Days 71 - 73: Central Oregon

We left Mt. Vernon late in the morning, anticipating a relatively easy 60-mile ride to Mitchell. I'm not sure what, if anything, informed this anticipation, but boy was it misguided. It got hot, and there was this long climb through a canyon that just didn't end. Or rather, we didn't know when it was going to end -- it came as a complete surprise -- so it felt like it just didn't. Also the wind was back. The landscape was great, with these bizarre striated rock shelves jutting out of the earth and a cool, mossy-banked creek tempting us all the while. We were later told that we missed some really cool fossil sites and other geological oddities; this sort of thing seemed to happen more often during the last week or two of the trip, as first crater lake and then the coast were calling to us. Anyway, then we ran out of water (which we had already been drinking sparingly) about an hour from town. With the wind and the heat and the climbing, it just took us a lot longer to get to Mitchell than we had planned for, and consequently there above with the water. I started to get kind of worried, given my previous experience with heat masculinity overload, but then there was this four mile 7% downhill and we made up a lot of time.

"Comfortable Elegance"

We stayed at the Oregon Hotel for $41, and shared the single bathroom on the second floor with the other occupants (there were none). The place was really charming in a threadbare way, and the "continental breakfast" of a muffin and cup of coffee was fantastic. The proprietor invited me into her home (in the hotel) so that I could bleach our water bottles. There was a black cat. Also we had great hamburgers at the Little Pine Cafe.

City Hall in Prineville, OR

The next day there was an even bigger climb, but we knew about it in advance and got out early so it was actually really nice. We rode up into the Ochoco NF and hit the pass at around 5,000 ft. just after we saw a pack of five older guys headed to Maine with one of their wives driving a support vehicle. They were really nice and said that we looked like swimmers, which I think was a compliment. One of them mentioned that they heard we had some pretty big hills out east, and Bonesy and I looked around at the mountains and wondered what the heck they were talking about. From there it was on to Prineville and Redmond, where we stopped for iced tea before riding the last 20 of 83 miles into Bend.

See? Like a swimmer.

In the cafe we stopped at we met two motorcyclists, Sam and Clyde, who were on their way back to Eugene after touring around the desert for a week. We got to talking, asking where each other was going, and it turned out they were headed to Bend and staying in the house of a friend who owned the place and kept in vacant for just such occasions. They invited us to stay with them, so we totally did, and stayed up talking about this thing they do where they go to Mexico and build houses for people without houses. I think one of them was a Quaker. They were incredibly generous and good-hearted, open-minded and honest, and they insisted that we take the bed even though they were old guys. The next morning they took off and we stuck around until two getting breakfast and riding around town. Bend is a neat place that seems to be just all about the recreation. This day probably deserved its own post, because those guys' generosity completely made our day and set the tone for an awesome end of the trip. It's all too fleeting.

Pahoehoe lava south of Bend, OR. Also the Cascades.

That afternoon we rode down route 97 to Crescent, which is not much of anything other than a way point between Bend and Klamath Falls, CA. I guess it was probably a logging town at one point -- you see a lot of that in central Oregon. We saw some lava fields and, at a distance, the Cascades. It was only like 45 or 50 miles, and kind of boring, but we were basically staging the ride to Crater lake. We got into town as it was getting dark, and we almost stayed at this really dirty RV park on the outskirts for $12, but then we rode all the way through and found a much better place (with laundry!) for only $15. Further proof that this section of the ride was somehow blessed: we saw the neon sign glowing through the pines just as we were about to turn around.

Ride on.

Days 69 & 70: We'll Take the High Road

So, remaining readers, this is it. A series of four posts, one for each of the last days of August, that tell the story of our final ten days on the road.

We have been back for two weeks now, and I have been avoiding these last posts; partially because of how busy I've been but mostly because they involve the admission that our trip and the summer are well and truly over. So now while a weakened Hurricane Irene drags herself through Vermont, snarling and snapping like a wounded animal, I will sit dry and safe and try to remember what it was like to be three thousand miles away, out of water and far from town in the high desert of Eastern Oregon.

