Week 8

It was a very Simpsons-riffic day! We left Burns lake this morning, riding immediately past Moe road and Otto road. We arrived in Smithers this evening around 7:30pm. During the day I wished I could eat my shorts, that they might stop rubbing my inner thigh to a state of unhappiness. And just now someone made a joke about Crabapples that I totally missed. And we almost went to a movie theatre tonight, wherein I would have watched (probably alone, since more people are into the Harry Potter thing, it seems. But I have my standards!) the Simpsons movie. If it's even out yet. Dates are something I totally don't understand or know anything about anymore. I don't know what day of the ride it is, what day of the week it is, or anything else. It's a kind of happiness floating free of the parts of society that require you to know these things. All I know is that it's always time to ride the bike =)

We stayed at a pentecostal church last night, and it was wonderful, except for the lack of showers. I'm almost getting used to going without a shower, demonstrated perhaps by my non-concern about a second night sans shower which will probably lead to two more such nights before I have the luxury of another cleanmaking. I'm actually feeling pretty clean despite being rained on all day and sweating between the rainshowers. Perhaps the rain counts for something?

We rode out pretty late as seems to be our habit these days...I don't think we left much before 10am. It was raining as we left so we were all geared up and I got to find out firsthand that my booties don't keep me dry without rainpants beyond mile 10. However, I wore them all day since they did protect my wet feet from the wind and thus kept them (and me) moderately warm. I led the pack for 20 miles and finally let Nelson and Shawn jump ahead on a hill just before the rest stop (which was, in my defense, at mile 21!) Of course, it's not a race, but I enjoy getting to finish my "stage" first when I've led the whole way. Despite the rain (Portland style--it was a reasonable sprinkle that didn't really keep me cold despite me being one of only two naked-legged people on the team), the wind was only slightly against us and the roads were fast and safe. The situation held through rest stop two which we hurried through because we were withing spitting (okay, riding) distance of Houston, BC, Canada--a town of 4,000 which served us a hot lunch and even gave us free sandwiches--sometimes it does pay to be first, since that offer was only extended to riders 1-4: myself, Shawn, Alex C, and Nelson.

Fed and warmed, we headed on through mostly nomorerain to rest stop 3.5, which featured festive art on the road courtesy of the chalk we've purchased in bulk to mark routes. I guess the drivers arrived quite a bit before us, because the road was well-decorated with erotic art, or anyway, erotic subjects even if the intention was humor. Eric and Daniel were the artisans, and the reception was fairly good overall--despite a certain amateurishness in style and a definite streak of vulgarity in subject matter. The lightness lifted our wings a bit and we headed out with alacrity and verve.

The last 20 miles were kind of brutal, but we made it to two great finds by Claire: a conference room in the Sandman Inn in Smithers, to sleep in. And free dinner at the Alpenhorn Bistro. Great dinner, great darts, fine times! Finally we did some quick shopping and got supplies, and dinero, and came back to find some fine donated breakfast from Tim Horton's. Katy and I had sought out an ATM and afterwards headed across the street to a pub where people were apparently gathering. I stopped in to tell the crew that I wouldn't stay out tonight, since the pub looked pretty boring...except that the stage had a stripper pole! So of course I got up on stage and did some handstand-pushups on the pole to scattered applause, before bowing and leaving. An uneventful sleepy night, except for the pubgoers coming in rather late and a bit rowdy into the 25x25' room we all shared as a sleeping locale and waking everyone who'd already passed out. (Yeah, I went to bed early instead of going out--after all, I had all you faithful readers to consider! When do you think I find the time to write these things? =)) Life is good, and sleep is now.

My title muse has failed me of late!

The hotel was great to us and let us take forever to do our morning ablutions and packup...good thing, because it took twice as long as usual due to some snafu sort of moments...a distractiontatious television going in the corner all morning, the saga of the missing team credit card (found, in Claire's sleeping bag which required entirely unpacking the trailer), and Collin and Michael's discoveries of breaking wheels which required immediate replacement. I'd been checking my back wheel pretty religiously since Usman's practically gave out on him, and hadn't seen the beginnings of cracks next to most of the spokes that were finally pointed out to me the next morning--once we'd already left the realm of "possible replacement locales" before Whitehorse! Not that I wanted a rush-built mountain bike wheel, which was all that the Smithers bike shop could provide, anyway. All these events conquered and our goodbyes said (thanks, Myrna! (owner of the hotel who joined us for the morning dedications, which for me included the everwonderful Naomi Gebo)), we finally set out at a slow-but-steady pace for the 70-mile day which featured little in the way of distractions...I think there was one gas station bordered by some interesting bridged-over rapids. After the first leg, I swept since I was already going slow to save my legs for Sunday's special event. Fortunately I had the company of Amy for much of the ride, Katy for the rest, and Alex M for most of the day.

