06/27/01- We woke up today with a huge goal; 135 miles to Boise where we would stay with my Uncle Steve and Aunt Eileen and chill out the following day. Somehow, through 7 rainstorms, we did it. We started out with a big, steep climb outside of Unity and flat land the rest of the way. We changed time zones today, which was pretty exciting because it was the first border we crossed. We stopped at a Dairy Queen with 65 miles left. There was a nice girl named Rachel working there who told us it was about 100 miles to Boise. We asked somebody else- “100 miles”. We asked someone else- “about 100 miles or so”. 100 miles?! No way. We got our map and added up distances- 65. It turned out to be 65 and we learned not to trust anybody’s word. It sounds kind of harsh, but most people are wrong. Sometimes, they’ll tell us we only have a couple miles to go and we find out two hours later they must have meant 25. They get our hopes up and then hope drops to the floor. We try not to ask too many people about distances anymore. We trust the map. Always trust the map. When we left Dairy Queen I overheard Rachel saying she hoped it would rain. I took a couple steps back. “What did you just say? Take that back, Rachel. We have been rained on enough today. Please take that back.” She apologized but it must have been too late. 5 minutes outside of town, we were getting poured on again… and the strangest thing happened. There are some bugs there that swarm around people’s heads. I couldn’t do anything about it. I could sprint at 20 or 30 miles per hour, get up to 40 down a hill, but the bugs still circled my head. After we crossed into Idaho, I realized I could dart in front of oncoming traffic and the draft the car created carries the bugs away. That gets rid of them for about 5 minutes until they find you again. So, for the first hours after the Dairy Queen curse, I was getting bugs in my eyes, nose, and ears, and for the last hours riding into Boise, I was seeing my life flash before my eyes, darting in front of traffic just to keep from being driven insane by the annoying bugs. When I rode by a farmhouse, I heard growling. My pepper spray was not handy and I was traveling slowly uphill. Lance Armstrong said fear is a priceless education. It seems like a wise thing to say until the fear hits you. When it does, the proverbial saying is forgotten. When a dog is chasing after you flailing its foaming jaws, growling, barking, yelling at you, you don’t stop to say, “thank you puppy for this priceless education.” You run, or rather, ride away as quickly as possible making every effort to kick the approaching K-9 in the face. Or you use pepper spray. That is for all of you. That is YOUR priceless education. You can use it next time you embark on a cycling expedition through a farmtown. In my case, however, I was wise enough to let a clip break. That clip held the pepper spray within arms reach on my bike. It broke the day before my first dog chase. If the dog chase hadn’t taught me to be afraid of being consumed by a Rottweiller, I might not have gotten the clip fixed already. But since it had, I did, and that was MY priceless education. We made it into Boise, though; in the dark. It was the first night ride yet. I took a shower and went to bed, happy to see my awesome aunt and uncle for the first time in a year or two. I will see more family tomorrow and Ben and I are really looking forward to our first rest day, a day of nothing after 135 miles.
06/28/01- I slept in until about 11:00 am. Sooooo nice. I got to look at the truck my uncle spent years building. What a sweet ride. The art in the house was mostly done by my aunt who is one of the best artists I have ever known. When I was little and I used to visit them in this house, I would play a game with my brother and sister called “guess which ones are photos and which ones are drawings.” That’s how well my aunt can draw. I got calls from 2 different news stations in Boise who were going to interview Ben and me, but they didn’t follow through with it. I’m not sure what happened. I got to see a lot of family and do a lot of nothing today, and I got my first roll of film developed. It was very relaxing playing darts and just chilling out. 0 miles
06/29/01- Today we rode from Boise to Mountain home on the interstate. I didn’t like being on the interstate much but it was the only path from Boise to Mtn. Home where my grandma and grandpa live. I wanted to spend the night with them, so today was only a 50 mile day. It took us exactly 3 hours to the minute to get to Mtn. Home because of the powerfully helpful tailwinds. I got a huge staple stuck in my tire in the middle of the ride, but the bulletproof Kevlar lining didn’t let it in. I saw my cousin and her baby today, too. He is a soccer star. My grandmother gave me a stuffed animal to take on the rest of the ride with me. It’s a Buffalo and I named it The. The likes to ride just below my handlebars secured tightly with zip ties. It was great to see my grandmother since she is the main reason I am raising money for MS and I'm glad to see that she is doing well. 50 miles
06/30/01- Today is the last day of the month, 9th day of riding, 10th day since we arrived at the coast of Oregon, 11th day away from Phoenix. Grandma made us breakfast. My rack is starting to collapse and I woke up to find my grandpa working on it. We left the house and got a new map… and climbed and climbed. I haven’t been able to sleep well lately because of my sunburned, itching, peeling back so I was tired all day. Eventually, I got to the point where I was beyond tired and I appreciated the plants that smelled of edible Icy Hot and the mist that blanketed our roadway. I tend to appreciate good things much more when I am unfathomably tired. We ate at a restaurant called The Loading Chute and a nice waitress named Jessie charged my cell phone for me and even set up arrangements for us to sleep in the park. She contacted a woman by phone who was in charge of the park. I got to talk to her and she sent us to a back corner where she said the sprinklers don’t come on at night. We got 105 miles behind us today.
