We awoke to our standard breakfast of pancakes and a handful of cereal, and watched Sierra eat eggs and homefries. Homefries are an innovation we are shamefully lacking, while eggs are the luxury. We totally have potatoes but have failed to maximize the potential of our potatoes! The food disparity raises hackles---dinner and breakfast were both watched hungrily by the Rockies folk but we still maintained our separate but unequal status. But you know me--I only talk about the bad if there's a good coming up =) Sorry to ruin my foreshadowing!
I dedicated my ride to my sister Meredith's best friend Rachel's dad, in addition to the requests from our fellow bikers that I mentioned yesterday.
Immediately before leaving town we face a choice--keep going straight on the road we came in on, or make a right turn. I was pretty sure our road bore right and Claire (who'd ridden on yesterday for bonus miles) was pretty sure it went straight. Finally Collin went back and read the road sign, and it bore right. How many cyclists does it take to navigate the Texas4000? Either 40 or 1 depending on how you interpret our answer =)
We ended up going the right way and immediately the peloton split up--we had a fine double paceline and powered through a few miles with Me and Oleg leading until we peeled off to draft and noticed that the group was only 6 instead of 40. The folks who'd kept up with us in front were Katrina, Daniel, Alex C, and Tim. Daniel and Katrina led us up at 14mph for a couple of miles and then it was Myself and Oleg begging for someone faster than us to pull (we could only hold 12) and getting no response. So I guess 12 was ok for everyone else! The climb was 6 miles long at a few percent grade and climbed to the highest point of our ride on this highway. By the time we got to the top, we were all winded and long past the point when we were ready for the climb to be done.
The climb was deceptive since it was gradual and constant--it was a flat road, but it was somehow constructed at an angle. It didn't kill anyone but it didn't feel good either. Still Oleg and I were in front near the top and we found the sign for the summit and he still had enough legs left to be king of the mountain by finishing the climb first. At least Alex had some wind to chase him so Rockies wasn't totally unrepresented by my slow self =) After we crested that minor mountain, we dropped Daniel and Katrina as Alex Chang led us downhill at a zillion mph, as we really enjoyed the not-climbing after a 30-minute uphill.
Unfortunately, while Tim and I kept up with the pace of Alex and Oleg until the end (we spent some time catching them after the hills), I decided to let them go on a small hill, and Tim chased, but they were far away and they made it to the top first and thus, into the rest stop just beyond the hill before we did. But it was still a good leg =)
Rode out first from rest stop just to be done sitting around and eventually Tim caught me and we rode and chatted past a beautiful blue lake strangely called Destruction Bay, into rest stop 2, which was just before a section of highway that we sadly had to drive over. The workers were having none of us riding through the blast zone, and as we drove over there was a large rockslide that wasn't actually threatening but was a little scary, as well as the world's largest dumptruck driving ahead, so we were probably best off driving instead of riding. We got out, and I kinda bummed around for a little while and ended up nearly last out of the rest stop. Pretty soon after riding awhile with Katy at cruising speed I realized I wanted to ride a little faster and caught Eric Estrin...and we pulled ourselves past the peloton up to the lead double paceline. Eric is fiercely fast (he was pulling our 2-man group 3-4mph faster than I could, and he's only been riding since we got our bikes in March!), and will be a force to be contended with in the Alaska border race.
At the town of Destruction Bay, with its 12 houses, there was a bar where I was compelled to order some food...and it was tasty! I had the best poutine I've thus far experienced and it was good, nay, great! But afterwards, I just wanted to ride slow, and so I did. Eric Estrin's chain was broken soon outside of town, and so I stopped with him and contemplated a rainbow created by some rain that was coming from a clear sky (the cloud was behind us but the rain was coming from in front!), and waited until Oleg came along with the gumption (I had the vauge knowhow but not the certainty that it'd work or how to cope with irregularities) to shorten his chain so he could finish the ride. It turned out that something else was awry so Eric ended up taking a sag into camp, after Oleg exhausted his options on the roadside, and so we carried on.
But not before appreciating a very beatiful memorial to a youthful Mr. Twiss which was filled with magnificent rock and wood carvings and a bit of lifestory...it was picturesque and lovely and I hope Katy, Claire, or Shelly will eventually have pictures of it to share with you.
We made it into camp and actually shared dinner since neither team could cook fast enough to feed demand on its own...wow! There's still some tension though..so we'll have to wait til tomorrow to find resolution. Read on for the exciting conclusion!
Oleg, Alex S, Michael C, Natalie, and Emily were our drivers for the day. Waking up from a tent has become routine, finally; it's usually too cold in the mornings to make us want to get up before we have to, unlike Texas, where you want to get up with the sun to avoid being roasted. But here, the mosquitoes pool between rainfly and tent and you awaken to the enemy army hovering overhead waiting to make war on the battlefield of your flesh. So, if you're smart, you've taken your mosquito-net-hat and rain gear into the tent--that's my best mosquito armor and when I remember it, things go great in the morning. This was such a morning.
We rode out together, turned left, and pedalled for about 70 miles.
The end!
