Day 29: The day of the tailwind

July 15, 2015July 16, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 29, 7/12/15, Vida, MT to Glendive, MT: 80.2 miles, 3,949 ft. elevation gain, 13.5 mph average speed
Trip Totals: 1,426 miles (62 mile daily average), 71,030 ft. elevtion gain, 11.6 mph overall average speed

Four and a half days behind schedule.

(Note: at some point during each of the last three days, Ted’s phone lost GPS, so the stats for the day might not be completely accurate. The distance is at least close, but the daily average speeds are estimates.)

Tailwind! For 50 miles! 50 miles in less than 3 hours! After it took us 3.5 hours to complete the first 30 miles when that same wind was a headwind. What a difference wind makes!

We woke up bright and early today (4:30a) to avoid those 20+ mph crosswinds we had at the end of the day yesterday. I was not happy about it. Our pace and sleep schedule feel unsustainable to me right now, but I’ll just keep chugging along until I feel confident we’ll make it to Niagara Falls in time to visit Ted’s family.

We started off at 5:30a and I could actually feel my heart sink when I noticed the grass blowing toward us about 6 miles in. We’ve not had to deal with headwinds this early in the day, and we still had 24 miles before we finished these rollers and reached a turn that we hoped would put the wind at our backs. With the wind and rolling hills, those first 30 miles were hard.

We got some low-quality processed sugar products for breakfast at the convenience store in Circle, MT, then made a 150 degree left turn, turning that crosswindy headwind into a tailwind!

This tailwind made me think I’ve never experienced a tailwind before. The first 15 miles after the turn were uphill and we cruised up at around 15 mph, and once we crested the hill we cruised into Glendive at around 25 mph. We got to town at 12:30p and felt we should take advantage of the wind and push on, but we had a warm showers place to stay, so we called it an early day.

We were hoping for a cute coffee shop to sit at and blog all afternoon, but there were no coffee shops in town. We ate burgers and fries at a converted Dairy Queen (renamed Re-treat) because it was the only non-dive bar open on Sunday in town. Pretty divey town, that Glendive. The burger was huge and the bun was a normal size. It reminded me of Chris Farley singing “fat guy in a little coat.”

There were two other groups of cyclists in this place, a couple cycling the northern tier from east to west on a supported charity ride to raise money for MS research and a family of three (a dad and 14-year-old girl on a tandem and a mom on a single) riding the northern tier to their home in Maine. We traded tips for our upcoming travels (we should expect rainstorms, more biting insects, humidity, and Midwestern hospitality) and we all ate lots of grease and ice cream.

We then headed to our warm showers hosts’, Joy and Glen, house. They built a beautiful log cabin on the Yellowstone River and they let us stay in one of their guest rooms. This is their first year hosting on warm showers and they’ve gotten a deluge of guests so far. We very much appreciate their hospitality! There was another cyclist there, Jace, a 20-year-old who is cycling from Connecticut to Oregon for his sister’s wedding. He created his own panniers out of kitty litter buckets to cut costs and they are waterproof and fairly lightweight. Great idea, and he thinks it’s gotten him a lot of pity-related kindness.

We got to cook red beans and rice in a real kitchen and shared it with Jace while discussing jazz music. Then to bed because we have an early start tomorrow for a 100-mile day!

Day 27: The day of the headwind

July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 27, Malta, MT to Glasgow, MT: 71 miles, 1,357 ft. elevation gain, 9.5 mph average speed.
Trip Totals: 1,273 miles (60.6 daily average), 65,058 ft. elevation gain, 11.4 mph overall average speed

Four days behind schedule.

Today’s synopsis is similar to yesterday’s, except I’d add headwind, hills, mosquitoes, and another hot. Today was the most miserable day since that 105 degree day into Eureka, MT. Also, sorry about the lack of photos. I was too hot and tired to bother with the phone.

We ended up turning down Terry’s exceptionally kind offer to drive us 26 miles up the road to Saco. You should be proud of us; this was hard to do and we sort of regretted it later. Terry gave us bagels and fruit for breakfast (thanks for feeding us so well, Terry!) and we got started early in hopes that we’d avoid the headwind and heat.

After 17 miles of rolling hills, we made it to Sleeping Buffalo, a sacred rock that I wish I could tell you more about, but I can’t because the moment we stopped there we were swarmed by mosquitoes. It was like something out of a Loney Tunes cartoon. We immediately applied our bug spray–our cruelty-free, all natural, citronella-based bug spray–and the mosquitoes didn’t give two craps about it. They were flying through the bug spray stream in search of blood. It was an ambush.

A lady pulled up and told us that we were entering the mosquito flats (which are actually the Saco Flats, but are known for their mosquitoes) and it would only get worse for the next 13 miles through Saco, which aligned perfectly with Terry’s warning. The mosquitoes can’t really bite us as much when we’re moving so we pushed on to Saco. A headwind had started while we took our break. We started regretting passing up that ride at this point. We continued regretting that decision for the rest of the day.

Terry gave us another amazing tip: there’s a butcher in Saco who cures his own meats and sells them in the grocery store in Saco. He wins all of the meat curing awards Montana has to give away, so this meat is apparently not to be missed. We stopped at the store and the lady working there was super friendly. She even opened a package of meat so we could try some (it lives up to the hype!) and she gave us the rest of the package for free! A bunch of people stopped in the store and grabbed armfuls of this meat and told us to stock up, that they come from 30 miles away just for this meat, etc. We bought as much meat as we could carry and a gallon of lemonade and stood outside to eat our second breakfast, consisting of that gallon of lemonade, Bloody Mary-flavored beef sticks, and Peanut Butter Oreos (a breakfast staple, naturally). As an aside: I’m really into the fact that I get to eat all of my guilty pleasure food in disgusting quantities and I’m not gaining 100 pounds. I hope I’m able to wean myself off when we’re not riding bikes all day.