Previously, on The Long Haul:
When we left our heroes, they were stranded with a broken spoke in Unity, a small town in the middle of nowhere just East of the Umatilla National Forest. Would they find the cassette removal tool they needed? Would they get a ride into town? What would become of Rook and Bonesy?

Stranded! (Unity, OR)

Well, the next day a posse of 33 riders from Bike & Build came through town. We knew in advance that they were on their way: the proprietors of the campground and store had posted a sign for us soliciting a ride into John Day, and while no one offered to take us, several reported that a large group of cyclists were headed west from Vale. The front of the pack arrived around 4 in the afternoon, followed shortly by a big ol' SAG van. I approached one of the riders on his way into the convenience store and asked if they had the tool I needed. He said he had no idea, but that "our leaders are inside, if you want to ask them."

Now, readers, can we briefly discuss the (supported versus self-supported) touring ethic? Maybe it's best not to. It's just, like, I totally respect the Bike & Build program because they're doing a great thing -- raising money and donating labor to affordable housing projects across the country -- and even if you're not doing charitable work like that, it's still cool that you're biking across the country whether it's with a group or not. I'm just not sure, having done this now, that I would want to do it any other way. First of all, you necessarily surrender a degree of autonomy (this is an apt illustration of the Social Contract, I think), e.g. the "our leaders" comment. I just can't imagine having someone tell me how far we're going to bike today, where we're going to stay, what time lunch is, et cetera. For me, and I think for Bonesy, so much of the sense of accomplishment derived from having actually planned and executed this whole thing ourselves: in that sense, "Biking across the country" entails for us not just the pedaling, but the logistics and decision-making as well. Furthermore, when you have a SAG vehicle, and you're sick or tired, you just ride that leg in the van (obviously they can't stop 32 riders because one has heat stroke, and besides, they're on a schedule). Fair enough, but I also know that if I had missed so much as one mile of riding over the course of the trip I would have felt like I'd not quite completed it. Steve Garufi knows what I'm talking about.

Then there's the cheering. This is where I probably start sounding like a misanthrope, and but so sue me: every time one of these kids rides into town, the assembled leap and hoot and holler in support. When we get to camp, maybe a dog barks at us or some RVers watch silently from inside their mosquito netting. Then the next morning as we're breaking down camp, there's this ruckus from over at the store, and it's team Bike & Build doing their morning chant or whatever. Then as we rode the same road for two days we'd keep finding these little pastel encouragements from the SAG crew chalked on the asphalt:

"Lunch!

To

Mile

1,"

"People!!!

Amazing

All

Are

You," 

and -- I kid you not, readers -- "You have accomplished more in one summer than most people will in their entire lives!" Have they, though, scribe of the shoulder?

I'm not jealous -- the last thing I'd want to see or hear at the end of a long hot ride is a group of people who beat me there -- but to be perfectly honest (and if this is going to be a good blog it must first be honest) there's a part of my aversion to this whole mutual back-patting that is resentful. I think it's because I know these kids are going to tell people that this summer they "biked across the country," which is what we did, albeit with another 50 pounds each between bike and gear, and having to take responsibility for our personal safety let alone success. The rebuttal, I guess would be that they actually managed to benefit other people while doing it: that my criticism is based on an entirely narcissistic definition of accomplishment. Well fine, I cede the moral high ground. All I'm saying is that what we did was harder, and in light of that there's something a little bit insulting about the self-righteousness.

This brings me to a larger point about the idea of riding in support of charity/fundraising efforts, and I think I can address it better with the above rant out of the way. We both wish that we had tried to raise some money for someone during the trip. Or at least I do and Bonesy thinks it's a nice idea but rightly points out that there was nothing wrong with doing it solely for ourselves. Still, most of the touring cyclists we met had some sort of connection to a "cause," even if they were just raising awareness. My favorite approach was that of two older guys from Oregon who we met 20 miles west of Cody, WY. They were just asking everyone they talked to on the trip to donate to their (the talkees') local food shelves. I like this for three reasons:

1. It's easy (time, effort, money), both for the riders and the donors.
2. It allows the riders to have a local impact in communities all the way across the country, instead of siphoning money to larger, geographically distant groups.
3. It effectively allocates 100% of donations to the target group, which means that as a self-contained effort, the ride's fundraising component maintains perfect organizational efficiency.

