Maja’s musings

Musings (6)

/ Maja Wessels / 1 Comment

9:2

I wonder when men stopped taking their hats off indoors?  It seems that every table in every restaurant we’ve eaten in has at least one man with a baseball cap on.  Why is that?  So it was refreshing, at the Medora Musical last night, when all the men took off their hats as we all stood to the song:  I’m Proud to be an American.  Charles will have written more in his posting, but it was a fun evening.

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The flags were whipping at the Medora Musical!  We were worried that our tent would be gone by the time we got back to the campground, given the high winds, but it hadn’t budged in our absence

And again we’ve had some great people experiences.  As we were walking the couple of miles uphill to the Medora Musical, a couple in a car offered us a ride up.  They also said they would drive us back down afterwards if we didn’t want to walk.  And as we were waiting for the parking lot to clear out after the Musical, they asked if we wanted to spend the night at their house in Dickinson where we planned to be the following night. How nice was that?  Unfortunately, Charles had already paid for a motel room, so we had to decline.  But we really appreciated their offer of hospitality.  How often would any of that happen in Phoenix, Washington, Brussels or wherever you live?  Or, when was the last time you asked a stranger into your home?  Then yesterday, on our ride into town, we stopped by a truck selling cherries from Washington State.  The owner, who said he had also done some distance biking (in Uganda and Japan of all places), said that cherries for cyclists were free and we walked away, or rather cycled away, with a pound of incredibly delicious cherries.  There isn’t a day that goes by without some unexpected kindness from a total stranger.

One of the things that we end up paying attention to as we’re biking along is street names.  The other day we passed a street called Do Drop In.  Really!  Today, in the middle of nowhere North Dakota we passed the below street:

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The intersection of 36th St and 134th Avenue!

I guess my East coast sensibilities still have me thinking of Avenues as something grand, not country dirt roads.  A couple of “blocks” later we saw 132 1/2 R Avenue.  Funny.

One of the things I love about this trip is that we get to see, close up, states we’ve never even been in before and, in the case of North Dakota, states we haven’t ever known anyone from.  Now we’ve seen thousands of North Dakotans and met a lot.  My expectations were for a state that was boring, flat, non-descript.  It has been anything but.  Very beautiful countryside and incredibly varied, from fields of rye and clover, to the gorgeous, albeit somewhat desolate, Painted Canyon, to the Bad Lands and rolling hills.  And while the population is pretty monochromatic, we had a really good Mexican dinner last night, right next to our motel.  It rivals Mexican dinners we’ve had in Arizona.  We also saw our first oil well of the trip here.

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Our first oil well on the outskirts of Dickinson, ND

Later on we saw one in Dickinson in the middle of a residential area…

Today is my birthday.  We’re celebrating with a leisurely moving, a day full of errands and a short ride to our final destination of Richardton where our warm showers host will be waiting for us.

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The Medora Musical stage in the middle of the Badlands.

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Song and dance at the Medora Musical.  What an amazing setting!

 

Musings (5)

/ Maja Wessels / Leave a comment

8:1

Well, I’m officially over feeling sorry for myself and full into feeling sorry for the Brits and the EU.  Condolences to all of our British friends in Brussels.  What a depressing outcome.  Brexit leaders are already admitting that they exaggerated (read:  lied about) the advantages of leaving the EU and the downsides of staying.  Brady just texted that the most googled question in the UK now is “What is the EU?”  Truth…

As I was riding today (much better on all fronts) I was thinking about how all of our senses play a much bigger role when we’re outside on our bikes, but particularly our sense of smell.  Obviously, through our photos we’re sharing what we see.  But we can’t really share what we hear, smell or feel.  For the most part, our ears are filled with the sounds of passing cars, trucks and semis and trains.  We’ve gotten quite good at identifying what’s coming up behind us. But we also hear a lot of birds–many of which are new to us.  Smells on the road are numerous.  In Washington and Idaho we smelled a lot of pine, especially when trucks carrying logs came whizzing but, but also as we traveled through forests and past lumber mills.  The smell of decaying carcasses is a frequent one, even when we can’t see the dead animals.  The odor of skunk is one that hits us quite often.  Over the past two days we’ve biked past road crews cutting grasses along the edge of the freeways, so the smell of freshly mowed grass and sweet alfalfa accompanies us.  We also smell cattle, horses and manure.  And every once in a while we’ll smell what someone’s cooking for breakfast or dinner (if we’re on the road that late, which is not that often).  For me, the smells along the road have become an interesting and enjoyable part of my ride.