Alex was to be my partner in crime for Sunday's big event, so we chatted about eventualities and reviewed eachother's gear lists and generally fed on the excitement that we were rushing towards, heedlessly perhaps..

We pulled into some of the nicest camping that we've experienced so far--soft grass, propane-powered bbq grill (we made the best hot dogs I've had in awhile to go with the rice and beans), free laundry and showers. Camping like that would be easy to do for months; it's okay to miss a shower some days but getting into that sleeping bag 3 days post-shower after hard riding isn't the immediately lovely restful experience you might wish for. So, I slept particularly well and had a lovely chat with the RV park owner about our route and the ride and the life in Kitwanga, BC, while the rest of the team did the usual dilly-dallying in the morning.

We had a century lined up, and we had to make it--there was nothing between where we started and where we were ending! Turns out, there was nothing where we were ending, either! This started the loneliest stretch of road we'll be on, the Stewart-Cassiar Highway (Interestingly named since the ends are Kitwanga and Watson lake--Stewart and Cassiar aren't even on the highway itself. In fact, Cassiar isn't even a city anymore--it's listed on the map as "abandoned". Since it's 10 miles down a gravel track from the nearest point on our route, I'm guessing we won't make our way out to see it). Also known as BC 37, this road is mainly a connector--of highway 16 in the south and the Al-Can highway in the north, both of which see a good deal of traffic. Highway 37 is not even entirely paved (it's short about 70 miles of asphalt) and the traffic consists of about half RV's (there are infrequent lodges and cabins and guest ranches and the like along the road--most of which don't have as much as a phone), and the other half construction vehicles, tanker trucks, and gravel trucks. Not a lot of actual resident traffic, since there appear to be far less than 720 residents on the entire route, which is the number of kilometers it covers. (No, we haven't gone native, but I could believe that there are more than 448 people living along the road, and that's the distance in miles =))

Once we got out on the road, the rain started toying with us as we rode, sprinkling on and off and making me stop repeatedly to don and doff my rain gear--a luxury afforded uniquely to me as the only one with enough cargo space to carry all my gear in my lovely Carradice saddlebag. It's no racks-and-panniers solution, but it's got enough room for all my tools and my cold gear and some snacks so I can keep my back pockets mostly empty, which makes me feel so much better on the bike.

I saw my first bear while biking today, while I was riding kinda slow and steady but not taking more than about 5 minute rest stops to simulate tomorrow's ride...anyway that left me out front for much of the day so I got to see nature undisturbed. The bear in question was actually at least 400 feet away when it crossed the road but I rode past really slowly since I couldn't tell how far past the road it had travelled, from that distance. I didn't see it again, or any other notable wildlife for that matter, through the end of the ride.

The country was beautiful and abandoned, just the way I like it...come to think of it, I like the urban too, but I definitely feel more at peace riding the countryside where I can go for an hour or two without smelling anything manmade except my own stink =). The trees and the wind whisper, the birds sing, the rivers rush, and my mind is quiet. (OK, only sometimes on that last one.)

Still out in front on the last leg, I pulled into what appeared to be an abandoned quasi-town--it was the former location of a privately owned (as opposed to state park) Campground/RV park/convenience store which would have been the only facilities anywhere near our destination (which is a state campground). I knew it was closed since the RV park owner whom I'd conversed with before we left had mentioned as much, but I cruised the "strip" and dodged some potholes and boulders in the "road" (yeah, I never get off my bike even when I should. I've had amazing tire longevity even so...), and I noticed a few not-completely-abandoned-looking shacks and trailers. And then I saw a couple sitting out on a stoop and so I swung around and chatted with them about life in Meziadan Junction. He drove a logging truck, she shovelled snow to keep them from being snowed in all winter---that location had received around 55 feet of snow last winter! Most of what he could talk about was bears & how we were in the thick of bear land and where was my bear mace? Fortunately the rest of our group has some mace with them, so I hope they'll save me from any bear charges...