No, wait, I can make it a little more exciting than that. I was feeling a little off for much of the morning, so I rode alone for the most part and tried to find peace among the trees. Of course, the RV people are flying past, so it's not as peaceful as it might be, but it's still pretty idyllic. And suddenly it was upon me: mile 4000. My odometer had been flaking out lately, so it was more precisely somewhere within 20 miles past 4000, but the numbers rolled over and I had trouble looking up from the odometer to appreciate the beauty of being alone with the road, my bike, my mind, the trees, and mountains off to the left. On a bike ride (this day) from the middle of nowhere to the somewhere just west of the middle of nowhere, with the sun shining and enough clouds in the sky to dance with the snow covered mountain peaks (I looked at a map at a rest stop at mile 4000.8, and saw that we were as close as we were going to get to Mount Logan, Canada's highest at 19,000+ feet...I couldn't tell if I was looking at it or something else that was tall and in its general direction, though). I'd made it as far as we were supposed to by one metric, not too terribly near where we're heading for, by a geographical metric, and I was still in the wrong country. But it definitely cheered me up to know that I'd done the big part of what I'd set out to do. I'd be in alaska in two days and in Anchorage in 8...and then this trip will really be over. I'm not sure how I feel about that, though.
What I feel good about, is that I'll soon be back in my hometown, amongst all the friends I've known for more than a year, in my element, where the streets all have a name that I know. I'll be spending time with my friends and seeing my family and spending American dollars again. Nothing against Canadian dollars except the inflated prices and the even exchange rate...meaning everything just cost tons more. But it's never been about money, just about comfort. And I will be a lot more comfortable back in Austin =)
We pulled into the campsite 23 miles later and I set up the tent since Alex M swept this day, and so I picked a cushy spot that was abandoned by someone with a wider tent, and got it all squared away by the time Alex got in. I laid down to inflate my sleeping pad (it takes about 5 minutes of heavy breathing to do it, and I've finally decided I most prefer doing it on my back with my eyes closed), and when I woke up, I heard raised voices. It was the grand Sierra versus Rockies explosion I'd been half-expecting, all-dreading. There are some aggressive personalities on both teams and they were in the process of blowing up at eachother, and we all got to play along, or at least listen along. It ended quickly with the more level heads (Rockies, of course) walking away, and the less level (ok, mostly Jordan) going down to the nearby creek. And then Menzies pulled in just in time to dodge the rain...which poured down for about 10 minutes and then let up completely. And with it was washed away the animosity--Eric Estrin was hanging around "our half" of the campground, Jody was pitching her tent next to ours, and we were apparently all on the same team, again, for the first time. Dinner was created by all, for all, and enjoyed by all really and truly.
After dinner we realized we were out of drinking water and low on almost everything else. So Collin and I drove up the road to the nearest gas station (closed). And the next gas station...open! We sauntered in to find the two proprietors there among their incredible collection of junk for sale, and we all got soft drinks and I asked after water...and got severely berated. Actually, first, the guy suggested we go about 15 miles upstream (yeah, no road) and just grab some, and then the lady suggested we just boil some. and while I was trying to explain that boiling 40 gallons of water in 3 pots on 2 camping stoves was madness, I was accused of being a mama's boy, and what would I do in the real world without someone to clean up after me? And so I left kind of bewildered and more than a little scared of the local color/flavor.
But fortunately Oleg stuck it out and hit it off better with the lady, who organized a fine donation of 10 loaves of bread from a bakery down the road at Beaver Creek, and we drove on to the next RV park and they turned their generator on for us and we got 40 gallons of glacier water for the next day. Tasty!
Later we played spades for a little while, sipped on some firewater around the campfire, and we went to bed happy, and whole as a group for the moment at least, and the stars smiled down on us.
Collin and I drove out of lake creek campground with Miguel and Peyton. This was our first full day of true teamwork, and it went swimmingly! Hopefully you'll still read the details because while there's no devil in there, you might find something interesting...
Pancakes and cereal for breakfast as per usual, but along came Sierra's secret stash of bagels and cream cheese for all! Clean-up actually went pretty smoothly thanks to an extra pot of water I boiled too late to be used for eatings but that was just in time for the washing out of all of our dirty dishes. Peyton is as environmentally conscious as I am (maybe even more so!) so we did a bangup job of cleaning up the cooking area, and then we circled up and dedicated and it felt a lot more teamlike, somehow.
The cars rolled out in a faux-paceline to the one and only rest stop at 25mi, and we used the extremely awesome donated bread to make extremely awesome sandwiches. Seriously, after living on smushed, we'll-give-it-to-you-instead-of-throwing-it-away, nearly-moldy bread, this fresh-baked-with-love stuff was so much better we almost ate it all in one rest stop. We did manage to go thru 7 loaves of bread, 2 things of honey, a huge tub of peanut butter, and 2 jars of jelly. And the rest stop was good, nay, great, since it was sunny and happy and teamy. This was the first "everyone come here to the sandwich zone" rather than "rockies over here, Sierra over there" type affair. And we had fun =)
While we were hanging out with a few of the stragglers, an RV pulled up and told us we had a rider who'd been hit, up ahead! Miguel and I were driving the small cars so we bolted and sped up the road about 3 miles to find several cars stopped with some of our riders...Miguel beat me there by driving around 110mph and we found Michael Glass nursing some wounds, standing next to a shredded back wheel, and laughing. He'd been rear-ended by an old lady, flown in the air and slid along the ground for awhile...his helmet was cracked in 2 places...but he was miraculously ok! We cleaned him up a little and then went back to wrap up the rest stop, and found out at the last second that Ryan Hill had had a blowout way back, so I went to pick him up and brought him up to the stop where he changed tires.
