Eating Sh*t and Getting Giardia

Ok ok I didn't really eat poop! But I might have drank it!! And I fell off my bike.

Work finished up in the afternoon so I went over to Joyride Bikes where I rented a bike for 24 hours, knowing that I'd have to return it in the late morning. The bikeshop dudes gave me directions to Green Canyon, which they assured me would be flowy and fun and wouldn't kill me. They were right!

But I am going to go ahead and apologize in advance to Travis. Babe, I am sorry I am going to be so slow on this tour. I was riding this bike that has full suspension and one more easier gear than my bike and no stuff strapped to it, and I might have been pushing 4 mph in the granny gear riding the paved foothills to get to the trailhead. IN THE FOOTHILLS. 

I found the trailhead no problem, and followed the little creek that winds its way down to flatter land. The path ended up being mostly shaded, which was great because today's high was 91. That being said, I learned some things about myself today. I need about a liter of water an hour when I'm biking up a canyon. My water bladder only holds two liters, and I ran out pretty quickly. So I could either turn around back to town to refill and waste this rental bike situation, or take a risk and fill up in the little river with plain water because I'm a dummy and didn't bring water treatment. I thought, "Well, if I get giardia, then at least I can feel terrible and miss a few sessions of this conference tomorrow and no one will know better." So I filled up, and kept going.

I only fell once today, and it didn't hurt that bad. I already have a terrible bruise from falling the last time I rode in Florida, so this was in no way worse. Truthfully, I am intimidated by rocking inclines, and I am glad I didn't Strava this ride so I didn't have to post my embarrassing speed. I walked quite a bit.

​But I stuck it out to the end of the trail. It was neat to watch the scenery change as I gained altitude, and I started to recognize alpine wildflowers. It's always nice to see those ethereal quaking aspens. 

A word on descending off-road. It is just not as rewarding as descending on pavement. Descending on pavement I can relax, look at scenery, stretch my calves, take it easy! NOT SO OFF-ROAD.

It is almost as much work to ride down as it is to ride up! First of all, I don't want to die, and gaining too much speed and hitting a rock or running into a tree does not sound fun. It takes a lot of concentration, hand strength for braking, and a general activeness to keep from crashing. So we'll see how that goes when we actually climb a peak next week. 

Last thing. I was guzzling the end of my giardia water as I got back into town, and then felt something slimy in my mouth..................

IT WAS A SLUG THING. FROM THE RIVER. IT WAS SO SLIMY. 

I was feeling pretty confident about my water decision, but this slug put a serious damper on my mood. And then I actually looked up when giardia symptoms set in. It's a parasite, not a bacteria, so instead of getting stomach problems within hours, symptoms don't show up for a week or two and can last for a whole month......... WHAT DID I DO. Luckily, lots of people show no symptoms at all, so let's all take this opportunity to pray to Baby Jesus that I don't get sick while camping in rural Idaho next week. 

The Wind Caves

It's that time of year in Florida when the humidity is soaring as high as the temperatures, and it could flood at any minute. Time to leave the Southeast! I'm in Utah for a work conference, which spurred this year's bike tour. Logan, Utah is pretty close to Idaho... and work is paying for my airfare so why not tack on a couple extra biking weeks??? 

But in the meantime, I'm here in Logan, which is a college town but not all that interesting so far. It seems to have similar problems to Florida regarding unbridled development, and instead of preserving its quaint downtown, they turned Main Street into a throughway, cut down all the trees and built a ton of identical sub-developments.

The area AROUND Logan is very interesting, however. It's in the Cache Valley, and according to my cab driver and Wikipedia, it all used to be underwater. Lake Bonneville was a prehistoric lake the size of Lake Michigan, and covered almost 20,000 miles. Then 14,500 years ago it started to dry up, and the Great Salt Lake is one of its remnants. That's why I found snail shells in the trail when I hiked up a canyon yesterday!!

After checking in to the conference yesterday, I took a cab up Logan Canyon to the Wind Caves Trail. It's the closest, most popular trail to town, and I figured a five mile hike up a mountain would be a good way to acclimate myself to the dry heat and elevation (4,500 ft!). Well I will tell you, you can bike all you want and then when you start hiking you may as well have sat on your butt for the past year. It's hard! I was wearing my new hiking shoes and my camel back and was all prepared for the outdoors, and then all the local Utah State undergrads just passed me full speed in their tank tops and leggings and one tiny water bottle. BUT IT'S NOT A COMPETITION Y'ALL. 