We started toward Nashua against that headwind and the terrain flattened out a bit. After 14 exhausting miles we entered Hinsdale, another small town with a convenience store where we bought Gatorade and sat at a table inside to escape the heat. An older local man was sitting at the table holding his dachshund and another man was drinking a coffee. We talked to them about the weather (i.e., complained about the heat and headwind) and left as soon as they told us the headwind gets worse throughout the day.

Not soon enough, though. The riding was miserable between Hinsdale and the rest stop 15 miles away. We were pooped by the time we reached the rest stop and decided to stop short of our goal destination, Nashua, at Glasgow, which was only 15 more miles. We scarfed down food, guzzled water, and I somehow managed to fall asleep on a concrete picnic table bench. That’s how exhausting it was.

Ted woke me up and had already packed up lunch and refilled our waters. What a sweetheart! Letting me sleep while he works! He is really carrying me through this trip. I would still be in Glacier if it wasn’t for him.

The wind and heat had both gotten worse, of course, so we really struggled through the final 15 miles. It took what felt like an eternity. The hills felt like personal insults and the winds sometimes stopped us in our tracks. We stopped at the first convenience store in Glasgow and bought cold drinks, then proceeded to the city’s civic center to see about camping in the city park. We found out that it was free to camp and there were dollar showers at the rec center around the corner.

We quickly showered then got on our bikes in search of wifi. We found a recently opened brewery, searched for and found a wifi signal, then went in to drink beer while updating blogs. But there were too many friendly people inside who wanted to chat so we were not productive. Two of the people we met, Tanja and Mike, invited us to have dinner with them at a new Mexican restaurant in town. The food was delicious and the company was lovely. Tanja is a meteorologist, so it was also a very informative dinner. Among other things, she explained our headwind predicament. Apparently there’s a low pressure system in the Rockies and it circles the winds counterclockwise and up. Should end on Sunday or Monday, so that’s good news. She also said that these winds are pretty common and that it’s documented that Lewis and Clark complained about the wind, too. At least we’re in good company.

Mike is into cycling, and we’re hoping he tries out touring someday. They ended up treating us to dinner, which was so kind. We are meeting the most wonderful people on this trip. Montanans, on the whole, have been particularly kind.

Tanja warned us about a rain / wind storm tonight so we’ll get to really test out our new tent!

Day 25: The day of the rumble strip

July 11, 2015July 15, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 25, Shelby, MT to Havre, MT: 107.8 miles, 2,385 ft. elevation gain, 14 mph average speed.
Trip Totals: 1,112 miles (58.5 daily average), 62,461 ft. elevation gain, 11.4 mph overall average speed

Four days behind schedule.

We woke up from a deep sleep (beds!) at 5:30a, but couldn’t manage to get as early of a start as we aimed for, leaving around 6:30a. We were greeted by a small hill out of town, but then flats / downhills / small rollers for the next 40 miles into Chester. We beat our previous cycling without stopping record by 10 miles, cycling for 27 miles nonstop. We made it to Chester, 42 miles in and 2/5 of our total ride by 9:45a and decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at Spud’s cafe. I got a delicious, sloppy skillet meal and Ted got the Hungryman breakfast, which included, among other things, a giant ham steak.

Our waitress was a nine- or ten-year-old girl sucking a lollipop. Sort of disconcerting, but I guess child labor is common at family-owned restaurants in tiny towns in Northern Montana? She probably considers it a fun summer activity.

We met two other bike tourists at the restaurant, two retired guys from Des Moines who were cycling the northern tier to Iowa. Interestingly, more than half of the other cycle tourists we’ve met on this trip are in their 50s and 60s and retired. When else do you have the time to do something like this? They also tend to have higher budgets than the rest of us and stay in motels most, or at least many, nights.

After breakfast we pushed on, determined to break our remaining 61 miles into manageable 20-mile increments. We passed through many grain fields (I had “America the Beautiful” stuck in my head all morning and couldn’t figure out why they weren’t golden waves of grain rather than amber until I finally saw an amber field of grain) and many cute towns with funky signs. We learned today that town=grain elevator. A town might also have a restaurant, car service shop, or convenience store, but not much else and not usually. Towns with grocery stores seem to be about 40-50 miles apart.

We stopped in Rudyard about 20 miles after Chester because the town seemed to have a funny obsession with dinosaurs and it definitely had a Amish deli, where we hoped to get cold drinks. They also had a funny sign that made us think there would be interesting people in the town. Most of the shops on main street were boarded up except for the Amish Deli (which was not only not boarded up, but had a neon sign to ensure folks don’t miss it), a movie theater (playing a mystery movie on Thursday and that was it), and a pristine Wells Fargo bank. Interesting to see the businesses that stick around after the town falls apart.

We walked into the Amish deli and found the lunch rush of farmers. Got some weird looks in there, but proceeded to the ice cream counter. A small boy, possibly 12 years old, peaked over the counter and told us to sit wherever we liked. We ordered milkshakes and they took over 20 minutes to come out because the 12 year old was slow and deliberate in his operation of the ancient milkshake machine. Among other problems with child labor, I’ve found that nine to 12-year-olds are sort of brusque, forgetful, and inefficient. But you can’t fault them for it because they’re children and they haven’t yet learned about Americans’ expectation for fast, error-free, pandering customer service.