The whole day, I couldn't figure out the sound system in the minivan, so I was stuck listening to Wayne's World 2. Turns out to be an acceptably silly movie to just listen to. Then after rest stop 1, I stayed near the back of the pack for about 45 minutes to make sure everyone made it a good distance without trouble and then cruised into town to direct traffic to our campsite at the RV park, until everyone was in. I played sweep...in the car =)
Then, we made the best rice and beans ever! Sierra still had some veggies and new spices stashed, and with 2 stoves we actually created enough that everyone could eat right off. Usually rice and beans are just ok, in my book, but today, I ate two helpings and the mass of leftovers was consumed before morning. We hung out at the mini-mart doing laundry, playing on the internet (Alex C was again kind enough to let me use his computer to do my blogposting and emailing), and then we turned in & went to bed relatively early...of course, it always feels early here in the land of the midnight sun.
Our last day in Canada started with a pancake. Thinking back to yesterday's fabulous bread and thinking ahead to about 100 yards down the road from our current campsite whence the bread came...well, it was a moral imperative to rustle up enough grub to actually fill my stomach--something our camp kitchen rarely has the output capacity to do, especially in the morning rush & especially with twice as many hungry mouths to feed now.
So, Buckshot Betty's served some fine omelette and finer toast to myself and 10 or 12 other kids who wandered over. Being a cash-only type of establishment, I played banker to enough people to turn my $7 breakfast into a $40 feast. but I still only felt $7 full.
And then my favorite game--yup, you guessed it, the waiting game! Today was met entirely without a sense of urgency since we not only had a short day but were crossing into the past - reliving an hour of our lives as we entered the Alaskan timezone. So, as a result we didn't leave the RV park until almost noon, Pacific time. Which gave me approximately 2.5 hours to wait. I guess I read a little, napped a little, and stood around a lot. We eventually got into a circle for dedication...there were lots of rededications (a growing theme over coming days) as our trip passed one of its final milestones, into its final days.
Finally, we're done dedicating and everyone wraps up their bikeprepping and packing and Jordan gets up in front of us & dictates the rules for the last, and first, full-team border race. He goes on and on and who made him king anyway? We were to race only the last kilometer, to stay together until then, and by the way, the race is on and off of gravel...it's not even paved for the whole last kilometer! That's not how Rockies rolled (our races were from the rest stop--this one would have been almost 19 miles long), and so most of my team opted out. Given the option, We'll ride safe & happy & on our own terms...so almost as a rebuke to cruddy racing terms, I swept, Rockies style, with care and intention, and it was good.
Katy and I rolled into the border quite awhile after the team to a round of applause & shouts of welcome to Alaska! The team was mostly already posed on the "welcome to Alaska" sign, so we joined them for some pictures, and some more pictures. Innumerable, interminable pictures. At least 2 hours' worth. Fortunately I only had to pose for a few minutes but we all waited until all the pictures were finished to roll out & into US customs. It's strangely quick compared to Canadian customs (who fit the team personality quite well with the hurry-up-and-wait shtick), and indeed, we passed a mile-and-a-half long line of cars waiting to cross into canada.
3 miles into Alaska and it's time for the second rest stop within a 20 minute span! We all did want a snack at reasonable prices, & some folks like Collin and Shawn had been dying for a fountain soda for weeks--for some reason Canada doesn't seem to believe in them for the most part? There were canned sodas everywhere, even at restaurants, though I guess not at bars, though I doubt either of them went into a bar for a soda =). So we roll into the first US-based business we see (a huge gas station/convenience store, of course), & immediately 38 riders are stunned by American TV into a torpor that lasts for an hour. Katy & I are unaffected and sit outside, her on the phone & me playing scrabble and napping.
The next 20 miles are more pleasant and less slow--I ride with a variety of people like Oleg, Rachel, Miguel, Tyler, Claire, and Elyse, and the threat of rain has dissipated, which is quite pleasing. I congratulate tyler as he rolls over 4,000 miles, cracks a beer and toasts the trip by himself.
A weird thing about today is that the clouds look like they've been badly rendered by a computer. Most days, especially days in big sky country, they look towering and huge...but today they look kind of 2 dimensional, as though they were trapped between a couple of pieces of plate glass. It was an odd phenomenon, apropos of nothing, but I watched the clouds for a long time over the next 2 days until they suddenly sprung back into 3 dimensions when I wasn't quite paying attention.
At camp, we visit the local convenience store for some snackies, and camp down in mosquitoville. This sends me directly to bed after dinner, where I sing happy birthday to Elyse and Katrina from inside my tent. The team are pretty bad singers.
I sleep well, in the rain.
That fabulous store we camped near last night yielded quite a breakfast bounty--eggs & sausage & milk, oh my! So I ate quickly and fairly well (anything with protein which I don't have to ingest half cooked, such as the not-actually-instant oats we've had all summer--that's what counts as well, by this point). And then I sat in the van until everyone else caught up with me. It was rainy and mosquito-y outside, so there wasn't much to do once I was packed and eaten...no desire to sit outside and mess with my bike or help others pack or ride around in circles or whatever. Most people joined me in the van as quickly as they could.
