From coldwell@frank Tue Jun 12 23:49:24 2001 -0400 Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 23:49:24 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: The bike diary Message-ID: <20010612234922.A5063@frank.harvard.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 If you are receiving this email, it is because you either specifically asked to be added to the bike diary list or because I thought you might get a kick out of reading it. If you are in the latter category but want to be removed from the bike diary list, let me know and I'll take you off. If you have no idea what the bike diary list is then read on. I seem to have figured out a scheme for remaining in email contact while I am riding my bicycle across the United States from Boston to Seattle this summer(*). I propose to use this facility to send a little report on a more or less daily basis (as cellular coverage permits) letting you know where I am and how things are going. It won't be great literature (I know my limits), but it might be fun to read especially for those of you prone to take this sort of adventure yourselves. First bit of news: the departure date has been postponed a little from the original goal of hitting the road on June 15 to probably June 20. There's just too much to do before I go. Chip (*) For you nerds on the list, the mechanism involves a NEC MobilePro 700 handheld PC loaned to me by my brother-in-law (thanks, Ross) connected through a 3Com 3CXM756 Global GSM & Cellular Modem PC card (CSC, not CDPD) to my Nokia 6160 cellular telephone, thence via the AT&T digital one rate plan to a US Robotics Courier V.Everything external modem that hangs on frank, the Linux server in the Horowitz group. Power for all these accoutrements comes from the output of a Schmidt's hub dynamo on the bicycle, converted to DC and regulated by a circuit I built with alot of help from my advisor (thanks, Paul). From coldwell Sun Jun 17 23:50:20 2001 Return-Path: Received: (from coldwell@localhost) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA03850; Sun, 17 Jun 2001 23:49:23 -0400 Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 23:49:23 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: departure date set Message-ID: <20010617234923.A3808@frank.harvard.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3 I've set a departure date for Saturday, June 23. This is a bit late in the season to get started, but better late than never. A few of the locals on the bike-diary list have expressed an interest in escorting me out of town on their bicycles. You are certainly welcome to, but be forewarned that this is going to be a slow ride (at least for me) since I'll be riding a loaded touring bike. My plan is to leave my apartment (123 Highland Ave, Somerville) sometime around 7 AM on Saturday and roughly follow the route of the Boston Brevet Series 400k event as far as North New Salem and then head up to Erving State Park (which is probably alot farther than anybody who has to turn back to go home wants to go). You can get the cue sheets from http://www.gis.net/~bbs/cue2000.html It's very straightforward once you leave Concord: basically 119 to 101. I suppose I'll follow the canonical route to Hanscom Field where the cue sheet starts. Chip -- Charles M. "Chip" Coldwell "Turn on, log in, tune out" From coldwell Fri Jun 22 10:44:33 2001 Return-Path: Received: (from coldwell@localhost) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA14146; Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:42:20 -0400 Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:42:20 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: major cities Message-ID: <20010622104220.A14070@frank.harvard.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 4 Here is a list of major population centers along the Northern Tier route: Rochester, NY Niagara Falls, NY Buffalo, NY Cleveland, OH Fort Wayne, IN (not passing close to major population centers in IL) Muscatine, IA Winona, MN Minneapolis, MN Fargo, ND Minot, ND Williston, ND Wolf Point, MT Glasgow, MT Havre, MT Shelby, MT Cut Bank, MT East Glacier, MT West Glacier, MT Sandpoint, ID Kettle Falls, WA Seattle, WA Those of you familiar with Amtrak's "Empire Builder" (or the Great Northern Railway train of the same name that preceeded it) should recognize the place names between Winona, MN and Sandpoint, ID where the Nothern Tier follows the railroad. It leaves the railroad in Sandpoint, ID to go north crossing the Casacade Range at Washington and Rainy passes (the railroad goes over Stevens pass). Chip -- Charles M. "Chip" Coldwell "Turn on, log in, tune out" From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sun Jun 24 20:30:41 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id UAA25804; Sun, 24 Jun 2001 20:29:20 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200106250029.UAA25804@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #1 Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 16:35 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 5 The starting point for this trip, my apartment on Highland Avenue in Somerville, is at latitude 42 degrees 23 minutes 16 seconds north, longitude 71 degrees 6 minutes 3 seconds west. You'll have to wait and see to find out the coordinates of the ending point. Day 1 Date: Saturday, June 23, 2001 Distance: 90 miles Moving average speed: 12.8 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 4:00 PM Overnight in Erving State Forest near Erving, Massachusetts latitude 42 degrees 37 minutes 11 seconds north longitude 72 degrees 22 minutes 9 seconds west "An inauspicious beginning" I think it was Kate Courteau who used the expression quoted above in reference to the weather as a small group of friends gathered in front of my apartment this morning to give me a sendoff on my trip. My departure had been postponed so many times already that I was pretty determined to get going for real this morning. "Damn the forecast, full speed ahead," or something similar. The ride itself went pretty smoothly. We left about on time, and some folks even escorted me out of town. Jono, in his determination to get the perfect departure photo despite the dead battery in his camera, even stuck it out beyond Concord (the others, Max & Co., were en route to Hartford, Conneticut, and split off in Belmont). I really appreciate the escorts; a little moral support at the beginning of a great and daunting enterprise such as this makes a big difference. The night before depating I weighed myself and the bicycle. It seems like we're both getting a little heavy; I was 180 pounds and the loaded bicycle 104 (34 pounds unloaded). The weight of the load seemed awfully high to me, as my recollection from previous tours was that it should be about 45 pounds, not 70. I have a few frivolities with me this time that are adding weight to the load (such as the handheld PC that I am writing the on), but the certainly don't add up to 25 pounds. Nonetheless, repeated careful measurements always came up with the same result. At any rate, the weight of the load was the major factor in setting the pace for today, it forced me to slow to creep (8-9 mph) going uphill, of which there was plenty on today's ride. Nonetheless, I managed a respectable overall moving average speed, 12.8 mph shown in the table above. When you're riding a 100 pound machine, you're pround of 12 mph and not ashamed of 10. I went through a number of old industrial towns, notably Gardner, Athol and Orange (all in Massachuetts, of course) with beautiful old water powered brick factories left over rom the days when we actually built things in this country. Most of these towns had made some efforts at preservation (a la Lowell). When I arrived at Erving State Forest in the midafternoon (my final destination for the day and where I sit now as I am writing this), Kate's prophecy of bad weather started to violently come true. I barely had time to pitch my tent and get my gear inside before a Wagnerian storm broke and sheets of water started pouring from the sky. Unfortunately, the campsite I was assigned was not well designed: it was built on a slope insead of the preferred way of having a peak (on which you pitch the tent) surrounded by lower ground. This means that the water which runs off the tent on the uphill side the runs under it and soaks through the floor. I actually think the guys here were trying to be nice to me by giving me this since it is the closest to the water supply and the head, but in reality they did me a bit of a disservice. I was forced to crouch in my tent cursing while water seeped through the floor and everything started getting damp. Once the rains did finally stop; everything was a sea of mud because instead of grass the campsite has bare dirt. Oh well, it will all dry out again in another day or two. Day 2 Date: Sunday, June 24, 2001 Distance: 93 miles Moving average speed: 11.4 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 6:00 PM Overnight in Austerlitz, NY latitude 42 degrees 17 minutes 8 seconds north longitude 73 degrees 29 minutes 57 seconds west The moving average speed for today tells it all: I crossed the Berkshires at a snail's pace. It is my opinion that the Berkshires are by far more difficult to cross than the average Rocky Mountain pass. As I was struggling up one of the steeper grades on route 20 west of Huntington, MA that it would be very easy to prove that opinion is a fact if I had one of those fancy bicycle computers that include an altimeter and use it to tell how far you've climbed. I decided to cross the Connecticut River on the bike path that connects Belchertown to Northampton, the first time in all the times that I have bicycled across Massachusetts that I have tried this path. This meant starting the day on nearly a due south trajectory, riding from Erving to Amherst, where I stopped for a patry and coffee. At the coffee shop, I met Frank Tripoli, who lives in Ware and bicycles the path from Belchertown to Northampton and return for exercise. It was a lucky chance; he gave me good directions to the path, and when I caught up to him on it, we had a long conversation. He seems to have a habit of encountering cross-country adventurers on that bike path, the last one was a guy walking his dog from San Diego to Boston. Frank has a younger brother, Steve, who works as a reporter for WBUR, one of the NPR affiliates in Boston. I've heard that voice thousands of times. Tonight I'm staying at my aunt's house in Austerlitz. It's a welcome chance to lay out all my soaked gear to dry and sleep in a warm bed. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Wed Jun 27 22:06:44 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA11078; Wed, 27 Jun 2001 22:04:23 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200106280204.WAA11078@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #2 Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 19:50 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 6 Day 3 Date: Monday June 25, 2001 Distance: 108 miles Moving average speed: 12.6 mph Left at 9:30 AM Arrived at 7:00 PM Overnight in Glimmerglass State Park near Cooperstown, NY latitude 42 d 47 m 8 s N longitude 74 d 51 m 50 s W Cumulative distance: 291 miles After a very late start, I discovered that the weather gods had changed their minds about my project and decided to provide me with near-perfect cycling conditions. So in spite of the late start and a moderately sore knee I decided to make hay while the sun was shining instead of taking a shorter day as I had originally planned. The day went pretty smoothly. I took my first bite out of the Catskills today and with the exception of one heart-breaking grade 87 miles into today's ride, they have proven to be alot easier than the Berkshires were (compare today's average speed with yesterday's to see the effect). Not much to report, today was mostly about grinding out the miles. One interesting quirk: when I arrived at Glimmerglass State Park, there was a note in the window of the ranger's office listing the campsites that were not reserved for the night and instructing guests to move in and expect a visit from the ranger later in the evening to collect the camping fee. So I did and he did, but an hour later I had a second visit from the same ranger who came to refund my $15.75 camping fee. Apparently his supervisor "has a lot of respect for" crazy guys like me who try to bicycle across the country and figures we deserve a free night of camping for our efforts. Day 4 Date: Tuesday June 26, 2001 Distance: 74 miles Moving average speed: 12.2 mph Left at 8:30 AM Arrived at 7:00 PM Overnight in Chittenango Falls State Park southeast of Syracuse, NY latitude 42 d 58 m 47 s N longitude 75 d 50 m 42 s W Cumulative distance: 365 miles It was a short distance today because I spent most of the morning in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. That is definitely worth a visit, even if you are not a hardcore baseball fan (and I am not). Then I turned west, which is to say perpendicular to the direction of the Catskills (or parallel to their gradient, if you prefer). This meant that instead of following valleys between hills, I was forced to confront them head on and the day turned into and endless series of long tedious ascents followed by breathtaking descents with a small town in the valley. The continuous up and down made it impossible to make any time. As I was creeping up one of the long ascents, I was reminded of one of the basic principles of railroad engineering. When building a line between points A and B, one should find the highest point between the two and then make a gradual ascent to that point and a gradual descent from it to minimize the cost of operating the railraod. Any deviation from this ideal is referred to as "redundant grade". On a bicycle, screaming downhill at 30 mph is exciting but very wasteful since the energy you put into climbing the hill is squandered in wind resistance. The energy lost to wind resistance per unit distance (i.e. the force) grows as the velocity squared; this means you won't get nearly as much distance for your hard-earned energy on a rapid descent as you will on a gradual one. Crossing the Catskills was all about redundant grade. No railroad engineer in his right mind would try to build a line along US 20 in New York State. In fact, they didn't, the railroad and the Erie Canal before it were built a good deal north of US 20. After sweating up a few redundant grades I stopped in at the Red Door Restaurant in West Winfield. There a few friendly locals gave me dire warnings about the "Pompey Hills" coming up on route 20. "They put that road in back in '70, and they didn't make any unnecessary cuts." Since there was agreement among three locals about the difficulty of crossing the "Pompey Hills", and since they were dire enough to rate not only local recognition but their own special name, I decided that I would get plenty of exercise on my way to Seattle even if I routed myself around the "Pompey Hills". Therefore I departed route 20 in Cazenovia, NY, my plan being to take refuge from the hills along the southern shore of Oneida Lake and north of Syracuse and the join the railroad and the canal west of Syracuse. That also put a very convenient state park in my way for an overnight, which is where I am as I am writing this. I did run into another long-distance cyclist on route 20 today. He was headed east on his way from Sioux Falls, SD to Bennington, VT. He was the sort who eschews (or perhas hasn't heard of) national cycling organizations and expensive equipment. He was riding a middling-quality mountain bike, wearing a painter's cap and baggy shorts, and had made it from Erie, PA to Syracuse, NY in four days (pretty darn good time). He just got on a bike with a AAA map and went. He did mention that he had passed a westbound couple doing a perimeter tour of the US in Erie who were hoping to make Washington State by August 31. I'm hoping to get there by August 15, and there's a good chance that they are followng the same Northern Tier route as I, so if we all stick to our schedules I should overtake them. They're about 8-9 days ahead of me now, so I probably won't close the gap until we get out west somewhere. Day 5 Date: Wednesday June 27,, 2001 Distance: 108 miles Moving average speed: 13.3 mph Left at 7:45 AM Arrived at 7:00 PM Overnight in motel in Rochester, NY latitude 43 d 6 m 41 s N longitude 77d 32 m 55 s W Today I finally passed through the difficult terrain of the Catskills and came into the promised land: the Erie Canal and level ground. I left Chittenango Falls this morning still planning to follow Madison County route 3 to state road 31 and follow that along the southern shore of Oneida Lake and north of Syracuse. Imagine my surprise when only a couple of miles north of Chittenango I crossed what was unmistakably a canal with a crushed stone towpath headed west. The sign said "Old Erie Canal State Park and Trailway". As it turns out, that word "Old" is packed full of meaning. What the sign should have said was something like "original Erie Canal, abandoned shortly after the turn of the twentieth century in favor of a rebuilt canal to the north that goes through Oneida Lake." However, the sign said nothing of the sort, and so I assumed I had hit the towpath that the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route takes west of Palmyra, NY. Despite the fact that the towpath was unpaved (dry crushed stone is not alont worse than asphalt when you're riding on 700 X 35C tires), I could not resist the temptation of a level canal grade. I was hoping that it would take me right through Syracuse along a level grade all the way to Rochester. Instead, it ended abruptly after ten miles just outside of Syracuse. It turns out that the path of the old Erie Canal through Syracuse was long ago filled in and paved over to make streets with suggestive names such as "Erie Boulevard". To the untrained eye, there really isn't much of a trace of the canal left in Syracuse. However, I decided to make the best of it and visited the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, which was pretty interesting. West of Syracuse I picked up New York State bike route 5, a.k.a. state road 31 which parallels the (new) canal pretty nearly and has a nice level grade to it. I also got my first faceful of the headwinds that will persecute me all the way to the pacific. This slowed down progess, but not nearly as much as the hills had over the past two days (moving average speed it up, as you can see above). I ran into another eastbound tourist today (if you think about it for a minute, you'll realize that practically all the tourists I'm going to run into on this trip will be eastbounders). "Ian" is doing my trip in reverse: he started from Seattle on April 13 and hopes to reach Boston in 8 days. I asked him if he didn't run into some weather at the higher elevations after such an early start. Apparently so, some of the Rocky Mountain passes (notably Lolo pass in Montana) had treated him to rain, snow and hail. I gave him my set of Rubel bike maps of western, central and eastern Massachusetts since they are of no use to me now and might help him considerably (they mark the big hills on those maps, in addition to recommended roads for cycling). I had 435 miles on my odomter, he had 2913. The sum of these two numbers (3348) is considerably less than my original estimate of the total distance from Boston to Seattle along the Northern Tier route (4000 miles), and could mean a difference of a full week of cycling. I will have to revisit that estimate. Chip I put in a good long day to celebrate reaching level terrain, but the time spent in the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse finally caught up to me in the late afetrnoon and I took refuge in a motel as the sun was getting too close to the horizon for my comfort. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sat Jun 30 01:12:39 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA22761; Sat, 30 Jun 2001 01:11:42 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200106300511.BAA22761@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #3 Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 18:43 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 7 Day 6 Date: Thursday June 28, 2001 Distance: 69 miles Moving average speed: 12.8 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 3:00 PM Overnight in Niagara County Camping Resort, northeast of Lockport, NY latitude 43 d 14 m 1 s N longitude 78 d 37 m 41 s W Cumulative distance: 543 miles Today is my 32nd birthday; I can't think of how I would rather have spent it than doing exactly what I was doing today: riding a bicycle across the US. After my conversation with Ian, the eastbounder from Seattle, I went over my mileage estimate again, and I came up with very nearly the same figure I had before; namely, 4073 miles. I suppose Ian could have been wrong, but that's unlikely since cyclists by and large are very scrupulous about getting credit for every inch travelled. More likely his route (which I know is not the same as mine) is shorter. He did say he had taken Interstate 90 across Montana and North Dakota. Personally, I think half the point of an adventure such as this is getting away from the interstates, so I'm not much tempted to deviate to save miles. As of today, the average daily mileage is 90, but that statistic will go down alot over the next two days since tomorrow is another short day and Saturday I'm not moving at all. However, it is interesting to note that if this pace is extrapolated forward, it puts me on a seven week schedule to reach Seattle, right in the middle of the six-to-eight week estimate I gave at the beginning. It was a pretty easy day today. I've been planning to stay with a friend of mine from college in Buffalo, Owen Harrison, and it was going to be more convenient for him to have me arrive tomorrow (Friday) than today, so I inserted a day. This is convenient for me as well, since it means I can take a leisurely day through Niagara Falls and get my snapshots and postcards and all that. I spent the day switching between two different recommended bicycling routes: the one from Adventure Cycling which says take the canal towpath and the one from the state of New York which says take route 31. In places such as Rochester, route 31 is a pretty busy road and not much fun to bike on. In other places, the canal towpath deteriorates quite a bit and its hard to make any time on it. Fortunately the two routes are close and parallel for most of the distance so switching back and forth as the moment demands is not a problem. I ran into more eastbounders today: this time a retired couple from Santa Ana, CA who had flown to Cleveland and were riding east from there. We performed the usual rituals observed by long-distance tourists under these circumstances: we exchanged information on routes and roads and other cyclists headed that way and then parted ways after the obligatory "happy trails". Tonight I'm in a campground that is an example of a phenomenon that I had not realized existed in this country before I started touring. It turns out that there are alot of "campgrounds" in this country that basically serve as summer (or even year-round) homes for folks that can't afford the more traditional variety. They bring an RV or a trailer to the "campground", pay a seasonal rate, and establish themselves as permanent residents of the "campsite" for the duration. Naturally, most folks want something more for a home than what they get from a camper, and so alot of them have built additions onto their campers that are more permanent structures than the campers they are supposed to be enhancing: framed in two-by-fours with wood siding, glass windows and the works, it makes one wonder why they bother to maintain the pretense of living in the camper. Some of them have even built little fences around their "campsites" and put lawn ornaments within! It occurred to me that this is hardly a new phenomenon in this country. If you go to the town of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, the area around the Old Iron Tabernacle is filled with dozens of gorgeous, tiny carpenter-gothic wooden houses that were built there by folks who came to the Vineyard for the camp meeting revival, but liked it so much there that they started staying for the whole summer. They only had their tent sites from the camp meeting to build more permanent structures on, so the houses had to be very small. But I suppose a sort of keeping-ahead-of-the-Joneses effect made them get more and more elaborate. Anyway, it was clearly the same phenomenon going on there over a hundred years ago that I am seeing around me here in my campground in Lockport. I should add, as a final bizarre postscript, that just as I was settling into my tent to go to sleep I had a visit from my neighbor in the next campsite who wanted to warn me about his dogs. He said "They don't bite, really, well there was that one little girl, but she charged him ...." I wonder what the backstory to the incident alluded to is. I admit I lacked the courage at the time to ask. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sat Jun 30 01:12:45 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA22785; Sat, 30 Jun 2001 01:12:07 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200106300512.BAA22785@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #2, addendum Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 22:39 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 8 Some folks on the list have asked if I mind getting responses (the usual concern is one of conserving cellular modem bandwidth). Well, so far I have not been able to get the damn cellular modem to do much of anything for me -- even with the strong signals here in Rochester, NY it connects for a short while and then craps out. Forunately, it is not costing me much additional weight to haul this POS around with me: just a PCMCIA card (that stays in the handheld PC) and an twelve-inch cable to connect it to the cellphone. At any rate, on a landline I have plenty of BW to spare, so as long as there are no attachments (which this thing is not supposed to download anyway), I love getting responses, especially news from home. Apparently a few folks were inadvertently left off of the list and are getting my reports second-hand from folks who were not. I apologize profusely to those who were overlooked. I can, with some difficulty, make additions to the mailing list from the road, but it is a bit of a pain. If you can line yourselves up somebody on the list to forward the diary to you, that would certainly be the easiest for me. Second easiest would be to contact Darren Leigh (dlleigh@frank.harvard.edu) and ask him to add you to the bike-diary alias on frank. If all else fails, I can log in from the handheld and do it myself. It appears that these reports are going to be pretty sporadic since 1) cellular coverage of the back roads of America is worse than I expected and 2) the cellular modem is more demanding of signal quality than I expected and 3) the cellular modem is more demanding of power than I expeted. Ocassionally I pass a cellular tower on the road (they're easy to recognize), but without a source of AC power I can't really use the cellular modem since it drains the two AA cells powering the handheld almost instantly. I plan to continue making daily entries, and I will transmit them at the first opportunity, but that might be only once or twice a week. Some recent additions to the list were wondering where in hell it is coming from. So here's the story: my brother-in-law loaned me his NEC MobilePro handheld PC, a MIPS R4000 powered WinCE clamshell computer with full keyboard (thanks, Ross) and I bought a 3Com 3CXM756 GSM & Cellular modem PCMCIA card that I can plug into both the handheld PC and the cellphone (a Nokia 6160m with AT&T Digital One-Rate service). In principle, that should be all that it takes; in practice it seems that it also takes an AC power source and a landline. Oh well, it was fun to try. Anyway, I am using these gizmos to send periodic (sporadic?) reports from the road as I ride my bicycle from Boston to Seattle to a list of folks who either expressed an interest or who I thought would be interested. The plan of the moment is now to arrive in Buffalo on Friday and probably layover there Saturday. I'll shoot for Lockport tomorrow (Thursday) and have a leisurely day in Niagara Falls on Friday before continuing down to Buffalo. The next major cities on the route after Buffalo are Erie, PA and Cleveland, OH; the route follows a line about 15 miles south of Fort Wayne, IN at its closest approach. There are a couple of folks I would love to see in the Chicago area, but Adventure Cycling's route would take me well to the south of Chicago, and I'm not sure if it's wise to detour. I have at least until Cleveland to make up my mind, and good maps of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois if I decide to detour north. Finally, if I'm not responding to your email quickly it's because my MO is to send my responses, download new mail, then disconnect. So you might not get a response to an email I just downloaded until the next connection. It doesn't mean that I'm ignoring you, just coping with my connectivity limitations. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sat Jun 30 17:52:21 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id RAA26342; Sat, 30 Jun 2001 17:51:30 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200106302151.RAA26342@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #4 Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 08:34 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 9 Day 7 Date: Friday June 29, 2001 Distance: 68 miles Moving average speed: 11.8 mph Left at 8:45 AM Arrived at 4:30 PM Overnight in Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo, NY latitude 42 d 59 m 35 s N longitude 78 d 44 m 04 s W Cumulative distance: 611 miles More than 600 miles is seven days ... not a bad start if I say so myself. Of course, there's something like 3400 miles to go, so it really is just a tiny dent in the total distance. But it is starting to feel like I'm on my way for real now. I started the day with the short ride from Lockport to the Canadian border and crossed on the Lewiston-Queenstown bridge to ride down the Niagara Parkway on the Canadian side and see the famous falls. I must say that I cannot remember the last time I saw such a concentration of kitsch and tourist traps in such a short distance. But the falls are quite spectacular, and the Niagara Parkway itself is a very nice ride upstream from the falls. I rode it as far as Fort Erie and then crossed back into the US on the Peace Bridge into Buffalo. An old friend of mine from college, Owen Harrison, is putting me up here in Buffalo. We went into town and watched a minor league baseball game beteen the Buffalo Bisons (Department of Redundancy Department?) and some team called the "Indians". That was a blast, but a very bizarre thing happened around the 8th inning: it started raining bugs. I have no idea where they came from, but all these bugs started pelting us there in the bleachers like some kind of Biblical plague. They were very lethargic, once they landed they didn't take off again, so I suspect they were blown in from somewhere. Quite a few people cleared out of the stands in fear of an impending apocalypse, no doubt. Owen and I are not so timid, and stuck it out through nine innings. It was tied up 4-4 at 10:30 PM and going into extra innings when we left. I'm going to layover at Owen's place tomorrow. Day 8 Date: Friday June 29, 2001 Layover day. I spent the day going over my gear to make sure everything was still in order, doing my laundry and buying essentials (Coleman fuel for the stove and spare flashlight bulbs). We still had enough time to drive down to Orchard Park and go through the Pedaling History Bicycle Museum there, a truly fabulous collection of bicycles from the early 19th century to the present. I highly recommend it to any cycling enthusiasts passing through the area. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Wed Jul 4 21:33:46 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA16136; Wed, 4 Jul 2001 21:31:45 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107050131.VAA16136@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #5 Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 19:57 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 10 Day 9 Date: Sunday, July 1, 2001 Distance: 118 miles Moving average speed: 12.7 mph Left at 7:50 AM Arrived at 7:00 PM Overnight in Cassidy's Presque Isle Trailer and Campground near Erie, PA latitude 42 d 3 m 19 s N longitude 80 d 8 m 28 s W Cumulative distance: 729 miles In the morning, today was all about wind. When I left Amherst, there was a cold front coming in and a brief shower made me wonder if I was in for another inauspicious beginning. Fortunately, the rain held off. The wind did not. My route south of Lackawanna, NY was state road 5, which hugs the southern coastline of Lake Erie from Buffalo to Conneaut, OH. As one might imagine, the wind comes off of Lake Erie with tremendous force (especially with a cold front moving in), enough to slow my progress to a crawl at times. Then, much to my surprise and delight, the wind turned out to be a fickle creature (undoubtably that cold front at work again) and would turn around to my after quarter and push me along for a few miles before turning abeam again. The upshot was that most of the time the going was pretty smooth today, it was 12:20 PM when my odometer counted the 50th mile of the day (I consider it a good start if I have 50 miles by noon). I even crossed a state line (NY/PA) and took the inevitable photo of the bicycle leaning against the sign that says "Welcome to Pennsylvania". I don't know why it is that something always ends up making even a relatively good day into a long one. As I rolled down route 5, I kept passing very nice looking campgrounds and thinking to myself that this was all in accordance with the Principle of Maximum Perversity: now when I only have 75 miles on the day there are campgrounds in abundance, but as soon as I get over 100 and I'm ready to call it a day, there will be none for 25 miles. It was 5:00 PM when I reached downtown Erie, PA. The map showed two campgrounds in town, one very close to the route and one quite a little ways off the route. It should come as no surprise that, all other things being equal, the closer campground is to be preferred. I rolled up to the office of the Sara Coyne Campground and asked for a tent site for the night. The man on duty told me to go find one and then come back to register it. I think he must have known that as soon as I had a look at their facilities for tent campers, I would seek lodging elsewhere. That campground was easily the most crowded one I've seen so far on this trip. There was no buffer zone between sites; hundreds of RVs crammed into every square inch of ground; nothing but grassless sandlots crammed in the corners for the tent campers (BTW, this was another one of those campgrounds with seasonal rates and campers with elaborate additions on them). It was a small wonder it was so crowded: the very popular beaches of the Presque Isle State Park were within walking distance, as well as a short strip of tourist traps and amusement parks. Of course, I was planning to avail myself of none of these attractions and could see no reason to suffer an unpleasant night just to be in proximity to them, so I did something that I have never done before on a tour and with 110 miles on the odometer I left a campground to go try to find a better one. As I already mentioned, my map listed two campgrounds in Erie, PA. >From the directions it gave for the second campground, I knew I would have to back-track to the main route, Alternate Route 5, and the go south 3.5 miles on State Road 832 and turn left on Love Road. After going a little more than 4 miles south on 832 I realized that I must have missed the turn and my frustration with the project of finding a suitable campsite was pretty high. Fortunately, the map also lists a phone number for the campground and I was carrying a cellular telephone. A little old lady's voice answered and I half expected her to tell me that I had dialed the wrong number. But instead she gave me an unmistakable landmark (a cemetary) for finding Love Road, which it turns out was not marked. Cassidy's Campground is a pretty odd place. It's clearly been here a long time; the facilities are quite old and one suspects that the little old lady who answered my call and then greeted me upon my arrival has been running this place most of her life. The area is both very pretty and very quiet; Walnut Creek runs a few feet from my tent and I share that privilege with less than half a dozen other campers. The proprietress even gave me a substantial discount on the camping fee because I had arrived under my own power and for her "it's too late to start making money now." She walks with a cane and with great difficulty, and the campground itself is at the bottom of a steep hill behind the building that is both her home and the campground office, so perhaps it has been a few years since she has even seen it. Things are deteriorated but still functioning; the shower was warm and the electricity was on. I have to admit that I am quite charmed by the place and glad that I went out of my way to get here. Tonight is getting very cold; that cold front that played havoc with the wind today is supposed to bring temperatures in the 40s tonight. I've had to pull out all the cold weather gear that I didn't think I would need before reaching the higher elevations of Montana. Day 10 Date: Monday July 2, 2001 Distance: 133 miles Moving average speed: 15.0 mph Left at: 8:00 AM Arrived at: 8:00 PM Overnight in Wa-Hoo Camping Grunds and Lounge near Sheffield Lake, Ohio Latitude 41 d 27 m 43 s N Longitude 82 d 4 m 10 s W Cumulative distance: 862 miles The moving average speed says it all this time; I woke up to perfect cycling conditions. Clear and sunny sky, cool temperature, level ground and a following wind. I had in mind to go quite a long distance today and there was only one thing in my way that could slow me down: Cleveland. My first real stop of the day was in a diner in Conneaut, Ohio just over the state line from Pennsylvania (and yes, I did take a photo of my bicycle leaning against the sign that says "Ohio Welcomes You"). In it's heyday, Conneaut was a division point for two railroads: the New York, Chicago and St Loius (better known as the "Nickel Plate Road") and the New York Central. Both railroads are still operating (albeit under different names: the former is now part of Norfolk Southern and the latter CSX Transportation), but the division point is gone, a victim of the transition from steam to diesel locomotives. Steam locomotives, romatic as they are, were very manpower intensive to run, and once the conversion to diesel was completed, alot of that manpower became redundant. All that Conneaut has left to show for its heritage is a small museum located in the former New York Central depot. Unfortunately, it didn't open until noon today, and I was passing through at 11 and couldn't see squandering an hour of perfect cycling conditions waiting for it to open. I ran into another eastbounder near Willowick, OH today. He left Seattle on May 20. I calculate that he's ridden about 3180 miles in 42 days, which is 76 miles per day, very respectable going (I now have 862 miles after 10 days, so I'm making slightly better time). The one very valuable piece of information he gave me was that I must make a point to stay a night in Monroeville, IN, where they have a special facility specifically for trans-America cyclists. If things go according to schedule, I'll be spending July 4 there. My goal for today was to get to the west of Cleveland. It's very unusual for an Adventure Cycling route to go through a major city like Cleveland, but the Northern Tier carries you right through downtown (and in front of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which