Finally pulled out and finished riding into camp about 10 mi north of the minisettlement...on Katy's wheel, since mine was wobbling ominously and I finally discovered a huge sidewall bulge that meant "time for a new tire" (thanks, Mom and Dad!). As well, I noticed my rim had started cracking (in keeping with the pattern of the other 3 heaviest guys' rims already having cracked), but I will hopefully make it okay into Anchorage since my cracks are in line with the wheel instead of across it...even though my wheel is still pretty wobbly. It's tough to get your wheel true when the joints that hold the spokes that keep the wheel in line are gaping with cracks :/. Go-go gadget loose-as-all-get-out brakes.

That night, as I prepped for Sunday's ride, about half of the team drove into Alaska down a dirt road--we were only 40mi from the border, although we aren't going to hit the border on the bikes for several hundred more miles. I skipped it since after all we are riding our bikes to alaska...why spoil the fun by driving over? Turns out everything was closed in "town", so I made the sane decision--avoided a 80 mile van ride and got more sleeeeeeeeep.

Last year, Oliver, Jason, and Travis initiated Yet Another Texas4000 Tradition, the Dease Lake Triple Challenge.

As you may recall from my last blog entry, we're in the middle of a whole lot of nowhere. Since that post I've discovered that my population estimates were probably pretty close--we're talking less than a thousand people on this nearly 500 miles of road. That means that there's not a lot of call for stores of any sort, or anything more than secluded ranch houses we can't so much as see from the road...much less places to stop, places to get help, etc.

So we don't have a lot of options as to where to stop--we need water and we'd like not to be breaking the law by camping illegally (easy to do if you're one or two people--we talk to other cyclists routinely who do it but they are typically carrying all their gear--no car to hide, no problem in hiking 50 feet with 2 people's worth of stuff, etc). We also don't have a lot of constraints--in Dease Lake is about the only place we have a "host"--otherwise we're just camping and there *are* a lot of state parks and the like--you can legally camp in a lot of places, even if not for free. And half of the commercial establishments on the road are RV parks where you can generally camp.

The reason I mention all this is that there's not a lot to go to...but there's not a lot of reason you can't pretty well stop when you're tired, either. So last year, these guys decided to play one, two, skip a few...and head north at a fiendish pace and plant themselves in the only "destination" on this stretch...the town of Dease Lake. This town plays home to a coupla-few hundred folks year round (and a few more in summer--prime tourist season), and has a restaurant, a pub, and the only real grocery store (it's real by virtue of having more than 2 grocery aisles--it's still inside a convenience store), and a liquor store. Also, 2 real hotels with capacity for probably 50 people at once. A real Mecca! But anyway, a place to spend a day or two and not be trapped in your RV or wishing you had a fishing boat because nothing else was around.

The problem is that there's not a lot of places to restock during an epic trek like ours--the team car has to drive some distance to get drinking water that doesn't need to be purified, and comes with a few days of food...which is easy to carry if you have saddlebags but hard to carry on our unequipped road bikes. Last year, I think the guys took some camelbaks and extra clif bars...and water purification pills. They made 204 miles in 17 hours and pulled into the hotel just before it closed. The next two days, waiting for the team to catch up, they worked in a cafe for tips and a place to stay and food to eat and had a blast.

We, being no less macho than the 2006 team, felt the need to represent. You read my blog about us one-upping them on the mohawk count...so some of us had been talking about the dease lake triple. There's no better training for an adventure like this, than riding an average of 85 miles a day for 50 days...well, that's pretty much the most time I'm gonna have to train for a double century in the foreseeable future! A lot of folks were interested, but as the time approached, many ruled themselves out--Daniel felt he had to stick around to cope with leadership; Alex C bowed out due to cost concerns; Eric wanted to soak in the scenery at a slower pace...and it was to be a lot of riding, a lot of chance, and some slim living on the bike.

Who was left was Alex M, Shawn, and myself. I'd stocked up on food that would fit in my saddlebag (peanut butter, tortillas, a little dried fruit and beef jerky--thanks Kim!), and some water purification tabs and a little extra cargo bag for stuff like my contact case, toothbrush, a few lara bars, and some misc electrolytes and sunscreen. Shawn was taking a full-on (campus style) backpack with some clothes, books, and food. And Alex was bringing clothes, books, bear mace, and of course, survival gear--emergency poncho, firestarters, rope, etc. Alex is even more of a boy scout than me with his being-preparedness.