Eventually we moved up to the store and inside of it for our dedications, which was fortunate since the process took over a half hour this morning. We probably annoyed the proprietor a bit, but we probably also spent hundreds of bucks at his store so I guess he came out ok.
We chanted quickly and then rode out in the rain. It was wet and cold for the first 15...the rain gear was doing ok at keeping me from freezing and soaking, if not actually keeping me warm and dry. But then came the wind. This was a wind like Shoshoni--gusty, in our faces no matter where we turned, and nearly relentless. Fortunately, the sun and heat were absent, and it did stay dry after mile 15. But that's about the only good thing to say about the rest of this ride, though.
Working hard & mostly alone out of the first rest stop, I made it 24 miles in 2.25 hours - and while there was a general uphill trend, it didn't really matter. Even going downhill, 14mph was hard to achieve. I once caught myself going 4.8mph uphill. Sigh. I cursed the wind loudly in my deep annoyance, but this had little effect.
I was going slow, but so was everyone else--I passed none of the folks I'd started after (except Elyor & Jordan changing a flat tire) and was passed by nobody except Jordan (who is crazy fast--stronger than anyone else on the team) and Shawn who is also a powerhouse. Shawn stopped to chat for awhile before continuing his slightly faster progress, which was a nice break for a few minutes, even if hard to hear, due to the winnnnnnnd. The road was perfectly straight for approximately the last 10 miles so I got to watch them dwindle for a long time before losing sight of them. Jordan was gone way faster than Shawn.
However, there was a reward waiting in Tok--Tyler had hooked us up a church to stay inside, and also we finally came to a restaurant recommended something like 4 days back, in Canada: Fast Eddy's. I pulled up fairly soon after the leaders since they still hadn't gotten their food when I arrived, so I joined them and ordered a milkshake--lunch of champions! I actually had a double cheeseburger for lunch, and another milkshake for dessert. We all ate a whole lot..in fact, I didn't need dinner after that lunch =)
We still had to ride a last 7 miles to the church (it's not a big town, but it is really spread out) and the wind hadn't changed...but that was fine. I had food power! Others were griping about being too full to ride but aside from hitting my belly with my legs as I ride, I don't tend to suffer much, so I jetted out to the church ahead of the rest...until I was sure I was lost and stopped to double check the directions at an RV park. We were on course, though, and arrived without incident.
No showers at this church, so I baby wiped the stinkiest skin areas as I was changing out of my very salty bike clothes, wrote a couple of blog entries (I was about a week behind by this point), watched a mindless hollywood blockbuster on someone's laptop while Amy and I ate a lot of taffy that Naomi had sent to a previous mail drop.
I was ready for wakeup call. This was the first time we'd spent the night in a town with cellphone service in weeks, so I took advantage of the time difference (3 hours by now) and my typical "ready to go too soon" situation to call Lori and Mom from the office (front seat of the minivan). It was nice to have something useful to do during my hour o' waiting and it was great to chat with my favorite people. I think it also surprised the heck out of them because they must have expected me to be in a backwater what with the no-blog-posting (the town lacked cell-data service, so I'd written entries the night before, and saved them for later).
This morning was special--though we'd stayed in a random church and were very happy not to be packing up our soaking wet stuff as it was raining when we awoke, we had a date for breakfast at the RV park we were supposed to camp at. We had $5 all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast lined up, and hungry bikers love all-you-can-eat. Kevin Ko and I had a little friendly wager on who could eat more...and he beat me handily (my forte is eating before I realize I'm full and while the pancakes were endless there was a substantial wait between helpings). We both agreed we could have taken it further (me at 11 and him at 13) but Shawn was ahead of us by 2 and we decided not to escalate things any further even though, of course, none of us was yet at the point where our necks were full. 11 pancakes, though, does turn out to be enough for me, esp when coupled with at least 2 cups of syrup, some fruit, and, well, too much "butter".
We'd been eating outside but under a roof, which was fortunate since it was raining and pretty cold. We asked what was up with the weather (particularly the vicious wind from the previous day) and were told that "summer was over and winter had arrived". Well, at least we wouldn't have to hang out for too much more of the winter =). There was a woodburning stove under the shelter where we ate and dawdled before we left and we took turns huddling by it until we circled up to do ride dedication...except circle was square, since the shelter was full of tables in the middle and we had to kind of perch around the outside of it.
We rode out in the rain, but fortunately the road had borne left so the wind was just a crosswind instead of a headwind. Furthermore, the rain dried up around mile 22 at the first rest stop...and the scenery started! It was a little hilly, but we were back in pristine country and there were some beautiful sweeping vistas and the rest stop crew chose our stops well.
Just out of the rest stop, Emily had a flat and I offered her help, but she had it under control. Then I flatted (front tire) which bode ill--this was the same tire i'd been riding since I got the bike and I *really* wanted it to hold out for a few more days so I could say I'd done it all on the same tire...anyway new tube and I was good to go.
Rest stop 2 at mile 47 was again gorgeous and I finally changed out of my rain gear as it was pretty darn clear and pleasant by now. Emily had another flat just past the rest stop and this time when I stopped she did need my help--the pliers and the spare tube and we got rolling again. She was sad because she'd been out near the front of the group when she flatted and wanted to catch back up...so we drafted off eachother until we caught up with the tail end of everyone (excluding us), and then I decided I'd see just how many people I could pass before the next rest stop--from back to front? Not quite, I think I only passed around 25 as I sprinted the whole way and caught Daniel at the very end, but he didn't put up chase and so I cruised into the rest stop, had a quick snack as we overlooked some gorgeous mountains to the south, and then zoomed on into town, where someone had run ahead and found us an inside sleepable temporary home in the town's community center! Yay, big kitchen and roof over our heads and new friends (a couple of volunteers for another cause were staying there as well, so we chatted awhile).
