Mettle to the Pedal
Crow Butte, WA to Kamia, ID
3 days
256 miles
The vicissitudes of the past three days have been mirrored in the rolling hillscapes of eastern Washington, with each up and down tugging at the mooring of my habituated life in Portland. Unsettled by the solitude -- not just from my people and dog but from so many of the quotidian distractions that occupy me -- my mind is grasping at its memory for something to hold on to.
The bike, for its part, is handling the trip with grace and aplomb. During its Frankensteinian assembly, I opted to take a risk by matching a rear derailleur with a cassette that is, so to speak, out of his range (34 teeth on the cassette's lowest gear versus the derailleur's suggested limit of 32), creating at times some awkward tension while shifting. This blog post was supposed to be about how the derailleur and I found our groove, how our cycles aligned. But then last night happened. A quick moment of background to catch you up:
I began Thursday, rising out of the Gorge, with a whimsical curiosity for my new life on the shoulder of the corridor, acclimatizing to my furnishings with all sorts of questions. What can be surmised of the American trucker's health after gauging the color of his urine in the innumerable plastic bottles that litter the highway? It doesn't look good. Drink some water, honey. In what state of decay does a dead dear offer the best skeletal talisman for my handlebars? None, probably. As the day dragged on, though, so did my enthusiasm for everything around me. I realized that Thursday's 96 miles in the absence of a western wind were far longer than the previous day's 100 with Aeolus at my back. When I finally rolled in to Walla Walla, Washington, I promptly checked into a hotel, puked a few times, laid frozen on the tile floor, took a hot bath, napped for an hour or two, woke up at midnight to ravage the town of any food available, and swore I'd be more prudent tomorrow.
And indeed I was... at least until the day's final leg when I decided to take a short cut that offered to save me 5 miles. Of course in the end it cost so much more than that.
The first 20 miles of the shortcut couldn't have been more picturesque: smooth road, not a single car, barns and farms straight out of a Dale Nichols painting. Good ole' Americana. And then I got a flat. And then the sun set. And then the pavement ended. And then the hill began. And then it started to rain. I made the summit summoning all the bonhomie God's blessed me with in this life. The descent is when things started to get real dicey. The road, too steep to be paved, was lined with oversized rocks and running streams of water; dusk had turned to full blown night and my hands were cramping from their desperate grip on the brakes.
The relief I found when the road finally leveled out was short-lived because here I was faced with two options: turn left on the paved road, returning me essentially to where I'd first broken off the main trail, still 25 miles from my destination; or, go forward, up a hill more forbidding than the one I'd just escaped, with only 5 miles to my destination. By this point it was 10 pm. What's a reasonable person to do?
So, I shifted down into my lowest gear (grateful for those two extra teeth) and began probably the hardest climb of my life. Had my brain access to the requisite calories it might've called the experience sisyphean, but by this point I was in a primal state: move forward. There were no houses, cars, or cell service. I prayed that the reflections of my headlamp ahead were simply road markers blinking through the brush. They weren't. The road had no signs, just a menagerie of nocturnal critters and beasts disturbed by my arrival.
A fifth of a mile from the summit, I stopped. I had no strength left. I couldn't walk or ride my bike a foot more. The exhaustion and darkness left me vulnerable to fear. Within minutes, I'd set up my tent on the road (leaving plenty of room for a car to pass) and made a cozy little shelter for myself out there. I had my food, water and warmth.
This morning, a ferocious wind shook me and the tent awake. A mild sense of dread still hung in the air until, just as I finished loading up the bike, a car -- the first car I'd seen in about 15 hours -- passed by. There was an older couple inside and they gave me friendly waves and big smiles that expressed something like, "How cute you're camping out here with your bike." I impulsively smiled and waved back. "You're right," I thought. "What a fun little adventure." Within minutes, I was back on paved road, gliding my way to Idaho.
