Minnehappyolis and beyond

Ten Reasons Why We Loved Minneapolis (Saturday 7/25):

1. We got to see my friend Sara!
2. Sara gave us a fun driving tour of the city: we saw the Spoon Bridge Cherry statue, a big cemetary where Hubert Humphrey is buried, and a scenic road around the City Lakes. Oh, and a computer store for Doug. ;) (So sorry about the parking ticket, Sara!)



3. As we rode out of town, we stopped for lunch at Whole Foods (!), where we stocked up on vegetarian gummy bears (!!) and canned Indian food (!!!!).
4. We got to ride on several bike paths on our way out of the city.
5. We saw a whole bunch of awesome fancy houses along Summit Drive in Minneapolis (or maybe it was St. Paul by then; I'm not exactly sure).


6. People on the road were SUPER-friendly: we got a whole slew of honks, waves, claps, and cheers! (It doesn't get old.)
7. As we left the city, we hit luscious green fields of corn and vegetables, which managed to feel comfortingly rural sans the stifling feeling of isolation of the prairie.
8. We rode 40 miles to Hastings, MN, and didn't get bored once!
9. The few hills we did hit along the ride were low-grade and went by quickly.
10. Our waitress at dinner put our order in late, and brought us a free slice of peanut butter chocolate pie as an apology. Oh, darn!

* * * *

Today (Sunday, July 26) we rode 56 miles southeast along the Mississippi River from Hastings to Wabasha, MN. The ride was lush and green, and full of great bluff views and river views.

We especially liked stopping for lunch in downtown Red Wing, of Red Wing Shoes fame; it had charming brick buildings and a cheerful garden with statues of kids reading books.



This evening, we splurged on a slightly pricier room at the AmericInn so we could take advantage of the indoor pool and hot tub, as well as the guest laundry machine. We've discovered that it's important to savor life's simple pleasures, like getting cool and getting clean. ;)

Tomorrow we'll cross over into Wisconsin!

* * * *

P.S. Bike Trip Awards Addendum, as per Mom's and Melinda's suggestions:

Cutest Animal So Far: "Mr. Squeaky" from Glacier (This is our name for all of the ground squirrels that hang out in Glacier and squeak mightily. A squeak shakes his whole body!)

Funniest Town Name: Greenough, Montana. This sparked numerous exchanges between the two of us along the lines of: "Is this meadow greenough for you?"

Best Vanity License Plate: The jury's out on this one. Oddly enough, we haven't seen that many vanity plates. We saw two public service SUVs in Minneapolis whose plates read "POLICE" and "FIRE," respectively, but I don't think those are funny enough to warrant this award.

Little Cyclists on the Big Prairie

As we left Glacier and set out across the prairie, I couldn't help but think of my childhood hero, Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame. I spent endless hours as a kid reading, rereading, and play-acting the Little House books. Now here was my chance, I thought, to commune peacefully with Laura on the plains. (OK, so we were on the Montana prairie and Laura grew up in the Dakotas, but stilll... close enough.)

It didn't quite work out the way I'd imagined...

Saturday, July 18:

Doug's dad Reg drove us from West Glacier to the top of Marias Pass (elevation 5216), from which we rode a nice long ways downhill (wahoo!) through East Glacier and then out across the plains. As we rode through the grasslands, the mountains behind us provided a jagged contrast to the land ahead of us.

We spent the first night in Browning, MT, a small town on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Our funniest moment that day arose when we noticed that the mascot of Browning's public school is the Indian. Given the way many Bay Area schools have gotten rid of their Indian mascots in decades past, we couldn't help but wonder how the residents of an Indian reservation came to have an Indian as their school mascot. I wonder if the decision was made by tribe members or outsiders? Is it OK to have an Indian mascot when you are, in fact, Indian (or Native American, rather)? As Doug pointed out, the MIT mascot is the Engineer, though that seemsto be a less controversial example of adopting a community's identity as a mascot.