I'm a nice guy and have agreed to take Allison's drive day since she has driven, unfortunately, on a lot of really long days and will not exceed 4,000 miles by much. I've been lucky and have had mostly pretty short days for my driving, and then I put at least a hundred spare miles (total!) on during my off days, and then another hundred spare miles on that most of the rest of the team has had to sag through. We were assured by the Powers That Be that it'll all work out and everyone will manage 4,000, and that seems to be true to a large extent, except for folks who've been unable to ride for extended periods. But the old saying about the people who help themselves getting more help...well, I'm happy to help Allison help herself =).
As well, the synergy of the Rockies/Sierra teams is in full swing and mornings are a lot less painful when you have a group of 5 (Myself, Katy, Darlene, Kevin, and Elyse) managing them instead of a group of 2. So, I didn't figure it'd be so bad. And, Allison graciously offered to help with all the other driver-duties--she just didn't want to drive. So we tore through the morning, muchly thanks to the community center we stayed at in Chistochina; it had a huge griddle which made pancake creation almost trivial and highly parallel. Seeing that things were under control in zee kitchen, I headed outside and prepared to play tetris in the trailer. A good trailer packing job will start with the trailer virtually empty, except for the hundreds of vats of sports drink we'd overpacked, which are conveniently boxed and sit in the back of the trailer as a foundation for layer 1--sleeping gear. At first I stacked, but finally I ended up crushing and cramming the sleeping gear into the back layer until it was done, and then I more carefully stacked all the duffel bags in front, on layer 2. I put mine and Katy's bag at bottom since they were the squarest bags and then kind of propped/wedged all the less-square bags on top.
Of course, during all that, I had some spare time since the flow of packed baggage out of the building is never constant, so I filled all the coolers with water (Running water that we don't have to boil that doesn't taste strange! Hallelujah!) which apparently surprised the heck out of Kevin later when he went to fill "Sierra's" coolers. Too bad we don't ride together for longer! (Though finding lodging for 40 can be harder than for 20ish, I think the increased numbers of folks focused on the same tasks such as cooking, gathering donations, etc, would lead to increased efficiency overall despite the additional hardship).
Once I'd gotten all the bags in, Katy ran up all flustered about having accidentally packed her driver's license in her bag. I didn't figure it'd be a big deal since we could always pull it out if it was needed, and told her as much; Mike Glass was walking by and said he didn't even bring his on the trip at all. But she was very worried and only calmed down slightly before we had more work to do. Work done, I headed inside and scarfed up a bit of breakfast, finishing off one of 3 cartons of milk I'd seen the night before while a couple of folks watched in dread. I told 'em I'd seen more in the green cooler the night before, and ran outside to continue my work there. It turned out they were in the fridge, where they were discovered as we got ready to leave town :(. I knew there were more or I wouldn't have taken the last bit...sigh.
I head back outside to start putting away food stuff and see a horror. My tetris skills have been defamed! Someone has broken my wall-o-bags, perfect in its flat-strapped-togetherness, by pulling out the bottom bag. It's Katy. She's messing with her bag and I go nuts. I start wailing and moaning and dancing around like someone just slammed my finger in a door as she comes up to me and tries to explain that she's just gotten her license out. I explode, my patience undone, as she says it doesn't matter even though I've spent so much time on it and I'm downright furious and tell her she could have gotten by without her license and that I don't want to talk to her. She runs off and I fume for about a minute before I realize that she's right and it doesn't matter--I can't remake the wall's integrity, but really, if it falls apart, nobody gets killed, nothing gets broken, it's just an annoyance. And worst case I can make *her* rebuild it. So I track her down and give her a big hug and we apologize and move on with our morning.
We dedicate and people set out over a fairly large time-interval, taking so long that we-the-drivers remember yesterday's quasitailwind and send the Sierra-small-car ahead with rest stop goodies to catch the lead riders. I gallantly assume trash duty and fill our trailer with no less than 6 garbage bags (somehow, we're a lot messier when we're staying in a place with a kitchen) and realize that it may be some time before I can throw them away...but leaving them behind would be an affront to the kindness that the town has shown us. On the way out of the parking lot I grab Vinoj's saddle wedge--he'd changed a last minute flat and left his wedge on the trailer--and then I head down to the convenience store to get some snacks for myself...and the other 2 vehicles follow. One has to gas up, but everyone wants snacks. And then we buy the team some snacks too, remembering a lack of salty food the day before. Katy graciously asks the store owner if we can use her dumpster and she graciously refuses, but says there's a "public" one down at a pullout a mile before town, so I dash down, dump, and catch up quickly with the caravan heading for rest stop 1. I pass Vinoj and ask if he wants his pack, and he says he'll be fine without it. Vinoj was probably our most frequent flatter so I skeptically accept his denial only because he's caught up to ride with someone else. So I head up to the already-rather-populated rest stop 1. We made so many sandwiches that everyone wobbled on the way out of the rest stop, so much so that nobody was hungry at the 2nd rest stop! Of course, the second rest stop was also in the town of Glenallen, which featured a huge grocery store and pretty good burger joint along with several other options, so people pretty much fed on their own, I think. I surely had a burger because I do love burgers served out of a converted school bus! Darlene also managed to score us a donation of a lot of bread (yay!) and some bottled water (kinda useless), before we took off--almost 2 hours after we'd arrived! I think it was probably the longest rest stop ever--in the exact middle of our last long day, with a town to explore (some went thrift shopping, others browsed the magazines in the grocery store, and everyone used the very clean bathrooms).