We were ready. Well, we had the stuff to be ready. Alex and I spent the night before packing, and Shawn, eveready, just winged it and did fine in the AM--beating me out of the gate to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich we all ate for breakfast. And then it was time...

We got up at 3:45 AM. Up here, daylight lasts about 4:30a til 10:30p. We needed our headlamps for about 15 minutes before we could see in the pre-dawn light as we got ready, and we were already being eaten by mosquitos. I added bugspray to my easy-access bag and couldn't find my gloves...sigh. I caused a bit of a slow start due to my absentmindedness...ugh, people were waiting on me! Exemplifying my own pet peeve. Anyhow we finally rolled at around 4:40am after a brief but touching dedication--we all dedicated to people important to us. I'd saved a dedication for my friend Matto for this day...in light of his recently becoming an Ironman after beating cancer and being stronger than ever...the endeavor ahead seemed like a similar challenge with a lot of training hours (though not as many as he logged!) put into it. And so we rolled and did a little early-morning energizing chant during the first kilometer on the bikes. After the first kilometer came our first challenge...the highway worker, yeti-like in his crooked grin, long hair and beard, and towering stature, who told us the road was closed somewhere past Bell 2 and would be "for a little while yet...not sure how long". But, we had anticipated it and took his wellwishes and warnings of a few serious hills ahead and cruised onwards, upwards. Highway 37 is a road full of steeps and downs and mostly, at that time of morning, fog. Everything was kind of ethereal--the light level indicated dawn but we couldn't see a sign of of the sun...all was fog. Sometimes the hill drifted off into the fog a half mile ahead, and sometimes the other riders faded out a few feet away. There were hills with no end, cloaked in fog, and a lot of clouds...we rode up into the clouds--there was a lot of climbing in the first part, and a lot of bears. We spotted a few on the road far ahead, then a few on the side, and then we snuck up on one and neither we or the bear realized the other was there...bikes are quiet when we're not singing songs to alert them to our presence (Shawn is best at this, Eric is a close second...but of course we didn't have Eric along!). The snuck-up-on bear was unknown to us because we were looking at bear scat and failed to notice its creator a few feet away...and suddenly I saw it and called "bear...right!" and the bear took off running. Fortunately we were 3 and apparently sufficiently threatening...

The early morning is a beautiful time to ride...we loved the scenery, the no traffic, and the soft moisture that was everywhere. No rain, as we were above it, but then we descended into the thick of things...the rain went on and off and it was still pretty cold at 6am, despite us being warm from all the climbing. And on the descents the rain drives into your eyes like tiny pins of cold pain and your contacts start to flap around...if you're not wearing the sunglasses. When you are, the drops bead up and make you wish for tiny windshield wipers.

This highway is so up and down it was really a challenge to stay motivated to ride 200 miles of it. Highways in America tend to blow their way through hills and stay flat, but this one climbed and swerved through the paths of least resistance and least effort in creation. Fortunately the pavement was incredibly smooth for most of the first 60, during which we took about 10 minutes total of break mostly to change clothes and resecure baggage and snack a bit. Unfortunately, I was in low spirits and contemplating quitting at the 60-mile stop: there was a lodge there with a diner, and what's more, the group was camping there that evening so it was a point of no-retreat-needed. Unfortunately, it would have screwed Alex and Shawn, since I was carrying much of the food and knowledge of the route. But I held my tongue and kept hoping I'd feel better afterwards and indeed, after a warm omelette that precisely matched Shawn and Alex's, I was ready to roll on...however far it was!

I also went a little nuts on the coffee since it was available immediately and was quite warm while we were cold and wet, so I gulped two cups of it...and was jittery for a few hours as a result. I've started drinking occasional sodas again but usually skip the caffeine...but still I haven't had coffee in years. Anyway it was tasty and zooooom!

We chatted up a few other cyclists at the lodge--2 coming south, and 2 going north. The 2 coming south were riding mountain bikes down from Prudhoe Bay heading to Argentina--a popular route as evidenced by the German cyclist we met in Prince George going the other direction--and they filled us in on additional lodging possibilities in case the road stayed closed. And they warned us about some gravel...in fact, they said, it was the first flat they'd gotten on their mountain bikes (with the knobby thick tires) in 1500 miles. Sigh. But it was far, far away mostly past the potential road closure, so we had to press on!