After delayed milkshakes, we had to make up time to get to the post office before it closed at 5p. We rushed to Havre without stopping much or for long and got to the post office only to find out that the package that we paid extra to ship express had not arrived. We called REI and they refunded our shipping, but we will have to get a late start tomorrow since we have to go to the post office.

We headed to our warm showers host’s house. Lindsay is 26, works in admissions at Montana State University – northern, and is pursuing her MPA at University of Montana. She fed us curry chicken sandwiches and ants on a log! Yay! Lindsay has sort of set her living room up as a hostel and loves hosting travelers and hosts people frequently, which is so nice of her. We hung out with her, her friend John Paul (who is also a warm showers and couch surfing host), and his couchsurfing.com guest, a man from Pakistan who is riding the Empire Builder train across America and wanted to spend a few days in each state he passed through and somehow chose Havre of all places. I suppose it is the biggest town we’ve ridden through in Montana that’s on the train line, but what an odd part of America to see. Cowboys and a few young people who ended up in Havre at the beginning of their careers or to go to school. His next stop is Sandpoint, ID, though, so I think he’ll find that a bit more interesting.

Lindsay attended the University of Miami and when I attempted to bond with her over us both attending Florida schools, she made sure to tell me that Miami was “statistically” a better school. I don’t know what statistics she’s citing, but if she’s referring to US News rankings, UF and UM are tied at 48th so they are “statistically” equal and neither school is great anyway. But the more important point is that US News rankings are not statistics. Anyway, that’s my petty rant for the day.

We had a nice conversation about life in Montana, during which we learned that Lindsay and John Paul are both paying less for a one-bedroom apartment than I paid for my share of a four-bedroom apartment in college, which is less than a quarter of what we pay for a much smaller one-bedroom apartment in NYC. So that was enlightening.

Get to sleep in tomorrow a bit since we can’t start until 8:30!

Edit: I forgot to mention why today was the day of the rumble strip! We rode for about 15 miles with a one-foot shoulder that was entirely rumble stripped, then for 25 miles on a shoulder that had a deep rumble strip at the white line, but the whole rest of the 3-foot shoulder was a less visible, but still very painful rumble strip. The problem with the latter is that cars aren’t as forgiving about bikes on the road when there appears to be a perfectly good shoulder, so we had to ride on that stupid rumble strip every time a car passed, which was often.

Day 24: The day of the cow

July 9, 2015July 8, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 24, St. Mary Campground to Shelby, MT: 91.8 miles, 4,139 ft. elevation gain, 13 mph average speed.
Trip Totals: 1,004 miles (55.8 daily average), 60,076 ft. elevation gain, 11.2 mph overall average speed

Five days behind schedule.

Yay! We’re back on the road!

We woke up to a light drizzle and packed up camp in 40 minutes. We’re getting much better at packing up quickly. It was pretty chilly this morning and we both had a hard time warming up our muscles, despite the fact that we started out with a 6-mile climb. I think we forgot what climbing is like. It’s hard. We stopped after 3 miles to stretch and eat breakfast and decided that our lofty 120 mile plans were, indeed, lofty and perhaps impossible.

We pushed on and Ted did some mental math about how many miles we’d actually need to average to make it home by August 15th. Perhaps he was a little too engrossed in his math because we missed our turn and ended up climbing an additional mile and a half. Luckily, a very nice guy driving to his job at a road work site ahead stopped us (at the top of the hill; important detail) and told us to turn around to avoid a muddy stretch of road (that was, by his estimation, impassable by bike), many more hills, and an extra 10 miles. Thank goodness for that guy! We turned around and sped downhill to our turn, and were pleased to find flats / downhill through the Blackfeet Reservation until Browning. We officially left the mountains and entered the plains and encountered many cows, many of which just hang out in the road. For some reason, cows are somehow threatened by us, but respond calmly to cars. When we roll up, there’s lots of mooing and stomping and standing their ground, then running away.

We got to Browning quickly and were happy that, even with big hills and a detour, we had finished 35 miles before 9:30a. Browning appeared to be the hub of the Blackfeet Nation and it had far and away the largest non-white population we’ve seen since Seattle. It was nice to see people who looked a little more like me for a change. Not for long, though; we were on a mission to complete 65 miles by lunch in Cut Bank so we sped through. Lots of dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. Luckily none of them chased us for too long.

We rode against a stupid sometimes headwind, sometimes crosswind until Cut Bank, where we plopped down at McDonald’s (stop judging us! Fast wifi, clean bathrooms, and unlimited refills are a touring cyclist’s best friend), ordered quarter pounder with cheese meals, and abused the free refill policy on flavored high fructose corn syrup (Dr. Pepper flavor for Ted, Orange Lavaburst Hi-C for me). We planned to rehydrate with water before soft drinks, but they didn’t even have water on tap! Just corn sugar! It was a fun indulgence, but we both felt really gross and sat in a corn sugar / grease coma for about 30 more minutes.

While we sat with free WiFi, we called around for campsites in Shelby and they were all sort of pricy (though still cheaper than the Montana Bike Hostel when including free showers, not that we’re dwelling on that experience or anything) so we called motels out of curiosity, found one for under $50, and decided to splurge. This seemed like a reasonable decision given the state of our tent and Ted’s sleeping pad (replacements will come to Havre tomorrow!) and the possible thunderstorms in the forecast.