As the last folks rolled out of town (Daniel among them, since he'd eaten half a box of popsicles and nearly gotten sick), Katy insists on treating me to a blueberry malt and I almost get sick from overeating. But it's fabulous, and we carry on.
I stopped at the liquor store to buy some celebratory beers for that evening, and suddenly get a phone call. "Allison's been attacked. Come quickly." I peel out and race up to the already-2-deep cop cars and pull over and run out. The short version of the story is that she's been assaulted by a guy next to the road, but gave as good as she got and was rescued by other riders who came along shortly after, and then went with the cops, found the guy, and he's safely in jail now. We are a crimefighting force! (see also, paintball episode, back in Bozeman).
Why does the big excitement always happen on my drive days?
Anyhow, we sat around for some time waiting for the resolution of that situation, and it started pouring rain. The vans quickly became full of riders, so the drivers hung out in Sierra's trailer (roomy, when well packed!) and chatted and played on our suddenly-working cellphones for awhile before heading on down the road for rest stop the last, and our stop for the night. Nothing eventful happens, except that the place we stay is literally the only establishment in its town on the main road anyway (Wikipedia claims it is more of a "census-designated place" than a town, and I'll buy that), but the proprietor is very nice and allows us to camp in his backyard. His establishment is everything: convenience store, gas station, mechanic, towing, and even his mom lives there. Weird and wacky backcountry, but the camping's fine--and there's a burn barrel and it's bright/big enough to not be too bear-encouraging, we think, until the owner tells us he had to kill a bear that wouldn't leave him alone a few weeks ago. sigh.
We cook a dinner of badass grilled cheese that only get better when we add tomatos that I found ($10 for Enough! at the store) and spices, and then we make some pasta to go along. The cooking takes quite a while but the results are totally worth it. We have some beers, have some fire in the barrel, and have some sleep.
Mike Vitek makes pancakes as big as the pan, and there is much rejoicing. Oleg shows off a tire losing tread much like mine did back in Montana, and pledges to "ride it til it pops." I help pack, and we all dart inside during some brief rain and buy the store out of most of its consumables. The friendly proprietor shares our dedication with us as well as his advice: "That other pastry is cheaper for more, and tastes better..." so I take him at his word. It is indeed tasty. Second breakfast at 9am! yay!
Our dedication lasts for a long time, and is marked with a lot of sadness and some happiness as we start to revisit (or in some cases re-re-re-visit) earlier dedications--Carson and Dylan are never far from our thoughts.
We set off into a cold wind, and due to the Allison incident, we are trying to all ride in groups or at least pairs. So of course, I'm enjoying a fast draft off Miguel when I get a flat 2 miles in, and stop to pull two staples out of my obviously-on-its-last-legs front armadillo. Thus, I get stuck in the back, and stick with Schliker until we catch up with some other folks. Schliker asks me why I think he has trouble making real friends on this trip, and I give him my honest opinion. I am glad that he feels like I am both approachable, and will be honest, and we have a long conversation about perception, and how him being kind of selfish sometimes has led people to be less disposed to his antics than someone like Marlowe who will always help if you ask him to, or Shawn, who aside from being unselfish is *always* lighthearted and mellow and plays the game better. I tell Alex he'll grow into it and hope he's learned from the trip, and we soldier on, passing a few folks until we see a car pulled over on a plateau, with people out grubbing around in the ditch beside the road. Alex asks them why they're out in the kinda miserable cold-raininess and the answer is "blueberries!" We stop and they show us how to find them, and we spend some time there, grubbing around ourselves, and attracting about 10 riders of the crew that we'd just passed before we decide to take off towards the rest stop. They're tasty, but I fill up after about 20 handfuls =)
We pull up to what looks to be the rest stop, but it turns out that half the team has gone inside to eat at a diner, but as the team-sponsored rest stop with sammiches is actually up another 5 miles, I soldier on towards it and catch some other folks to make it there for free sandwiches, of which I eat a heaping helping. When Vitek, Glass, Shawn, and Marlowe take off, I join their troupe and we do a double paceline into an area that is apparently called "majestic valley." It IS! Who knew that one of the most beautiful (scenerywise) days of our ride would come on the second to last day? There are some killer hills, but we work together to make it up them, regroup at the top, and then zooooom down. At some point in the midst of the hills we find Oleg putting a new tire on his bike finally, but we head on past as we're enjoying our zoomy pace, if not the cloudy, slightly damp and rather windy weather.
Suddenly we make a sharp u-turn after a huge downhill, and we're on the other side of majestic valley. Suddenly, the weather clears up entirely into a very pleasant sunny day. Suddenly we can see even more of the majesty without the clouds, and realize that there's a huge glacier down in the valley we've just worked our way around. We stop for some viewing, some pictures, and to read about glacier formation.