Over the course of the day, we saw nothing more in the way of commercial establishments. There were a couple of gravel airstrips, a lot of hills, trees, and a few RV's, and the most fortuitous pay phone ever. In rural Canada, there's no cell signal, so you're kind of limited to whatever phones you can find. A lot of places along the roads past Kitwanga (all the way to Alaska) didn't have any kind of phone service, or non-generator-electricity even. But they are pretty good about marking their payphones and so we were priveleged to find one at around mile 110 (which, as far as we could tell, was hooked directly to a huge satellite dish--there were no phone lines running next to the road for *any* of highway 37!) at which we stopped and called ahead to see about cabins at the last place we were aware of before the potential road blockage, and secured some kind of vague promise of a room for the night--the cook apparently pencilled in our reservation and we were a bit worried that we wouldn't have a place waiting for us when we showed up and we'd be sleeping outside sharing Alex's space blanket for warmth...

We did a lot more scenic riding, and crawled up the huge hill-o-gravel that we joked that the team would sprint up...turns out that Alex and Daniel did zoom up it but no king-of-the-mountain points were awarded, apparently (the three of us just rolled up it all slow and steady, but the team was a little fresher than us =)) and finally, at mile 147.5, we called it a night--12 hours out, 10 hours of riding at 14.75 mph average. 1.5 hours were chatting at Bell Lodge and breakfast...so we zoomed pretty sweetly if a bit slowly. It was a great day. A great ride, even if we had to stop short since the road was still closed right around mile 160. But we leave it to the 2008 kids to better the 2006 record =)

After we'd eaten, dryness and warmth were on our minds. and maybe a little rest, too. The cabin we'd called ahead for was upgraded due to a no-show for a nicer one, and so we had electricity and a bathroom rather than a woodstove and little else. While we mourned the loss of sleeping with fire-borne warmth (a camping experience I don't recall ever having--I've always retreated to a tent when it was time to become warm, and put the fire out responsibly, or left it in the hands of those not yet ready for sleep.) (I'm nearly always ready for sleep!) Anyhow, we had a couple of electric heaters and some hot showers to warm us, while we used a hair dryer to undo some of the worse insults the rainy weather had done to our gear...starting off with dry socks and gloves and shorts is, while not quite necessary, the most basic of luxuries and makes the bootstrapping process of getting warmed up and staying warm in the morning infinitely more pleasant. Getting the rest of our clothes dry was a bonus, which worked out between a little morning hairdryer action and leaving every horizontal surface in the cabin draped with our gear overnight. Fortunately we'd all brought something to change into in stay-dry ziplocs and so we could lounge in comfort while our gear did the same. To our vast amusement, in the middle of nowhere, this place had cable tv so we watched a little Tour de France and then read ourselves to sleep in the warm comfort of a bed...an expensive luxury but one our bodies appreciated for a full 12 hours before awakening!

We emerged slowly, from our cocoon of comfort and found that the remaining soreness was minor and localized; nothing that would keep us off the bikes. Alex and Shawn started eating granola bars for breakfast before I reminded them that there was someone willing to cook us such luxuries as eggs, chicken, and bacon in the next building over, and so we went over for breakfast. At breakfast, we found warm tasty food (although we'd entirely missed the breakfast menu and coasted into lunch--which I made sure still included an egg on my sandwich, and Alex got bacon on his =)). While we were there, our friends met yesterday at bell 2 lodge at 10am pulled in from their nocturnal campsite to a warm meal, and we chatted with them for at least an hour while we ate and compared machinery and road stories. We also jointly bemoaned the inconsistent yet consistently horrifying state of the roads we'd been repeatedly warned about, and talked tires and thoughts of a potential sag in the back of some nice person's pickup truck over the impasse. But we all had in mind the trying of the challenge before we gave up--nobody on a cross-country bike tour doing the impossible likes to give in to the merely possible without a fight, so we wished eachother luck and set out into the drizzle. The drizzle was unsteady but cold at first, but there was a dirt road with some climbing that had me out of my jacket in a few miles so that I wouldn't get more soaked in sweat (the jacket doesn't really let much in the way of cool air in, so I still end up swimming in wet (sweat) even if it's protecting me from the rain). While we stopped for my disrobing Jin and Glenn, our breakfast partners, caught and passed us, but we all made it safely over the rocks and dirt to another regrouping at the last store of the day, at Iskut.