We stocked up on Snickers bars, jerky, and fruit at Alberson’s, then headed out for our last 24 miles, which were easy downhill with no wind. We were both surprised by how much we enjoyed the scenery. All of the green and yellow grass tones, gentle rolling hills, and an overcast sky made for a different, unexpected type of pretty. I’m sure it will get old, but I’m glad we enjoyed our first day in plains, at least. Ted’s knee hurt all day, though, so we need to be careful not to push it too hard as we try to make up time.

Our motel is much nicer than we expected for the price. AC, fast wifi, ice, comfy bed, hot shower, clean and recently refurbished, has a fridge. What more could we ask for? Stay at the O’Haire Manor Motel next time you’re in Shelby.

So here we are, catching up on our blog, eating a salad as penance for lunch, and watching TV. And we are clean.

Heading to Havre tomorrow. 103-mile day and we’ve got to get there before the post office closes, so we’re planning for an early start.

Day 23: Escape from paradise

July 8, 2015July 8, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 23, Many Glacier Campground to St. Mary Campground: 21.5 miles, 937 ft. elevation gain, 15.1 mph average speed.
Trip Totals: 912.2 miles (53.7 daily average), 55,937 ft. elevation gain, 11.1 mph overall average speed

Six days behind schedule.

It came at last!

We’re thrilled to get back on the road. It just feels right to be biking again.

Before I get started, let’s recap the last few days of being stranded at Many Glacier.

Day 20:

Our third day, we took a 10-mile hike to see the aptly named Iceberg Lake. The hike was very nice, but it had a lot to live up to after Grinell Glacier (which I think is the most beautiful hike I’ve ever been on). The nice thing about the hike to Iceberg Lake was that the entire hike had a mild, steady grade. The downside of that is that the gentle grade makes it a very popular hike and we didn’t have any of the solitude we had on the Grinell Glacier hike.

The other downside of this hike is that two long hikes in three days without proper footwear left Dani with a severely aching foot. Turns out it began hurting on the Grinnell hike, but Dani didn’t complain much because she knew I wouldn’t let her hike on a gimpy foot. It got so bad on the Iceberg Lake hike that she ended up limping more than half the way down. We couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but we’re leaning toward some sort of tendinitis related to not having proper arch support. Luckily, the foot doesn’t hurt much while she’s biking, but it’s still no fun.

Dani, of course, tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. We saved the hike that she was most looking forward to for last and she was determined to do it, even only on one foot. She struggled to walk to the bathroom, but did her best to convince me that the 13-mile hike to Cracker Lake would be no problem at all.

I’m pretty gullible, but even I wasn’t falling for that one.

Days 21 and 22:

These days ended up about how one would expect given our strandedness in a National Park with one broken bike and one hurt foot. Lots of sitting. Lots of reading. Lots of sitting on the Swiftcurrent Inn porch drinking chocolate milk, lemonade, and beer. A few trips down to the fancier Many Glacier Hotel to sit by the fire, work on a puzzle, and drink chai. At this point, we were rather stir crazy. We just wanted to get back on the road.

Day 23:

The big day! It was a pretty stressful morning and early afternoon. The wheel made it to a town two hours away at 7:15a, and then there were no further tracking updates. I would walk up to the inn every half hour or so to check, and each time I was more and more convinced that we would end up spending another day at the campground. But when I checked at 3:00p, it was delivered! In shocked disbelief, I rushed to tell Dani and we hurriedly broke camp and packed up our bikes. We rode the mile down to the hotel to get the wheel. All that was left was installation.

The magical J.A. Stein Mini Lockring Driver leverages the pedaling motion of the bike against the bike frame to unscrew and reattach the cassette lockring.

I think I might do a post sometime about my bike tool kit, but for now I just want to mention that no one should head out on a bike tour without the J.A. Stein Mini Lockring Driver. Thirty-five bucks might seem like a lot for a “just in case” tool, but it saved my bacon here. Without this tool, even once I received the wheel, I wouldn’t have been able to transfer my cassette from the broken wheel to the new wheel. Also, if you happen to break a spoke on the driveside of your rear wheel, you need to be able to take off the cassette in order to fix it.

Thanks to that tool, I got the new wheel installed. Now, I’m eternally grateful to Velocity for sending me a new wheel completely free of charge. But if I was going to pick a few nits, they would be 1) I had a 36 spoke wheel, and they sent me a 32 spoke wheel, which is a marginal but still measurable reduction in wheel strength, and 2) they only had a disc brake hub, and my bike has rim brakes. I’m pretty sure I’ve read that you shouldn’t run rim brakes on a disc brake wheel, but I can make it through the trip avoiding my rear brakes. I don’t like using brakes anyway. They’re inefficient!

Once the wheel was installed and all the bags were packed, we started off. Wanna know what’s fun? Riding down a gentle downhill slope with a big ol’ tailwind. We just flew down the road. We made it to Two Sisters (17 miles) in less than an hour, and we couldn’t resist stopping for another piece of that peanut butter huckleberry pie. And dinner too, I suppose. The food was still great, but unfortunately the service was pretty terrible. The server was rude to us from the beginning. He rolled his eyes when we didn’t order drinks, never refilled our water without me doing everything short of grabbing onto his apron as he hustled by, and then ended the meal by coming over to our table and saying, “I’m not trying to kick you guys out, but there are people waiting for a table. I’m just saying. It’s up to you. Do what you want. Whatever.” Important detail: at least a third of the tables at the restaurant arrived before us, but no one else got un-kicked out kicked out. I’d say how I felt about this guy, but this is a family blog.

it was disappointing to have a place we enjoyed so much let us down, but there was a fun part of dinner, too! A fellow bike tourist saw our bikes outside, walked into the full restaurant, scanned the patrons and immediately picked us out of the crowd (perhaps we should be embarrassed by this?). We chatted (for too long, apparently; there are people waiting after all) about our trips. He’s a teacher in Richmond, Virginia, and uses his summers off to bike tour. What a life! He also had some of the coolest handlebars I’ve ever seen on a bike. I can’t find the exact setup he said he had, but it looked something like this. Next time I build up a touring bike, that’s what’s going on it.