I get a little sunburned since I have failed to get all gooped up as is my style on rainy days. But the sun feels good and that's fine. I get another chance to break the speed limit on some fine downhills just before we come to rest stop 2 where we are among the first, and take the first boat across some construction. We sagged 8 miles across a blast zone, but then got dropped off and, except for Oleg and Tim, the 13 of us keep a nice paceline all together through some really awesome winding downhill for over 20 miles, which is slightly scary due to lack of shoulder and unsafe motorists (one RV almost caused a wreck right in front of us), but was really fun to ride.
We pull into town and start to get worried because we haven't seen the church yet after a couple of miles, and stop to ask. It turns out to be nextdoor to the place we stop to ask at. There's a sign out, and a huge dinner set out for us! We drop our bikes and dig in (and get in line for the shower, which has been built from a tarp, a pallet, and a hose running out of the building), and we are all long full before we start wondering where everyone else is. A couple of people have ridden in since we arrived, but it's been over an hour and we've seen no others. Chris Condit is there to greet us, and agrees to head out with Collin and I to drive backwards up the route looking for signs of trouble. We find no riders, but we find both vans, and figure they'd have stopped if there was trouble, so we head back. During the drive we talk of ways to improve the organization and Rockies' improvements (the sweeper and the shared rest stops) as well as our other suggestions seem well received.
By the time we're back, we find out that there were some close brushes with cars and almost everyone else has sagged in despite the beauty of the route...their loss! The few who don't sag in finally pull up to much applause, and I realize that barring tragedy tomorrow I'll have done it--0 sag, 17 miles less than anyone else and 90 miles less than anyone except Shawn. Over a hundred miles less than most people. I feel a little bit of hardcore pride.
Some bluegrass artists come by the church and perform for us outside; inside we chat with the pastor's wife, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy, unwind, and joke about riding our bikes to Anchorage the next day. Then we take Eric Estrin out to buy him a 21st birthday drink at 12:01am at a cute local tavern, and meet a few locals, enjoy the chat, the beers, some pool, and are about ready to go when one of the local ladies comes over and grabs Eric for a birthday massage. She's pretty tanked, but apparently, good at the massage--she melts Eric and someone else and I take up his hands and work them too and he blisses out. happy birthday =)
Tiffany's her name and she grabs my hand after we're done with Eric and works on it for awhile. It feels intensely good--our hands and our backs are the tensest body parts, not the legs or shoulders. She tells me she has a life lesson for me, that she can tell who I am from my hands:
I need to breathe into my stomach, not my chest, to relax.
And I need to stop letting so many things happen; when I feel it, I should decide and act, instead of going with the flow.
I don't know about all that, but her hand massage feels good and puts me in high spirits, and on the way out of the bar I find a souvenir beer glass that someone left behind and carry it back to the church as I walk with Jon Poyner, and we agree that little towns have a wonderful feel to them on a summer night. And that where there's a will, there's a way, and we've had the will to do this, and we'll finish strong.
And with that, we creep into the church and pass out.
The mood upon waking up to day 70 in Sutton is about half jubilant and half scared. We'd all joked around about riding our bikes to Anchorage tomorrow, last night, but it was still in the future. Now, the future had arrived and left us a little uncertain. The extremely kind pastor of the church in Sutton we'd stayed with brought us some fresh fruit and milk to go with Ellen's fabulous chocolate chip pancakes and our favorite, off-brand bulk cereal--this morning I think we had Marshmallow Mateys (more marshmallowy than Lucky Charms!) and Fruit Whirls (more colorful than Froot Loops!). Having real milk (and whole milk, at that) was enough to make me drink a few cups of cereal--by now most of us have become pros at eating an entire breakfast without using either utensils or any dishes that might later require washing in sometimes nonexistent water. I have a pancake-and-syrup taco early on and then I have another once the rush was off so I can be sure I'm not stealing from anyone who hasn't eaten yet.
And then we played a weirdly tense round of the standard hurry-up-and-wait game--it was actually not too bad for me this morning since I'd left my tent hanging out to dry the night before and awoke before sunrise (but about 2 hours into the lit part of the morning) to find it soaking wet with extremely cold dew. So I repositioned my stuff in the first rays of sun and got it as dry as "reasonably damp" before giving up and packing it, between twiddling my thumbs, playing catch inside with a random found tennis ball, and poking at my bike and hoping it wouldn't implode before we crossed the finish line. A joke was made about how many of our bikes are held together by faith, spit, and duct tape by this point...and our faith in them only has to last another few hours!
We finally made it to dedication and many folks spent about an hour rededicating rides, or breaking out some of their fondest memories of the team, and there was some shuffling of feet and coughing and scratching as the mosquitos had also come to this dedication uninvited. But there were a lot of touching moments as we shared our circle with Chris Condit and the pastor of the church, and despite my occasional annoyance (completely irrational annoyance--it's a joy to have causes to ride for even if it's the same cause we've ridden for 8 times in the past 2 weeks, and nobody's dedication is bad...I'm just an impatient person on occasion and I don't really like that part of myself, but I haven't figured out how to calm it yet...) I teared up a couple of times, between being told how much we were loved as a family and how much of a difference we made in peoples' lives. It was a good morning by the time the dedication broke up.
Then we got so motivational with the morning chant that several of us ended up a little hoarse...