07/01/01- 1st day of the month. I think we might be able to finish before August... If sprinklers don't wake us up in the middle of the night and soak all of our stuff with water. That's right, the sprinklers came on. My camera, journal, cellular phone, clothes, and basically everything else got wet. To avoid condoning violent behavior and destruction of city property I would rather not say how we got the sprinklers to stop spraying in our direction, but I'll give you a hint. There's a little spring mechanism that allows the sprinkler to turn. Without that piece, sprinklers flood certain areas of the lawn. Needless to say, there were little ponds all around us when we woke up this morning- but we stayed dry. We started today with breakfast from the local general store. I showered with a waterbottle in the park. I wonder if that’s illegal. We went through Craters of the Moon national monument. There were tons of dried lava rock piles. It was pretty interesting and it seemed to attract many tourists. We met a guy named Rick who was riding a mountain bike Atlantic to Pacific to raise money for autistic children. He was pretty cool and I was surprised to learn that we were the first touring cyclists he met so far, and he’s almost done. I felt sorry for him because he had headwinds all day- good news for us, though. We made it to Idaho Falls. This has been my favorite city so far. We got a free room at Holiday Inn and I got to shed back-skin all over the sheets. –116 miles.
07/02/01- I woke up in my free Holiday Inn room. Cherie, thanks for all the help with the letter of request for free rooms. I think it will help a lot more now that we have had practice setting up a reservation with this hotel. There was a huge free breakfast downstairs in the Great Room; biscuits and gravy, French toast, Pop Tarts. I ate too much. We left the hotel around 9:30, but I couldn’t resist 10 minutes of talking to a homeless man just outside the parking lot. He was holding a sign that read, “Wyoming.” I asked, “So what’s in Wyoming?” He told me about the beautiful country and flowers and things like that. Ben and I tried to get the reason for his homelessness out of him. It took a while. He just wanted to talk about how beautiful Wyoming was. “Why are you in Idaho?” I asked. He said that he just ended up here. He’s a roamer. He wasn’t in Wyoming yet because he didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a car because he didn’t have money. He didn’t have money because he didn’t have a job. He didn't have a job because he didn't want a job. He didn’t want a job because, he says, “Work interferes with life.” Sitting on a corner holding a sign, waiting for a ride that may not come for days doesn’t interfere with life? He said it gives him time to think, and I can relate to that because that is something I like best about training and riding my bike all the time. However, there is SO much more to life than thinking, so much more fun to be had, so much a person can gain from doing something and thinking at the same time: writing a book, riding a bike, studying the psychological reasons homeless people think everyone else is a “slave to the economy.” This guy was beginning to insult the United States a little too much, so Ben and I told him to move to Cuba and we left him alone with time to think. We began cranking up some big hills outside of Idaho Falls and quickly crossed into Wyoming. Time passed swiftly because we were looking forward to the Teton Pass. We have spoken with a few people about the pass and they all say the same thing- “Good luck making it up and hold on tight on the way down.” We made it to the Tetons and stopped for a picture next to the 10% grade sign. This was going to be tough. Ben likes to go hard on the steep climbs while I like to granny-gear it all the way up and save energy. We tackled the climb without stopping even once, and I managed to eat a Zero bar on the way up. It’s difficult to eat when I’m winded because I often suck in pieces of my food and choke myself. I got a piece of Zero stuck in my throat on the way up the Tetons and I was coughing most of the way. I made it, though, and Ben was waiting at the top. I took a picture of the elevation sign; we were over the 8,000 ft mark and we were ready to hit the descent we had been warned about so many times. I was expecting tight switchbacks and cramped fingers from braking so hard. My expectations were off beam. I only braked a couple times at the top. I didn’t even hold on tight like everybody told me to. I relaxed and gripped the bars loosely while I crouched into the most aerodynamic position possible. I’m never uptight when I am on my bike, even as much as I was expecting myself to be on this downhill. I had a slight pain in my back after crouching for so long, but it was a result of the position that gave me so much speed, and it was more than worth it. Surprising me even more were the nice, wide turns with plenty of signs to direct traffic around them. Furthermore, there was no worry of being hit by a car because I was going the same speed as, if not faster than, the cars that were far behind me. The traffic was not very dense, either. THIS WAS THE MOST FUN I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. You may be sitting there thinking that I must be a pretty boring person if riding my bike down a hill was the most exciting thing I have ever done. You are entitled to your opinion, but I wasn’t riding my bike down a hill. I was gliding on a rocket down a sky-piercing, snow-sprinkled mass at 55 miles per hour, by way of a 10% grade portion of a cross-country route which would soon dump me into heaven; Jackson Hole. ---I am home. As I write this, I am sitting in my free Best Western hotel. We got a Suite. The people I have talked to so far have been people who came here for vacation and ended up staying or coming back time after time, skiers, bikers, rock climbers; the list goes on. It gave me the feeling I got in Portland; people are here because they want to be. I will live here someday. I lived a lot today- one of the best days of my life. I don’t want to leave. If you have never seen the movie, The Beach, see it. If you have, you may recall a quote that has not left my mind since I reached the Teton Range and Jackson, Wyoming. __________”Trust me. It’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe in search of something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite, and never outstay your welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it. You hope and you dream, but you never believe that something’s going to happen for you, not like it does in the movies. But when it actually does, you expect it to feel different- more visceral, more real. I was waiting for it to hit me. I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it’s not some place you can look for. Because it’s not where you go. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life. And if you find that moment, it lasts forever.” _________-Leonardo Di Caprio. Yes, I have that memorized. 80 miles?