After Two Sisters, we rode the rest of the way back to St. Mary Campground, where we fought through swarms of mosquitos to pitch our tent. We were sharing the campground with a couple who riding from Banff to Mexico, off-road, on the Great Divide trail. As we meet other bike tourists, I always enjoy seeing how other people set up their bikes. These guys had three-inch tires (twice as wide as Dani’s tires) and that Rolhoff speed hub I’ve been dreaming about. And I may or may not have embarrassed myself gushing over it.

Anyway, we hopped into the tent and tried to fall asleep asleep as quick as possible. Tomorrow is a big day! We need to start making up lost time!

Stranded in Paradise: A few of our favorite things

July 7, 2015July 7, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / 3 Comments

We’re still hanging out in Many Glacier, and we thought that since we’re not going to be riding anywhere until Ted’s wheel shows up, it might be fun to write a few non-recap posts about our experiences and lessons learned so far on the trip. First up, a few pieces of gear that we are really happy we have with us!

We were pretty careful about the gear we brought on this trip, and most of our things have some combination of durability, versatility, compactness, comfort, and low weight. When packing, we gleaned what we could from bike tour blogs and videos, and went rogue with some comfort-focused choices that would make (and have made) most bike tourists laugh. Here are some of our favorite things we brought, focusing on things we wouldn’t want to replace with a similar item of a different type.

Coughlihan’s clothesline. When I bought this clothesline, Ted sighed and asked, “why wouldn’t we just use our bear bag rope to hang clothes?” Now it’s one of his favorite things. This clothesline has two strands of fabric-covered elastic that are twisted together such that you can hang your clothes by sticking pieces of cloth through the two lines. Clothes never fall off and you don’t need clothespins. Genius. We wash a couple items of clothing every day, so this clothesline is in constant use.
Fozzils Origami Bowls. I’ve used these bowls since 2007, when I spent my summer backpacking in northern New Mexico. They are wonderful and I hope they never go out of production. These bowls serve as cutting boards and plates when not folded into bowls and store easily in the back pocket of a pannier.
Opinel Carbone knife. We bought this knife on a whim at an organic food stand in central Washington after Ted told me his main complaint about camp cooking was chopping vegetables with a tiny Leatherman blade. This knife is made from carbon steel, which means it rusts (which we learned the hard way), but you also never have to sharpen it. We didn’t know all of this at the time of purchase, but we met a Dutch couple who pulled out a larger version of our knife and said they had owned the knife for 30 years and wouldn’t go on a bike tour without it. It’s proven to be pretty great and has increased Ted’s willingness to help cook, so it’s certainly one of my favorite things!
Lezyne standing mini bike pump. We love our Lezyne floor pump at home, and the travel pump–specifically, the travel pump with the foot stand that allows you to pump on the floor–is the best travel pump we’ve used. We can get full pressure in our tires, which is almost impossible to do with most travel pumps, and it’s not nearly as arduous to use as other pumps we’ve used in the past.
Nemo Fillo backpacking pillow. Now for our luxury items. Some people don’t carry pillows on bike tours, which I think is crazy considering the value of a good night’s rest and the difficulty of getting that rest in a tent. We’ve both owned a few backpacking pillows in the past and all of them have packed down to the size of a jar of baby food. I love this about them, but they lacked comfort. For this trip, we opted for deluxe, inflatable pillows with memory foam and fabric covers that weigh over a pound and pack down to the size of a liter jar (a huge space / weight sacrifice on a bike). These pillows are magic. Ted is never able to sleep in a tent and he’s been sleeping well this trip. This is one of the times we prioritized comfort over all other practical considerations and we’re glad we did.
Sea to Summit silk / cotton sleeping bag liner. We didn’t expect to have regular access to showers, so we bought these sleeping bag liners to keep our sleeping bags fresh. We’ve found that we prefer to sleep in these liners every night, using our sleeping bags as quilts, particularly during last week’s heat wave. They also came in handy when we stayed in the Bacon Bike Hostel in Colville, WA, which didn’t have bedding and was too warm for sleeping bags.
Kleen Kanteen insulated water bottle. Again with the heat wave, it’s been nice to be able to keep drinks cold when we have access to ice or even when we have access to cool tap water. The insulation is high quality; we’ve kept ice in these bottles for over 36 hours. They fit perfectly in our water bottle cages, too, which is a rare quality among insulated water bottles. They also serve as our tea/coffee mugs.
REI Flexlite chair. Ted hates sitting on the ground. He blames it on his lack of flexibility. I’m not complaining because this hatred fueled our search for a comfortable, compact backpacking chair, which I would never have been able to justify purchasing if his hatred were only a mild dislike. These chairs occupy otherwise unused space on Ted’s rear rack and have been well worth their weight. Although we’ve been lucky to have picnic tables at most of our campsites, the chairs come in handy when we don’t have picnic tables, when the picnic table is in the sun on a hot day, or when we decide to take an hour-long break in a shady spot on the side of the road.

