Bike Diary #14 sent Tuesday August 14, 2001

We finally got far enough west to get out of Montana, and not a moment too soon in my opinion. State road 200 in Montana, which continues through Idaho under the same name, has a 70 mph speed limit which immediately drops to 55 when you cross the border. It's reassuring to think that they could see you and still have enough time to take apropriate action before you become a hood ornament. I don't think I'll go bicycling in Montana again until they come to their senses.

Crossing the Montana/Idaho state line.

Other than that it was a fairly routine day. Dad more or less manages to keep up, although he complains about every pimple as if he had to climb Everest. In deference to his years and out of a sense of filial piety (after all, he is the man who introduced me to the sport which has become my ruling passion), I've decided to schedule no more than one Cascade Range pass per day until we get to Seattle. As a practical matter, that's about as slow as you can go across and still have a campsite every night, and it puts us into Seattle one week from today on Tuesday August 14.

Day	47
Date	Wednesday August 8, 2001
Distance	83 miles
Moving average speed	13.2 mph
Left at	7:30 AM
Arrived at	2:30 PM
Overnight in	Edgewater Campground (USFS) near Ione, WA
Latitude	48 d 45 m 15 s N
Longitude	117 d 24 m 26 s W
Cumulative distance	3617 miles

Another fairly routine day, this one spent following the Pend Oreille river from Sandpoint, ID to Ione, WA. The locals, who by and large haven't wasted any time studying French, pronounce the name of the river "Ponderoy". It's been a long time since I wasted a lot of my time studying French, so I assume that, like the Nez Perce, the name comes from one given by the French trappers of the 18th century to the indigent native American population in honor of some form of bizarre self-mutilation they practiced.

The route follows the east bank of the Pend Oreille river, the opposite side from state road 20, and is very quiet, level and shaded by evergreens. Eastern Washington state is considered "semi-arid", or sometimes I have even heard it described as a desert. The notion is that the moist air off the Pacific Ocean on its way west hits the Cascade Range and gets pushed up to a higher, cooler altitude where the water condenses out and falls as rain on western Washington (including Seattle), leaving the rest of the state in a "rain shadow". Frankly speaking, desert is not the first word that comes to mind to describe the area around the Pend Oreille River. I've never heard of a desert supporting a thriving logging industry, but the air around Ione, WA is filled with the whine of chainsaws (not to mention the motorboats on the river).

Our campsite in Ione, WA.

Day	48
Date	Thursday August 9, 2001
Distance	86 miles
Moving average speed
Left at	8:15 AM
Arrived at	7:40 PM
Overnight in	Sherman Pass Campground at summit of Sherman Pass
Latitude	48 d 36 m 19 s N
Longitude	118 d 27 m 49 s W
Cumulative distance	3703 miles

I wouldn't normally schedule a 4000 foot ascent at the end of an 85 mile day, but today was proof that there is a kernel of truth to the lately-much-bruited-about notion that information itself has value.

Things started out routinely; we even encountered an eastbounder east of Colville, WA. Jim Damico had already ridden the traditional trans-America route from Williamsburg, VA to Astoria, OR, then headed up the coast to Anacortes before turning west again. He was going to ride the Marias Pass route south of Glacier Park, then go north and come back across the park on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway before turning south and heading for Texas. He has a website at http://wanderingtheworld.com/.

Eastbounder Jim Damico east of Colville, WA.

We crossed the Columbia River near Kettle Falls, WA at an altitude of about 1,300 feet above sea level, then immediately started climbing toward the first big summit in Washington State, Sherman Pass at 5,575 feet. The plan was to go only eight miles and camp below 3,000 feet at the Canyon Creek Campground in the Colville National Forest, then tackle the big climb first thing in the morning. The surprise came when we got to the campground.

Generally speaking, about the only thing a cyclist needs from a campground is a place to pitch the tent and a supply of drinking water. As a practical matter, it is impossible to carry enough drinking water to overnight (although some cyclists carry filters so they can drink surface water, I don't). Whenever I get to a campground, I automatically start looking for the spigot. After all, it's much more convenient to camp near the water supply. I rode a circuit around the camp- ground without seeing a spigot, the only thing that might have been identified as a water supply was a curious looking contraption sticking out of the ground in a corner near the entrance.