was just closing when I got there ... not that it would have made any difference either way). This forces you to slow down and spend alot of time waiting at traffic lights. For my fellow Bostonians whose minds are perhaps boggling at the concept of a bicycle waiting at a traffic light please bear in mind that you must be on your best behavior when you are a guest in another city. In the end, going across Cleveland didn't cost me too much time, I still managed to get in 133 miles today. My campground tonight is the first one after Cleveland that shows up on the map. It is perhaps one of the stranger ones I've stayed in so far on this trip. When you approach the Wa-Hoo Campground and Lounge from the main road (state road 611), you are not greeted by a sign that says "Campground", but rather by one which says "Liquor: Wa-Hoo Tavern". If I hadn't seen an RV making the turn in front of me, I would probably have assumed there was another Wa-Hoo in the same neighborhood. But no, they are one and the same: walk up to the bar and ask them for a tent site for the night and a Budweiser. The campground itself is a bit of a shambles, but not much worse than some of the others I've stayed at. One last closing thought: today was a day when I actually spent alot of time riding at the speed that would eventually be reported by the bicycle computer as my average speed (the mean and the mode were nearly coincident). This is a property of riding on level ground; in hilly terrain you are almost never riding at your average speed. PS tonight I camped practically in the shadow of a cell tower, and still the damned cellular modem couldn't hold a connection long enough to do anything useful. I'm convinced that data over CSC is practically impossible. Day 11 Date Tuesday July 3, 2001 Distance: 56 miles Moving average speed: 12.5 mph Left at 7:45 AM Arrived at 2:30 PM Overnight in Winesburg motel in Clyde, OH Latitude 41 d 18 m 32 s N Longitude 82 s 58 m 22 s W Cumulative distance: 919 miles The day started out with dark clouds stretching from horizon to horizon. I've gone out in conditions like this before and not been rained on, but it's rare. As the saying goes, if it doesn't rain on a day like this, then it's missed a good chance. I had barely put 8 miles on the odometer when the rain began. It was steady but not torrential, and I decided to try waiting it out for an hour in a park shelter near Lorain, OH on the south shore of Lake Erie. About 40 minutes after it began, the rain subsided and I was on my way again. The rain did bring with it a more significant change in the weather, namely the winds returned to their normal pattern which is from the southwest and hard against me. Cornfields and wheatfields may be pretty to look at, but they provide precious little shelter from the wind. Somewhere just east of Vermilion, OH an RV travelling in the opposite direction on US route 6 started honking at me. I had no idea what he was on about, since obviously I couldn't be in his way. A few minutes later he had turned around, passed me with only inches to spare, and then pulled over beside the road in front of me. The next thing I know a retired guy in his sixties strides out of the cab of the RV and starts waving at me. I pulled over and stopped behind his rig. "Ted Bailey" his says in a friendly Tennessee accent, extending his hand by way of introducing himself. "Chip Coldwell" I say in return while shaking his hand. It turns out that Ted's son, Mark, had left Detroit on a loaded touring bicycle headed for Buffalo and Ted and his wife had driven their RV up from Tennessee to meet him. The last word Ted had from Mark was that they should look for him near Vermilion, OH. By the time they realized I wasn't Mark, they had already made such a spectacle they figured that they might as well say hi. Now, I was westbound and Mark should have been eastbound, but I guess a solo touring cyclist is a rare enough sight on the road that I can forgive them their mistake. Ted rolled off in the direction of Vermilion leaving me with instructions to yell "Hello, Mark Bailey" at any eastbounders I see today in order to really blow his son's mind. Things started to get hard with the wind, although mercifully the rain held off. At Huron, OH, I finally turned inland leaving Lake Erie, and I had some hopes that I would leave the wind with it. This didn't happen, but I did start rolling across farm country and felt like I had finally made it into the midwest. Then my knee started hurting. Ever since I was a teenager, I've had chondromalasia in both knees. It flares up from time to time on trips like this one, especially after a bunch of long days such as I have just done. The only thing to do for it is to slacken the pace and take shorter days. So today I bailed out at my first opportunity after my knee gave out, hence the 56 miles and motel. Tomorrow I will shoot for Bowling Green, OH, which was originally my goal for today. Adding a day might be all it takes, or it might not; I'm not especially worried since I had a bad flare up in both knees somewhere around South Carolina on my last trans-America, and I went on to finish in Seattle. Day 12 Date: Wednesday July 4, 2001 Distance: 55 miles Moving average speed: 12.3 mph Left at 9:30 AM Arrived at 4:20 PM Overnight at Childers' home in Tontogany, OH Latitude Longitude Cumulative distance: 973 miles The day started late because I did not expect my knees to have recovered enough to make it a long one. My plan since yesterday had been to spend the night in Bowling Green, OH, thereby dividing what would have been a single day from Lorain to Bowling Green into two days: Lorain to Clyde and then Clyde to Bowling Green. The route out of Clyde follows a bicycle path (a converted railroad right of way as they often are) to Fremont, OH. Unsurprisingly, bicycle paths are a great place to meet other cyclists, and today was no exception. Tim Brutsche works for the Post Office in Clyde and is an avid cyclist. He's done a few group tours around Ohio and hopes to try long distance loaded touring someday. His dedication to the sport extended to underwriting a bench beside the trail, proudly emblazoned with his name. By the time we reached Fremont a steady rain was falling, so we hid under a park shelter in Fremont to wait it out which ended up being an opportunity for me to give him a show-n-tell about my bicycle and assorted gizmos. The rain abated after about an hour and I was on my way with Bowling Green as the destination of the moment. As the weather cleared, the wind built up to something just short of a roaring gale from the southwest. Every so often the route would change from due west to due north (the roads in rural Ohio are laid out strictly along the cardinal compass directions) and I would get a brief taste of tailwind and some notion of what the east- bounders experience in the midwest. Those guys have it easy. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sat Jul 7 22:45:11 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA22134; Sat, 7 Jul 2001 22:43:47 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107080243.WAA22134@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Cc: tripoli@hotmail.com, timofclyde@yahoo.com, childers@wcnet.org Subject: Bike Diary #6 Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2001 19:30 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 11 Day 13 Date: Thursday July 5, 2001 Distance: 85 miles Moving average speed: 13.1 mph Left at: 8:00 AM Arrived at: 4:00 PM Overnight in: cyclist shelter in Monroeville, IN Latitude 40 d 58 m 7 s N Longitude 84 d 51 m 55 s W Cumulative distance: 1058 miles Today I passed two major milestones: I crossed another state border (Ohio to Indiana, and yes, I took that picture of the sign), and I logged my 1000th mile. Now it's easy to extrapolate forward: if I covered 1000 miles in 13 days then I should cover 4000 miles in 52 days, which is 7 weeks and 3 days, within the range of my 6-to-8 week predeparture prediction. 52 days from my starting date (June 23) is August 13. I would estimate the error on that prediction to be +/- 4 days, on the grounds that I added 1 day of riding to the first 1000 miles to nurse an injured knee, which extrapolates to 4 days over 4000 miles. The weather today was fine, sunny with a high in the 70s, and the riding conditions would have been perfect were it not for the damn headwind. It was from the northwest this time, so I could get a little component of it behind me every time my route turned a little bit south. But along the stretches of roads aligned due west it was a real grind. I should digress on the subject of that headwind. If I could have a nickel for every time somebody has told me that I am riding the "wrong way" across the country because the prevailing winds blow from west to east, then I would start getting invited to Bill Gates' parties. Generally speaking, my interlocutors do not even appreciate the full difficulty of riding from east to west, because not only are the prevailing winds against you, but so are the prevailing hills. You may recall from a previous Bike Diary entry my discussion of why it is that one should always prefer to go gradually down hill as opposed to an exhilerating rapid descent that squanders all the energy gained from climbing into wind resistance (this is not my opinion, it is a fact of physics). Well, if you think about it, Denver is a mile high (5000 feet above sea level), but still east of the Front Range of the Rockies. The Mississippi River, on the other hand, is only a few hundred feet above sea level. This is true everywhere as you approach the Rockies from the east (for example, Cut Bank, MT on my route is just short of 4000 feet elevation). Therefore, going west across the great plains you are gradually climbing, only to rapidly descend again when you get across the continental divide. The eastbounders, on the other hand, get the benefit of playing out their altitude gain gradually over a long distance as they descend across the great plains. So, why go west? Personally, I feel that flying to the west coast and bicycling back is the moral equivalent of getting air lifted to the top of Everest, skiing down to the base camp and then claiming to have climbed the mountain. It is as if you wanted the bragging rights to say you rode your bicycle across the country, but you wanted to obtain them with the least amount of exertion necessary. If you live on the east coast, and you want to ride across the continent, it seems perfectly obvious to me that what you need to do is ride west. One should not undertake such a project as this if you want to do something easy. OK, end of tirade. Just remember this the next time you meet someone who claims to have bicycled across the country: the westbounders are the real cyclists. Speaking of westbounders, I may be closing in on some ahead of me. I stopped in at the bicycle store in Defiance, OH to see if they had any news of westbounders. Apparently a couple, short in stature, had passed through four days ago. I wonder if this is the same couple making a perimeter tour that I heard about from the scruffy eastbounder on route 20 in upstate NY (see Day 4, Bike Diary #2). If so, they were 8-9 days ahead of me then and are only 4 days ahead of me now, so I may be closing the gap. In 10 days I've gained 4 on them, with 4 more to go, so I would guess that I will probably catch up to them in another 10 days, around July 15. Stay tuned. I'm spending tonight in Monroeville, IN. Monroeville is like the set of a Frank Capra movie: you have your supper in the Village Cafe (two fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy and a side salad for six bucks) and a chocolate malted from the Whippy Dip for dessert. The clientele of the Whippy Dip is a small crowd of flirting teenagers, there's a little league baseball game going on the playing field in the city park, and after dark the fireflies come out in swarms. You may have thought that places like this didn't exist any more, but here in middle America civil small town life is alive and well. You don't lock up your bike and you don't worry about it, either. My accomodation here in Monroeville is a pavillion in the city park that has been set up as a shelter specifically for long distance touring cyclists. There's a small bathroom with every imaginable amenity from warm shower to washer/dryer for your laundry. The hospitable residents of Monroeville expect nothing in return: you can leave a donation but there's no obligation. There's a guest book where you can leave your name, starting point and destination, and from the list of names it appears that Monroeville is a popular destination for touring cyclists: there's a few coming through every couple of days. I scanned the list for evidence of westbounders ahead of me to no avail. Day 14 Date: Friday July 6, 2001 Distance: 83 miles Moving average speed: 14.1 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 2:30 PM Overnight in Salamonie River State Forest near Wabash, IN Latitude 40 d 48 m 42 s N Longitude 85 d 41 m 53 s W Cumulative distance: 1141 Although I rode 83 miles today, I only advanced 56 along the route to Seattle. There were two reasons for the extra 27 miles today, the first was an inadvertent detour first thing in the morning when I left Monroeville headed in the wrong direction. Here's and important fact for you future trans-America cyclists to remember: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Therefore, if you are navigating the midwestern grid on a sunny morning thinking that you are going west but you do not see your shadow in front of you, then something is terribly wrong. It took me about three or four miles to notice this discrepancy, miles which I had to double back, of course. The second detour was up to Fort Wayne to pick up some mail that my friends Maria and Kate sent me (thanks Kate! thanks Maria!). I love mail. The rest of the day was full of county roads and cornfields in Indiana. The wind more or less behaved itself today, starting the morning from the southeast before settling back into its usual pattern of coming from the southwest. It wasn't much of a wind in either direction, maybe 5-10 mph. I could easily have made it a longer day, but there is a real scarcity of services along this particular stretch of the route. The next campground is 38 miles farther on, and there isn't a motel in the next 87 miles. I probably could have managed the 38 miles to the next campground, but in deference to my still aching knees I quit much earlier in the afternoon than I would normally. It looks like I made an impressively early start today, but that turns out to be a bit of a trick. Although most of Indiana is in the eastern time zone, the state does not observe daylight savings time (except for the part in the cental time zone, just for maximum confusion) so at this time of year I crossed into the central time zone for all practical purposes when I crossed the Indiana border. My campground tonight is a "primitive facility" which translates to no shower and pit toilets. Generally speaking, I don't much mind primitive campgrounds as they are generally alot emptier than the ones that cater to the RV crowd and provide full hookups (water and electrical). This one is an exception to that rule: there's hardly a vacant site. I suppose it must be because of the holiday weekend since there isn't anything terribly exciting to do in the neighborhood. Most of the other campers are sitting in their sites experimenting with all the noise-making gear they have brought along (firecrackers, car stereos, bongo drums, you name it). Oh well, after all these days on the road I think I could sleep through anything. Day 15 Date: Saturday July 7, 2001 Distance: 86 miles Moving average speed: 12.1 mph Left at 9:30 AM Arrived at 6:15 PM Overnight in White House B&B in Rensselaer, IN Latitude 40 d 55 m 52 s N Longitude 87 d 9 m 6 s W Cumulative distance: 1227 miles I awoke this morning at 5 AM (EST) to the sound of distant thunder. At first, I didn't realize that it was thunder I was hearing. I'm accustomed to thunder as an intermitent booming; the sound I hear this morning was a continuous background. After I had ruled out military aircraft on manueovers as a possible source for the sound I heard, I realized that I was in big trouble. My immediate thought was "strike the tent and seek shelter". That probably seems strange to alot of people who figure that the tent IS shelter, but you may recall from my first night's experience that if the tent is pitched on a slope, then it provides precious little shelter from runoff soaking through the floor of the tent. I had once again pitched the tent on a slope, not expecting rain. In fact, it seemed that most of the folks in the campground were not expecting (or at least prepared for) the rain that came. By 6 AM I had my gear stowed my gear and loaded on the bicycle, and I moved myself and the bicycle to the only shelter on the campground: a pavillion that protected, ironically enough, the campground's water supply. The water supply itself was nothing but a spigot, but it spilled into a catch basin that looked like it came out of a coroner's office: it was a shallow sink no wider than usual but long enough to lay down in. The pavillion overhangs this sink by three or four feet on any side, therefore the entire sheltered area was no bigger than about eight by ten feet. At 6:10 AM the rains came with a vengance. I cannot remember the last time I saw such torrential rain and so much lightning. I believe that more than four inches of rain fell during the next three and a half hours, with lightning hitting very close to where I was standing. I now could under- stand why the distant thunder had been continuous, because I was now standing in the middle of it. And there I stood, for about three and a half hours, making light conversation with some of the other campers who dared step out in the storm and waiting for it to end. One guy seemed to have an unnaturally detailed knowledge of the roads and motels of Indiana; when I asked him what line of work he was in he said he was following power lines. Apparently utilities hire these guys to go around the state following the power lines to make sure there are no trees nearby that threaten to fall on them. At 9:30 AM it was clear that the worst of the storm had passed and I decided to head out and make the most of what was left of the day. I'm pretty much ready to get out of Indiana, having already spent more time crossing Ohio than I had hoped. The day started out as a more or less routine one of grinding out miles across cornfields. The wind was quite strong in the aftermath of the storm, but it had returned to its normal direction (southwest), so I concluded that the rain was probably over for the day. The weather was hot and humid, and the pace pretty slow. I ran into some eastbounders in Denver, IN. I wouldn't have recognized them as tourists because they were travelling on unloaded bikes, but one of them stopped to talk to me. They are a group of three men in their late 50s/early 60s doing the Northern Tier in sections while somebody's wife drives the camper/sag-wagon behind. Boy, these guys have it easy: not only are they eastbound but supported as well! And he had the nerve to complain to me about headwinds! "Take a look at that flag" I said. My goal for today after I realized that it would be abbreviated by rain was to make it to Rensselaer, IN. I'm passing through a part of Indiana where the campgrounds are scarce (and so is the population), so I had to shoot for a town with a motel. Upon, arriving in Rensselaer, I was greeted by a parade of hot-rods (in fact, some locals had stopped me about two miles from town to warn me that it was happening today). I would estimate that there was well over one hundred cars in the parade, and after it was over they proceeded to cruise the town revving engines and peeping tires much to the delight of the townsfolk, who had turned out to the last man to observe the spectacle. I suppose this is some sort of July Forth weekend event that happens every year. I ended up picking the B&B for the night since the only other option was a motel on the interstate. It might have been cheaper, but I would really hate staying on an interstate strip four miles outside of town. At least this way I could walk around town and watch the cars go by. I think I was making slightly better time on foot than the cruisers were, but maybe that's their point. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sat Jul 7 22:46:10 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA22190; Sat, 7 Jul 2001 22:44:36 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107080244.WAA22190@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Cc: tripoli@hotmail.com, timofclyde@yahoo.com, childers@wcnet.org Subject: Bike Diary #5, addendum Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 18:36 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 12 I was in abit of a rush to get the last Bike Diary entry off, and so I left out what is probably the most important part. The more perceptive readers may have noticed that I reported spending the night at "Childers' home" near Bowling Green, Ohio. I was wandering the rectilinear roads of northwest Ohio realizing that I had missed my turn onto Tontogany Road and trying to improvise an alternative route (not too hard given the strict adherance of the roads to the cardinal directions) when a red Mazda passed me and then stopped ahead of me. Chuck Childers noticed my load, assumed I was riding a long distance and asked the standard question "where to and where from?". After boggling his mind a little bit with my response, he asked where I was spending the night. I had already overshot Bowling Green, which had for a while been my destination for that day, on account of my knee starting to feel a little better, and was thinking about adding an extra 14 miles or so to the day to spend the night a Mary Jane Thurston State Park near Grand Rapids, OH. Then Chuck asked me what I was having for dinner. I made a vague motion toward my pannier and said "I have some pasta I bought in Bowling Green." Next thing I knew, he had invited me to join his family for dinner and a quiet July 4 celebration at their home. I couldn't think of a good reason not to take him up on the offer, so I did. Chuck gives me his address and says he'll meet me there after he and his son, Seth, are done running a quick errand. "We're getting firecrackers!" Seth gleefully explains. Interestingly, their home is on the road that I missed turning on when I got lost, i.e. right on the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route. I told them that if they wanted to make it a habit to take in wandering cyclists, there would probably be a good supply passing by (in fact, I was a little bit surprised that they hadn't noticed any before me ... maybe alot of folks are missing that turn). Chuck's wife, Barb, has recently rediscovered cycling and has been riding a trail near their home nearly every day. I think I may have planted the seed of an idea with them to go a little bit farther on their bicycles. I've become something of a bicycle touring evangelist on this trip. Anyway, they fed me, gave me a place to sleep, and Barb even did my laundry! (Just in the nick of time, actually ... things were getting pretty stinky). Their hospitality was way above and beyond what is due to a stranger ... it's good to know that there are people like that in the world. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Mon Jul 9 22:32:06 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA11204; Mon, 9 Jul 2001 22:29:29 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107100229.WAA11204@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Cc: tripoli@hotmail.com, timofclyde@yahoo.com, childers@wcnet.org Subject: Bike Diary #7 Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:35 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 13 Day 16 Date: Sunday July 8, 2001 Distance: 54 miles Moving average speed: 14.6 mph Left at 9:30 AM (EST) Arrived at 2:40 PM (CDT) Overnight in Ashkum City Park, Ashkum, IL Latitude 40 d 52 m 43 s N Longitude 87 d 57 m 4 s W Cumulative distance: 1281 miles Today started late: the B&B didn't serve breakfast until 8:30 AM and there was no way I was going to miss mine. My knee had been acting up quite a bit yesterday, there were some incidents so painful that I was forced to stop the bike, pant and cuss for a little while before proceeding. I even contemplated staying an extra day in Rensselaer to rest it, but remarkably enough it didn't feel so bad this morning so I figured to make it a short day instead. Early in the day I crossed the border into Illinois on a county road so obscure that the state had not bothered to erect a "Welcome to Illinois" sign there. The only indication that I had crossed a political boundary was a subtle change in the quality of the road surface. Thus I was deprived of the opportunity to take a photograph of my bicycle leaning against a sign. The riding was more midwestern routine: ride as many miles as you can before the wind kicks up in the early afternoon, then shift down and grind until evening. At least, that was my plan. Things went pretty much according to plan, and the knee was feeling pretty good, so I was even contemplating pushing on to the next town, Odell, beyond my original destination of Ashkum. I should digress a moment on the subject of Gatorade. The near ubiquitous market penetration of this beverage makes for one of the great simple pleasures of long distance bicycle touring. It is cold and sweet, practically every small town convenience store stocks it, and generally a 32 oz bottle can be had for less than two bucks. It also provides a convenient excuse to ask the folks at the store to fill your bottles with water; after all you are now a customer, not just some schmoe off the street. It takes me less than ten minutes to drain one, although if I feel like lingering I can stretch it out to fifteen or twenty. Thus, the touring cyclist can sate his thirst and replenish his electrolytes in about the time it takes to rest the legs without stiffening them. It was the lure of Gatorade that made me pause in Ashkum, although by this point my strengthening knee had caused me to push my goal for the day to Odell, 40 miles farther on. And it was definitely a place to gulp not sip; there was nothing but a convenience store parking lot to linger in. However, it was as I was gulping that I happened to look to the southwest and saw dark clouds on the horizon. Now, my experience two days ago in the Salamonie State Forest had taught me a profound respect for midwestern thunderstorms. And there was something about those clouds that just didn't look peaceful to me. According to my map, the town of Ashkum allows cyclists to camp in the city park (city parks are actually a rather common way of bridging the long gaps between campgrounds in the middle of the country), but one should get "permission from the mayor" first. There was no telephone number listed for the mayor, so I figured to roll down and have a look at the park and see if it was the kind of place I would like to stay before trying to figure out how to reach him. When I got there, there was a small group of maybe 20-25 people gathered under the pavillion in the park. It looked like quite a reasonable place to overnight, so I pulled out my map to look up the telephone number of the police department, figuring they would know how to reach the mayor. At this point, one of the men under the pavillion walks up to me and introduces himself as Ed Tholen. He tells me that quite a few cyclists have overnighted here, and I would be welcome to as well. I tell him that my map says that I should get permission from the mayor, and he tells me that the mayor was here just a minute ago, but had to leave to fight a fire. Apparently the mayor is also on the volunteer fire department. Fortunately, Ed tells me, the mayor's mother is here to act as his proxy. The mayor's family, the Heidemans are having one of their annual reunions in the park today. That said, he summons Ruth Heideman, and I very formally ask her permission to bivouac in the park, which she grants. I move my bike under the cover of the pavillion and start chewing the fat with Ed. Naturally, most folks are interested in getting some idea of the scale of the project: how far are you going? how far have you come? how long have you been on the road? when do you expect to finish? how far have you come today? I felt a little need to make excuses for the puny 54 miles I had covered today. After all, I was quitting at 2:30 PM with plenty of daylight left to burn. But my knee was sore, you see, and I don't much like the look of those clouds on the horizon. "Well, you're welcome to stay," says Ed, "but I don't think it will rain today." Not ten minutes after those words were uttered, a torrential rain started pounding the pavillion. Ed is forced to eat his words in front of his family, but does so as gracefully as one can. In the meantime, dessert is being served and I am invited to join in. The mayor, Paul Heineman, returns from the fire for his dessert. A man in his mid-thirties, he has been mayor of Ashkum for the last 16 years, elected to his first term as a write-in candidate at the age of 20. He's been a volunteer fireman even longer. Paul had run into another cyclist at the convenience store where I drank my Gatorade and offered him the use of the park facilities. But apparently that cyclist had decided to try to get to the next motel (east or west, I don't know, going west he would have faced another 35 miles, east 54). We all congratulated my prudence and admonished his foolhardiness. But we didn't know the half of it yet. After dessert, as folks were packing up, the storm really starts to pick up. We all moved into the enclosed kitchen at the end of the pavillion to avoid the rain being blown under it. At this point the storm releases its full fury: the wind really kicks up, blowing down a 40-foot tree in the city park and a number of limbs from other trees as we watched from the kitchen. Tremendous quantities of rain were blown horizontal by the wind and visibility was reduced to nil. It was the sort of storm that kicks up twisters in this neck of the woods (which apparently it did, a little to the south of Ashkum), and I was awfully pleased to be watching it from inside the city park pavillion kitchen instead of riding through it. I have no idea what happened to the other cyclist; if he was westbound I might yet catch up to him. However it was clear that I had dodged a bullet, and a pretty big one at that. After the storm abated, the Heidemans and Tholens started to ply me with the leftovers from their reunion. It was as if the full bounty of the midwest was laid out before me on a plate: fried chicken, meatloaf, corn, cakes, pies cookies, coffee, so much food that even in my depleted state I had a hard time doing it justice. Day 17 Date: Monday July 9, 2001 Distance: 100 miles Moving average speed: 14.5 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 4:30 PM Overnight in Henry Harbor Inn, Henry, IL Latitude 41 d 6 m 38 s N Longitude 89 d 21 m 6 s W Cumulative distance: 1381 miles I managed to get an early start today, which helped alot since the afternoon temperatures were brutally hot. The day quickly turned into a routine midwestern grind, and although the air was hot and humid, it was mercifully still and I was able to make pretty good time. The riding can sometimes get a little dull. When there are two crops then there are only four scenes to bike through: corn on the left with soybeans on the right, corn on the right with soybeans on the left, corn on both sides, and soybeans on both sides. I don't know who's eating all this stuff, but there sure must be alot of them given all the acres of Illinois devoted to growing it. Just east of Cornell, IL I ran into two eastbounders: a teacher from southeastern Idaho and his 13-year-old son riding from their home to a family reunion in Ohio. They got pummelled in the storm yesterday and had to take shelter in an abandoned farm house. I admire the boy for going on a trip like this instead of sitting at home playing video games (not that I haven't been known to play a few myself). I was not much older than he (15?) when my dad took me on my first long-distance tour: a much more modest trip from Florida to North Carolina. The other small surprise was in Cornell where the store where I bought my Gatorade had a registry for all the cyclists passing through to sign in. There was a couple going from New Jersey to British Columbia about five days ahead of me whose names I had seen in the registry in the Monroeville park. I can't remember how much they preceded me by there, so I can't tell if I'm gaining on them or falling behind. When doing long distance bicycle trips, one becomes a good deal more familiar with the road-builder's art than the average citizen. The word "tarmac" derives from tar-macadam, which pretty completely describes the process of building a road with this surface. Take any old county dirt road, pour tar on it, pour macadam on that, and then crush the latter into the former and you can claim a hard-surface road. (BTW, the "tarmac" at most major airports is actually made of concrete). Adventure Cycling promises to route cyclists only on hard-surface roads. However, in their zeal to keep us away from traffic, the route across Illinois mostly travels on county roads with tarmac surfaces. Tarmac is just fine for bicycling in about 70 degrees, but on a hot, sultry afternoon reaching into the 90s such as the one just passed, the tar softens, sticks to the tires of the bicycle and then picks up loose macadam until the entire circumference of the tire is encrusted. Meanwhile, since the entire weight of the bicycle, load and cyclist are supported on two very small points (the tires are inflated to 100 PSI and don't distend much), the bicycle tends to sink into the tar a bit. The net effect is something like pushing a tank through molasses. Late in the afternoon as the tarmac was softening and I was nearing the end of strength, I had pretty nearly made up my mind that as soon as I reached a state road with an asphalt surface I was going to take my chances with the traffic and stay on the hard surface, freelancing my own route to Muscatine if necessary (I have a very good Illinois state map for just such occassions). But the Adventure Cycling route picked up State Road 17 and then Tax School Road, both of which had asphalt surfaces and that brought me into Henry without any more tarmac. I did get a bit of a treat on Tax School Road when a combine harvester pulled out just in front of me. For those of you unfamiliar with the more advanced techniques of midwestern cycling, a combine harvester is just about the perfect vehicle to draft: they cruise at about 18 mph and have an enormous cross-section to the wind. You might get a faceful of chaff, but hey, that's the price of a free ride. Anyway, I got about three miles of effortless cycling before he turned off again, and it was just the morale boost I needed to finish today's century. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sun Jul 15 23:37:34 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA19869; Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:34:50 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107160334.XAA19869@frank.harvard.edu> Cc: tripoli@hotmail.com, timofclyde@yahoo.com, childers@wcnet.org To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #8 Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 19:10 -0400 Day 18 Date: Tuesday July 10, 2001 Distance: 76 miles Moving average speed: 12.1 mph Left at 6:30 AM Arrived at 2:40 PM Overnight in Hillcrest Resort Campground near Orion, IL Latitude 41 d 23 m 19 s N Longitude 90 d 21 m 48 s W Cumulative distance: 1456 miles Forewarned by the forecasters that today would be as brutally hot and humid as yesterday was, I decided to start early and make it a short enough day so that I would not spend the long, hot afternoon riding. Things worked out more or less according to that plan. The topography got a little more interesting today: there were some rolling hills which were actually a welcome relief from the monotony of the last few days. The wind was back up again, from the northwest and starting earlier in the day than usual (11:30 AM instead of 1:30 PM). There are still endless acres of corn and soybeans surrounding me (about equal quantities of both crops), but there were some farms that actually had livestock today: cows, pigs and even horses. The appearance of livestock is generally interpreted as an indication that the quality of the soil is poorer since grazing animals is not the most economical use of top quality farm land. I managed to wear almost all the tar off my tires today only to be greeted by yet another tarmac road for the last three miles before the campground. This was at 2:30 PM on a hot, hot afternoon. The tires were quickly coated with tar, and when I hit the gravel road into the campground they picked up enough stones so that the rear wheel literally got jammed by stones caught between the tire and fender. It was a real nuisance. I hope states farther west don't have the same fondness for this miserable type of pavement. The campground I'm staying at tonight is called a resort because of the two additional facilities it offers: a swimming pool and a golf course. The appeal of the swimming pool is obvious to anyone who was outside today, and I and a large sample of the local juvenile population took advantage of it. The golf course is a little more surprising. Naively, I would have thought that the rugged Illinois farmers would want nothing to do with an idle pastime such as golf, but even on a sweltering weekday there were a good number of them out there. I learned from a local that once the corn and soybean harvests are in, a large fraction of rural population of Illinois packs up and heads to Florida. Apparently they see no need to remain through the brutal midwestern winter while the fields lie idle anyway. So I suppose they want to keep their game sharp until they hit the links in Orlando this winter. Perhaps they are not as rugged as they look. The campground also has a registry for long distance cyclists, and I found the eastbounders (Idaho to Ohio) that I encountered yesterday had stayed here three days ago. Now I have names that I can put on the caption to the photograph I took of them: Steve and Jake Hill riding from Montpelier, ID to Ohio. Day 19 Date: Wednesday July 11, 2001 Distance: 106 miles Moving average speed: 14.4 mph Left at 8:20 AM Arrived at 5:15 PM Overnight in Sunset Motel, Wyoming, IA Latitude 42 d 3 m 31 s N Longitude 91 d 0 m 54 s W Cumulative distance: 1562 miles It was a late start today, for no particularly good reason. The weather was a good deal cooler, as promised by the forecasts, so I had no trouble riding right through the long afternoon. At the start of the day, I rode south out of Orion a couple of miles before turning west, and then I experienced a most remarkable thing. I looked up at the trees beside the road and I could see the bottoms of the leaves. "Good Lord Almighty", I thought, "a tailwind." Sure enough, the wind had changed from southwest (the prevailing pattern in these parts) to due east. Naturally, this change came on the day that my route would turn from due west to due north, so that after the first 35 miles the tailwind became a crosswind in accordance with the Principle of Maximum Perversity. But it was good while it lasted, and I even visited my big chainring for the first time in three states. I made my big right turn from due west to due north in Muscatine, Iowa, where I crossed both the Mississippi River and the Iowa border. I managed to get a photo of the sign, although it was pretty overgrown so I suspect it will be hard to see the bicycle leaning against it. Muscatine is quite a beautiful riverside town; I had lunch there and then moved on. I was told by the waitress that the RAGBRAI ("Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa" -- a huge event that draws thousands