Day 19: Stranded in paradise, day 2

July 7, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 19: Stranded in paradise, day 2

Today was a true lazy day, just how I like it. We woke up late, read in our tents until our bladders couldn’t take it anymore, cooked eggs in a basket, drank chocolate milk (it’s amazing/dangerous how close we are to cold drinks here!), and took our time cleaning up. Magical.

We spent the morning organizing things that had gotten out of order and reading. We ate quesadillas and PB&J for lunch, then headed to the Many Glacier Lodge for an Americano and a dirty chai. We drank those things while looking at the view above, reading, writing this blog post, and eating Chex Mix Muddy Buddies. Today might be the first day we are consuming more calories than we burn on this trip. Like I said, my ideal kind of day.

We also took a tour of the Many Glacier Hotel, a gorgeous Swiss-style hotel with a spectacular view of two glacial valleys over Swiftcurrent Lake. The hotel turns 100 on the fourth of July, and apparently various federal authorities have willed its destruction throughout the years. Firefighters managed to save the hotel from a massive fire in the 30’s and upon hearing that the hotel was safe, a senior member of the Department of the Interior asked, “Why?” Apparently folks in the federal government hoped it would burn in the fire because running the hotel was using up precious federal land management resources during the depression. We also learned that the hotel was seven inches out of plumb in the mid-90s, essentially falling into the lake. The federal government didn’t want to pay to fix this, but through grants and donations, Glacier raised enough money to pick the whole massive hotel up with an iron bar that stretched the length of the hotel and hydraulic jacks, and push the hotel up away from the lake without sustaining any interior structural damage. Pretty amazing!

After the tour, we found a hallway with several partially completed jigsaw puzzles and spent some time contributing to one of them. We headed back to camp, cooked dinner, and were in bed reading by 8:30p. Nice.

Day 18: Stranded in paradise, day 1

July 5, 2015July 5, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / 2 Comments

We woke up around 7:00a to begin hiking what many have told us is one of the most popular hikes in Glacier, Grinnell Glacier. Seven in the morning is still late compared to our recent routine, so we felt refreshed. We made cheesy eggs, packed a bag, and set out to the lodge to find out if Ted received a tracking number for his wheel. Unfortunately, Ted got an email saying, “We dropped the ball!” explaining that they accidentally shipped the wheel UPS ground (!) and due to the holiday, the wheel is not scheduled to arrive until Monday (!!). This means we won’t be able to leave until Tuesday, putting us five days behind schedule if everything works out perfectly, which it may not, based on what we’ve heard about Many Glacier’s one-day package delivery lag (!!!). So, as happy as we are to be in the most beautiful place on earth, it’s not fun to be trapped here and use up every single one of the rest days we’d planned for the entire trip.

We began hiking, a little downtrodden, but determined not to let it ruin our day. We spent the beginning of the hike trying to convince ourselves that this wouldn’t put us irrevocably off pace. Ted did some math and figures that we’ll have to cycle an average of 116 miles a day for eleven days in order to arrive in Minnetonka to visit my family on the date we planned to visit. This seems impossible to me right now, but Ted, optimistic as ever, thinks we might actually be able to do it given the flat terrain and prevailing easterly winds in eastern Montana and North Dakota. We really want to pedal the entire way home, but we might need to make some sacrifices. Visiting my family in Minnetonka adds two days to the trip and heading up to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan rather than taking the Lake Michigan ferry adds three days. These are two of the big highlights of our trip, so we’re going to pedal hard and long to avoid missing them. If we’re not making good time through eastern Montana and North Dakota—which we figure will only happen if we face headwinds, injury, or bike trouble—we are considering jumping on the Amtrak for a couple hundred miles through boring parts of North Dakota. This is a last resort! What’s the point of pedaling coast to coast if you’re going to cheat?

Anyway, back to the hike. This was the most spectacular hike I’ve ever taken. Mountains carved by glaciers are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Glacial mountain ranges are characterized by U-shaped valleys that are lush and green at the bottom because of all of the snow / glacier melt, with layers of glacier-carved rock above the tree line and jagged ridges at the top. They are stunning and everyone should make their way out to Glacier to see these mountains while there are still a couple glaciers left (I think I read somewhere that there are only 21 glaciers left here as compared to 150+ a hundred years ago, but those numbers might be wrong).

We started by hiking through a wooded forest and came across a scary sign after about a mile with a picture of a grizzly bear and a black bear that let us know that we were now in a bear frequenting area and our safety was not guaranteed, so we sang and talked loudly to let the bears know we were coming. Ted also reminded himself how to use the bear spray and accidentally deployed some (now we know it works!), and kept it in his pocket for the hike.

Once we left the densely wooded part of the forest, we hiked past Lake Josephine, yet another gorgeous turquoise mountain lake, and had mountain views all around. We then approached Grinnell Lake, which was equally beautiful. It’s wildflower season, so there were plenty of flowers in the grass. It couldn’t have been more beautiful.

We only saw two other groups on the trail on the way up; apparently people get a late start around here. There was a very cold waterfall falling straight onto the trail, so we got a refreshing break a little over halfway up. We crossed paths with a couple marmots when we reached the top, our first non-deer wildlife sighting of the trip. After rounding a corner, we came within about 30 feet of six bighorn sheep snacking on some grass.

