Canada

I'm not really sure how I can begin to write about such a long and sweeping experience like the Tour Divide. The fact is, right now, I can't. I'm fresh off the route and dealing with the swift realities of the expensive brake work my car needs, how to get myself and that silly car back to Juneau as quickly as possible, the fact that I'm returning to Alaska homeless, single and back to a job that will be much different and likely even harder and more all-encompassing than it was when I left it. And I have to do all of this having been "Great-Divided." I don't think it matters who you are, or why or how you rode this route - it changes you. And in the short term, quite drastically. I've lost about 10 pounds - even my skinny jeans slip down my backside. I still greedily eye the gummy candy sections at gas stations. I can't think beyond eat, sleep, ride, and I have a whole life to move on with. Right now, I admit I feel a little amused when people tell me they're impressed with what I've accomplished. I want to tell them that life on a bike is so much easier than real life.

In the coming weeks, I do plan to write in depth about my experiences on the Tour Divide, because that's what I do, and that's how I process things. But in this short term, with so much else going on, I might just have to settle for posting my favorite pictures and a few short captions. Eventually, I'll upload all my hundreds of pictures to a site like Picassa and probably unload thousands of words of Tour Divide blabbage on this computer. But for now, I'll start with my two days in Canada.

John Nobile and I at the race start in Banff, the Spray River trailhead. So innocent, so full of hope ... so clean. :-)

I was talking with my friends Keith and Leslie with the race suddenly "started," and the whole field just launched forward before I knew what happened. I quickly fired up the Spot unit and turned on my GPS, but I began the race at the very back of the pack. That was probably a good thing. I missed the crazy hammering of the first few miles, and just hung back and enjoyed the scenery with the other Tour Divide tourists.

Even still, with 42 racers still relatively close together, there was lots of company that first day. It's almost strange to look back on. It was one of my most relaxed days, and the only day that to me had any appearance of a race. But then again, I was never up front. ;-)

I'll admit that at first I was a little irked about having to ride the Canadian "prologue." It wasn't part of my plan until very close to the actual race, but I did make the decision to ride the Tour Divide and Canada is part of the Tour Divide. Even though I came very close to the Great Divide Race (border-to-border) female record and, despite all, in the end could have broken it with a little determination and an all-night ride across the desert - I don't regret my decision. I had great company both before and during the race, and the Canada stretch really is as beautiful as they say it is. But they're all beautiful. Even the Great Divide Basin is beautiful.

But Banff National Park is stunning.

And the first day - long before trail weariness sets in - is the perfect time to enjoy scenery. I took lots of pictures on day one.

Even the powerline access trails are stunning.

The first day brought hours of scattered rain showers, which turned out to be a constant for most of the trip. I didn't keep solid track of my "Days of Rain" on the Tour Divide, but it was at least 20 out of 24. Of course, I'm from Juneau, and the rain didn't really bother me at all until the mud caught up with me.

Some kind of industrial plant outside of Elkford, where I spent my first night about 100 miles from the start. I became pretty lost finding my way out of Elkford, and burned up about 45 minutes to an hour looking for the right road out of town. That was actually the most lost I ever was in the course of the entire trip. And for that, I'd like to thank my Garmin Vista HCX GPS unit, and Scott Morris for creating a most excellent track of the border-to-border route. Seriously. With my sense of direction and attention span, it was a godsend. My GPS became my most valued possession - almost more so than my bike. I practically slept with it at night.

Those first two days were mostly smiles, gratitude and curiosity about how much longer it was going to last. At that point, I had no concept of really riding my bike all the way to Mexico and didn't really believe I could do it in the time frame I had set for myself. I thought my body would shut down, or my mind would, or both. The task I had set to, in all honesty, looked impossible.

Maybe those thoughts were my own way of taking the pressure off myself. The race already took so much time, money, planning and preparation that I don't think I was ready to deal with the disappointment of failure. So I told myself that just in being out there, it was already a success.