of cyclists annually) is finishing in Muscatine this year. I'm running due north now, short-cutting the long meander east that the Mississippi River makes on the Iowa-Illinois border. I'll rejoin it again just short of the Minnesota border at Marquette, IA. So far, Iowa has been all rolling hills, a welcome change from the flat country in Indiana and Illinois, although perhaps it gets tired after a couple hundred miles, too. Strangely enough, these hills seem to be theraputic for the knees; at least, I managed a hundred miles of them without more than the occassional twinge. I would like to comment on the preposterous notion that the difficulty of a bicycle ride can be measured in miles. Certainly, all things being equal, long distances are harder than short ones, but all things never are equal. Distance is only one of many parameters that affect how hard a ride will be. What direction was the wind? Did you ride round trip or one way? How much climbing? What was the temperature? Did it rain? Did you ride alone or draft in a group? Was the bicycle loaded or light? Were there any mechanical failures? "105 miles" doesn't answer any of these questions, but they are all very important if you want to know how difficult the ride was. Today's 105 miles were considerably easier than yesterday's 76, because the wind was favorable, the temperature was cooler and the hills entertaining without being demanding. I ran into two eastbounders today, just north of Bennett, IA. Another father and son team, Vince and Vince Suich were riding from Seattle supported by mother Suich driving the sag wagon behind. Vince the younger, a man in his twenties, was riding an upright well in advance of his father, but because it was unloaded I didn't try to stop and talk to him. Vince the elder was riding a recumbant, and he stopped me. He told me his machine sufferred from the same problem all recumbant bicycles have: it doesn't climb worth a damn. He also told me that they had passed a group of five westbounders in Dyersville, IA yesterday. That puts them about 140 miles ahead of me, or about two days. I don't think I can close that gap before Minneapolis, where I am going to layover for a couple of days. I'm hoping to get to Minneapolis on Sunday. My hosts in Minneapolis are the parents of a good friend and coworker, Andrew Howard. Strangely enough, it appears that Andrew will be in Minneapolis not long after I arrive. This has tempted me to violate one of the cardinal rules of long-distance touring: never take off more than one day at a time. If things go according to plan, I will arrive in Minneapolis on Sunday and Andrew on Tuesday early in the afternoon. I would really like to see him, but I don't know how long I will want to linger in Minneapolis with westbounders in sight ahead of me. I'm in a motel tonight which is just about the only place to stay for 25 miles on either side. It's a small town motel with a sort of faded modernity to it: it must have seemed very modern about forty years ago. For example, the telephone is a great, heavy black thing with a single button and a note which says "to call lift receiver push button". (I wonder when they had to add that note. There was undoubtably a time when this was standard equipment for motels.) If you lift the handset, you don't get a dial tone. I suspect the entire motel shares a single line that is manually switched at the front desk. The owners are a man and wife team who have run the motel since it was built and, sadly, are selling out to retire to a mobile home near Cedar Rapids. I only hope that new owners have some respect for the place. Day 20 Date: Thursday July 12, 2001 Distance: 75 miles Moving average speed: 13.6 mph Left at 8:20 AM Arrived at 4:45 PM Overnight in Elkader City Park Campground, Elkader, IA Latitude 42 d 50 m 55 s N Longitude 91 d 23 m 45 s W Cumulative distance: 1637 miles It was a late start again today, again for no particularly good reason. The weather was good, wind from the east again now that it doesn't do me any good. I made a long stop in Dyersville to visit the "National Farm Toy Museum". When I saw the sign from the road, I couldn't resist, but I had no idea that it would be as elaborate a museum as it turned out to be. It seems that there are no less than three major manufacturers of farm toys (toy tractors, model barns, etc) located in Dyersville. The biggest one is Ertl, which has been making toy tractors in Dyersville since the 40s. The museum has a huge collection of model tractors of every sort on display. My campground tonight is in the city park in Elkader. It is an incredibly popular one; I don't think there is a vacant site. It's right on state road 13, which carries a relatively large amount of traffic. The combination is pretty noisy. Elkader itself is a charming "Main Street USA" sort of town on the Turkey River, which is a popular trout stream. My neighbor in the next campsite gave me a couple of filets that were a nice complement to my otherwise bland (and not too filling) pasta supper. He'll be up even earlier than me to hit the streams again tomorrow. I encountered another eastbounder today, about fvie miles south of Elkader, IA. Matt Allen is riding from Huntington Beach, CA to Bangor, ME to raise money for breast cancer research (see http://www.rideforcancer.com/). He's on a recumbant, pulling a BOB ("Beast Of Burden") trailer behind, and having problems with his chain that are forcing him on to the next town with a bike shop, Dyersville. The county roads in Iowa are surprisingly well made. One I rode today, named "X3C" in Clayton County, was well graded and paved with concrete (as opposed to asphalt or macadam). The concrete was a bit broken up at the south end, but farther north it was essentially flawless. This policy of using concrete for paving county (and some state) roads seems to be common in Iowa. Day 21 Date: Friday July 13, 2001 Distance: 95 miles Moving average speed: 12.9 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 5:30 PM Overnight in Ranch Motel, La Crescent, MN Longitude 43 d 49 m 36 s N Latitude 91 d 18 m 10 s W Cumulative distance: 1732 miles A fairly uneventful ride today. I got a reasonably early start, the temperature was moderate, and the wind was against me. I encountered an eastbounder north of Elkader on State Road 13. Michael Murphy is an Irishman who lives in Boston (Dorchester, actually) who flew to Anacortes, WA and rode east. He's headed for Bangor, ME, the end of the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route. I rejoined the Mississippi River in Marquette, IA and crossed the border into Minnesota at New Albin. Yes, I got my photo; very nice sign marking the Minnesota border on state road 26. I had a bizarre conversation with a local in New Albin, IA. It started the usual way with the standard questions: how far are you going? how far have you come? how long has it taken? what kind of work do you do that let's you take that much time off? Generally, I don't tell casual acquaintances like this that I am a graduate student in physics at Harvard, because after telling them that I am riding a bicycle from Boston to Seattle, this makes one too many unbelievable answers and I fear would make my interrogator suspect that I have been bullshitting all along. So my standard answer is that I am "a computer programmer between jobs", which is approximately true (I was once a programmer, and I undoubtably will be again) and if I ran into another computer programmer I would be able to talk a pretty good fight. This guy in New Albin wasn't a programmer, but he did want a website, and he starts asking me alot of questions about how he should set up his website and his email. I had half a notion to say something like, "hey, I'm on vacation, and if I wasn't, I get paid alot to answer questions like that", but instead I got dragged into a long discussion which he tooks notes on throughout. Arrgh. Everywhere I go, I am the Computer Guy. Day 22 Date: Saturday July 14, 2001 Distance: 75 miles Moving average speed: 14.0 mph Left at 6:30 AM Arrived at 3:30 PM Overnight in Hok-Si-La City Park, Lake City, MN Latitude 44 d 28 m 25 s N Longitude 92 d 17 m 29 s W Cumulative distance 1806 miles I got an early start today simply because I woke up early and had nothing better to do than ride the bicycle. I was about 10 miles out of La Crescent when I saw signs for a "bicycle campground" in the Great River Bluffs State Park. Imagine that: a campground exclusively devoted to bicyclists. In all the years I've been touring, I've never seen another. Even more remarkable, this campground is not shown on the Adventure Cycling map. I will send them a little nastygram about that. Like all Adventure Cycling routes, the route along the Mississippi River in Minnesota strives to avoid traffic at any expense: additional mileage and redundant grade included. There is a rapid gain in elevation as you leave the Mississippi River going west into Minnesota, and the only reasonable thing to do if you want to go from one point on the river to another point on the river is to follow the river. Water has this way of always finding the lowest, levellest path. Between La Cresent (where I stayed last night) and Lake City (where I am staying tonight), this means US Route 61 which, along with the Canadian Pacific Railway's Soo Line, hugs the western edge of the river. Adventure Cycling was forced to take Route 61 in some places, but they leave it at every opportunity. Every time they do, they force the cyclist to climb between 300 and 500 feet of elevation only to return to the level of the river a few miles later. That is a textbook example of redundant grade. There are reasons to avoid Route 61: it has a 65 mph speed limit and heavy truck traffic. On the other hand, there is a wide paved shoulder and if you're going to have to ride it anyway, why go to all the trouble of doing all that climbing just to avoid a couple of miles of Route 61? Anyway, I saw alot of local cyclists riding on it, so it must be a common thing to do. The one tricky bit is just a mile west of La Cresent where Route 61 joins Interstate 90 for about four miles. As I discovered this morning, it turns out that the state of Minnesota is on your side. Just at the point where you are about to pass the "Freeway Entrance" sign there is another sign that says "Bike Route" and puts you onto a two mile long path from the interchange to Dresbach, where another "Bike Route" sign guides you onto Winona County road 11 for the remaining two miles before Route 61 leaves the interstate in Dakota. Not far at all after I had rejoined Route 61 north of Dakota I saw the signs for the bicycle campground. Had I known that only ten miles lay between me and this campground when I arrived in La Crescent last night, I surely would have stayed there instead of in a motel. But Adventure Cycling only shows one campground in the Great River Bluffs State Park, which is accessed by climbing 500 feet on a county road and then travelling 3 miles on gravel. I couldn't see facing that at the end of a 95 mile day so I took a motel. I hailed another eastbounder today. Justin Kristan is riding from Stillwater, MN to Bar Harbor, ME along the Nothern Tier Route. I encoutered him west of Winona on Route 61; he was on his third day out from Stillwater. That means he's averaging something like 50 miles per day, which is about typical for tourists. He plans to continue from Bar Harbor and do a complete perimeter tour in one year, and he has a website: readingaroundamerica.com. He was riding on 32 spoke wheels, which is really daring even considering that most of his load was on a BOB trailer. Not far west of Weaver, MN, I saw a group of recreational cyclists who were dropping onto Route 61 from county road 14. They were a good way ahead of me, so I had to open the throttle a bit to catch them, running a 104 pound bicycle at 18-20 mph for about four miles before I did. I'm glad I did catch them, they turned out to be a pretty interesting group. They meet every Saturday morning at 8:00 AM at a coffee shop ("Eagles Nest Cafe") in Wabasha and ride until noon. Then they do the RAGBRAI every year as a team and have converted an old school bus to be their team support vehicle. I rode with them into Wabasha and had a coffee and muffin at the Eagles Nest, where there were photos on display of previous years' RAGBRAI events. >From there, it was an easy 20 mile cruise up to Lake City. Lake City has two campgrounds, Lake Pepin and Hok-Si-La, although why a cyclist would even consider staying at the former I can't fathom. It's right on highway 61 on the opposite side from the lake, has no detectable shade, and is full of RVs. Hok-Si-La, on the other hand, is set way back from the road, has a beach right on Lake Pepin (actually not a lake, just a wide part of the Mississippi River), only allows tent camping, and prohibits cars in the campground (they have to remain in a parking lot at the entrance). The park used to be a Boy Scout Camp, and the name "Hok-Si-La" is an Indian word meaning "gathering place of immature, homophobic, white males", or so I am informed by the woman at the office. Day 23 Date: Sunday July 15, 2001 Distance: 80 miles Moving average speed: 13.9 mph Left at 9:30 AM Arrived at 6:02 PM Overnight in Howard family home, St Louis Park, MN (near Minneapolis) Latitude 44 d 55 m 53 s N Longitude 93 d 21 m 13 s W Cumulative distance: 1886 miles Today was a day of more or less bizarre coincidences. The hostess for my layover in Minneapolis, Julie Howard (my coworker Andrew Howard's mother) was going to spend most of today at a family reunion in Frontenac, MN, just a couple of miles down the road from where I spent last night in Lake City. Julie grew up in Lake City, and the family used to hold reunions at the park where I camped last night. So why should I have been surprised when a car pulled over in front of me on Route 61 north of Red Wing, MN and Jim Howard (Julie's brother) shouts out the driver's side window "Are you Chip?". Julie was sitting next to him in the pasenger seat, so he must have been on the lookout for loaded touring bicycles moving in the opposite direction. My ride into Minneapolis was not entirely a pleasant one. I cannot really recommend Route 61 north of Red Wing for cycling, although there was a wide shoulder. I thought I could cut a corner and shave a few miles off the trip from Red Wing to Hastings by taking State Road 316. This turned out to be a serious error as most of the traffic on Route 61 thought exactly the same thing and State Road 316 lacks the shoulder that US Route 61 has. At any rate, by the time I reached Hastings I had decided that I would have to rethink my strategy for getting into Minneapolis. I had the good luck to run into a man who worked for Dakota County and initimately knew the conditions of all the roads therein in addition to being something of an avid cyclist himself. He gave me good advice on getting across the Mississippi River without getting killed, and suggested that I try a local bike shop to see if I could buy a map of the bicycle trail system in Minneapolis. That store turned out to be a waste of time (except that I could fill my bottles there) as there is nobody working in a bike shop on a summer Sunday afternoon except a bunch of pimply-faced teenagers hired temporarily to cover the summer crush. I think they probably all knew how to ride a bicycle, but they certainly had never tried anything so adventurous as riding one to Minneapolis, scarcely 40 miles away. As luck would have it, as soon as I crossed the river I joined the trail system, and some local cyclists promised to lead me as far as Lake Street, and from that point I pretty much knew how to get to St Louis Park. Unfortunately, the trail system has some places where you must portage your bicycle up and down a couple of flights of stairs. Every try that with a 100 pound loaded touring bike? There was a track on the side of the stairs where you were supposed to be able to roll your bike ... going down my tires slid down the track as I held the brakes and going up I had to push hard to get up a 71% grade! Then I was faced with the seemingly endless series of traffic lights (practically one every block) between the Mississippi River and St Louis Park. Winding up a loaded touring bike just to come to a stop a block later and do it all over again gets tired pretty quickly. Just before I made the turn from Lake to Excelsior, who should pass me but Julie Howard on her way home. We had agreed to meet there "around 6", and amazingly enough it was 6:02 PM when I rolled onto her driveway. Now for two much needed layover days. The chain on the Bob Jackson has 1886 miles on it and should probably be replaced before it takes out the freewheel. The tread on the rear tire is starting to look a little bald, so if I can get another one just like it (Panaracer Pasela Compe, 700X35C for you bike nerds on the list) I will replace it. I haven't had a flat tire yet, so I'm really pleased with this make of tire. I've now crossed seven states (Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa) and have only five left to go (Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Washington), but the geography of the west is on an entirely larger scale, so as I look as my odometer (1886 miles down) and my maps (2045 to go) I realize that I am not even half way there yet after three weeks and two days of hard riding. I suppose I had better rest my knees and redouble my determination because there's still a long way to go. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sun Jul 22 21:28:49 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA23753; Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:27:14 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107230127.VAA23753@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #9 Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:47 -0400 Day 24 Date Monday July 16, 2001 Layover day Not much to report. I replaced the chain on the bicycle since it had over 2000 miles on it, although it probably could have finished the ride it would have taken the freewheel out with it. I spent most of the day relaxing, there are all sorts of aches and pains from fatigue injuries that have accumulated during the first half of the trip. Day 25 Date Tuesday July 17, 2001 Layover day I picked up my mail in Minneapolis today. Thanks, Maria! I still love mail. Andrew, his father, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend all arrived today after driving a station wagon and a rental truck up from California. It's good to see Andrew again; California seems to be treating him pretty well. I'm shipping out first thing in the morning tomorrow since the forecast is calling for a very hot day. Many thanks to the Howard clan for all the hospitality of the past two days. They provided me a chance to take a much needed rest midway through the ride when the long distances had been wearing me down, for which I am very grateful. It was also good to see Andrew Howard again, who left Cambridge even before I did. Day 26 Date Wednesday July 18, 2001 Distance: 78 miles Moving average speed: 14.1 mph Left at 6:45 AM Arrived at 2:00 PM Overnight in Deluxe Motel, Milaca, MN Latitude 45 d 45 m 47 s N Longitude 93 d 39 m 14 s W Cumulative distance 1964 miles I made an early start in the hope that I could stop riding before the afternoon temperatures got out of control. As it happened, although it was a hot, muggy midwestern day, the winds were largely favorable, coming from the south as usual while I was riding north all day. Therefore, I was able to make pretty good time despite the temperature. I decided to make it a short day anyway, in deference to some lingering fatigue injuries from the first half of the trip. Most of the day I was riding due north out of Minneapolis freelancing my own route along the way until I rejoined the Adventure Cycling route just east of Milaca on county road 2. I'm in another small town motel again tonight, this time the closest reasonable campground was another 53 miles farther along the route. Small town motels always seem to have something a little surprising about them. This one, the Deluxe Motel, has a ancient wooden telephone booth in pristine condition in the lobby. I spent some time examining it while I was waiting for someone to meet me at the front desk (you pick up a telephone there and call for service, the desk isn't manned but the proprietors live within easy walking distance). It no longer has a telephone in it, hasn't for about 15 years, but has been there as long as the current owners have been the owners, about 30 years. It seems like small town motels are the museums of vintage telephone equipment, at least to judge by this one and the one in Wyoming, IA. Day 27 Date: Thursday July 19, 2001 Distance: 81 miles Moving average speed: 14.1 mph Left at 6:30 AM Arrived at 4:30 PM Overnight in Budget Host Motel, Long Prairie, MN Latitude 45 d 58 m 7 s N Longitude 94 d 51 m 58 s W Cumulative distance: 2045 miles I got a good early start this morning, warned by the forecasts that the afternoon would be a long and hot one otherwise. I made very good time because of a strong east wind that blew me along the westbound stretches and didn't interfere too much on the northbound stretches. Things were going pretty well until I reached a point about five miles east of Royalton, MN when suddenly the tailwind stopped and I found myself riding in still air. A change in the wind usually portends a change in the weather, and my suspicion that the still air was simply the turning point as my tailwind metamorphosed into a headwind was verified within another two miles. I resolved to seek shelter in Royalton to wait out the coming storm. I found a city park pavillion in Royalton and began what would become a two hour wait for the weather to clear. In fact, not much of a storm ever did materialize, just an indifferent rain with a few steady moments and alot of sputtering. I probably could have ridden through it without danger, but in the end I was glad I didn't because while I was waiting out the weather in the pavillion I encountered my first westbounder. Brian Higgins flew from Scotland to Boston and picked up the Norther Tier by riding north to meet it where it emerges from Bar Harbor, ME. Brian quit his job, sold his flat in Glasgow and has devoted himself to bicycle touring for the entire year. He had been on the road eight weeks when I waved him down from my pavillion in Royalton. He's riding the Northern Tier to Montana, then planning to divert south and head for San Diego, after which he will head off to New Zealand and Australia to cycle through the northern hemisphere winter. Having already got the Lands' End to John-O-Groats ride under his belt, he will have a fair claim to have cycled the entire English-speaking world. After the rain stopped, we rode together for the rest of the day and are sharing a motel room tonight in Long Prairie tongiht. It appears likely that we will part ways tomorrow as I am trying to make it to Fargo on Saturday before the Post Office closes (there's another mail drop waiting for me there), which is a somewhat more rapid pace than Brian would enjoy. He's riding a leisurely tour and taking days off here and there where opportunities arise, whereas I am more or less on a mission to finish in seven weeks, or at least to meet my dad's train in Whitefish, MT on August 5. After dinner Brian and I took a stroll through Long Prairie and stumbled onto the town's bike shop. It's a bit unusual to find a bike shop in a rural town of 3,000, generally speaking you wouldn't expect there to be enough business to support it, especially in a place like Minnesota which is renowned for its long, brutal winters. Nonetheless, there it was defying the laws of economics, and in front of the shop was a small group of cyclists who had just returned from an afternoon joyride. The proprietors of the Wheelwright Bicycle Shop, a young couple, were among the group, and they invited Brian and me to their home for a beer. Juergen Brunkhorst and his wife Luan followed a complicated path to Long Prairie. It started in Germany, where Luan, originally from eastern Pennsylvania, was a student of the German language and Juergen a surveyor. When they came to the United States, it was initially for the purpose of riding their bicycles from Orlando, Florida to Arizona (the trip was during the winter, hence the choice of a southern route). After spending three months in Arizona, they searched the Internet for American schools looking for a German teacher (Luan has a teaching certificate in addition to her degrees in German). "It came down to Las Vegas or Long Prairie," says Luan. They bought a $300 Chevelle and started driving north to Minnesota, where they have managed to find (or perhaps carve out) a niche for themselves within the small town life in Long Prairie. The lifelong locals seem to have a certain affection for these two cosmopolitans who have moved into town. For example, Juergen had just retrieved the Chevelle from the local garage where some brake work was done, and the tag they had attached to the key to identify it read "German Dude from the Bike Shop". That is a completely unambiguous personal identifier in Long Prairie. I immediately took a liking to Juergen and Luan when I saw that they were riding on Brooks saddles (B-66 Champions, to be precise) and Brian and I had quite an enjoyable evening with them swapping war stories from our various bicycle tours. I really admire Juergen for having the guts to open up a bike shop in such an improbable place. He seems to do a pretty steady business in the summertime; although the local population will most likely buy their bicycles at Sears or Wal-Mart, those stores don't do repairs and the bicycles they sell are guaranteed to need them frequently. The fashion among the pre-teen boys in town is for BMX trick bicycles, and the more elaborate the trick the more likely it is that the bicycle will end up on Juergen's stand. Things slow down considerably in winter, so Juergen has tried a few other things to generate income during the off season. Driving a school bus was as terrifying as one might imagine; now he is running a web site with real estate listings for the area (http://www.minnesotareal.com/). Day 28 Date: Friday July 20, 2001 layover day I woke up early with the intention of getting an early start on the day, and I had the bicycle loaded and outside when I noticed it was spitting rain. The weather forecast called for "severe thunderstorms", although these things tend to be highly localized around here so the important question was "where?" The weather radar showed storms in the northern part of South Dakota moving east, but outside the motel room things didn't look so bad, so I figured I would press on. Brian took a look outside and came to the opposite conclusion, so we said our farewells and I was on my way. About three miles out of town I got up high enough to have a better perspective on what kind of weather was moving in, and I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that Brian was right. It was one of the most threatening skies I have seen so far, the wind was shifting all over the place and lightning was striking not too far away. So I turned back and decided to layover today with Brian after all. I spent a while in the local historical society museum and at the public library (which had public Internet access terminals), hung out for a while with Juergen at the bike shop, and saw a good fraction of what there is to see in Long Prairie. In the end, there wasn't much of a storm at all in Long Prairie (although who's to say what I might have encountered farther down the road), and the skies were clearing by 4 in the afternoon. I've had to shuffle my schedule a bit, since I want to hit Fargo on a day when the post office is open I need to time my arrival for Monday instead of Saturday as originally planned. This means slowing the pace down a bit, and so Brian and I will probably ride together at least as far as Fargo. Juergen and Luan had us over to dinner at their place, we ate outside on a picnic table in their yard. Long Prairie is a town where people wave, every time a neighbor drove by there was a visual exchange of greetings. Then one drove by in a tractor. Although we're in the middle of farm country, seeing a tractor driving through town is still a pretty unusual sight (although it's commonplace on the back country roads we cycle on). By way of explanation, Luan only offers a three-letter acronym: "DWI". Apparently this particular gentleman had lost his driver's license for driving while intoxicated, which means he can't legally drive a car on public roads. However, you don't need a driver's license to drive farm machinery on public roads, so that's what he does. I was vaguely reminded of the movie "Straight Story". Day 29 Date: Saturday July 21, 2001 Distance: 73 miles Moving average speed: 14.0 mph Left at 8:30 AM Arrived at 3:45 PM Overnight in Twin Lakes Landing Campground, Amor, MN Latitude 46 d 24 m 47 s N Longitude 95 d 46 m 8 s W Cumulative distance 2124 miles (includes 6 miles from false start yesterday) The weater forecast this morning was an exact duplicate of the one yesterday that had kept me in Long Prairie: severe thunderstorms all morning and afternoon. The sky was dark and threatening, the wind from the northwest and quite strong. However, I had resolved not to be fooled again as I was yesterday, and Brian was pretty determined that the time had come to move on. So we did. In the end, it turned out to be a perfectly nice day for cycling, the skies were clear well before noon and we spent a good deal of the day riding north being pushed along by a south wind (the wind gradually returned to its normal pattern -- out of the southwest -- during the course of the day). We decided to split the distance between here and a Minnesota state park that's just outside of Fargo; hopefully we'll get there tomorrow, allowing me to ride through Fargo on Monday during business hours and pick up another mail drop at the post office. In this part of Minnesota, there is a great deal of flexibility in choosing where to end the day; we're travelling through the lake country and the place is lousy with campgrounds. Day 30 Date: Sunday July 22, 2001 Distance: 87 miles Left at 8:30 AM Arrived at 4:00 PM Overnight in Rodeway Inn, Fargo, ND Latitude 46 d 50 m 44 s N Longitude 96 d 47 m 52 s W Cumulative distance: 2211 miles The forecast for today must have looked identical to the ones for the previous two; I'm sure the words "severe thunderstorms" were included for good measure. I'm starting to lose the respect for these "severe thunderstorms" that I learned in Illinois. At any rate, all three of the past three days have turned out fine for cycling, despite starting out with threatening dark clouds, high winds and some lightning. Today I was briefly caught in a shower, but by and large I managed to dodge all the rain. The horizon is getting low enough so that you can see the rain quite a distance away, but so far the storms have been so localized that the probability of getting hit is still pretty low. I'm sure it must be a source of a great deal of frustration for the farmers in the region who desperately need the rain to hear these forecasts, see the clouds and then get only a trace of rain at any given location. Brian and I left Amor this morning intending to ride together to Buffalo River State Park 16 miles east of Fargo on US 10, but we hadn't got very far into the day before our differences in pace separated us by a good distance. He caught up to me while I was stopped beside the road putting on my foul weather gear and suggested that we should break the link. There was perhaps more than a difference in pace between us, but also a difference of philosophy. Brain is taking a much more leisurely approach to his trip, he said to me "I'm not really hung up on this completion thing." I, on the other hand, am very much hung up on the completion thing, and I would like to complete this thing quickly enough to be able to spend some time with friends and family on the west coast and still get home to Boston before the end of August. So we parted friends and as a tailwind picked up (take that you smug eastbounders: your prevailing winds don't always prevail!) I pushed my goal for the day beyond the state park to Fargo, as this should line up the stops in North Dakota so that I can get from Fargo to Minot in three days. All the advice I've heard from eastbounders is that there's no reasons to linger in North Dakota. Just east of Glyndon, MN I encountered more eastbounders on US 10; this time four men, two on single bikes and two on a tandem. They were headed for Rochester, NY from Anacortes, WA. I talked to them for a while about my adventures in upstate New York and gave them a message to tell Brian that I was pushing on for Fargo should they encounter him later in the day. They were planning to spend the night in Cormorant, MN. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Fri Jul 27 20:13:29 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id UAA17102; Fri, 27 Jul 2001 20:11:58 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107280011.UAA17102@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #10 Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:09 -0400 Day 31 Date: Monday July 23, 2001 Distance: 99 miles Moving average speed: 11.2 mph Left at 8:00 AM Arrived at 5:30 PM Overnight in Wonder Rest Motel and Trailer Park, Cooperstown, ND Latitude 47 d 26 m 32 s N Longitude 98 d 7 m 24 s W Cumulative distance: 2310 miles Today after picking up my mail in Fargo (thanks, Maria!), I took my first bite out of North Dakota. I should mention that yesterday when I crossed the North Dakota border I was once again deprived of the opportunity to take a photo of my bicycle leaning against a "Welcome to ..." sign since Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN have basically merged into one city and like an old married couple it appears that they don't bother to welcome each other anymore. The morning went smoothly and just about as expected. Almost as soon as you leave Fargo you are on the great plains, and riding the great plains is like riding a treadmill. While the route parallels the railroad, you can play the game of spotting a grain elevator on the horizion and watching as it imperceptibly gets closer, but pretty soon the route leaves the railroad and you are deprived of any indication that you are making progress except for the odometer. The horizon is low and you can often see the water tower in the next town five or six miles before you get there. You have to disabuse yourself of the notion that just because you can see a place you must be close to it: at 12 mph it could take a half hour to go from first sighting to arrival. My goal for the great plains was to keep the average speed around 12.5 mph. That way eight hours of riding would carry me 100 miles and still leave an hour or two for breaks or in case something interesting came along. It's a pace I can manage pretty easily even in moderately difficult conditions, but as you can see from the header above I didn't come close today. The reason is the wind. I thought I had fought headwinds in Indiana and Illinois, but back then I didn't know what a headwind was. Around noon a wind started picking up coming directly from the west; by 2 PM it was up to a steady 25-30 mph, right in my face. In the great plains the wind is relentless. There's no shelter from it. and it has half a continent across which it can blow freely without obstruction. A strong headwind is very demoralizing. No matter how hard you work you can't make any time, and unlike climbing a hill, you won't get anything back. It's a widely fluctuating load as the wind gusts up and down, so it's hard to set a steady pace. If the wind has any component perpendicular to your direction of travel it will blow you off course forcing you to make constant corrections. There's no helping it: the wind will slow your progress to a creep. I had in mind to go another 25 miles today, but at 5:30 PM the wind was at full strength and the last 10 miles had taken me an hour and a half. At that rate, there simply wasn't enough daylight left to go another 25 miles and set up camp once I got there. As I was slogging along, I kept thinking that it is inconceivable that our country would seriously consider drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge while thousands of gigawatts blow across North Dakota untapped. It's interesting that the wind reaches its full strength in the early afternoon at exactly the same time when the demand for electricity is at its peak. I hope someday somebody in the utility business takes advantage of this happy coincidence. Day 32 Date: Tuesday July 24, 2001 Distance: 148 miles Moving average speed: 15.5 mph Left at 7:00 AM Arrived at 7:00 PM Overnight in Hillman Inn and Campground, Rugby, ND Latitude 48 d 21 m 20 s N Longitude 100 d 0 m 7 s W Cumulative distance: 2458 miles I made a point of getting an early start today so that I could get as much riding in before the wind came up in the afternoon. The route out of Cooperstown, ND starts out due west and then turns north on state road 1, and when I reached the northward stretch I started feeling pretty sluggish. There's a small town just off of SR1 called Binford, reaching it meant a detouring a mile off the route, but if there were coffee and pancakes in Binford then the extra distance would be well worth it. The cafe in Binford had a notebook for cyclists passing through to write their name, departure point, destination and about a page describing their trip. Most of them wrote notes with recommendations for cyclists going in the opposite direction, all of them praised the friendliness of the locals and the pancakes in the cafe. The notebook went all the way back to 1995. It was interesting to see the wide variation in how cyclists were reacting to the experience of riding across the US. There was the resignation of an eastbounder reaching Binford late in September and realizing that there was no way she could finish before the weather in the mountain passes would get too cold. There was the euphoria of an eastbound couple finishing up a round-the-world tour and claiming to average 100 miles per day (although the 1800 miles from Seattle had taken them 22 days). There was one who was positively suicidal. Numerous eastbounders complained that they hadn't had any tailwinds yet. One eastbounder in 1995 suggested taking US Route 2 from Devil's Lake to Rugby to shave a little distance off the Adventure Cycling route (which picks up US 2 west of Rugby). This turned out to be very bad advice. I spent quite a while in Binford reading all the entries in the notebook and taking copious notes on their suggestions. When I finally got going again the wind had already come up, but much to my surprise and delight it was a tailwind today, just a little bit south of due east. I took off like a bat out of hell propelled by that tailwind, hoping to encounter some eastbounders so that I could gloat about it. Near Tokio, ND I encountered my first "Road Closed" sign of the day on State Road 20. There are only 638,800 people living in North Dakota, about half as many as live within the city limits of Boston (not to mention the surrounding towns and suburbs), in an area of 70,704 square miles. A low population density means a very sparse road network, and therefore any detour could easily add forty miles to the day. Naturally, there's no easy way to tell in advance, you are just expected to follow the detour. So I flagged down a motorist going in the opposite direction and asked him if he knew why the road was closed and if he thought I could get through on a bicycle. He said he didn't know why it was closed, he had no problem getting through in his pickup, and I should certainly have no trouble on my bicycle. This turned out to be very bad advice. The roads in the neighborhood of Devil's Lake (the lake, not the town) are built on causeways through the surrounding wetlands and across the lake itself. It was the absence of one of these causeways (which was being rebuilt) that was