The pavement had returned by the store so our spirits were improved even as the weather worsened. We bought sodas and cream cheese to provide some change to our monotonous diet (it was cold enough that we weren't worried about keeping the cheese cold as long as we kept the bikes outside), and our friends stocked some more basics in their voluminous saddlebags--bread, for one. Unfortunately then came a minor tragedy in our need to get in a car, after all. The rain intensified just as we reached a man holding a stop sign in the road who told us we could go no further--there was single-lane traffic ahead and we wouldn't be allowed to ride it since there were plenty of cars waiting to make the run in either direction and our speed was assumed to be low (assumed correctly, judging from the texture of the gravel we'd just arrived in and the steepness of the hill we could see ahead). Fortunately the ride was a bit less than 2 miles with a very nice lady who gave us yet another differing account of what types and distances of road lay ahead, and by this point, we'd stopped trusting in what people said about it and decided to just wait and see for ourselves. (A sampling of what people told us: 55km of gravel ahead, whoa boys! ; the road gets a little bad ahead ; it'll be better on bikes than in cars [which turned out to be true--bikes dodge potholes damn well] ; you have maybe 15-20 k of the nasty stuff ; your tires aren't up to the task! ; it just gets worse from here ; you're through the worst of it [both of these last ones at the Iskut store]). So we rode!

There was good gravel, dirt roads, interspersed 50' chunks of pavement, nifty wooden bridges, and very little traffic. What traffic there was avoided us politely for the most part--I believe we got maybe a honk or two of annoyance but mostly stares of incredulity from passing RV drivers. The rain continued on and off, and somehow made the road entirely passable--we rode the whole stretch of it past that initial vehicular ferry, and with remarkably few issues. We had brought extra tires and tubes and Shawn got a couple of flats and changed a tire in addition to the tubes, but his tire was in no way completely caput--it was just time for a new one and we kept the old one in case of tragedy. But Alex and I suffered a total of 0 flats despite riding over miles and miles of sharp gravel, and outdid even mountain-bike-man from the bell2 lodge in our non-flatness. The other element of danger was the rain. Slick roads from rain are something that we've pretty much learned to deal with...no sudden turns and no goofing off; don't make the traffic dodge you much. But the rain on dirt roads means mud, and our tires are pretty unsuited for mud riding. Not in the sense that it hurts the tires...but in the sense that they're small enough to dig in instead of drifting over, and in the sense that they'll not provide much traction once they get muddy. And then there's mud-versus-gear. Alex has what is no doubt an endearing picture of Shawn and my backsides while we waited for a massive piece of construction equipment to stop taking up the whole road--mud spattered from tail to top of helmet, and our bikes are coated. However, despite some threats of mud-stoppage, we didn't actually get thrown or gummed up to the extent that things stopped working--though for awhile Alex admitted to choosing his gearing based on which one was making the least noise as he pedalled! I just stayed in my smallest front-gear (meaning I could choose gears 1-9 out of 1-27) out of a desire not to kill my legs on the steeps or create too much torque on the slick roads and play the biking-in-place game. Once again though, our little red bikes-that-could did, and we made it to the top of our climbs after the most difficult part of the day--the 7km downward and then 6k upward at grades of 8% on the middling-nasty type of gravel roadways. We spent a fair amount of time riding the wrong side of the road just to get the patch with a little more traction, but were again blessed with little traffic and no harm came of it.