Believe it or not, now that we’ve turned off the hi-line and the neighboring BNSF railroad tracks, I find that I actually miss seeing the trains, counting the cars as the trains pass, and listening the the train whistles and the sounds the cars make as they pass us buy.  We did ride next to an abandoned track today.  Quite scenic…

We’re still enjoying ourselves most of the time.  I realize that the worst thing for me is a headwind.  I’ll just have to make sure I mentally prepare myself better for days that I know are going to include a headwind.  Luckily, tomorrow we’re supposed to have a very strong tailwind and I’m getting a massage in Medora.  Yippee!

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Nature taking over an abandoned railway line

Musings (4)

/ Maja Wessels / Leave a comment

Dies horribilis:  Wind, hills and more wind.  Some marital strife.  Landscape was pretty, but monotonous.  Today was the Brexit vote.  I hope the stay voters win so I don’t have to stop feeling sorry for myself and start feeling sorry for the UK and EU.  I guess we’ll know the results tomorrow.

We rode through only one little town called Vida.  It had a post office, two churches and a bar.  Interesting combination.

Today we rode past several crude billboards with anti-meth messages.  Meth is quite a scourge in the more rural areas of the country, and Montana is no exception.  According to some of our warm showers hosts, it’s a particular problem on the Reservations.  It’s so sad.  Hope to be more upbeat over the coming days. 🙂

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One of the meth-related signs we’ve seen.  Another showed a mirror reflection of a skeleton head saying something like “The true reflection of meth.”

Musings (3) by Maja

/ Maja Wessels / Leave a comment

5:1 (surprised at how small the numbers are at this point)

It’s been a while since I added my thoughts to our blog, so here goes.

I have caught myself on several days singing America the Beautiful, My Country tis of thee, and This Land is Your Land to myself.  The beauty of the countryside we’ve been riding through is breathtaking.  And then there are days like yesterday, where I started out awed by the beauty of Glacier National Park and the Going to the Sun Road (should have been called Going into the Clouds Road, given our experience).  But we ended our day on a more subdued note, riding in low hanging, monochromatic gray clouds into Indian Reservation land that reminded me of areas of Texas I’ve seen with plastic bags hanging on every fence, in bushes, on trees and just blowing around.  It was very dreary and Charles and I were definitely ready for the end of the day after 80+ miles.

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Taken while riding.  Gray and dreary!

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The road we’re on–Route 2–follows the railway and is nicknamed the highline.

Today started out with more of the same dull, gray but even days like this have their bright moments:  three kids racing their horses in a field, yelling and whistling;  a train engineer who blew his horn in greeting as he chugged past; grains and flowers that add color to the fields; people coming up to us in parking lots with questions, comments and words of encouragement; the sun finally peaking through right after we got rained on.  Even on the hardest days, there’s something to admire and to raise our spirits.  Human nature is mostly positive and people are so nice.  In addition to the couple that warmed us in their van yesterday (see Charles’ blog) one woman stopped us on the way down and asked if we wanted to just sit in her car and offered us a warm cap, water and food.  So nice!

Charles and I sometimes have different ideas about how far we can ride.  Today was one of those days.  We cut our ride a bit shorter than I would have liked, but I think it was probably the right decision to make.  The weather forecast is for rain, hail and wind tonight and we’re in a nice Holiday Inn in Shelby where we’ve been able to do our laundry.  A big plus!

Our three days of R&R at Glacier got us a bit out of the habit of biking every day.  We probably won’t take such a long break again in the future. I can’t say that there haven’t been times, during the middle of a long, hard ride where we may not have questioned ourselves and what we’re doing.  But never for more than a few minutes at a time.  There’s always something that reminds us how lucky we are to be doing this trip.

I’m still surprised at how little I think about during the hours on the bike.  Today I was wondering why the little prarie dogs cross the open and dangerous roads when they have a gazillion acres of perfectly great land on one side of the road.  We’ve seen lots of squished prarie dogs on the road.  As well as dead dear.  Today we got to bike past a freshly killed skunk… Litter analysis on the road is also a constant.  Lots more broken glass in the reservation.  More cans outside of the Res.  How do people lose so many single shoes?  While rumble strips in road shoulders are certainly a big safety enhancer for cars, they’re not much fun for bikes.  We spend a lot of time debating whether we should ride on the remaining narrow strips of shoulder or ride on the road, which is also generally a lot smoother than the shoulder.  Why do towns tend to be in hillier areas?  Wind abatement?  And then there’s the continuous  analysis of the weather.  It’s all pretty basic and very much in the moment.