The end of the hike, Upper Grinnell Lake / Grinnell Glacier (the melting glacier is pooling up to create the lake), was spectacular. The water in this lake is the color of Gatorade Frost, with glacier all around. We felt like we’d entered another world! We were just below/beside/surrounded by the Continental Divide. There was a nice couple from Baton Rouge, LA sitting by the lake who offered to refill our water bottle using their filter. The water was ice cold, as you can imagine, and we figure it must be some of the purest water on the face of the earth. We sat there for a bit, eating limited edition cinnamon roll-flavored Pop Tarts, watching five other bighorn sheep playing on the glacier, and drinking our fancy cold water.

Some clouds started rolling in and it looked like it was raining down the valley, so we figured we should head out since we didn’t bring rain jackets. On our way down, we came across a herd of 15 more bighorn sheep. They were everywhere!

We crossed paths with a ton of glacier-bound traffic and were grateful that we got such an early start, enabling us to walk up in solitude. Plus, the views were almost completely blotted out by the clouds and fog that had rolled in, so things weren’t nearly as majestic for the latecomers.

We caught back up with the couple from Louisiana (Kyle and Cassie) and hiked the rest of the way down with them. They told us about some of their previous and upcoming travels and we added items to our growing list of places to visit. The world is too big and wonderful!

We got back to camp, drank some chocolate milk and ate Hostess cupcakes (as we do), did a few things on the computer, cooked dinner, showered, and crawled into our tents to read ourselves to sleep. Also, in an effort to clear out our pannier pantry, we melted old chocolate and peanut butter together and threw in some stale trail mix and peanut butter-filled pretzels to create trail mix bark. We’re letting it cool overnight for delicious desert tomorrow.

Day 16: A day of ups and downs

July 4, 2015July 4, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 16, Sprague Creek Campground, Glacier National Park to St. Mary’s Campground, Glacier National Park: 40.2 miles, 3,958 ft elevation gain, 9.5 mph average speed.
Trip Totals: 867.5 miles (57.83 daily average), 53,593 ft. elevation gain, 11 mph average speed

Literal and figurative ups and downs today.

We broke a new record for leaving our campsite again, mostly because we knew Clive would be waiting for us at his lodge a mile up the road. We decided that we’d meet Clive at 5:45a partially because I was a little nervous about making it to Logan Pass by our 11a deadline, and partially because we heard the traffic gets worse and worse throughout the day and the cliffs are steep. Traffic + steep cliffs + tourists looking around while driving = potential badness. Dan and Gina were staying at our campsite, so we all left to meet Clive at 5:35a.

Going to the Sun Road was spectacular. We started the day with 10 miles of very gentle climbing, then began a much steeper, but perfectly graded eleven-mile ascent. When the park service built the road in the 1930s, they aimed to create a road that traced the side of a mountain at a steady grade and provided spectacular views. In our opinion, they succeeded! The views got more and more spectacular as we ascended. There were endless, picture-perfect vistas, gorgeous waterfalls, etc. on the way up. Pictures won’t do it justice, but they will do a much better job than I at conveying the wonder.

When we reached the top, we ate a bunch of food, drank a bunch of water, and gawked at the incredible views. After about an hour we headed down and hit a roadwork zone where they were only allowing use of one lane and alternating west- and east-bound traffic. The flagger told us that bicycles had to go last, but invited us to hang out in the traffic pull-off where he was standing. We waited there, baking in the heat, for no less than an hour before we were allowed to follow the cars down. The cars were moving at a snail’s pace, so we really didn’t need to go last. Plus, at this point, we already knew that Ted’s rim had a crack in it and he had a feeling that using his rear brake would exacerbate the problem (plus it made a terrible noise because the outside rim was bulging out), so he was relying entirely on his front brake. He planned to fly down the descent, rarely using his brakes, but because of the roadwork traffic, he had to brake constantly on the six-percent grade and was sometimes forced to supplement with the rear brake. This ended badly. By using the rear brake and compressing the rim, he made the crack worse and ended up getting a flat from the jagged, sharp metal crack.

Because of the roadwork and the general narrowness of the road, there was no place to pull off and he had to walk his heavy bike down for 20 minutes to get to a pull-off where I was waiting. Poor Ted. This hurt his shins pretty badly because he was working so hard to keep his bike stable and because bike shoes are not made for walking.

We pulled his tire off to look at the crack and saw that it had nearly doubled in length since last night. Then it started raining for the first time on our trip. Comedy of errors. We applied a few layers of duct tape to the crack in hopes that it would prevent another flat, changed the tube, and headed down the rest of the hill. Unfortunately, although our map’s elevation profile made it look like we’d be descending all the way to St. Mary’s, we had rolling hills instead. We were happy to get to the campground with bikes and legs (barely) intact.

After setting up camp and taking free warm showers (all for $5 per person per night; take note, Montana Bike Hostel), we headed into what we believed was a town to find WiFi and get a new wheel shipped to us. Unfortunately, it was not really a town; it took us a long time to find WiFi and by the time we did, Velocity (Ted’s wheel manufacturer) was closed. Defeated, we headed back to the campsite, made dinner, and plotted our next move.

Our trail friends picked up s’mores ingredients and beer and we had a “No s’more mountains” campfire (name credit: Dan and Gina) to celebrate making it through the North Cascades and Logan Pass. We met another bike tourist, Dave, who quit his job in Baltimore a few months ago and is making a giant loop around America. Very cool.

When Dan and Gina came back to the campsite, Gina was kind enough to let us use her phone (she has Verizon), so we were able to do some research, make a few calls and come up with a plan for Ted’s wheel situation. We don’t feel 100 percent comfortable riding very far with this wheel, but feel fairly confident we can make it 21 miles to Many Glacier, a gorgeous region of the park that we were planning to go to anyway. We plan to have the wheel shipped to the hotel out there so that, even if we’re stuck, we’re stuck in what many people have told us is the most beautiful place on earth. Depending on what happens when we contact Velocity tomorrow, we might have lots of time to test that assertion!

