1200 feet. 1400 feet. 2000 feet. After a while, the numbers just start to blend together. It’s hard to convey the sense of starting out a day at 1800 feet and climbing up to 5300. At 9am, the town of White Bird was closed up tight as a drum (despite the cafe saying they would open at 8). The sun had started to climb in the sky. There was nothing left to do but patch the gimpy tube on the back of my bike, eat the last of the Clif Bars that Emily had given me, fill my two water bottles with lukewarm water from the hotel tap, and start pedaling. On the way out of town, I passed a couple on an ATV who waved at me, as if to say “it’s your funeral, buddy”.
Old Highway 95 is an angry road. Relentless, tortuous, torturous, unrelenting. It is a road that says “I do not want you. Please leave me alone”. It winds its way up from White Bird to the summit of White Bird Hill, joining back up with the new, modern US-95. There is - quite literally - nothing there, and no reason to take the road anymore. It’s not clear to me why they even keep it open. The land is open and brown and dry, which has the undesirable “benefit” that you could see almost all the way to the top from the bottom - so you knew just how screwed you truly were. Deer scampered up and down along the rocky cliffs. There was an historical site for an old Indian battle, and I could imagine in my head rampaging groups of Native Americans on horseback, parading over the hills. I saw no cars the entire time; I think they were afraid. At one point a farmer got on the road with a tractor carrying some bales of hay, but he got off as quickly as he could. Even the two horses I passed turned around and went back the other way. 500 feet up the mountain I was completely, devastatingly alone. 900 feet up the mountain, the rear tire fell off the wheel of my bike. It had been giving me trouble for days, and now it was completely, unavoidably broken. Buddhism preaches this idea of relativism; that things are what we make of them. In that moment, I was quite certain that they were wrong. It was hot. My back tire was broken. I was alone, and I had 1800 feet left to climb. These were facts, as real as things could be. I could almost reach out and touch the heat, and I could damn sure reach out and touch the broken back wheel. So I changed that wheel, got back on that bike, and made it to the top.
I don’t know if I will ever ride that road again. I think it would be fun someday to ride my car or motorcycle back along that road, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be on a bike there again. But I will never forget it.
Today, I met my friend Jessica. She’s also riding across the country, but from the opposite direction. She was one of my inspirations for starting this trip, and you should definitely check out her blog at http://bikingacrossthe.us. When I realized that there was a chance we might pass like ships in the night, we concocted a plan to do a high five, and today was High Five Day. We ended up meeting at a wheat field outside of Stites, ID. Random, but entirely appropriate somehow, that the two of us, both from the Bay Area, should now have a picture of each other in a wheat field in rural Idaho. I have no idea how I’m going to explain that picture to my grandkids. She was with a couple of guys, Alex and Jeremiah; they were definitely cool. Everyone I meet out on the trail is cool. They’re my people.
Jessica said something interesting as we were staring at this immense field of wheat: “This is something I’ve never seen before”. And it’s true. I hadn’t. And I realized; that’s one of the awesome things about this trip. I will definitely admit to being a New-o-phile; I like something new all the time. And this trip provides that in spades. Every day I see something or experience something I had never seen. I think that’s what I love about being on the bike; it’s fast enough (compared to hiking) that I get to a new place every day, but it’s slow enough (compared to driving) that I actually *see* the things I roll past. I could also see a motorcycle working out that way, which is why Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance works. I’ve seen arid deserts, lush deciduous forests, I’ve thrown my bike over a barbed wire fence, seen ninjas, made friends with a New Yorker, and ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches. I rode 122 miles in one day, climbed 3000 feet over a mountain pass, got chased by bees, stand up paddle boarded, sand boarded, and camped in the rain (last night it rained on me for only the second time the whole trip - and I was fine!). Some experiences just wash off me, others will linger. But that attitude - of seeking something new all the time - is definitely going to stick with me.