Below are some photos from our climb up the Going to the Sun Road.  I’ve been pretty indiscriminate in including them.

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Starting the climb.  Already getting cloudy.

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Since we got a 6 am start, the road was pretty empty except for the last hour or so.

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Lots of waterfalls.  This one was cool because it ran under the road.

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Another water fall.

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Biking through the clouds.  Normally I might have been disappointed to be missing the views, but this was pretty cool, albeit also somewhat scary.

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Periodically it looked as though the clouds might lift.

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Until they didn’t.

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Still pretty, though.

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We were in the parking lot at the top when this big cloud just came rolling in.

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On the way down and the sun emerges.

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We had to stop periodically on the way down to warm up.

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We biked through areas that had been hit by forest fires last year.

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And then we were biking away from Glacier, seen only in the background.

Musings (2) by Maja

/ Maja Wessels / 1 Comment

3:1. A free Frank Lloyd Wright phone cover to whoever guesses correctly what the preceding numbers refer to. They will change over the course of our ride. All guesses are welcome.

Washington, Idaho and Montana

As we left Washington and entered Idaho, I was thinking about my impressions of the State. Scenic, green, lumber, lumber and more lumber, lots of bodies of water, and above all friendly. Washington has set a pretty high friendliness bar. We’ll see how future states fare.

Our ride through Idaho yesterday was absolutely everything a bike ride should be. Beautiful weather–not too hot or cold, nor too sunny or cloudy–and gorgeous scenery. It truly is “God’s country” as one gentleman with whom we were speaking called it. We spent the night in Clark’s Ford, a tiny town with a high school, a small country store, a bakery, a restaurant and a lodge. We were totally blown away by the quality of the food in a place we easily could have dismissed as being in the middle of nowhere The bakery used and stocked goods that were organic and local as did the restaurant. Both could easily have made it in a large city. But their owners prefer little Clark’s Ford. This ride is certainly teaching me a thing or two about assumptions.

Outside of the bakery we talked to a couple who retired to the area about 8 years ago and bought some land on the river–enough so that they don’t see any of their neighbors. I imagine that he was about 75 or so. His parents were German and he grew up in CA speaking German and still did a bit. We talked a while about our common ancestry and how his uncle had been captured by the Russians during WW II and then escaped and surrendered to the Americans, just like mine. He and his wife provide the eggs used by the bakery. They were a lot of fun to talk to (the couple, not the eggs). These short conversations we are having with people we meet on the road are some of the highlights of our trip.

Today we entered Montana after about 6 miles of riding and then continued for another 55 or so. We had decided to take an alternate route that got us off the busy two-lane highway with zero shoulders and blind turns for at least a little while. We ended up riding on a dirt road into nowhere because we missed our turn back onto the highway and got lost. Luckily for us, we managed to flag down a vehicle that happened past and the driver offered to take us back to where we should have been. We happily accepted his offer! During the ride he told us that he had moved here 7 years ago when his wife passed away. She had suffered from heart problems that cost them over half a million dollars in medical expenses. They weren’t insured because he had just started a new business and so they had to declare bankruptcy. After her death, he moved back to Montana and started driving for the oil companies. He has now retired, lives in a little cabin in the woods that is off grid (solar and generator) does odd jobs and is active in his church. If we had seen this guy on the street, we could easily have thought that he was homeless. And yet he was the salt of the earth, well-read, and interesting to talk to. And of course, helpful and friendly. Another lesson in judging a book by its cover.

Physical Fitness

On a different note, many of you are probably wondering about how we’re doing physically. A ride like this certainly has an impact on the body. First and foremost, is the posterior. 6-12 hours of riding each day takes a toll. Hot days generate painful rashes. Other days just result in pain, period. There’s nothing really to be done about it. I have pretty constant pain in one of my shoulders. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. I imagine that this isn’t going to get any better over the course of the ride. Charles is having some wrist problems that have resulted in numbness in some of his fingers. But he’s figured out that if he moves his hands around a lot, the numbness improves, so the past few days have been better. His knees are holding up. All in all, we’re doing fine. Ibuprofen is the name of the game.