Sun, July 19 - Tue, July 21:

We continued to ride 150+ miles across the plains, which consisted of vast expanses of isolation speckled with the occasional miniscule town. Despite my Little House fantasies, I have to confess that the prairie was hot and boring. I tried to be mindful and meditative about riding across the slightly rolling hills of grassy nothingness, but it didn't really work. Each day, what pushed me forward was a monotonous counting down of the mile markers: "47 miles to go...46, 45, 44... oooh, 44 splits into 24 and 20, and those chunks don't seem too bad..." Needless to say, while this counting and calculating got me through each day's ride, it wasn't the most enjoyable way to motivate myself.

A few prairie shots, just to give you an idea:

Not only that, but our eating options have also been pretty limited. While we were in Glacier, I bought a postcard that depicted a man strapped to a lawn chair, looking afraid, while several other men waved huge chunks of meat in front of him. The caption reads: "Deprogramming a Vegetarian in Montana." And while I know that's a joke and an exaggeration, it's definitely tricky here sometimes! At one point this week, we stopped in Rudyard, MT (pop. 596) for lunch, where the only place to eat was the town bar. And the only food the bar served was 12 different kinds of frozen meat pizza, and no cheese or vegetarian pizzas. We convinced the bartender to pry the pepperonis off one of the frozen pizzas so we could have cheese pizza for lunch.

Unable to face the thought of another 970 miles of this, we...

Wed, July 22 - Thu, July 23:

...caught the Amtrak in Havre, MT, and rode it to Minneapolis! It was fun to see the scenery of the Montana and North Dakota prairie as the train whizzed along, but I definitely felt happy to be seeing it from inside the train instead of during 2+ weeks of riding, since it looked a lot like the prairie that we'd already seen.

It feels good to be back in a big city after feeling so isolated. We've spent the past two days wandering around the city, exploring shops, eating good food, listening to free outdoor music shows, and (of course!) spending quality time at the bookstore. It's so nice to be able to find all the foods that make me happy: plain organic yogurt, luscious cherries, Kashi cereal, sushi, Indian food (We had Indian food for the first time of the trip last night! Oh, how we'd been craving it!), and all the other comforts of home. Being on the road this long has reminded me how much eating familiar foods makes me feel at home. Too many days of cheese sandwiches, gas station snacks, and de-pepperoni'd pizza unsettle me, and it's been nice to recalibrate here.

Not only that, but we also scored an amazingly sweet deal at a fancy downtown hotel through Priceline! Here's Doug unloading stuff in our glorious room:

Check out those yummy crepes!

What I tried to capture in the next photo (besides Doug's winning smile!) is an awesome fountain that we discovered inside the Skyway, a series of connected hallways that run between major buildings downtown, and are lined with shops like a mall. The fountain looks like indoor rain: a circle of water shoots down from the middle of the ceiling, falls five stories, and crashes onto a marble circle, creating a peaceful breeze when you sit at its base:

I liked the Mary Tyler Moore statue! Reminded me of watching MTM reruns on Nick-at-Night as a kid.

Tomorrow afternoon, we'll head east toward Wisconsin and then drop down into Chicago, where we'll probably hang out for a week to see friends and see the sights.

Bike Trip Awards!

Now that we've been on the road for more than a month, we decided that it's time to give out awards to a few of the most memorable people, places, and things we've encountered. Thus, without further ado, we bring you Round One of the Bike Trip Awards!

Favorite Bike Accessory that We've Acquired on the Road

Runner-Up: My white biking sleeves and new Patagonia white long underwear pants. (Lindsey P, that's a Patagonia shout-out just for you!) I picked up the sleeves (Craft "compression arm coolers," if there are any bike-gear junkies reading) at Allegro Cycling in Walla Walla, WA, and was skeptical about how much they'd actually cool my arms or prevent sunburn. But I'm a big fan so far! I'm equally excited about the sunscreening ability of my new long underwear pants, which, while they make me look like I'm biking in my PJs, do one heck of a job of keeping the sun off my legs.

