Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sometimes the merchandise is already bagged.

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trap shooting

A Saturday afternoon contest. The clay pigeons were orange.
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These are behind me

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Farmer's Hall

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Across The Columbia

3 photos from day 14
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Day 14

Wenatchee to Sun Lakes State Park. 78 miles, 8 hours 20 min of riding



Lakes and rivers by the laws of physics place themselves in bottom lands. As previously mentioned the bank of elevation keeps strict accounts, but it in fact pays negative interest. The energy expended in climbing is never fully repaid on the decent. The great Columbia River with it's deep coulees is a prime example. I had thought I might be avoiding something by not going through Vantage, but it was not to be. The road runs north from Wenatchee along the river bank for about 20 miles and then turns right and climbs up an 8 mile canyon that leads to the top of the eastern plateau of this state. 8 miles at 4 mph at midday. Food and rest break at Waterville before starting the 45 miles to this campground. I have learned to pee without leaving my bike. Traffic is light. My urine is quite clear indicating sufficient hydration. Along these lines, for those of you in need, I have found where in the Walmart of the road is the bed pan section. It is about 400 yards south of mile post 138 on SR 2. The selection and inventory is limited to two items so best not to dally. I took neither. Of the climb up the canyon I was aware. As I rolled steadily over the undulating terrain of the plateau I came upon a sign indicating a fishing lake somewhere ahead. Because of this I was not totally surprised when the wheat fields gave way to a stretch of sage brush and suddenly there appeared a sign indicating a 4 mile descent. This was not good news. I was at least 20 miles from Coulee City and I was pretty sure the 4 miles down meant 4 miles up. It did. Moses Coulee is the place. 5 PM was the time. It was tough.



Tried to call Beth in the PM. No service. I felt strangely isolated. I did get through near Coulee City, but off again here at the park where I have camped four miles south of the town. Mosquitos here. Since I sleep under only a tent fly there is no mosquito netting.



I have a few sore spots now, patches of sun burn, one tired buttock, (how does that happen?)



Time to get started on day 15.

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Friday, May 30, 2008

Day 13

71 miles, 6 hours and 20 minutes of riding. Cle Elum to Wenatchee



The choice was plain enough. I-90 with the wide shoulders, but the noise and the climb up from Vantage, or State Route 2 to be got to by crossing 4,000 foot Blewett Pass. But just knowing the elevation of the pass is not enough information. I didn't know the elevation of CleElum or the grade up the pass, or the shoulder width so it was with some trepidation that I chose the pass. As it turned out it was really a beautiful ride. The first ten miles were on a relatively unused road, paved with asphalt so it was quiet, with an easy grade and a tail wind. Even when the traffic got heavier the other conditions held until the last 3 or 4 miles of the climb. The last few miles took about an hour to do and it was pretty hard work. Then came the looooong run down to SR 2 and into Wenatchee. The usual climatic effect of being east of the Cascades resulted in some mild sum burn on my arms and legs.



Metaphor of the Day: The bank of elevation keeps exacting records. If you take out a line of credit it must eventually be repaid. On the other hand all deposits made are assured of repayment The bank of the wind on the other hand is a fickle and capricious accountant. It cares not for fairness or good will. It rewards gratuitously and it exacts payment as it pleases. For the past two days it has been kind. I don't suppose it will always be so.



Hot as I rolled into Wenatchee.

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Thursday, May 29, 2008

after 3 hours

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not a good sign

It means the grade is about to steepen.
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too bad it's not in my yard

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Day 12 Over the pass

North Bend to Cle Elum 63 Miles 6 hours and 20 minutes of riding time.

Up at 6:30, but with eating, packing the bike and blogging hit the road at 9:30. How is that possible? I think it is correct.

Just beyond North Bend the road is steep for a few miles and steep again for a few miles near the summit, but the grade is pretty reasonable for much of the middle distance. As the road steepens, I gear down to keep the work steady, but with a slower pace. Now rather than thinking of % of grade I think of 3 mph grade, 4 mph grade etc. On the steep parts I went 4 or 5 mph with only one brief dip to 3 mph. I was helped by a substantial tail wind augmented by the draft off of the big rigs. The draft is not the same for every big truck, but I have not figured out what body shape creates the better draft. Unlike more bold cyclists I stayed away from the fog line and thereby sacrificed some of what Dwight called the traffic draft. Made the summit at 12:30. After a bean and cheese burrito from the summit grocery store I had my first nap of the trip.