But by the afternoon of day two, the race was starting to look ridiculous. The night before the race, the organizers threw in the curve ball of a new "test" section that added something like 45 miles, three big passes, a lot of rough roads and a nearly nonexistent animal trail that was supposed to pass for "singletrack." Plus, we had to follow it all with only a rather vague and sometimes outright wrong cue sheet - no maps, no elevation profiles, no GPS. Luckily, I had the bike tracks of the many people in front of me to follow. I ended up going through the singletrack stretch in the dark. The end quarter mile gained nearly 300 feet on a very slippery, muddy trail that cut straight up the steep slope. The cue sheet called it a pusher but it wasn't even that. A couple of times I had my bike practically over my head, slipping backward down the slimy trail as I struggled to find my balance. I didn't think I was going to muster the strength from my puny arms to push the bike up that slope. I thought I was going to have to break my bike down to several pieces and literally shuttle it up. But after lots of grunting and sweating, I did make it up only to reach a clear-cut area with lots of downed trees and no distinct trail across it. I groped around in the dark for a half hour, knowing the road was mere yards away but unable to find it. By the time I stumbled onto the gravel, I was so tired and frustrated that I only rode another mile before just plopping down to camp in some pretty serious bearitory. I didn't care. It's funny now to look back and think about how frustrated I was about the whole thing. That was nothing. :-)

The next day, I woke up to more fun obstacles.

I crossed the border at 9:45 a.m. Sunday, June 14. I was feeling pretty tired, and the race had only just begun.

Made it

I rolled as close to the Mexican border as the gate would let me at 5:24 p.m. Monday, July 6, to finish the 2,700-ish miles of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in 24 days, 7 hours and 24 minutes. My parents drove down from Salt Lake City to meet me at the border, so even though the guard station was closed, I didn't have to finish alone. What an incredible experience. Feels strange to not have to pedal any more. Feels even stranger to be wearing clothes that I didn't just wash in the shower. I'm happy, healthy and still feeling strong. Despite a few mechanicals, minor injury and weather setbacks, I still kept my goal of finishing within 25 days, and still feel like I could go out again tomorrow if I needed to. Glad I don't have to, though. I took 731 pictures. More to come soon, I'm sure.

Free day

I groped my way out of Silverthorne this morning along a series of confusing bike paths. Just when I thought i was home free, I came up on the tail end of a large breast cancer awareness walk. For nearly 10 miles, I weaved through a parade of people wearing pink shirts and waving balloons shaped like breasts. At first I cheered them on, but after four miles, I began to feel herd weary. I blew through Breckenridge and ran into my third human traffic jam up Boreas Pass, with Sunday drivers and bikers crowding the narrow road.

I dropped down the pass into much more lonely country, wide open country without even a tree to pee behind. I was slammed by a couple heavy thunderstorms, dropping hail and mixing up mud. I was pretty muddy when I rolled into Hartsel, which was teeming with bicycle tourists traveling the trans-America route. Everyone was curious about my mountain bike and muddy state, so I spent more than an hour chatting with fellow travelers, including a vehicle-supported group traveling cross-country to raise awareness about affordable housing. They weren't very impressed when I told them I was averaging 100 miles a day. Sigh. Roadies just don't understand.

Still, human contact is a good thing. I returned to lonely country to climb a couple more small passes, and then dropped 3,000 feet into Salida on the most breathtakingly scenic road. Sunlight filtered through curtains of scattered showers over a skyline of 14,000-foot peaks as I buzzed around the narrow edges of sandstone outcroppings. When I reached Salida, I realized that I felt totally fresh, like the 115-mile day didn't even take anything out of me. It felt like a free day. I decided to soak it in and enjoy it, because I'm certain to not get any more of those. :-)

Sent on the go from my Peek

Good luck, bad luck

I was grinding up a loose gravel road, feeling lonely and tired, with a gorgeous sunset fading quickly behind me. I watched my headlight beam bounce off pebbles until it illuminated a sign announcing 10 miles of private land. No tresspassing. I wondered if I would just keep going. I thought i should.

After 10 p.m., I passed the Brush Mountain Outpost. I lingered a moment, envying its comfort and warmth, before continuing up the road. I was about 100 feet past when a woman called out my name. "You hungry?" she asked.

Inside the warm building, she told me she was a fan of the race. She had been tracking everyone and inviting them in for meals and beds. She made mw a quesedilla and fresh fruit. She told me about the things that were going on in the world. She asked if I thought i was doing well in the race. "Well," I said, "If your goal is simply to finish the race, I believe it's 20 percent perseverance and 80 percent luck. So far, I've been pretty lucky."

This morning I left my warm outpost bed to greet the rainy, cold morning. Fog moved in and the showers picked up in intensity as I climbed the Watershed Divide. The descent was rocky, severly muddy and becoming muddier. Patchwork repairs in Rawlins had left me with new front brake pads, terribly worn back brake pads and no spares. I knew my brake situation was sketchy, but I feared the wheel-sucking mud and I wanted to get off that mountain. What I didn't know was that my new front brake pads were rapidly disintigrating to black goo. I didn't find out until a particularly steep, rocky slope. I pressed down on the brake levers and nothing happened.