Hands-down Winner: Jugsy!
We bought this 1-gallon hard blue plastic water bottle on a whim at an Army-Navy Surplus store in Lewiston, ID, since we knew we had some hot, isolated stretches of road ahead of us. Never did we dream that we'd come to worship Jugsy in all of his icy glory. On hot days like today, there's nothing like cooling down at lunchtime with a glass of freshly melted ice water from Jugsy. We fill him with ice in the mornings when we can, and we're amazed at how long Jugsy stays icy during the day. Today we rode 40+ miles through isolated prairie, and yet we still had ice all day long. Sigh.

Funniest Road Sign

Second runner-up:

Littering signs sure do show a state's personality. Compare these two, for example:
Washington: "Litter and it will hurt."
Idaho: "Idaho's too great to litter."
You can bet I kept a good eye on my Clif bar wrappers in Washington!

First runner-up:
Along Highway 83 in Montana, between Missoula and Glacier National Park, we spotted not one but two signs that called our attention to the "University of Montana College of Foresty." Try reading that again if you're wondering why we laughed.

Winner:
Highway 83 sure was a gem in terms of road signs. One of our few regrets is that we didn't get a picture of this sign, positioned right alongside the highway:
No Motor Vehicles

Most Memorable Quote

We've heard a lot of funny things from people along the way, but the winner of this contest is clear. Whenever we need a laugh, we just repeat her words to ourselves. This quote comes from a sweet woman somewhere in Washington, who offered us this greeting after we told her we were from California:

"Welcome to our country!"

Now it's your turn to participate! How would you have responded to this dear Washingtonian? We've spent the last month joking about all the ways we could have responded to her, and now we want to hear what you think. Also, feel free to suggest other categories for future rounds of Bike Trip Awards!

Glacier photos - a bit belated

Hi, folks! We're on the Montana prairie right now (more on that in another post!) , but I wanted to (belatedly) post a few Glacier photos to give you a sense of what we saw during our week there. We had rain and sun, a hike through some snow (!), a hike through a burned-out forest, and of course, lots of time reading by the lake. (No pictures of the reading, though, sorry. You'll just have to imagine that part.)

More pictures available (though out of order) on Doug's Picasa album! http://picasaweb.google.com/doug.ricket

Moving at a glacial pace (for once!)

Greetings from Glacier National Park! We rode here in 3 days from Missoula, MT, arriving on Sat 7/11, and have been relaxing by Lake McDonald with our books ever since. My current addiction is the Sookie Stackhouse vampire mystery series by Charlaine Harris. Thanks to a bookshop in Missoula and the bulging bookbag that Doug's parents brought with them to Glacier, I have 8 (!) of the Sookie novels, and have plowed through 5 of them in the last week. I'm determined to finish the remaining 3 before we start riding again. OK, you might say I am a wee bit obsessed. But binge-reading has always been one of my favorite vacation pleasures, and there's no better place for binge reading than the shore of Lake McDonald! It is so lovely to sit around on a lakeside bench all day instead of pedalling. If I'm feeling particularly energetic, I go skip rocks for awhile and wade in the water before returning to reading. It's a good life.

We've had a mix of rain and sunshine in Glacier so far, and I'm hoping we'll get a bit more sun before we leave so we can go river rafting. Today the four of us drove up the Going-to-the-Sun Road to Logan Pass (elevation 6646 feet, part of the Continental Divide). At the top, we took a walk up a mountain along a raised wooden path that was covered by snow in certain parts! It was pretty awesome; I promise we'll add some photos later when we get a chance to upload!