Day 14: The day we raced the sun

June 29, 2015June 28, 2015 / cummingsdanielle / Leave a comment

Day 14, Eureka, MT to Whitefish, MT (and then to the Montana Bike Hostel): 63.4 miles, 3,411 ft. elevation gain, 11.5 mph average speed
Trip totals: 792.3 miles (60.9 daily average), 48,243 ft. elevation gain, 11.0 mph overall average speed

Map and stats here.

The title of this post may be a bit misleading, since we’re only a couple of days away from taking “Going to the Sun road” over Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. But today, we raced the sun.

Yesterday, you’ll remember (or you just read), was terrible. And the fact that we were riding in 100+degree temperatures made it so much worse. Then, the other bike tourists at our warm showers place last night told us that it was going to be even hotter (!) in Whitefish, our destination for today.

We couldn’t fathom riding through that heat again, so we decided to get to Whitefish as early as possible. We woke up shortly after 5:00a, ate an AMAZING breakfast prepared by our Warmshowers host (you’re wonderful, Nikki!), and got on the road by 6:30a, an hour before our standard time.

You’d think they’d realize their mistake pretty immediately, but we saw several of these on the road today.

And that was just the first half of our race strategy. The second was to cut down on our usually numerous breaks. We took a short break 5 miles in to stretch, a brief break shortly after that to take a picture, another break 30 miles in to grab second breakfast, and then we pretty much cruised the rest of the way. Although, part of the reason for the lack of breaks was the fact that we were riding on a major-ish highway with minimal shoulder.

The shoulder in this picture is a bit of an aberration. More often they looked like the one in the picture below.

The last four miles into Whitefish were on absolutely terrible road conditions. No shoulder, horrible pavement conditions, steep rolling hills, and tons of traffic hurtling around sharp corners. Miserable. But we hear those are the worst four miles on the entire Northern Tier route, so we’re grateful to have seen the worst!

We made it into Whitefish a little after noon, and made a quick trip to the post office to mail some more stuff home (a lot of it was our cold weather gear that we brought along for Glacier; remember that record heat wave we were talking about?), and then went searching for a place that had both WiFi and smoothies. We found a little café that had both, but the smoothies were much better than the WiFi. Then we headed to the bike shop to pick up some odds and ends. While there, we ran into Dan, Gina, and Clive and we all went out for lunch at an Italian eatery next door, where I gorged myself on a giant calzone. The best part about riding 60+ miles day after day is the enormous amount of food we get to eat. No calorie restrictions on tour!

Afterwards, we went up to Lake Whitefish and took a quick dip to cool ourselves off (heat wave). Then we pedaled to our camping place for the night, The Montana Bike Hostel and Campground. This is a side business run by a couple of folks that live almost on the way (but not quite) between Whitefish and Columbia Falls (the next town over), but a couple miles down a gravel road. We chose to camp here because we’ve had great luck with cyclist-focused lodging so far, but this was a letdown. It is run as a business that seeks to take advantage of the cycling culture around Whitefish and Glacier National Park. It exists to make money. The other places we’ve been staying have been run more for the love of cycling and helping bike tourists along their journey, without really seeking to make a huge profit.

Beautiful! But out of the way and pricey!! And notice the locked door on the hostel. They came out to lock it up after we had the audacity to go in and look around.

I guess we had no reason to expect that everyone is just going to be kind, but if we had to do it again, we’d stay at one of the other campgrounds closer to town and not come out of the way to pay the most we’ve had to pay for camping so far to pitch a tent in a guy’s yard and get lectured (citing half-truths and some outright lies) about how fair the price was and how untrustworthy and cheap cycle tourists can be.

There was also a little misunderstanding about the shower situation. When I talked to the owners on the phone, the man mentioned that there was an outdoor shower that we were free to use. When we showed up, the hosts were nowhere to be found (and didn’t answer our knocks on the door or rings of the doorbell), so we started to get set up. We pitched our tent and saw a small structure across from the bike bunk house (which we couldn’t afford) with the word “shower” across the top. “Oh,” we thought, “that’s the outdoor shower.” So we turned on the water and I jumped in the shower.

The hosts came out and started to talk to Dani as I was getting out of the shower. The first thing they told her was that we were not permitted to enter the bunkhouse (which had electricity, a cooktop, and a weak wifi signal), because those luxuries were only for people paying to stay there. Then, when we tried to pay the exorbitant camping fee, the host said, “And also $5 for the shower.”

What?!

First off, $5 for a cold shower is really steep. Secondly, he had told us that the outdoor shower was free. But, as was quickly explained to us, the shower I took was in a shack. So it wasn’t outdoors. The “outdoor shower” he was referring to was hanging the hose from a tree in their yard and letting us stand under it.

But, as Dani said, just because an outhouse has walls and a roof doesn’t mean it’s an indoor bathroom.

Anyways, this only seems like a bad experience because we’ve encountered so many selfless, generous people who have gone out of their way to be kind to us. This serves as a reminder to us to be grateful for every kindness and not take anything for granted.

Tomorrow’s another early day! We have to make it 36 miles to our campground in Glacier before 11:00a. They close parts of Going to the Sun road to cyclists from 11:00a-4:00p, so if we don’t make it in time we’ll have a long journey ahead of us on Monday!

panniers and granny gears

Author: cummingsdanielle