At the top of the climb, the road turned back to pavement once and for all, and there was much rejoicing as we reached an "end-of-construction" sign. We celebrated by continuing to ride since it was sprinkling and we were cold. Once we reached the gnat summit pass at nearly 3800 feet (we'd climbed at least 3,000 feet since an earlier sign we'd seen, but we were starting to believe the claim of last year's challenge-takers that there was 13,000 feet of climbing in that 204-mile stretch!), we found the rain to have stopped and took pictures and ate some peanut-butter-and-cream-cheese on tortillas with some dried fruit sprinkled in before the cold drove us onward and downward over some more lonely but pretty territory, if you ignored the couple of strip mines and first ranch house we'd seen in days. The ride continued to be rolling hills without much letup, but we were making such better time on the pavement than the gravel--you just can't go fast on gravel, even downhill, since you never know when you'll lose traction and there is no stopping on a dime...there's just shredding yourself as you try and your bike slides out from under you. But the pavement stayed good and we flew along with feet composed of blocks of ice and determination, and ended up on the last stretch into dease lake--downhill, as promised by a long-ago construction worker. We saw it coming and I just managed to get my long gloves pulled on before we started downhill...and we coasted for at least 5 miles. I'm heavier than Shawn and Alex and so I kept passing them even as they pedalled until the ground started to level out...and then we were still going fast enough that I finally had to shift from my small gear in the front to a bigger one or lose all that momentum. The moment of truth--chain versus caked on mud on the unused gear rings! But it went fine, if crunchy, and we sailed into town around 8:30pm in the steady cold drizzle, and did a tour of the main drag before pulling into our hotel and having trouble operating a pen to fill in the check-in paperwork due to fingers cold to the point of excessive stiffness. Discovered two bummers--the restaurant was already closed, and our bikes had to sleep outside. Bummed but not yet beaten, we rushed to the convenience/grocery store before it closed and ended up with a dinner composed of nearly $50 of groceries, mostly junk food, and $30 of beer (it's expensive here) and retreated to the warmth of the hotel room for celebration and sleep.

Because we'd earned it (ok, we're lazy), we woke up pretty late to a phone call about our bikes--the guy at the front desk was very nervous to discover them missing in the morning and called to ask if we knew where they were. Alex had answered the phone and was too sleepy to lie so just told him the truth--we'd waited til the front desk closed and snuck them in--and the guy hung up and didn't immediately come down and throw us out, so I guess we were off the hook there. Alex's theory was that he was so thrilled they weren't stolen (He'd promised us that they would be fine out front. We were dubious.) that he forgot to be mad. Whatever. Anyway we got out about 2 minutes before checkout time and strolled the bikes across the parking lot to Mama Z's cafe which is about the only thing of excitement going on in the town of Dease Lake--and also the place the challenge completers from last year found work during their off days, so we were hoping for a warm reception. The food was good and eventually Mama came out to find us and welcomed us to hang out and said there'd be work later if we wanted it. But for the time being we were content just to hang out and read and write in our journals (you've already seen the results of my paper-to-computer transcription..painfully tedious but judging from the reviews I've gotten the transmission made it through ok).

We figured we had some time until the team made it in since they had a pretty long ride over the gravel ahead of them and we knew it wouldn't be quick riding... but suddenly at about 2pm the whole team showed up by car, since they'd decided the gravel would eat tires for breakfast and probably cause a few falls. The whole team, that is, except Eric, who is hardcore and insisted on getting out of the van and doing the ride even though it might be tough. He rode a lot of the difficult stuff and all the fun stuff at the end and made it in safe.

The rest of that day was spent pretty much just hanging around in the cafe and ignoring the layer of rust that was forming on my bike's drivechain, decompressing from a couple of hard days' ride. You may have noticed that Mama Z's had wifi--I managed to post some blogs. It also had a payphone from which I wished my parents a happy anniversary (good thing it was that day and not any of the 4 other surrounding days we were totally without even payphone service!) and gave Lori some talk time. A relaxing end to the day as I ate, read, visited the local pub for long enough to see that I didn't feel like spending that much on bad beer and winning a few games of pool (not sure how that happened--ahhh yes, it was my teammate, Collin!), and then slept for a long time.

One of the cool things about doing the challenge is that I then got a second day of not being on the bike! However, I did have to take care of the bike lest it rust into a solid mass...so while Alex Chang cooked some fabulous breakfast involving real (recently) live spinach, I started the work with a hose, then followed up with polish, grease, new brakepads, unpacking my bike bags from the long haul, and polishing it to a brilliant finish...it almost got Vinoj-level clean (That guy cleans his bike with an intensity I cannot match!) and finally it was declared good enough. so I focused on other things like getting my tent dried and folded, shopped for my drive day (the next day! a triple day-off!), showered in the fire station, ate a 1-lb hamburger (I could have eaten another...), was very jealous of Eric, who got drafted to be a fireman suddenly...got to wear the suit, ride the truck, and use the hose!

I finished the days off with a pleasant drunk, incorporating fine trailer-cleaning and ending in some more great sleep. I utterly refuse to feel bad for sleep being a high point so often these days!