We've adapted the next leg of our trip somewhat, and are planning to ride straight across the prairies of Montana and North Dakota to get to Minnesota, instead of dropping down through Yellowstone, Wyoming, and South Dakota. We've heard mixed reviews about the prairie ride (one rider told us about some funky wind patterns he hit a few years ago), but we're particularly psyched by its flatness. I looked for an elevation scale on our Adventure Cycling maps, only to realize that the next leg of our trip doesn't have an elevation map because, well, it's that damn flat! Sweet. If the winds can stay at our backs, we should have a nice (albeit looong) next stretch ahead of us.

Montana-rama

We're back in the land of computers (Missoula, MT) after several days of wilderness isolation (a.k.a. riding through the Clearwater National Forest). When we were in the woods, I found myself itching for "civilization," namely good food, cell phone service, and hot showers. And yet the second we rolled out of the mountains and into a truck stop for sandwiches, I found myself yearning for the mountains and rivers of the last few days. The grass is always greener, eh? I think it's a good thing that we have a mix of wilderness and urban travel on our trip. Otherwise I'd overdose on one and ache for the other.

Riding along the river through the forest was spectacular. All day long, we heard the rushing water of the river, listened to birds singing, and watched rafters and kayakers navigate the rapids. We camped for two days, and the last day we got a rustic room at the Lochsa Lodge. Our first day of wilderness riding was idyllic, but the second day was painfully hot, so much so that all I wanted to do was sit down and cry on the side of the road. (I've actually cried a few times on the side of the highway, but it didn't happen this particular time!) But besides the painful day, the other two days in the forest were ... wow. I'm not sure how to put words to the feeling of riding along a river in the woods for three days, other than to say I'm really glad we did it. I hope the pictures give you some sense of how fresh and green and peaceful it was. This is definitely my favorite part of the trip so far!

Here's something I never thought I'd say: Yesterday, we got cold! We knew we had to ride up and over Lolo Pass (elevation 5235 feet, some of which we'd already gained in the 2 days leading up to our major climb), and we were planning to get up at 5:30am to ride over the pass before the worst of the heat. (For those of you skeptics who think I do not have the wherewithal to get up that early, let it be known that we did actually get up at 6am the previous day to avoid the heat!) Instead, though, we awoke at 4am to the sound of rain. We'd left our bikes and much of our gear outside of our cabin at the lodge, so we rushed outside and brought it all in. We opted to bike later in the morning, and so at 10:30am, we set out on our first overcast and cool riding day. It couldn't have been more perfect! If you have to climb a mountain, overcast skies are your friend. As we reached the pass and prepared to cruise down the peak into Montana, we actually had to put on windbreakers, tights, and gloves to stay warm! Once we reached a flatter section of Montana, though, it warmed up, and we had a light, cool breeze and scattered clouds to keep us from overheating. It was bliss.

Today was our first day off in 2 weeks, and we've spent the day wandering around Missoula, which has been a nice break from riding. We even visited the headquarters of Adventure Cycling Association, the group that makes the maps we've been using. They took our photo and added it to a wall of photos of cross-country cyclists who've cruised through Missoula!

Now that we've been on the road for three weeks, I'm starting to accept some aspects of traveling that I hadn't anticipated. Often, when I go on vacation, I feel like I should be having fun the entire time; if I'm not having fun, then I've done something wrong, or have failed at vacation. (What a thought!) But Rose pointed out that daily life has its ups and downs, and that this truth about life stays true when we step out of daily life and embark on huge adventures. Don't get me wrong; I'm not regretting this trip for one second! It's just stretching me in more ways than I'd imagined. I was prepared for the physical strain, but I also feel the tug of missing home, family, and friends. I feel out of sorts sometimes, and I'm finally realizing that that's OK and normal. Doug also helps me remember to enjoy and appreciate whatever moment we're in, even when it's not the moment I was expecting.

Last but not least, if you've been sitting at home wondering if you should call or email me to say hi, the answer is yes, definitely, I'd love to hear from you! It's really good to hear from people, whether via email, phone, text, or otherwise. It helps me feel more at home in this new and wild chapter of my life.