If I ever do any big tour again, I'll be doing something very similar to what those guys did. Let's just think for a second, though, about this idea that all bike tours are fundraising efforts. When you go on a 7-night luxury cruise, are you frequently stopped by shipmates soliciting donations for [insert worthy cause here]? Perhaps you are. I wouldn't know.

OK! So yes, obviously I borrowed their tools and fixed Bonesy's spoke. Thank you, Bike & Build, for lending us the tools -- and for helping to address the lack of unaffordable housing at a time when we are still looking to the construction of unreasonably large single-family homes to gird the economy. Unfortunately, the B&B cavalry arrived a little too late in the day for us to start the ride over the Blue Mountains to Mt. Vernon, so we drank a lot of beer and went to bed early instead. The next day was a gorgeous ride through pine forests (checkout Umatilla NF on google maps in satellite mode: the patchwork of logging tracts is pretty cool) and over another little pass. Strawberry Mountain and its sister peaks are awfully pretty, rising out of the grassland around Prairie City which itself is a quiet gem of a town. From there we followed the John Day river through its eponymous town, where we stopped at an ersatz bike shop in the back of the Chamber of Commerce building. I wanted to have someone who knew what he was talking about check the wheel, because even though I'd replaced the spoke I was concerned that it might've gone out of true, ready to spring another one as soon as we got out into the canyons. He said it was fine.

A comically-oversized prairie schooner on the long descent into Prairie City, OR

We stayed that night at the Bike Inn, in Mt. Vernon, OR. The inn and its operator, Christy, appear briefly in this video from travelers Russ Roca and Laura Crawford, who have somehow managed to bike tour basically full time. They also document some of the other small towns that make Route 26 such a great road for cyclists. Speaking of that, it should be mentioned that the road is part of the ACA's Trans-America trail. We didn't know this when we set our sites on it while still in Boise, but it's not surprising given the lack of decent alternatives for crossing the desert that stretches both north and south. Because it lies on perhaps the most-frequently-biked cross-country route in America and otherwise is pretty much out of everyone else's way, this stretch was crawling with touring cyclists and would occasionally present us with an unexpected bike lane or a gas station stocked with Clif Bars. Everyone was either going to Astoria, OR; or Yorktown, VA, and all the locals were pretty much accustomed to touring cyclists. This was nice in some ways, like when B&B showed up which clearly would not have happened off a major touring route, but mostly we were glad to quit the trail in Redmond, OR in favor of what felt, anyway, like the roads-less-traveled.

Ginger at the Bike Inn, technically on the morning of day 71

 Ride on.

Day 77: Crescent City (PHOTOS)

Yes, avid readers of the comments section, it is true: we reached Crescent City on Monday, August 8, after eleven weeks of riding. The moment was emotional.
I know many of you are waiting for a post about the last weekor so of the trip, and I'm sorry not to have wrien it up yet. It's just, like, I'm a little bit burnt out, you know? From biking. Across the country. We really tore it up the last 8 days on the road there, and a lot of really noteworthy stuff was happening -- that of course is when I'm least interested in pecking at the Blackberry (R). Then we drove down the coast to visit Lemairekid in San Francisco, and would you spend your 46 hours in one of the world's greatest cities blogging, impatient readers? No, you wouldn't. So then I went to Dallas for a day to see my fam while Bonesy high-tailed it back to the Burly Veets. I am finally writing this from a Greyhound bus that just pulled off I-89 into town, and guess what? I'm going to have to get back to you later. In the meantime, check out the photos that Bonesy put up -- they're better than anything I'm going to end up squawking about.