the reason for closing state road 20. The local in the pickup truck who said I could get through on my bicycle must have had a rather exaggerated opinion of my swimming abilities. Fortunately, the Adventure Cycling map showed a way to route around the missing causeway that only cost me a couple of miles on gravel roads. The south shore of Devil's Lake from the southeast, is the Spirit Lake Nation, a Sioux Indian reservation (apparently "Devil's Lake" is a mistranslation of a Sioux word more nearly approximated by "Spirit Lake"). The Sioux of the Spirit Lake Nation have also noticed what I have been remarking on for the past three or four states: in flat country such as this the wind is steady and reliable enough to use for generating electricity. It was in the Spirit Lake Nation that I saw a wind power turbine for the first time. Apparently the Sioux are using it to power their casino, judging by its location just outside the parking lot. I imagine the local rural electric cooperative simply didn't have enough amps to supply the demands of a large scale hotel-casino, and so the Nation erected a turbine to supplement it. At this point, I decided to take another piece of really bad advice, which was to detour off the Adventure Cycling route and pick up US 2 in Devil's Lake (the town, not the lake) and follow it to Rugby (the town, not the sport) shaving a few miles off the route and taking better advantage of the ESE tailwind. After all, Adventure Cycling was going to pick up US 2 west of Rugby and follow it for a few hundred miles across western North Dakota and eastern Montana, so how bad could it be? Perhaps it was the image of that wind turbine that made me think taking full advantage of the wind was the order of the day; at any rate I would live to regret this decision. For a four-lane, divided federal highway with a 65 mph speed limit, US 2 is in pretty abominable condition. The pavement is badly broken up, there isn't a hard shoulder for most of the 60 miles between Devil's Lake and Rugby, and where there is a hard shoulder six inches of grass has grown through the cracks. This was bad enough, but the worst was a stretch I hit between Penn and the junction with US 281 at Churchs Ferry. I guess the DOT had come to the same conclusion I had about the condition of the pavement, and had decided the best course of action was to rip it all up and start over. To this end, they had closed the two opposing lanes on the eastbound side of the median, reversed the flow of traffic in the passing lane on the westbound side and had two way two lane traffic for a good four miles. The only things that saved me were 1) North Dakota drivers are VERY considerate and 2) there aren't very many North Dakota drivers. Even though US 2 is the only east-west corridor across the northern part of the state, there still aren't enough people living here to generate alot of traffic. I had pretty much made up my mind to take US 281 south to Minnewaukan, pay the 11 mile penalty for my error of judgement, and forget about Rugby. But guess what sign I saw at the junction with 281? "Road Closed" with a detour straight down US 2. Arrgh. At least I was out of the construction by then, and the next ten miles of US 2 must be what they ripped up and rebuilt last year because it was in excellent condition with a wide, hard shoulder. I guess what Andrew Howard says about Minnesota also applies to North Dakota, "There are two seasons: winter and road construction". In the end I decided to just grit my teeth and steam down US 2 as fast as I could to get off of it before the sun was so low in the west that drivers would be blinded. Fortunately, I had that wind behind me, so with some effort I was able to run through the last 60 miles or so at 17-18 mph (hence the ridiculously high -- for a tourist -- average speed in the header above). One begins to understand why some cyclists choose to ride the interstates in Montana and North Dakota: the traffic isn't moving much faster than it does on the secondary roads and at least there's always a hard shoulder. I'm spending tonight at a campground (which is an adjunct to a motel) in Rugby, the geographical center of North America. I think Alaska must be pulling the center a bit to the west in the continental US since I am pretty sure that I'm more than half way to Seattle: with 2450 miles down, there should only be about 1700 remaining. And the "geographical center" seems to be remarkably close to the 100th meridian exactly .... At any rate, there's a monument here marking the center which becomes a photo opportunity when you lean a bicycle against it. Day 33 Date: Wednesday July 25, 2001 Distance: 68 miles Moving average speed: 15.2 mph Left at 9:45 AM Arrived at 3:00 PM Overnight in Expressway Car Wash, Laundromat and Campground, Minot, ND Latitude 48 d 13 m 46 s N Longitude 101 d 15 m 6 s W Cumulative distance: 2526 miles I had a late start today since I knew it would be a short one. I need to get myself in phase with the places you can stop along the way. Here in the wild west, the population is so sparse you can't choose your daily mileages, you just go from one town to the next and hope it's not too far. By delaying my departure I gave the wind time to build up a bit, and who would have guessed it but I got another day of bodacious tailwinds. I bet those eastbounders who flew from the east coast to the west coast to start their ride are really steamed now. But guess what the day consisted of? 68 miles of pure, solid US 2, this time sanctioned by Adventure Cycling. It's no different west of Rugby than it was to the east; I've put in more than 120 miles on US 2 in the last two days and I'm thoroughly sick of it now and plan to follow every single little detour off of it that Adventure Cycling recommends. Locals inform me that US 2 is even worse in eastern Montana where it's only two lanes wide, still with no shoulder. That's acceptable to me as long as traffic is light. They told me in Rugby that the North Dakota State Fair would be running in Minot when I got here, and sure enough it is. I spent most of the afternoon down there. It's everything you would expect from a state fair: carnival, crafts, livestock (a word of caution to future cyclists in North Dakota with fancy cleat systems built into your shoes: be very careful where you step in the livestock barns). It seemed a shame to squander the tailwind by spending the afternoon at the state fair instead of riding all afternoon, but there is no place to stop within a reasonable distance of Minot if you already have 68 miles on the odometer, so I have to just hope the wind doesn't turn again tomorrow. Day 34 Date: Thursday July 26, 2001 Distance: 81 miles Moving average speed: 12.6 mph Left at 9:00 AM Arrived at 4:00 PM Overnight in New Town Marina Campground, New Town, ND Latitude 47 d 58 m 56 s N Longitude 102 d 31 m 53 s W Cumulative distance: 2607 miles I had a miserable night last night. My choice of campground was a very poor one: although they had a laundromat and were convenient to the state fair they were located right on the corner of US 2 and a major county road with a gas station that was open all night. It was one of those "campgrounds" that's really just a parking lot for RVs with a few grassy patches at the edge where you can pitch a tent. It was very noisy; I hardly slept at all. I had a late start after lingering in a cafe in Minot, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the wind was still favorable, from the southeast today. I was able to take pretty good advantage of it except for the first twenty miles which were due south. That stretch was on US 83, which was a carbon copy of US 2 as far as riding conditions are concerned. I turned west on State Road 23, which was much better. I'm getting into really empty country now. It's the sort of place where they raise the speed limits on the grounds that the greater danger is one of drivers falling asleep, not high speed collisions. Today I started with a 45 mile stretch where there were no services whatsoever (no towns, no gas stations, no convenience stores, no potable water, nothing). Tomorrow starts with 70 such miles. This is the price you pay to leave the main road. Eastern Montana won't be so bad because the route returns to good ol' US 2, which is literally the only road you can take through that area. Day 35 Distance: 76 miles Moving average speed: 12.3 mph Left at 9:45 AM Arrived at 4:00 PM Overnight in Travel Host Motel, Williston, ND Latitude 48 d 10 m 49 s N Longitude 103 d 37 m 37 s W Cumulative distance: 2684 miles Not much to report on today. I crossed what I'm sure will turn out to be the loneliest stretch of road on the trip: 72 miles from New Town to Williston, ND in which there is not a single town. The loneliness was relieved about 20 miles out of New Town where I encountered two eastbounders: Bill Easley and his son Todd are from Denver, CO and are riding from Anacortes to Bar Harbor following the Northern Tier, on the road for 20 days when I encountered them. Bill will have to finish alone as Todd has to return home to work in another 20 days. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Sat Jul 28 22:13:45 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA21732; Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:12:54 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107290212.WAA21732@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #11 Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:00 -0400 Day 36 Date: Saturday July 28, 2001 Distance: 104 miles Moving average speed: 13.7 mph Left at 8:00 AM (CDT) Arrived at 4:00 PM (MDT) Overnight in Sherman Inn Motel, Wolf Point, MT Latitude 48 d 5 m 26 s N Longitude 105 d 38 m 11 s W Cumulative distance: 2788 miles Indian reservations are the ghettos of the great plains: isolated pockets of poor dark-skinned people surrounded by relatively affluent blonde whites of Scandinavian descent. They have all of the social ills normally associated with inner city slums (poverty, unemployment, petty crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence) as well as their outward manifestations (federal housing projects, pawn shops, detox clinics, crisis centers and dozens of missions trying to help by pure dint of religion). The word from the eastbounders so far has been unanimous: don't camp in city parks on the reservations. I entered the Fort Peck Indian Reservation 30 miles after crossing the Montana state line (yes, I got a picture of the bicycle leaning against the sign). About 15 miles later I hit the little town of Brockton, MT and decided to stop at the convenience store there and perform the buy-Gatorade-and-fill-my-bottles ritual once again. There's nobody in the store except the woman working the register and a guy who appears to be just loitering there. I buy my Gatorade, fill my bottles, make some small talk with the woman at the register about the "4-for-2, contact your Congressman" sign outside the store (they want four lanes for this stretch of US route 2). I walk outside to my bicycle, and the loiterer follows. "Do you have a dollar?" he asks. "Yes, several," I reply and start drinking my Gatorade. "Will you give me one?" he asks. At home, I walk through swarms of pan-handlers every day in Harvard Square and I have about as bad a case of compassion fatigue as it is possible to get: "No", I reply. "How about a quarter?" he asks. At this point, I just want to finish my Gatorade in peace, so I hand him 50 cents and hope he will go away. But no, still unsatisfied he decides to try a rather blunt intimidation tactic: "Don't you ever get scared, riding that bicycle all alone?". Two can play at that game, I thought: "I'm not alone," I lied, "there are four guys behind me. I told them I'd wait for them here." "Oh," he says, and overwhelmingly outnumbered, leaves. I think I have guessed his MO: he waits at the convenience store for strangers to happen along. All the locals have heard his sob story before and stopped giving a long time ago. One important tidbit of information I got from the woman at the store was that the forecast for tonight is for crop-damaging hail, so I wasn't really tempted to camp at all. It was hard to believe during the sunny and pleasant afternoon, but sure enough, now something is really moving in with a vengeance. The westbound Empire Builder passed me in Brockton at 1:15 PM MDT. Assuming that it covers the remaining 35 miles to Wolf Point in half an hour (a bit generous, I admit), he was running more than two hours late, a fairly typical Amtrak performance, unfortunately. (Yes, of course I have an Empire Builder schedule with me. I'm not going to ride 600+ miles exactly parallel to its route without bringing a schedule!) From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Mon Jul 30 23:26:17 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA32419; Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:25:21 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200107310325.XAA32419@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #12 Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:17 -0400 Day 37 Date Sunday July 29, 2001 Distance 49 miles Moving average speed: 9.7 mph Left at 9:00 AM Arrived at 3:00 PM Overnight in Shady Rest RV Park, Glasgow, MT Latitude 48 d 11 m 51 s N Longitude 106 d 37 m 15 s W Cumulative distance 2837 miles I got a late start today, which meant that the wind had a chance to build up. Ugh, what a wind. Today was both the slowest and shortest day of the ride so far. It was the first headwind I have faced since leaving Cooperstown, ND six days ago. This was the sort of wind that you only get on the great plains: a steady 25-30 mph coming from due west right in my face. It slowed my progress to a creep, as you can see from the moing average speed above. But I've complained about winds before, and I suppose I should really be grateful that I've had so many favorable winds despite the "prevailing westerlies" theory (of which I am becoming increasingly skeptical). Fortunately, I had planned for a short day today anyway. West of Culbertson, MT some agency (whether it is government or private, I do not know) has erected a white metal cross on a signpost next to US 2 marking the locations of all the highway fatalities. I was familiar with this tradition from living in Tucson, where family and friends of people killed in automobile accidents often erect a small shrine beside the road, but the ones along highway 2 in Montana were clearly all done by the same organization. One can hardly travel a mile without seeing at least one, and sometimes they come in pairs and I even saw a group of four. Some of them have been decorated with flowers and ribbons, but most are bare. Meanwhile, the traffic passes at 70 mph,the posted speed limit. As far as I can tell, both North Dakota and Montana have legalized gambling, or at least some forms of it. It seems like every business in these states now has an ancillary casino. Some of the ones I've seen: "Git-N-Go: Gas, Food, Beer and Casino", "Elks Lodge 1764 and Casino", and of course every hotel and bar in both states has a casino as well. There was even a forlorn looking "State Line Casino" on the North Dakota-Montana border, doubtless erected during that brief window of opportunity with gambling was legal in North Dakota and not Montana. Frankly speaking, I'm not sure that there are enough suckers, er, I mean gamblers, to support so many casinos, what with the Indian reservations already having such elaborate facilities. In this day of ubiquitous casinos, it seems to me that legalizing gambling in one more state is the last desperate act of a dying economy. I encountered an eastbounder while I was doing my laundry at the campground today. He's spending the night here as well. Ben Reed left Aberdeen, WA on June 27th and is riding to New Jersey to celebrate graduating from high school. This is his first long tour, and he's getting a hard lesson on the frailty of everyday bicycling equipment when exposed to the rigors of long distance touring. Lately the problem has been broken spokes in his rear wheel (a 36 spoke three-cross pattern). He had no sooner had the last one repaired in Havre then another one broke before he got 170 miles farther to Glasgow. He didn't have any spares, but I was able to install one of mine and get the wheel true enough so that he could use his rear brake again. Frankly speaking, the wheel needs to be entirely rebuilt; I'm surprised the bike shop in Havre didn't do it for him. I suffered my first mechanical failure today: a toeclip strap broke during an ungracefully executed dismount manoeuver. Naturally, I don't have a spare so I will have to ride without it until I reach Havre in two days. It's moderately annoying, but certainly not a show-stopper. Day 38 Date: Monday July 30, 2001 Distance: 72 miles Moving average speed: 12.6 mph Left at 8:30 AM Arrived at 3:00 PM Overnight in Maltana Motel, Malta, MT Latitude 48 d 21 m 32 s N Longitude 107 d 52 m 35 s W Cumulative distance: 2910 miles The wind was much better behaved today, mostly calm with something from the north from time to time. I was tempted to press on to Havre (the next place one can reasonably stop) since I don't know what to expect from the wind tomorrow, but there was a very interesting museum here in Malta, the Phillips County Museum, with a collection of dinosaur bones found in the area and I spent so much time there that I didn't feel up to another 90 miles late in the afternoon. I watched the eastbound Empire Builder come into Malta and leave at 3:20 PM, half an hour late already and only 600 miles east of Spokane. I've been riding on a schedule myself for the last several days. I'm meeting my father in Whitefish, MT on August 5, and I want to make sure that I get there on time. Since the Adventure Cycling route parallels the Great Northern Railway from Williston, ND to Cut Bank, MT, it seemed natural to base my schedule on the Empire Builder's. Therefore, my plan for the run from Williston, ND to Shelby, MT is to ride one Empire Builder stop per day and finally see something of the towns I've passed through on the train so many times before. So that's what I've been doing, so far Williston, Wolf Point, Glasgow and Malta are down and only Havre and Shelby remain. There's only 25 miles between Havre and Cut Bank, so although I'll pass through it I won't stop but press on to St. Mary instead. I ran into another eastbounder today, staying in the same motel that I'm in. Scott Henderson, from San Diego, left Seattle on July 11 and is headed for the midwest. He says he just wants to get in front of tailwinds on the great plains and have some fun before going home. From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Mon Aug 6 22:47:37 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA03458; Mon, 6 Aug 2001 22:41:21 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200108070241.WAA03458@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #13 Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 20:33 -0400 Day 39 Date Tuesday July 31, 2001 Layover day Took another weather layover day after a ten mile false start. As usual, the weather appeared to be clearing at about 10:30 AM ... the sun always comes out right around check-out time at the motel. So I felt compelled to at least give it a try. I got about five miles out of town when "Big Sky Country" lived up to its reputation and presented me with a clear view of some weather that was definitely not messing around. This time I have no regrets about turning back: it rained steady all day. I mostly spent the day hanging out with Scott the eastbounder, who also decided not to move today. Havre tomorrow for sure. Day 40 Distance: 94 miles Moving average speed: 13.8 mph Left at 7:30 AM Arrived at 3:45 PM Overnight in H. Earl Clack Campground (city fairgrounds), Havre, MT Latitude 48 d 33 m 22 s N Longitude 109 d 42 m 32 s W Cumulative distance: 3014 miles (NB, includes 10 miles from false start yesterday) I got an early start, and the wind was more or less cooperative today, even favorable in stretches although mostly calm until about 3:00 