P.S. Our next stop is Glacier National Park, about 4-5 days' ride from Missoula. We'll hang out for a week there with Doug's parents. I'm looking forward to staying still for awhile and having lots of lounge-around-and-read-by-the-lake time!

P.P.S. I forgot to mention our newest travelling companion! We added Jugsy to our family back in Lewiston, Idaho. He's a 1-gallon hard plastic water jug that we fill with ice at every opportunity. Saved our sanity on the hot days!

Orofino, ID

Micro-blog! On Thur 7/2, we set a speed record for the trip, biking about 43 miles in 4 hours! We left Lewiston, ID at 5:30pm, and reached Orofino, ID at 9:30pm. Check out Doug's picasa album for pics of this amazing river area! We're headed into the wilderness now, so probably no more blogging til we get to Missoula, MT. I think yesterday's scenery was my favorite of the whole trip so far. We're following the Clearwater River (not the Snake River, as I'd thought) and it makes me feel so peaceful. Send us good thoughts as we head uphill toward Lolo Pass! (I think 5200 feet or so, though the climb should be relatively gradual.) Hugs!
Pics, now with captions:
Http://picasaweb.google.com/doug.ricket

Idaholy cow

Greetings from Lewiston, Idaho! We rode a record- breaking-so-far 69.45 miles to get here, and we're feeling quite proud of ourselves. :)

Today's ride was memorable for its big hills and its kind people! We started the morning in Dayton, WA (pop. 1500 or so). The owner of the Country Cupboard, where we had breakfast, was super-excited when she saw our bikes. She came over to chat with us, and then told our story to the other patrons in the cafe. By the time we left, two little girls were waving to us from the window, and another couple wished us well as we rode off. It made me feel like some sort of minor celebrity, which was pretty fun.

We surmounted one 500-ft hill outside Dayton, and thoroughly enjoyed the zooming downhill that followed. Doug enjoyed stopping alongside a field to eat some fresh peas! Then we had a long stretch of fairly isolated riding through flat and slightly uphill farm-lined roads. After 35 miles, we reached Pomeroy (pop. 1500), where we stopped for a second lunch around 3:45. A sign at the edge of town told us we were entering the "friendly city of Pomeroy." The Pomeronians did not disappoint! Not only did at least half a dozen people in the sandwich shop come chat with us, but a kind old man named Don invited us to come to his house to swim in his pool, have wine and cheese with him and his wife, and spend the night! We were really tempted by his offer, especially since we knew it was another 30+ miles to Lewiston with a big hill in the way. But we were feeling energized and in good spirits after our lunch, so we decided to go for it.

It worked out great! We rode the 12 miles from Pomeroy to Alpowa Summit (2785 feet), and we were really happy because it was a slow and steady climb instead of the dreaded up-and-down rolling hills that we hit coming out of Walla Walla. We've discovered that climbing hills is not bad as long as it's a steady climb without a killer grade. Today's climbs were winners on both counts. Nice, manageable grade (think: spending most of the time in the gear or two before granny gear), and no intermediate downhills to weaken our spirits. When we reached Alpowa Summit, we had a fantastic ride downdowndowndowndown! It's the real-life equivalent of a roller coaster. We did the first 5 miles really fast (like 30 mph!), then another good chunk at 23 mph, and another long stretch at about 16-18 mph. Thankfully, there was not a lot of traffic on the road. At the bottom of the mega-downhill, we sidled up alongside the Snake River, which we'll ride along for the next several days through Idaho on Hwy 12.

We made it to the Econo Lodge at 8:30pm, got hot showers, then walked down the street to devour a big salad and a pizza. Eating after such a long day is SO satisfying! Every bite tastes so good.

Tomorrow we start riding through Idaho toward Missoula, MT. This section is a route that Doug has ridden before, and of which he has fond memories, so I'm excited to finally get to see it!

P.S. These photos are from the past two days, and include scenes from several towns we rode through. (The "Hot Poop" store is from Walla Walla--Sister, that one's for you. ;P)