Aside from the fact that it was bone dry, the contraption screamed "water supply": a pipe about four inches in diameter sticking out of the ground, with what looked like a drinking fountain on one side and a small box with a spigot and a knob, all made of cast iron. Engraved in the iron below the knob were the words "lift to fill". I studied it very briefly, lifted the knob, and got no moisture for my efforts. There was a couple picking berries in the campground, and rather than spend a lot of time puzzling the thing out, I figured I would just ask, "Is there a water supply in this campground?"

No, they said, years ago there was one but it was repeatedly vandalized and they were no longer providing any. They could give us about half a gallon that they had in their car, but that was it.

It's funny how at times of extreme fatigue the intellect completely fails one. John Krakauer wrote about many such failures brought on by hypoxia and fatigue in "Into Thin Air", but I never suspected that I would let the side down so spectacularly myself.

I didn't give the curious iron mechanism another thought. My father and I filled our bottles with the half gallon offered, learned that the couple in question were undoubtably an authority on the situation of the campground having camped there themselves many times over the years, and then had to face the question of what to do. We had enough water to summit, but not enough to overnight, so our options were to go back to Kettle Falls, giving up the altitude we had gained with so much effort, or to try to summit tonight and spend the night at another forest service campground there. The risk was that we would run out of daylight before getting there, putting us on an unfamiliar, unlit road with plenty of logging trucks after dark.

We decided to go for the summit. I'm about 40% faster than dad on ascents, so I figured the best thing for me to do would be to charge up to the summit, leave my gear at the campground, and then double back light so that I could meet Dad however far up he had got at that point, transfer his load onto my bike and get both of us to the summit as soon as possible. I reached the summit at 7:07 PM with about an hour of daylight left. Imagine my horror when I sought out the water supply in the summit campground and found exactly the same cast iron contraption that had been down below.

This time, I was considerably more desperate, since I had no idea how far down my father was and it was a good 18 miles down the other side of the pass to the next town, Republic. Although it would be downhill, it would be dark and therefore not fast. So I had to figure out how that contraption worked.

I took a closer look and almost immediately saw that it was a hand-operated pump, but missing the pump handle. You could grab onto the part the pump handle would have moved up and down and with some effort move it up and down without the handle, and praise God water starts flowing.

So I quickly unloaded my bicycle and then doubled back down the pass. I found my father about two and a half miles below the summit and offered to take his load. He was fatigued but determined and his pride was still intact, so he refused the offer, and we rode together to the summit getting there at 7:45 PM.

There was a notice on a bulletin board in the summit campground from "Ranger Meredith Webster" saying that due to increased vandalism and decreased funding as well as an inability to find a private concession, none of the campgrounds in the Kettle Falls Ranger District of Colville National Forest would be providing drinking water anymore. It seems that as a practical matter, the implementation of this policy was to remove all of the pump handles.

In the Canyon Creek Campground, near the bottom of the pass, the pump was definitely on a well, because I vividly remember seeing a tag from some Washington State authority identifying it as such. There was no corresponding tag on the summit campground pump, so probably it caps a cistern that has to be periodically refilled. I imagine nobody will be refilling it anymore, but it held enough water for our purposes. However, I suspect that if I had spent less time talking to the couple picking berries and more time puzzling over the mechanism, I would have recognized it as a pump without a handle and if it caps a well not a cistern, then potable water could almost certainly have been coerced from it.

As it is, our panic has probably saved us a day getting into Seattle, since we weren't planning to summit Serman Pass until tomorrow.

I will send a nastygram to Adventure Cycling notifying them of this change in the services available at these campgrounds. A campground that doesn't provide drinking water doesn't provide much.

Day	49
Date	Friday August 10, 2001
Distance	59 miles
Moving average speed	13.9 mph
Left at	8:30 AM
Arrived at	3:00 PM
Overnight in	Red Apple Inn motel in Tonasket, WA
Latitude	48 d 42 m 29 s N
Longitude	119 d 26 m 15 s W
Cumulative distance	3762 miles

Dad at the summit of Sherman Pass.

The day started out well enough with the exhilerating descent down the west side of Sherman Pass. We parlayed two eastbounders about halfway down: Henry and Hazel Kliner from Warroad, MN who left Seattle on August 4 and are riding to Whitefish. They have been riding the Northern Tier in sections over the past several years. They warned us that there was construction ahead, which was messy but we managed to get through. While I was talking to Henry I noticed yet another mechanical failure: one of the bolts that holds my rear rack to the seatstay was missing and the other was very loose. Fortunately, the map showed a bike shop in Repulic, WA, just a few downhill miles farther along.

Eastbounders Henry and Hazel Kliner east of Republic, WA.