07/03/01- Today is Ben’s birthday. We ate our free breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs, Fruit Loops, oatmeal, and juice and went to the lobby to ask where the closest bike store was. I didn’t excessively stuff myself this time. Working at the front desk was a good looking female in her mid twenties who used to be into cycling. She said she had ridden over the Teton pass once before. I said if I were her, living here in Jackson, I would be skipping work to go ride it again. The shop was only about 2 blocks away, and we found it without a problem. Because my rack isn’t in good shape, I will soon need a new one, so we have been checking at every bike store we pass. The kind I need is rare so I wasn’t flabbergasted when they told me they didn’t have what I needed. I started up a conversation with a 15-year old employee there named Andrew. He is a triathlete/skier/mountain biker, the next Lance Armstrong. He just got back from the Deer Valley Mountain Bike Nationals where I would have been racing with my team (NOVA) if I weren’t on this trip. I have no regrets, though. Andrew is going to be a big star someday. I really believe that. I bought a really cool Teton Gravity Research bumper sticker for $4 even though, since I have no car, I don’t know where I’m going to put it when I get home. I took many pictures of the Teton Range on our way out of “home.” We didn’t want to leave. With such a large number of people doing so many different things in the world, it’s great to find a concentrated population of those who share a love for the same things that I do- and it’s terrible to have to leave newfound friends. Even though Ben and I didn’t say much for the first part of the ride, it is times like these that I am really glad I took this trip with a friend. Outside of Jackson, I saw what I thought was a touring cyclist ride by us from the opposite direction. Ben and I slowed down to talk to him, but the guy kept on spinning. He must have been a cycling tourist. (Steve Leroux explains the difference in his journal at www.bigadventures.com/biketrip) In the middle of the longest climb of the trip, we met 2 touring cyclists at a general store. Jim was a humanities teacher from Chicago who has toured all over the world. His friend was a strange man who was upset about the mosquito population. They were pretty thick around here. He called them “damn bastards” each time he smacked himself in the face trying to kill one. We crossed the continental divide and caught up to the Cycle America group. It’s a group of about 60 people who pay a company to set everything up for them as they make their trek across the U.S. in a big line of riders. That’s not how I would have wanted to do this, but it seemed like they all became a big family and had a good time. Based off of what people told us, they were 7 days ahead of us when we began. We never expected to catch them, so we were pretty excited when we did. There was a cute 21 year old girl named Jamie working for Cycle America who was handing out water at the top of our biggest pass- over 9,000 ft. I talked to her about working for the company and she advised me, in her southern belle accent, to go somewhere else if I was looking for high pay. They get free food and a place to sleep, but only a few dollars a day for snacks. She said she gets to ride 5 days a week. I could tell by how she said that, she was here for her love of traveling by bike. She GETS to ride 5 days a week. Later, I was talking to another employee who said they have to ride a couple times a week. I felt like telling him to go home. We came down a 2-mile downhill and rode about 8 more miles into our town where we got a free hotel room. Our hotel neighbors fed us free salad and spaghetti while they preached about aliens existing among us. The spaghetti was good, anyway. I got Ben some birthday cake and ice cream from the local gas station for dessert. Earlier, some folks who were riding in the group invited us to come hang out with them at the school where they were sleeping. We tried, but nobody was at the school. They were all out getting drunk at the local bar. Then we saw Jamie again and she invited us into the bar. She said we only had to be 18 to get in and 21 to drink, so we could go inside and talk to the owner of Cycle America and share stories with the other bikers. Ben would get to use his age to his advantage on his 18th birthday, too. We got kicked out as soon as we entered. I guess Jamie was wrong- 21 to get in, 21 to drink. There was a guy outside who said he was the stripper at the bachelorette party happening right next door to the bar. He invited us inside but we had to decline. Bachelorette parties aren’t really my bag. I glanced inside as Ben and I walked away and I saw about 20 drunk women dancing around a 6-foot inflatable penis. I almost got hit by a penis dart that was shot out the door. I guess they had dart guns, too. We went to bed. 90 miles.