PM when it built up to a pretty strong westerly. I was practically in Havre by then, so it didn't matter much. I also had my second mechanical failure of the trip: a flat tire a little bit east of Havre, coming after 3005 miles without a single flat. I repaired the tire and contemplated replacing it (the tread is pretty worn now), but decided not to just yet. If there's another flat soon, then I will replace it. US 2 turns back into a miserable road for cycling west of Fort Belknap Agency, MT, where traffic on state road 66 from Billings, MT joins. There are two lanes, no shoulder, and a 70 mph speed limit and a bunch of REALLY inconsiderate Montana drivers on the road. I think they're still bitter about the failure of their experiment with having no speed limits at all. It's strange that although Montana and North Dakota share a border, they have entirely different attitudes toward sharing the road with bicycles. My favorite Montana manuever is the one where some guy in the oncoming lane decides to pass the car in front of him despite the bicycle (me) in the opposing lane, so you get this situation where there is a car coming at you head-on at about 80 mph and you have nowhere to go but the ditch. Speaking of Montana drivers, I saw some really poignant arrangments of roadside crosses today: twice there were seven crosses sharing one signpost, and one overpass over the railroad just east of Dodson had played host to no fewer than three separate accidents killing a total of five people (two, two and one). I logged my 3000th mile today. Most folks I talk to figure that 3000 miles should have carried me all the way from Boston to Seattle, but it's more like 75% of the way there. I blame frequent flyer programs for this geographic distortion. Too many people are basing their distance estimates on how many frequent flyer miles they would get from flying from Boston to Seattle, forgetting that 1) planes can take a much more direct route and 2) aviators always navigate with nautical miles, which are 15% longer than statute miles. But it is starting to feel like I'm putting a dent in it anyway. Now after setting up a schedule for myself based on the Empire Builder, I find that due to my layover day yesterday I am now behind schedule, just like the Empire Builder so often is. However, like Amtrak, I padded my schedule, so if there are no further delays I should still wake up in Whitefish on the morning of my father's arrival. Speaking of the Empire Builder, the eastbound train passed me just west of Chinook at 1:52 PM today. It should have left Havre, 21 miles farther west, at 1:32 PM, so it looks like today was a good day for Amtrak. My companion from Williston, ND to Cut Bank, MT is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, in particular the part that used to be the main line of the Great Northern Railway (which merged with the Northern Pacific, the Spokane, Portland and Seattle and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy to form the Burlington Northern in the '70s, then the Burlington Northern merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe about two years ago). There is a great deal of traffic on this line, which follows US 2 very closely in places (or, more accurately, US 2 follows the main line of the Great Northern, since certainly the railroad was there first). It is generally possible to get the engineer to toot the horn for you if he sees you and you make the universal hand-pulling-whistle-cord gesture from the bicycle. I spent quite alot of time talking to a BNSF freight conductor and a friend of his in front of a supermarket in Havre. They tried to convice me to make a side trip to the Rocky Boys Indian Reservation about 20 miles away where a pow-wow is starting tomorrow. Apparently this particular pow-wow is one of the biggest in the country and draws dancers from all over the US and Canada. If I hadn't already soaked up my one-day pad in the schedule waiting out the rain in Malta, I definitely would go, but as things are, probably not. The frieght conductor said he does the run from Havre to Whitefish over Marias pass twice a week, and there's no comparison between Marias pass and the Going-to-the- Sun Road (the latter is far more spectacular), so I guess I have made up my mind over which pass I will cross the continental divide. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until after our conversation that I should have asked the freight conductor if he had any extra BNSF employee timetables. Day 41 Date Thursday August 2, 2001 Distance: 104 miles Moving average speed: 11.6 mph Left at 8:15 AM Arrived at 7:00 PM Overnight in O'Haire Motel, Shelby, MT Latitude 48 d 30 m 13 s N Longitude 111 d 51 m 31 s W Cumulative distance: 3118 miles Today was one of the hardest days of the ride, although I can't figure out why. The distance was not that much longer than usual, the wind was not much stronger than usual (15 mph from the southwest), and although I gained about 800 feet in elevation during the day, that's not a whole lot of climbing. Maybe I was just having a bad day. Most of the locomotives passing me on the BNSF are very modern 6000 horsepower units (mostly DASH9-44CW's and SD70MAC's with a smattering of 3000 hp SD40's); the type of locomotive you would expect to see on the main line of a class 1 railroad. I have seen a new locomotive arrangement: BNSF is running unit trains of covered hoppers (grain, I suppose) which are incredibly long. They use four of their 6000 hp locomotives to move these things, and they don't go alot faster than I do uphill. (An aside: as locomotives grow more and more powerful, freight trains don't get any faster, just longer. Such are the economics of bulk transportation, I suppose.) The interesting thing is that they put two units at the front of the train, and the other two at the end, controlled remotely from the front (or at least I hope so, as they are unmanned). One of these unit grain trains passed me going west as I was working my way upgrade between Devon and Dunkirk, MT. As usual, I made the universal hand-pulling- whistle-cord gesture, and immediately the engineer responded with a pretty good rendition of shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits. Immediately after, the window on the left side of the locomotive (the side I was on) was opened and somebody started frantically waving at me through it. I believe it may well have been the frieght conductor I spoke to yesterday. At least, I know that since the engineer sits on the right side of the locomotive, it was definitely a freight conductor who was waving at me. The eastbound Empire Builder passed me at 12:20 PM in Rudyard, MT. If it left Shelby, MT at 11:20 AM on schedule, then the intervening 63 miles took an hour, which is credible. The westbound Empire Builder passed me in Dunkirk at 6:20 PM. If it took it 10 minutes to cover the 11 miles to Shelby then it arrived at 6:30 PM, an hour and ten minutes late. So it was a mixed day for Amtrak. Day 42 Date: Friday August 3, 2001 Distance: 91 miles Moving average speed: 11.9 mph Left at 8:30 AM Arrived at 6:30 PM Overnight in St Mary Campground, Glacier National Park near St Mary, MT Latitude 48 d 45 m 15 s N Longitude 113 d 26 m 33 s W Cumulative distance: 3209 miles Finally finally FINALLY managed to ride my way out of the great plains today after 1000 miles and 13 days of some of the most boring real estate this country has to offer. I can think of no good reason for bicycling in the great plains except that they are in the way. As if they wanted to make absolutely sure that I would have no regrets about leaving, the plains provided me with yet another typical afternoon southwesterly, 20-25 mph. I thought I had a trick up my sleeve which was that my last ten miles into St Mary on US 89 would be mostly north, putting the wind at my back. Little did I know that on US 89 the wind would hardly be relevant. Adventure Cycling provides two possible routes from Cut Bank, MT to West Glacier, MT, one that goes north into Canada and visits the Waterton Lakes before traversing the Going to the Sun Highway, the other takes US 2 over Marias Pass. I didn't want to miss the Going to the Sun Highway, but I didn't have time or inclination for Waterton Lakes, so I freelanced my own route from Cut Bank to St Mary which was 84 miles shorter and didn't hit any particularly bad roads. My route took me through the town of Starr School in the Blackfeet indian reservation, which has to be one of the most depressing towns I've passed through. Some time ago I noticed the pattern that the more hopeless a person's outlook is, the meaner the dog he gets to compensate. If things are really bleak, then what you need is a whole pack of really means dogs, and don't bother putting up a fence so that they don't chase whatever happens to pass in the road. I'm undoubtably going to lower myself in the esteem of some of my readers who are dog lovers with what follows, but I think I might as well just come out and admit it: I hate dogs. I don't fear them; fear implies a certain respect. I just hate them. The dog has to be one of the stupidest creatures on the planet, convinced that every piece of real estate he ever pissed on is his. The concept of a public right-of-way traversing his territory is too subtle for the puny canine mind. These ignorant creatures are convinced that they are protecting their domain by coming out in hot pursuit of passing cyclists, but the net effect of all this sturm und drang is just the same as if the worthless animal had never ventured out. I often daydream about countermeasures. Doggie treats laced with deadly poison? Too slow. Lure the dog into traffic? Too risky. .357 magnum? Unfortunately, the dog's owner might have one too. These days, I don't even speed up when the dogs come out in pursuit: I'm so bored with the whole scenario. Anyway, after my adventures with the dogs in Starr School, I reached US 89 ready to get in front of that southwest wind. I immediately hit a wall: US 89 is the first road definitely off the great plains and in the Front Range. The tailwind I was counting on to blow me into St Mark was nothing but a breeze on my back as I crept uphill. Fortunately, the last five miles into St Mary were a bodacious downhill, but a tailwind could hardly have made any impact on the speed that me and my 100 pound machine went down it. Day 43 Date: Saturday August 4, 2001 Distance: 81 miles Moving average speed: 12.3 mph Left at 7:30 AM Summit at 9:30 AM Arrived at 4:00 PM Overnight in The Bunkhouse Traveler's Inn and Hostel, Whitefish, MT Latitude 48 d 24 m 44 s N Longitude 114 d 20 m 24 s W Cumulative distance: 3290 miles Today was supposed to be the Big Day of the ride: I was going to reach the highest point on my trip, Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway at 6646 feet. I had to get an early start because of bicycle restrictions on the GTTS Highway, and I was all psyched up for a big climb. The sad truth of it is the Going-to-the-Sun is a bunny hill. A cupcake. Not a difficult climb at all. Six miles of a 6% grade: big deal. It looked like the eastbound trip would have been twice as long climbing, but the grade was the same. I would take the Going-to-the-Sun Highway in either direction over the ride from Northampton to Lenox across the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts. The Berkshires are real climbing. Now a word about those restrictions that the Park Service has put on bicycles on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway. Specifically, they are that from June 15 until Labor Day between 11 AM and 4 PM all bicycles are prohibited from the seven miles along Lake McDonald and eastbound bicycles from the twelve miles from Logan Creek to Logan Pass (the climb), i.e. exactly where and when you are most likely to want to ride your bicycle in the park. For eastbounders, this effectively means you have to summit before 11 AM. For westbounders, this effectively means that if you are planning to spend less than a full day in the park you will have to spend alot less than a full day in the park: as a practical matter you have to be out of the park by 11 AM. I reached the summit of Logan Pass at 9:30 AM, 18 miles and two hours after leaving my campsite in St Mary. It was 10:52 AM when I entered the restricted zone along Lake McDonald on the other side, 24 miles farther down the highway. There was no way I was going to sit there and wait for five hours, so I wound up the mule for all it was worth and made it seven miles to the other side of the restricted zone at 11:18 AM, at which point I was two miles from the exit from the park. So that was it: I had four hours in the park. Nice mountains, nice lake, but I gotta go because the Park Service won't let me ride my bicycle on the Going-to-the-Sun Highway. I think those restrictions are completely backwards, of course (it's the damn automobiles that should be restricted), but since bicycles are vastly outnumbered, and since we know it is easier to discriminate against minorities, in the interest of the convenience of those who no longer have the strength to travel under their own power those of us who do are practically excluded from Glacier National Park. Whitefish, MT is quite the quintessential Rocky Mountain resort town: lots of SUVs, fancy mountain bikes with elaborate suspension systems (ick), street fairs, coffee houses, internet cafes and of course the obligatory micro-brewery (Black Star). This place is lousy with roof-rack cyclists (for those unfamiliar with the lingo, a roof-rack cyclist is one who puts his bicycle on the roof rack on his automobile and drives it 600 miles to ride a 60 mile van supported tour). I suppose that given enough time Whitefish, MT will evolve into a carbon copy of Boulder, CO. Day 44 Date: Sunday August 5, 2001 Distance: 64 miles Moving average speed: 13.8 mph Left at 12:00 noon Arrived at 5:00 PM Overnight in Rexford Bench Campground (USFS) near Rexford, MT Latitude 48 d 53 m 59 s N Longitude 115 d 9 m 22 s W Cumulative distance: 3354 miles I spent most of the morning waiting for my father's train to come into Whitefish. It was scheduled to depart Whitefish at 7:26 AM, it didn't arrive until 10:10 AM and it departed twenty minutes later, more than three hours late. Apparently it had been three hours late leaving Seattle, its point of origin, because the westbound train whose equipment comprised this eastbound train had been late getting into Seattle and they couldn't turn it around in time. Clearly, there is a vicious cycle at work here. What a way to run a railroad. Anyway, the old man arrived intact and reasonably well rested so after eating an early lunch/late breakfast in Whitefish It seemed like there was nothing else to do but press on and try to make the most of what was left of the day. The weather was perfect, winds mostly favorable, and surroundings a welcome relief from the plains. Dad keeps up very well for a man of sixty; I pull ahead a bit on ascents but otherwise things are pretty much even. Day 45 Date: Monday August 6, 2001 Distance: 82 miles Moving average speed: 13.0 mph Left at 8:45 PM Arrived at 5:30 PM Overnight in Ranch Motel, Troy, MT Latitude 48 d 27 m 10 s N Longitude 115 d 53 m 8 s W Cumulative distance: 3436 miles West of Whitefish, MT, the Northern Tier route does a series of long meanders north and then back south as it tries to follow rivers (and the lakes created by damming them) through the mountains to find the levellest route west. It almost seems as if the Adventure Cycling Association, headquartered in Missoula, MT, wants to prolong your stay in their home state. We spent yesterday going almost due north along US 93, only to spend most of today working back south again on state road 37. State road 37 follows the shore of Lake Koocanusa, which was created by damming the Kootenai river near Libby, MT. It's a very pretty route, but by flooding the river valley the Army Corps of Engineers made it impossible for it to be a very level route. The road is high up on the hills that used to be above the valley, and every time it crosses a creek (which was formerly a tributary of the river but now feeds the lake) there is a long descent followed by the corresponding ascent afterwards. These are exactly the sort of conditions that amplify differences in strength between cyclists. One often hears novice cyclists say something like "I can keep up on level ground, but not in the hills", or more recently all the sports commentators were remarking that Lance Armstrong would have to make up his time defecit during the mountain stages of the Tour de France if he wanted to have a hope of winning. It would almost seem that climing hills is an entirely difference process from running over level ground, perhaps using different muscles or different technique. This is, of course, pure bunk. You can understand why less powerful cyclists can keep up on level ground but not on hills if you can understand freshman physics. First of all, to debunk a popular myth, what matters in determining how fast you can propel a bicycle is not the amount of force you can exert with your legs. You can always choose a lower gear and spin with a higher cadence to get the same power with less force. That is lemma 1, that what determines the speed of the bicycle is the product of force times velocity, i.e. the power, that the cyclist can produce. Now consider the situation on level ground. On level ground, the force that limits your speed is due to wind resistance, which is a force that grows as the velocity squared. The power required to overcome wind resistance is the product of force times velocity and therefore grows proportional to the velocity cubed. Thus the velocity grows as the cube root of the power: a cyclist needs to be eight times more powerful in order to be twice as fast on level ground. The situation on hills is a completely different one. On hills, the force that limits your speed is just your weight (sum of the weights of bicycle, rider and load), which is a constant independent of velocity. Therefore, to go twice as fast on hills, you only need to be twice as powerful (c.f. factor of eight for wind resistance). Thus just from physics you would expect differences in strength to translate into large differences in speed on hills, but small differences in speed on level ground. Notice that this analysis has completely neglected the benefit that less powerful cyclists can get from drafting more powerful cyclists on level ground which I suppose can often make up for most if not all of the difference. Why do I bring this up now? Well, the old man had a bit of a struggle on state road 37, but he persevered valiantly and didn't complain too much. It takes a week or two on the road to really get seasoned, unfortunately I guess he'll be seasoned just about in time for our arrival in Seattle .... From coldwell@frank.harvard.edu Tue Aug 14 02:00:49 2001 Return-Path: Received: from Inbox ([140.247.122.114]) by frank.harvard.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA09837; Tue, 14 Aug 2001 01:59:18 -0400 From: Chip Coldwell Message-Id: <200108140559.BAA09837@frank.harvard.edu> To: bike-diary@frank.harvard.edu Subject: Bike Diary #14 Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 23:08 -0400 Day 46 Date: Tuesday August 7, 2001 Distance: 97 miles Moving average speed: 12.8 mph Left at 7:45 AM Arrived at 4:45 PM Overnight in Round Lake State Park near Sandpoint, ID Latitude 48 d 9 m 55 s N Longitude 116 d 37 m 58 s W Cumulative distance: 3533 miles 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. 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 alot 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). 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/. 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 alot 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 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 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. 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). 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 alot 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.