perkins offers an alternative to OK Cascade's monotony. | |
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