I ascended to the caves in an hour, and they were cool!!

The rocks are made of limestone, and we know how erodible they are. So apparently the wind carved these caves out!

All in all, everything worked out great. My hiking shoes didn't really need to be broken in; I didn't die of overheating, altitude sickness or dehydration, and the cab showed up on time to take me back to my hotel. Good first day Out West. 

Back in the saddle!

Hi everyone. Claire here. It's been a while since we went on a long bike tour, which isn't to say that we haven't been biking over the past two years. 

I've gotten into road biking and found some lady buddies that I am trying to get faster with, and Travis has switched over to mountain biking exclusively, and is dabbling in these insane off-road endurance races. But I hate to say that there just hasn't been as much tour cycling lately, mostly because we have been too busy adulting. 

Last summer I completed my thesis research, and graduated in December. I bought a house that we renovated over the past year, and we finally moved in in April. I got a job at UF, and I started a gardening and cooking education non-profit called Brave Harvest. Travis got promoted at his job, and he also started grad school. He's been working on fixing up our old house so we can buy it. B U S Y. We go on adventures closer to home these days, and luckily we live in North Florida so they usually turn out fun and beautiful and relatively easy to do over a weekend.

In any case-- we are gearing up to get back on the road! Except we won't be on the road! This summer's quick trip is a two week bike-packing tour, which means we really slimmed down our gear and strapped it on to our mountain bikes. We will be doing as much of the Adventure Cycling Association's 750 mile Idaho Hot Springs Mountain Bike Route as we can in 13 days. Until then, I am squeezing in some adventuring myself at a work conference in Utah. So look for some fun blog updates over the next few weeks!

The Long Road Back to Missoula

I cannot lie. I was ready for this tour to be over. For the last week, I woke up on a sleeping pad about 2 inches thick, wearing dirty clothes and nursing a body made sore by either 60 miles of riding or intense hiking. I had been living on a diet of oatmeal, trail mix, peanut butter ramen, and chili cheese mac. This tour felt like it lasted a long, long time. And even though thinking about working on my thesis gives me a case of anxiety intense enough to paralyze me till I force myself to think about something else, I am ready to go back to civilization. I am pretty sure Abby Ryan has forgotten about me.

Also my bike has slowly been falling apart. My front rack wasn't fitted to my bike properly, and it broke my front bag, so it had been attached with a bungee cord for the past three weeks. Then I lost the bolt that attached my front rack and brakes to my fork, so we had to use a zip tie to keep everything in place. That ended up breaking my rack entirely, so this I rode back to Missoula gypsy style. 

Additionally, riding with high speed cars for five weeks was starting to take its toll. We have a few friends who are riding cross country with the fundraising group Bike and Build, and for the second year in a row one of their riders was killed mid route. He was killed by a woman who was texting and driving. He was a recent graduate of UF, and he was a teacher in the Bronx.  

We still had three long days of riding through forest fires to get back to Missoula, we battled against giant RVs for space in the road. A couple of times, 50 foot vehicles passed Travis within a foot against oncoming traffic, honking at us all the while. Apparently it is too much trouble to ask retirees to move their foot from the accelerator to the brake and wait for 7 seconds. Nope, they are in a huge rush to continue on their permanent vacation and can't be bothered. Travis said this is his last road tour. He is advocating for the off-road Continental Divide mountain bike route next year.

FINALLY we arrived at our first destination in Missoula: Adventure Cycling headquarters. We used Adventure Cycling maps to help guide our journey, and since we're members we wanted to pop in and say hi. Besides they give you ice cream when you visit. 

So we joined our place on the wall with the hundreds of other cylists who embarked on bicycle adventures. It's inspiring to see who has done it, parents with young kids, septugenerians, couples like us. We even saw photos of inspirations from the past, like Laura in 1982.

And then, it was time to take care of what was really important. 

Our host was my sister's best friend Brit and her fiancee Brian, who were generous enough to let us stay in their house and let us pet all the cats, including Mac and Purry Murray.

They also took us to karaoke, where I was able to hear Travis sing the song he sang to me EVERY MORNING when we started riding, except this time he sang more than just he first line. 

And now I'm finishing up this blog, and getting ready to fly back to Florida, where the humidity will settle on us like a wet blanket, and we'll start dreaming of next year's bike tour.