Finally we set off, making our last exit from an overnight stay, in our typical disorganized fashion. I zoomed out after Shelly and I heard that some people had left 5 minutes prior (we hadn't wanted to go first but finally gave up after waiting a few minutes), and I immediately started having problems with my leg warmers slipping down. I hope a shot or two of them makes it into the gallery because they are funny--bones painted along the legs, and I was wearing them to max effect on the warmth and sexy factors but they just don't like to stay up when worn outside of shorts (to showcase their cuteness)...Argh.
So I adjust them while riding, and stop paying attention to the road for long enough to roll off the road and into a ditch at 25mph and elicit some laughs from my following crew. All is well and I walk my bike back onto the road and carry on.
I rode with Allison for a little while thinking she might like not to ride alone, but suddenly there are 10 folks behind me and she asks us to pass as she's obviously enjoying her alone time.
And so I lead the group past and pull through the minor headwind for about 6 miles with Shawn and Eric Estrin before dropping off to check out a scenic spot. David and Tim come join me to be sure I'm ok and can't resist taking some pictures of the mountain range to the south of highway 1, which is gorgeous in the morning light, across a riverbed and off a cliff we're standing on. I ride on, contemplative and wanting to be alone for awhile, so I rebuffed some attempts by Kevin, Darlene, and Alex S to ride with me, and made it along a fairly narrow stretch of shoulder next to highway 1 unto the first rest stop at mirror lake.
The local texas exes and some fans of ours (Bruce and Sharon) that we met in Montana, who drove up just to see us in, had a most fabulous spread laid out for us. We took most hearty advantage of the provided food (brisket, blue bell, sandwiches, sodas, oh my!), and played frisbee and chatted with the several folks who'd come up to meet us for a few hours. I got a wonderful surprise when my parents finally got my attention after I rolled in--I had no idea they'd be at the rest stop! It was so wonderful, but mostly, strange, to see faces I loved other than my T4K family, for the first time in 55 days (since Denver on day 15 or so when last I got a chance to hang out with a personal friend). Once I finished with the strange I enjoyed the wonderful some more until we had to ride out to make the finish line at the right time for dinner and media coverage...
And we rolled out in typical T4K style--no idea where we were going, rolling loud and proud and too fast and not following the leader and ended up separated into 3 groups at about mile 6--and the person who *did* know where we were going was in a group by himself! Once Alex C realized that we'd left some folks behind, I zipped back, found the leader, and got the trailing folks on the phone and the route leader (a Texas Ex named Randy) managed to get us all back into a group, and this time we even engineered it so that there shouldn't be any more lossage. I dropped back to sweep to help maintain that status quo.
As Alex C and I joked, it wouldn't have been a true T4K ride if there hadn't been a little bit of snafu mixed in with the monkey wrench that Murphy brought along. And so, we came to cruise through some amazingly beautiful terrain that the bike path occupies in Anchorage--an incredibly usable bike path system that actually got us 30 miles into the heart of town with no scary traffic and, as I mentioned, the pretty. So much really heavily wooded, shaded, sun-peeping-through-branches, well-paved and zoomy trails. Ahhh! I'd ride all the time if I lived here. until the snow started piling up on the ground, I guess =S.
At one point, someone had a flat and while we waited for the changing, we turned around and saw Mt. Mckinley. Over 200 miles away and still visible...amazingly tall and snowy even mid-summer.
We pulled into a parking lot and the leader told us we were on our own, and indicated a fire engine that was going to lead us into the finish line! It was a genuine full-size rig and fired up the lights and sirens and we rode loud and proud and not a little tearful behind it for a mile or so, and then we started hearing the screaming--our adoring fans! So many parents, Texas Exes, and interested parties with a little balloon arch over the "finish line"...and Elyse took care of it by riding through the line of ballons and almost falling over. So then we knew we'd arrived, dropped our bikes, and spent at least 20 minutes hugging eachother, shaking hands and then deciding to hug, and getting sprayed with silly string by Jody and someone else I couldn't see...and finally we calmed down enough to eat a tremendous spread that the Texas Exes had set up--it contained the best salmon I've ever had, antelope sausage, bear chili, and much other awesomeness.
The banquet was filled with speeches of little and lots of consequence, but mostly with good food and family--I had no friends there, only people I loved, some whom I'd known since I was born and others I'd only really gotten to know over the past 10 days.
It still has not sunk in that the ride is over and that I have no home, no job, and now, no mission...but I think I'll just bask in this heady unrealized general-purpose happiness as my butt and legs and numb appendages return to normal. I guess the first real indication that the real world was back was in finding out that a few riders were leaving within hours and that our family was about to start breaking up spatially even if not heart-wise. It's going to be both hard and good to get back to my "other life" in Austin, but I'm pretty sure I'll wander around in circles for awhile trying to figure out what to do with myself...
It was said that the Texas 4000 is the most fun you'll never want to have again, and in some ways it's true--I can wait awhile, maybe a lifetime, to abuse myself quite that hard without space for a breather, again. But I already miss the new and unexpected experiences it brough me into, and the people I've grown to love. Can I have the best summer of my life twice? Don't worry, I'm going to try, and I'll let you follow along next time too. It won't be the Texas 4000, but if I can even vaguely approximate the scale and wonder that this experience blasted me with, I have faith that I will make it through that as well.