I had planned to use the John Wayne Trail over Snoqualmie and the old highway over Blewett, but was informed by a denizen of North Bend that neither would be possible since both are still snow covered. It turned out that riding the freeway was not that bad. I wore ear plugs to reduce the noise and the traffic seemed to be pretty light so that there were times when I was actually alone for a few moments.

The difference between flotsom and jetsom is that one is stuff that was cast overboard to lighten a foundering ship and the other is stuff that floated away from a foundered ship. I can never remember which is which or how to spell them. There's lots of both on the sides of the interstates making them collectively the largest Wall Mart of them all, measuring some 4,000 by 2,000 miles of goods available for free. It is mildly inconvenient that the merchandise is randomly shelved, but that lends an air of surprise to the shopping. The stuff also hints at many stories of loss and dismay. There is somebody who no doubt rues the loss of the 7/16 wrench that I picked up. The universal joint I passed on speaks of a drive line of a family size car that fell apart while trying to take someone somewhere for some reason.

Passed 500 miles on my ride today

Stayed in a wonderful freshly refitted motel in Cle Elem.

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At the Astor Inn in Cle Elum

It seemed too much of an indulgence for me to use.
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Snoqualmie Summit

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always a welcome sign

It means the grade is about to flatten.
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

An even better sign

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Pvt Carl Stenberg

Died June 4th 1944. 21 years old
A woman at the cemetery gave me a flag from her grandfather's grave. He was a Jehova's Witness. She didn't think he would like a flag on his grave, though he was a veteran.
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Memorial Day Cemetery

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Colleen

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Day eleven Tuesday May 24

Seattle to North Bend, 47 miles. 5 hours 18 minutes.

An 8 AM call to Bike Friday solved the bike problem. The morning was spent tweaking the bike and the load and by 1:20PM I'm fed, hydrated, greased, well rested and ready to start east over Snoqualmie Pass. I've grown fairly comfortable with the load and slow pace now. It is now possible to get from Seattle to North Bend without getting on the freeway anywhere. However this does take some searching and considerably more effort. Trails are not an unmixed blessing. They are often not fully paved which slows you down a bit, but my bike takes a compacted dirt or gravel path pretty well. They tend to have flaws in their signage and when the signage is inadequate it leads to either wandering around looking for the way to go forward or in some cases a simple dead end and then some amount of back tracking. Often one can find someone to ask about trails, but it seems there are a lot of people around who know of trails, but who have never actually been on them or at least not to their ends. This leads to assurances about the surface, or distance or completeness, or destination that do not always prove to be accurate. On the other hand trails often contain really pleasant riding opportunities, especially as compared to a freeway as was true yesterday.

With not too much misdirection I reached the outskirts of Preston, but there the trail disappeared with not a hint of which way to go to look for it. I asked a guy with a bike waiting for a bus (the best source of biking information is a biker) and was directed in the right direction to pick it up again, but in fact I missed it and was riding slowly and perplexedly as I looked. What I found, or rather who I found was Colleen. I asked if she knew of a trail to Snoqualmie and she replied that she lived there and was on her way. She is working on using her bike to commute to her job in Issaquah. She graciously invited me to join her and off we went. Much of the ride with her was improved by pleasant conversation, but just as we seemed to be getting close to our goal the trail along the old railroad tracks stops abruptly and we had to backtrack about half a mile and then resort to pushing our bikes up a steep and narrow walking trail over Snoqualmie Ridge. At the top you come to the back side of the big housing development of the same name. It was a hard couple of miles, but from there on, downhill and flat into historic Snoqualmie. To celebrate we went to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. Colleen accompanied me to the trail head of a short flat path to North Bend where we said goodby. The ice cream store in North Bend was just closing when I slipped in the door. A cone and a shower at the nearby motel ended my day in comfort.



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The view

I slept on the window seat listening to the wind and waves.
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Monday, May 26, 2008

Bruce's carvings

They fill the house. (Pictures are fuzzy due to dirt around the lense.)
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Looking out and down from the living room

Home as gallery.
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The facts turn bad

Day 8: An easy and pleasant ride from Birch Bay to Bellingham where the family is assembling for the Ski To Sea (day long relay race). Passed a few moments at the cemetery of Ferndale, WA which was bedecked with the Stars and Stripes in honor of Memorial Day and those to be remembered. If the marker in the picture is not legible, it is that of a man of 21 years when he died on June 4, 1944 - D Day.