I panicked and leaned toward the trail, bashing my left knee on a rock amid a geyser of mud and screeching metal. Sharp pain was followed by blunt anger. That was an unlucky thing to have happen.

I adjusted my back brake enough to get it working again. The front was pretty much metal on metal. The rational side of me wanted to walk down, but a deepset fear of mud drove me to ride the back brake all the way to Clark, where I arrived cold, stiff and completely frustrated.

I spent and hour icing my knee, warming my body, and trying to motivate to make the run to Steamboat Spring. I knew I needed to get there quickly to get my bike repaired, but I struggled to find the courage to get back on my bike. My knee was swollen and stiff, and I was in full-on hate mode. Eventually I toughed up, walked around for a while to loosen my knee, hosed myself down and started a slow but painful pedal into town.

My first stop in Steamboat was the bike shop, and despite the late hour of 4 pm, they were amazingly helpful. They put everything aside to refurbish my rear hub, install new brake pads and a new front rotar and caliper, new chainrings, chain and cassette, and sell me a couple spare brake pads. My bike was finally running again, but my knee felt like crap.

While the guys at Orange Peel were working on my bike, I tried to work up the courage to head down the trail tonight. But the stiffness and persistant swelling in my knee combined with more gathering storm clouds convinced me to stay in town, ice the knee, dry my gear and continue searching for courage.

I think my knee injury is just a bruise. So I plan to continue on in the morning. Wish me luck.

Sent on the go from my Peek

Nearly stranded

Despite the daunting combination of heat, wind, desolation, remoteness, and lack of shade, food and water, I had been looking forward to the 140-mile trek across the Great Divide Basin. A big part of that has to do with my ancestry - my great-great-and-so-forth grandparents crossed the plains with the Mormon pioneers in the mid-19th century. They trekked across the Basin in the same area that the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route traverses today. And because of the aforementioned heat, wind, desolation, ect., little about the region has changed. I was excited to get out there and think about all the things they saw and felt, and draw inspiration from their struggle and perseverance.

I left Atlantic City at 5 a.m. beneath a beautiful sunrise and bid goodbye to the last tree for 135 miles. Shortly thereafter, I passed the Willie's Handcart Company historic site, a place where tragedy struck a group of pioneers attempting to cross the Sweetwater River in a winter storm in late October. A great couple that I met at the bar in Atlantic City, Marjane and Terry, told me that the company had been plagued with mechanical problems with their handcarts and had lost several oxen, and because of that had fallen behind schedule and got caught in a Wyoming winter. Many of them died or got frostbite. Pioneer tragedy was on my mind when, about 30 miles in, my freewheel started to slip.

After coasting down a long hill, I tried to pedal and nothing happened. I spun my legs wildly and the bike slowed down rapidly up the next hill. Panic began to set in. Even if I turned around, 30 miles was a long way to walk back to Atlantic City. And I was nearly 100 miles from the highway if I stayed on the route. Jeremy Noble, the closest racer to me, left Atlantic City the night before and was well in front of me. I was all alone. Just me and the pronghorn. Stranded.

Luckily, the hub finally engaged just before I stalled out. I pedaled wildly down a few more hills before I let it coast again. The freewheel froze up, again. More wild spinning would coax it back into gear, but I was beginning to realize that coasting or stopping wasn't a viable option. I might be able to coax it back to life, but what would happen when I couldn't? There were a couple of bailout options along the route, but even the best-case scenerios would put those places at a full day's walk. All of my romantic pioneer fantasies turned to pure stress.

I decided to continue forward on the route and hope I could limp it into Rawlins. It meant near-constant pedaling for 100 miles, which on Day 12 of this hard tour is a tall order. My legs are tired and they like breaks. A couple of times, I had no choice but to stop. I needed to tap into my water reserve, and I couldn't hold it any longer and wasn't quite willing to pee my pants. Each time I stopped, it took a few seconds to get the wheel to engage, but it did improve throughout the day. By the time I hit pavement on a remote county road, I could coast again for decent stretches.