I have already mentioned how every business in North Dakota and Montana seemed to have an ancillary casino, no matter how improbable the combination might be. In Washington State there is a similar phenomenon, except instead of casinos the ancillary business is a coffee bar: "A-1 Auto Parts and Espresso". Therefore I was not too shocked to see a neon "Espresso" sign in the window of Eich's Mercantile, which the Adventure Cycling map says is a bike shop. However, upon walking into Eich's, I discovered that the coffee bar was not in fact ancillary to a bike shop, but a violin shop. It seemed highly improbably that Eich's would be carrying any stainless steel socket-head M5 X 16 mm bolts or lock washers, so I walked a few doors down to the hardware store which did, and 42 cents later I had my bike back in its customary perfect working order. Adventure Cycling will receive yet another nastygram from me on the subject of Eich's Mercantile.

After leaving Republic, we started the long climb up Wauconda Pass, 4,310 feet above sea level and about 2,000 feet above Republic, WA. I made it to the summit first, and stopped there to wait for the old man. There was a couple on Harleys up there, headed to the Grand Tetons from Omak, WA, the town where I was hoping to end the day. They told me that on account of the Omak Stampede and Suicide Race (a big deal in Omak, believe me) there wasn't a motel room or campsite to be had in the twin cities of Omak and Okanogan. (An aside: before starting his motor, one of the motorcyclists put plugs in his ears. I had to suppress a chuckle. I thought about mentioning that if he put an adequate muffler on his Harley he wouldn't need ear protection, then thought again.) A couple of calls from a payphone in Wauconda to the motels listed on the map confirmed their story. This meant we would either have to summit Loup Loup pass today or stop short in Tonasket. We decided to make it a short day since the laundry was getting kinda stinky and so were we. The campgrounds on the summit of Loup Loup Pass are Forest Service campgrounds which never provide showers (and only occassionally drinking water).

Tonasket is in the Okanogan River Valley, which is the first place we've come to that really looks like the desert we were promised in eastern Washington. As you come down from Wauconda Pass, a blast of hot air hits you in the face, and when you reach the bottom you realize why: the temperature in the valley is about 95 degrees. There's very little humidity, which means you are losing water faster than you realize because you don't get sweaty. The valley still has some trees, although they are getting sparse and most of the ground is covered by scrub.

Day	50
Date	Saturday August 11, 2001
Distance	91 miles
Moving average speed	12.3 mph
Left at	7:00 AM
Arrived at	5:00 PM
Overnight in	Early Winters Campground (USFS) near Mazama, WA
Latitude	48 d 35 m 47 s N
Longitude	120 d 26 m 48 s W
Cumulative distance	3853 miles

We got an early start in the hopes of getting up out of the Okanogan River valley before the temperatures climbed up to where they were yesterday afternoon. We had 30 miles in the valley before we even started climbing today's pass, Loup Loup Pass (believe it or not) at an elevation of 4,020 feet above sea level and 3,000 feet above the Okanogan River valley.

We encountered two late-season eastbounders near Riverside, WA. Bill and Sheila Swanson are riding from Seattle to Toronto via Jasper and the Canadian National Railway (to bridge the long, boring plains).

Eastbounders Sheila and Bill Swanson with their Bike Fridays.

It was a slow, hot climb up Loup Loup Pass despite the early start, and when we got to the other side we were rewarded with yet another desert-like river valley, this time the Methow River valley. I was in favor of crossing the valley this afternoon instead of tomorrow morning since we had a tailwind and I didn't want to climb the next pass during a hot afternoon (the next pass, Washington Pass, is at 5,477 feet above sea level and 3,000 feet above Mazama). The old man complained a lot but went along in the end.

Tonight's campsite is right next to the Early Winters Creek, not a bad place to soak your feet at the end of a long day.

Early Winters creek.

Day	51
Date	Sunday August 12, 2001
Distance	83 miles
Moving average speed	12.4 mph
Left at	8:00 AM
Arrived at	5:45 PM
Overnight in	Rockport State Park near Rockport, WA
Latitude	48 d 29 m 27 s N
Longitude	121 d 36 m 44 s W
Cumulative distance	3936 miles

Today's pass was actually two passes separated by about five miles: Washington Pass at 5,477 feet and Rainy Pass (which fortunately didn't live up to its name) at 4,855 feet. Wouldn't you know it, but on the penultimate day of my tour I finally encountered more westbounders: Dave and Marie Baker left New York City on June 6 and are headed to Anacortes from where they will embark on a tour of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound. We met them on the way up to Washington Pass, talked for a while, and then went on. I had been hearing about a couple from New York for some time, so it was good to finally put faces and names on that rumor.