I made Bellingham about mid day and partook of the usual Ski to Sea Eve dinner at the home of our niece, Kerrie, and her husband, Brett

Day 9: No travel today. While others skied, biked, paddled and ran, I elected to address a small, but bothersome problem with my bike. Unfortunately, while endeavoring to fix what was really only a potential problem I managed to create a real problem which made the bike unrideable. The end result was that

Day 10 was spent driving to Seattle in search of a fix instead of biking on toward Washington pass and eastern Washington.
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Saturday, May 24, 2008

Meet Dwight and Vanessa

Pictured are Dwight and Vanessa, who run a B& B near Duncan BC. Dwight found me on the streets of Duncan looking for a place to stay and took me home. We did have about three minutes of conversation before he extended the invitation so we were not complete strangers. I only waited for a slight pause in his description of the place, to accept. Dwight is a cyclist of an unusual sort. Some of you won't get it, but others will. A bicycle is a great device and it is good for many things. One such is as a way to test oneself. Certainly to a degree the ride I am on is a test, but it is a hollow shell as compared to the stuff Dwight has done. Basically what he does is take his bike to places and conditions where it is not supposed to go. Dwight has done extreme rides through the western states, the Andes mountains, the Canadian prairie, and most recently Baja California with his wife. It was her first extreme ride. I can't recall the details well enough to do these rides justice here so I'll confine myself to what could be called his Prairie Period. He was living in Regina where winters are like North Dakota only a few hundred miles north. Since he lived out of town about 8 miles his co-workers didn't expect him to be coming to work by bike once the winter set in -- but he did. He actually had a house mate who did it with him and to give an idea of the cold, they always took a tow rope to be used when one or the other's chain broke, which apparently happened pretty often. On his big prairie ride he left on Boxing Day, (Dec 26, I believe) and rode for seven days in temperatures of -40 C. He had to keep his water bottle inside his coat to keep it from freezing. In places the snow on the road was so deep he was forced to thump along the railroad ties.

I pulled into a truck scale a couple days ago and learned that as bike and rider I'm at 100 kilos, or 220 lbs. Since I weight about 160 my bike and gear must come to about 60. I find this to be a lot. I am tired and struggling and unsure of making it over the mountains before me. It was great to hear Dwight's tales of the many times he has had to get off his bike and carry it and then his gear though some impasse. It gives me hope.

The B&B has a web page. Google Affinity Guest House.

Dwight and Vanessa

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Friday, May 23, 2008

Just the facts

Day 2 To MauryIs and home, 51 miles, 2 significant hills Rich came along
Day 3. Port Townsend via Whidby. 58 miles. Big climb out of Clinton
Averaging between 9 and 10 mph. It may be a long trip. .
Day 4: PT to Victoria 50 some miles. Pedal fell of just past the Empress Hotel where my father was a bell hop as a kid. Good that it didn't happen in some isolated area like the Sequim to PA trail.
Day 5: Victoria to Duncan. About 55 miles Great ride in the AM on the trail from Victoria to Brentwood Bay.
Day 6; Duncan to Decourcy About 50 miles counting the loop around the island caused by missing the turn to the Richardson House. Arrived at the Lady Smith boat landing just as Bruce and Mindy had the boat loaded and ready to go.
Day 7: Decourcy to Birch Bay St Park. 50 miles. An easy ride, with following wind.
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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Dwight landing

Keeping young
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Leaving Seattle

Is this the gear of a well out fitted bicycle tourist or just some Seattle bag man who found himself a bike?
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Monday, May 19, 2008

Fw: Claire's asp

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-----Original Message-----
From: "paulandbethgibson" <paul-beth@comcast.net>

Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 07:19:46
To:"Paul Gibson" <yogasanta@gmail.com>
Subject: Fw: Claire's asp

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Gibson" <yogasanta@gmail.com>
To: "Beth" <paul-beth@comcast.net>
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 5:34 AM
Subject: Claire's asp


>
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.20/1453 - Release Date: 5/18/2008
9:31 AM

Rules To Live By

There are two offers that should always be accepted

1 a breath mint
2 an invitation to the home of an artist [the photos do not begin to touch the pleasure to be found at Claire and Eric's home]
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Claire's Garden.

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Close up

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Claire's garden guardian

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Slow, but not the slowest

I want to record that I have in fact over taken some other cyclists. Five of them I think. Two probably had some extra drag arising from the training wheels. Another was of indeterminate age because her hair was not all white, but more salt and pepper. The other two had out grown their hair all together making estimates difficult. That's it.
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Breakfast at Cathy, Rich & Anna's

My friend Anna.

Day One

This was not a day for discovering new and facinating aspects of the landscape of Seattle, or my mind. It was just a ride over familiar ground and wouldn't get a mention were it not DAY ONE.