I made it to Rawlins just before the bike shop closed, and talked to a woman there. She told me her mechanic wouldn't be in until 10 a.m. Thursday morning and she wasn't quite sure she had the parts to help me. Beyond the freewheel, I need another set of brake pads, new cables, new cassette and chain, etc. My bike's a bit of a junk show right now. But the freewheel has me worried. If the bike mechanic in Rawlins can't help me, do I risk 130 miles of possible stranding while limping it into Steamboat Springs? Do I have a bike shop in Utah overnight me a whole new wheel?

Because the freewheel just started slipping, and improved throughout the day, I may be able to go on with what I have. Steamboat is the mecca of Great Divide bike repairs, so getting there rather than having stuff done in Rawlins would be ideal. I'm bummed because the Rawlins stop means losing at least six hours that I would otherwise be riding, but worse things can happen. I could be walking a desolate road in the Great Divide Basin.

In Pinedale

I rolled into Pinedale, Wyoming, at about 11 p.m. Monday night after a ride that was, like most days on the Tour Divide, sometimes hellish, usually beautiful, and always intriguing. In the past two days, I crossed the borders of both Idaho and Wyoming with little fanfare, but the real sense of accomplishment has come in how much the landscape has been changing. From aspen groves to high alpine drainages to rolling sage valleys, the land is my gauge of progress. Like everyone else in this year's race, I've been caught in a fair amount of weather, but I've been lucky enough to miss most of the rain on trails where dryness is crucial. I did a long push yesterday around the Brooks Lake loop. It took me nearly three hours to go three miles. The snow pushing was fine - I'm used to it, really - but the muddy areas where the snow had melted had become that wheel-sucking, wet cement mud that freezes up my wheels within seconds. By the time I realized it, it was too late. I had to carry my mud-caked bike about a half mile along the rocky sideslope because my feet were sticking to the trail. Of course, I was cursing my 29-inch wheels and the nonexistent clearance they have on my small frame and the whole Adventure Cycling route that makes us go around Brooks Lake when it's so easy to bypass it. :-)

I really enjoyed the climb up Union Pass. Just took it super slow and enjoyed the views. I was slammed by hard winds at the pass. The south wind was mostly in my face, and when it wasn't, random 50 mph gusts were nearly strong enough to knock me off my bike. I just plowed into it, only slightly annoyed because the high alpine landscape was so beautiful, and I knew I was so far out there, and getting farther away. That's one thing about the Great Divide route that I really enjoy - it really puts you out in places that are far away from anywhere you might normally visit. Forty, fifty, sixty miles of nothing but dirt track and landscape that's changed little in hundreds of years. When I reach the Great Divide Basin, hopefully by Wednesday or possibly even tonight, that's going to be much farther from anything. I like that. Lots of space to think.

I'm not sure about the mileage I've covered so far in my 10 days on the route - more than 1,000. Hard miles. Amazing miles. I honestly didn't believe I'd make it this far, but each new day makes me excited to make it farther.

Tough day

I made it across the state line today and rolled into Sawtell, Idaho around 6 pm. It was an 85-mile day that ended about 40 miles short of my goal, but it was definitely one of the tougher days of the trip. John and I left Lima under dark skies and light showers that soon turned to heavy rain. By 10 am, the road had turned to wheel-sucking muck. No matter how much pressure I let out from my tires, I could not stay on top of it. The mud had the consistency of wet cement, and eventually i couldn't coax the tires to turn. For several quarter mile stretches, I had to pick up the bike and carry it along the thorny side of the road as mosquitoes swarmed me. It was pretty ridiculous - one of those situations where I couldn't help but laugh at myself and the idiotic things I get myself into.

After the tiny, remote town of Lakeview, the road surface improved somewhat, but the thunderstorms became more violent. In a particularly terrifying moment, I felt the wet hairs on the back of my neck standing on end when a bright flash of light shot through my peripherial vision, followed instantaneously by a deafening crack of thunder. I could have measured its proximity in feet. I slammed the pedals and amped my speed to 23 mph after spending a whole morning traveling between 2 and 7 mph. As John says, it's amazing what you can do when you're truly motivated. He was already long gone, though, motivated only to get out of the rain.

There will probably be more mud and rain tomorrow, but it is another day. I was bummed that I wasn't able to ride the Livestrong century in Seattle. I was hoping to ride 100 miles in honor of the event, and didn't eve quite hit that. But I wanted to dedicate my 85 miles of mud to Susan Nelson and her brave battle wth cancer, andto all of the many people who donated funds to fight the good fight. Thanks, everyone.
Sent on the go from my Peek