Day 68: Disaster Strikes

We are in low spirits, dear readers, as we reach you tonight from Unity, Oregon. Calamity befell us 20 miles east of here when Bonesy broke a spoke on the drive side of her rear wheel. We each carry spares, and they're easy enough to replace... when they're not on the drive side. For that (this) you need to remove the cassette, which requires a special wrench. Judging by the tone of this post, intuitive readers, do you think we have such a wrench? Of course not, which is stupid. So anyway, thanks be that this happened in one of the two towns we rode through during today's 65 desert miles: we just happened to be in front of the Nicest Lady in the World's house. TNLitW gave us cookies and drove Bonesy and her bike to this campround. She also invited us to church tomorrow morning, which we declined.
Then the people here were really nice and offered to take us to the nearest real town on their grocery run tomorrow, but one of the two shops in that town just closed down and the other's owner's out of town. So tomorrow they're going to take us to Mount Vernon, where we have tentative Warm Showers hosts who might, we hope wildly, have the tools we need. Otherwise I might hitch it into Bend with Bonesy's wheel -- we're just not sure. It's frustrating that even with so many people being so willing to help we're still kind of screwed.
Also, I'm bummed out that at least tomorrow's leg is going to be by car -- it grinds my gears that we'll now have ridden Almost the whole way from Burlington to Crescent City. It felt, too, like we were building some good momentum after my convalescence: today we broke into Pacific time, passed the 500 miles-to-go mark, and did some fun climbing out of the hot, flat, and boring "Treasure Valley." At least tomorrow is a vacation day, kind of.
Ride on.

Day 67: Oregon, Baby, Gone

The promised land looks a lot like Idaho did, but being the promised land it is infinitely more bearable. We are in Vale, OR, and when we stand on Main Street, we stand on the actual historical Oregon Trail. There are also some trees, which is nice because it's very hot (and will be even hotter tomorrow). We hear that in addition to trees there are 28 murals celebrating the town's history, but so far have only seen one of these. Last night in Caldwell we went to the Canyon County fair and saw some goats and ate ice cream and listened to a man covering Hank Williams, Jr. songs.[insert wry observations tempered by sincere appreciation for the earnestness and tradition and community experience, etc.]

When we got to this campground and asked for a tent site, the woman was like "ahhh, tent sites-- not my favorite..." which was curious, because she was otherwise very friendly. I felt bad, but it would've been silly for us to take a pull through site with a 50-amp hook-up.
Ride on.

Day 62: In which I am Laid Low by Heat Exhaustion (PHOTOS)

Boy oh Boise, readers, do we have a blog post for you! This because we are laid up in a motel and I am too weak to go downstairs, let alone outside, and so basically what little energy I have can be devoted to this report.

First off, Bonesy has uploaded many fine photographs. See them by clicking the link above!

Now to a description of the last 43 miles of yesterday's ride: grueling. We took off from Mountain Home feeling pretty fine, and were just zipping along the freeway for the first ten miles - actually, I should say that I, personally, zipped for 10 miles before stopping under the first overpass and looking back down the road to find no Bonesy in sight. Bonesy, it turned out, had only zipped for eight miles before getting a flat, and I was too busy playing drinking games to notice (we don't carry camelbacks because of the long days in the saddle, so I have to remind myself to drink water on hot days. Say every time a yellow car passes, or every mile marker. It can get pretty engrossing when we're in the desert). So I rode back with our only pump and patch kit to find an understandably distraught Bonesy just sizzling on the shoulder, two miles from shade and able only to wait for me. Evidently she had tried to flag people down so they could tell me what had happened, and no one stopped. 100 degrees, middle of nowhere, and no one stops for a cute young woman in distress? Outrageous. What threat could she pose? So obviously this situation had her a little rattled, and then by the time I fixed the flat the wind was figuratively out of our sails and physically in our faces.

We stopped at the one rest area on the way to Boise, and sat under an awning and the hills across the interstate reminded us of that Hemingway story:

"It's hot," she said.
The man brought iced tea. She shook the bottle. She drank. The iced tea was cold.
He looked at the hills. There were no trees. The wind blew up dust from the pavement.
"This reminds me of Hemingway," he said.
It was very hot.

Actually, literate readers, old Ernest shot himself in a cabin not 100 miles from that spot, now that I think of it. And yes, I know that neither he nor his characters ever had an iced tea without at least two fingers of rum in it, but there you are.

Asides aside, Bonesy seemed to really turn it around from there on, picking up her cadence and her head for the push into town. I, it should be noted for eventual dramatic effect, felt great. A little hazy, sure, but limber and energetic and certainly not "exhausted." All that given that we were riding a century in high heat, of course, which sort of throws off one's ability to assess these things objectively.