About 58 miles in 6 hours of riding. Actually pretty tough going. The loaded bike is very heavy and today there were 8 significant hills. Also warm enough to have an effect. I don't think I can sustain working as hard as I did today, day after day. I wonder how those guys with Lewis and Clark did it, dragging and paddling and poling those boat up the Missouri. Quite a feat.

Friday, May 16, 2008

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. "

Henry David Thoreau
Walden Pond

You have now read the best writing you will find in this correspondence. Read on at your own peril.

I do not set out on this bike ride with the thought that my time will be improved over that which I generally experience at home. I actually have no idea how these days on my bike could improve upon those here at home. My time is passed in a blend of exercise, reading, talking, on-demand napping, all seasoned with just enough productive activity to let me feel useful and of some value, with an interesting companion and in a great location. So why am I going off on a weeks long bike ride where I will be too hot, too cold, exhausted, bored, probably lonely and somewhat at risk of harm? Because I don't want to die without having done it. That's all. It's on my list.

The goals are two: to cross the country by bike and to call on as many friends as is practical. The guys in Tulsa, Dallas and California are out. I open with a ride around the north end of Lake Washington calling on the Griffiths, McCaggs, Olsons, Carlsons, Gowdys, Metcalfs, Jacobsons, and Powellsons. I sleep in Montlake. The next day I go south to the McCalls in Tacoma, back by way of the Webers on Vashon, and with a stop by at Beth's brother's. That's my last night at home and then it's up the peninsula to Port Townsend, Victoria, DeCourcy Island, Vancouver and to join the family in Bellingham for the Ski To Sea. On Memorial Day I head east via Washington and Rainy passes, Spokane, Glacier National Park and the Kolstad's wheat farm. The rest of the itinerary includes Minneapolis, Baraboo WI, Chicago, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington DC. I expect to sleep mostly at camp grounds, but may occasionally use motels, hostels, and some open ground. I will carry small amounts of cereal, powdered milk, powdered potatoes, tortillas, peanut butter and jelly. I will eat ice cream at every opportunity. I will leave a copy of our 2007 letter (previously undistrbuted) everywhere I can.

For a day dreamer, making such a plan is great fun. Camping stuff we had, but I needed maps, (easy to get on line at state departments of transportation) some bike gear including new tires, brakes, lights, helmet, bike seat, underpants, and an air foil/windshield. I tested my tent apparatus a couple of nights in the yard. The most significant equipment category was the electronics. I started with a Blackberry smart phone. To the knowledgeable operator this represents a mountain of useful options. To the uninitiated it represents a maze of maddeningly obscure, but tantalizing possibilities. There's no question that the Blackberry has occupied more preparation time than any other thing including the bike rides to be mentioned below. I am now master (sort of) of the phone, email, GPS, photo, internet, and memo functions of this thing. This message is being typed on the BB. Well, the typing is being done on the portable, blue tooth keyboard using ten fingers instead of two thumbs, but it is being processed and will be sent into the ether via the BB. I have not yet undertaken texting, instant messaging, voice dialing, or downloading my personal tunes. Neither have I visited the ATT mall to buy ring tones or wall paper etc etc etc. I tried out a solar panel to charge all this stuff. It is supposed to sit in the sun atop a pack all day sucking up energy and discharge itself into the devices at night. After about a week of trying it didn't seem to absorb and then dump enough energy to do the job. I took it back.

Finally by way of preparation I have taken weekly rides of 50, 60, 70, and 90 miles each followed by a day of serious rest. It is a very open question how much I will be able to ride on a day after day basis. Time will tell. And this brings me to the picture. You should find it directly below this post.

If you ride around on a bike a lot, inevitably there will be some falls. It just happens. Often when it does, there is a moment between the point that you know you are going down and the time when you actually hit the pavement. I usually have time to say to myself, "Oh shit.. This is going to hurt". Sometimes there's time to remember that it will hurt less if you relax. In the case pictured there was no such time. From the time the car clipped me to the time I hit my face on the pavement there was no thinking. There was never an instant of fear. I had no idea I was in danger. Just bam and I was on the ground. There was a flash of anger at the guy who hit me, but the first real thought was Oh shit, I won't be able to do my ride. As it turned out neither I nor the bike was much hurt. I rode about 40 miles after the accident so how bad could it have been? It was a strange situation. The difference between death and a bit of road rash was a matter of inches. I survived with the rash. It is said that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger - or smarter, or more cautious. In a week I am going to set out on a ride of several thousand miles and I am never going to let this particular situation arise again. Never.

Never take your hands off the handle bars

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

yogasanta

This is to create a travel blog for friends and family, pertinent to an odyssey from sea to sea, searching for the odd-to-see.
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