Westbounders Marie and Dave Baker en route to Anacortes from New York City.

The North Cascades Highway follows the Skagit River on the west side of Rainy Pass. The Skagit River was dammed three times (Ross, Gorge and Diablo dams) early in the twentieth century by Seattle's municipal power company, Seattle City Light, to provide hydroelectric power for the city. I'm sure there must be a story behind getting the eminent domain to flood those valleys along the lines of the theft of the Owens River by Los Angeles, but I don't know what it is. At any rate, the power company turned the resulting lakes into a recreational area that is very popular with Seattlites.

I believe that it is a requirement of all Seattle residents to affect an interest in outdoor activities. Enjoying the outdoors Seattle-style starts with a visit to the REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) co-op, whose flagship store in Seattle looks more like a theme park than a cooperative. There you load up on Gore-Tex, Tevas and Power Bars, then load it all into the SUV and put the bicycles on the Thule roof-rack and head up to the North Cascades Highway.

A tourist inching his way up Washington Pass with nearly four thousand miles under his belt and seventy pounds of gear on his bike can therefore look forward to swarms of roof-rack cyclists from Seattle buzzing past on exotic, lightweight bicycles which wouldn't survive one week of a loaded tour. You must remember to be grateful, for the appearance of roof-rack cyclists is a sure sign that you are getting close to Seattle, and having so many of them around all the time has accustomed the drivers to sharing the road with bicycles. By and large they are friendly, and some will regale you with stories of their glory days of touring long past, but you can't help but think that somehow you have achieved something more by reaching the summit than they have. And you definitely get the impression that they think so too.

Dad stands on the overlook at the summit of Washington Pass.

A digression on the subject of the loaded touring bicycle. One often hears riders of lightweight bicycles rhapsodize about how "the bicycle feels like an extension of my body" or that they "can't tell where I end and the bicycle begins". It is impossible to become so confused when you are riding a loaded touring bike. The relationship between bicycle and rider is clear: it is a heavily loaded vehicle for which you happen to be both pilot and power supply. You can forget about all your favorite lightweight tricks: jackrabbit starts, panic stops, track stands, sprinting hills, etc. are just impossible or at least certain to rip your knees to shreds. A touring bike winds up slowly and never runs very fast: cyclists who average 18 mph on lightweight joyrides will average 12.5 mph on loaded touring bikes. My riding style is heavily influenced by the many thousands of miles I have spent touring: keep the cadence in the power band between 75-85 rpm and always match impedances to the load, flogging the gearshift as necessary. Standing out of the saddle is a sure sign that you're in too high a gear, so shift down, spin up and remain seated.

The day ends with a long gradual downhill along the Skagit river downstream from the dams, following the high tension lines that carry their power to Seattle. We hope to arrive there ourselves tomorrow.

Locomotive belonging to Seattle City Light Company and used to haul materials during construction of the Skagit River dams. On display in Newhalem, WA.

Day	52
Date	Monday August 13, 2001
Distance	100 miles
Moving average speed	14.5 mph
Left at	7:30 AM
Arrived at	4:00 PM
Overnight in	Grandma's house, 1456 38th Ave, Seattle, WA
Latitude	47 d 36 m 50 s N
Longitude	122 d 17 m 5 s W
Cumulative distance	4036 miles

Seattle at last!

The ending is anticlimactic: there's no brass band nor yellow tape to ride through arms upstretched, just a long spin into town, picking up more and more traffic along the way. It's hard to believe that tomorrow I won't wake up, strike the tent, load the mule and try to make another 85 miles go by before dark. After weighing in, I discovered that I've lost 20 pounds on this ride; I wonder how long that will stay off.

Although I've faithfully reported the moving average speeds reported by the bicycle computer, it occurred to me some time ago that the right units for measuring a tourist's average speed are miles per day, not miles per hour. So the final value is 4036 miles in 52 days, or an average speed of 77.6 miles per day. If you exclude the five layover days I took, then the moving average speed is 85.9 miles per day. That's not a record, but I'm not ashamed of it either.

It's something of a strange thing to ride a bicycle across America alone in public. I hope that I've managed to convey some idea of what it is like to take a trip like this and give some idea why I love doing it. When world-weariness and wanderlust become too much for him, Ishmael goes a-whaling. As for me, I ride a bicycle.

The end: arrival in Seattle.