Alright, so we get to this motel (the campground we'd aimed for had zero tent sites - praise be to the creator on that one, as it will soon turn out - and the next one was another 10 miles) and Bonesy's feeling kind of nauseous and we're both a little loopy, but boy am I proud of her tenacity and ability to play through the pain. So we order Chinese, which doesn't sound all that good to me, not that anything really does at this point, and we shower (during which fatigue starts to set in for me and I pretty much just lie in the tub). The food shows up, and I can only force down a single spring roll - ten times fast! - before lying down and drifting in and out of sleep while Bonesy watches Fight Club.
Now, some hours later (it's all a blur, did I sleep? What time is it? Who am I?), I awake suddenly and make my way to the bathroom, where I kneel before the toilet for the first in a long series of violent convulsions that would entirely empty my system of food and water. For hours this went on, and in between I felt like I was going crazy: I kid you not, readers, at one point I was concerned that John Boehner and his thugs were going to interrogate me inquisition-style (I mean, I literally saw him looming over me in bed) and all I managed to say to an attendant Bonesy was "they're going to crucify me." During brief periods of fluorescent-aided clarity as I heaved myself dry, I ruminated intently on the subject of intravenous nutrient replenishment. I had trouble standing.

Mom and Dad and godfather Gary (he of Ironman accomplishment) are pretty convinced it was heat exhaustion. I can see why, though I wasn't aware the symptoms could be so delayed. Anyway, now regardless of what it was my body is pretty much devoid of energy and sitting up in bed is an effort. Worst part is that we're going to have to take a couple of days off. Parents were adamant about this; thing is, I couldn't bike if I wanted to (I don't want to). I wish instead of heat exhaustion (which makes me sound like Daisy Buchanan) it was called something more awesome, like "Heat Overdrive Throes" or "Compromised Hydration and Muscle Permormance," but I'm too tired to be embarassed. Except that Bonesy, after all that, is just a little sore today: her status gets updated from "trooper" to "warrior," I think. A warrior taking very good care of me, I'd like to end by saying. She is out buying chicken noodle soup right now.
Ride on.

Day 62: 101, Being Both the Forecasted Temperature and Projected Mileage for the Day

First of all, let me say that it is currently 93 degrees in Mountain Home, ID, where I am sitting outside a Jack in the Box restaurant listening to a small dog cry out for help as it slowly asphyxiates in someone's car. Whence the city's name, you ask? No idea. Oddly, it's not really in the mountains, nor even at their feet. From the interstate we saw a lone peak about 20 miles to the west, but even that was nothing to write home about (and yet, observant reader, here I am writing home about it! Perhaps the sheer lack of other distinguishing features offers, in that vein, some clue to the mystery of the naming). We woke up before dawn this morning and were ready to go by 6, only to discover that Bonesy had a flat tire. Still, we knocked down 60 miles by noon and earned this two hour shady respite. The dog is still barking.
When we wake up in Boise tomorrow, we will be only 60 or so miles from Oregon! Idaho-rribe week of riding not withstanding, that puts us about eleven days from the coast, and we are starting to get excited. I think my Ocean Mist-scented Car Freshener (R) is growing more potent as it feels itself nearing its home. Bonesy just came back with one of those fast food chain "large" sodas more aptly described as "benthic," and it is full of cold, sparkling lemonade and only cost a dollar six.
Speaking of lemonade -- still barking -- we were just talking yesterday about how our moms alays used to make lemonade from concentrate, which seems in retrospect to have been a little out of character, and how now we have developed associations along an axis between motherhood, refrigeration, and Minute Maid that probably in themselves provide enough material for a French novel. Then this morning when we stopped in a diner for eggs I asked the server if their OJ was from concentrate and she didn't know what I meant, and obviously it was, and I felt like a prat for being so particular and besides it was strangely comforting...
It turns out that the dog (we investigated) is sitting comfortably in a well-shaded and equally-well-ventillated vintage Winnebago, and is just freaking out, apparently, because his master is out of sight. That's good, because I don't know what we were going to do otherwise. 40 miles to Boise on a beautiful July-daho afternoon.
Ride on.