Mental Fitness

You may also be asking yourself what we think about as we ride for hours and hours on end. In fact, as I’ve been riding, I ask myself that as well. It’s funny how the mind just empties… I enjoy the beauty of the land through which we’re riding, I read names on mailboxes and think of people I’ve known with the same names. I think about how many miles we’ve ridden and how many more are to come and are they flat or hilly. I think a lot about the cars and trucks that are passing us–are they too close, how fast they’re driving, how big they are, and what they’re transporting. I think about Charles and how he’s doing and whether he’s close or further behind. And finally, I think an awful lot about what the next meal will be and when it will be eaten. But a lot of the time, I don’t really think about anything at all. I just enjoy the ride.

Musings by Maja

/ wescov / 1 Comment

While Charles has been doing all of our blog writing so far, I want to share a few musings as I sit here in free lodging provided by a very generous couple in Colville, WA.

We have been on the road for only a week but have already experienced so much. What I have taken away from our trip so far is, first and foremost, that we get so caught up in our daily lives, the news we see on TV and read about in the media, and the relative “sameness” of our friends and acquaintances that we forget to appreciate the differences and the qualities of our fellow Americans or maybe even forget to fully appreciate that those who are different than we are have so much to offer and contribute so much to the well-being of others. Two experiences from our short ride to date reflects what I mean and make me believe, no matter how this political season seems to have placed us in “us vs. them” camps, that as individuals, we are better than that.

Story #1: Small-town USA. When we rode into Tonasket, WA we were greeted by the annual Founder’s Day parade. We took a small detour to get to the Visitors Center behind which we planned on setting up our tent, since bicyclists are allowed to camp there for free. We spent the rest of the parade on the porch of the visitors center watching the parade and talking to 10 or so locals, many of whom were visitor center volunteers. They made us feel right at home, told us stories about the various parade participants, gave us suggestions for our bike route and told us of the rodeo taking place that evening. Long story short, one couple drove us out to the rodeo that evening, introduced us to their friends, and we all went out for beers afterwards and had a great time. The next morning, we altered our route based on the recommendation of one of our drinking companions, and climbed 12 miles out of town to their home where they generously fed us breakfast, provided us with a biking map that they have lent out twice before to cyclists, always with the proviso that it be mailed back, and showed us their beautiful home which they built from scratch themselves, showed us their wine cellar with wine they make, and sent us on our way with self-dried apricots and cool water. The hospitality we experienced in Tonasket was heart warming and we hope that we have learned from our new friends there what being welcoming is all about. We will definitely stay in touch.

Story #2: Colville, WA. In Colville we are staying in an apartment above a storage area that was built solely to offer shelter to cyclists on the Northern Tier ride by the couple whose house sits on the hill behind us. They provide wifi, all utilities, a kitchen to use and laundry facilities and expect no payment. This is astonishing enough. Even more impressive and selfless is what they have done and continue to do with their lives. They spent four years in Malawi with their two oldest children where Barry served as a physician. Since returning to the US in 1990 they have traveled to Africa pretty much every year to “help” including teaching, working at orphanages and providing medical services. Back at home, they hold an annual fund raiser for causes like supporting girls who have been taken into sexual slavery, Father Jean Bosco’s orphanage, purchasing mattresses for a pediatric ward, etc. Today, Shelley drove us into town to go shopping while she made soup for a non-profit kitchen she runs whose primary purpose is to provide jobs for high-school students. Shelley and her husband, Barry, recently bought a house in town (they called it an Oxford house, of which there are numerous in the US) that they rent out to people who are trying to recover from drug-addiction. And Barry works as a physician to low-income patients. Wow! How impressive is all that? And I’m sure I haven’t covered the half of it. We are truly humbled.

More musings:

Politics: We haven’t had a lot of political conversations, but it appears clear that a reputable third party candidate would have had a lot of support in this election. I am thankful that we have removed ourselves a bit from the “angst” of this political season.

Driving: To date we have had only one “mean driver” experience (someone who honked at us for over a minute as we were trying to make a left hand turn) but as we entered Canada we were told of a truck driver who the day before had purposefully hit a rider. Thank goodness, most drivers have made an effort give us a wide berth.

Rivers: Riverbeds here have water in them. What a concept!

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The Cascades in Canada on the way to Colville, WA

Questions:

1. While on a long stretch of country road, I made a point of waving to every oncoming car. Every single pick-up driver waved back. About 50% of car drivers did. Are pick-up drivers inherently friendlier? Does owning a pick-up make you friendly?

2. For every snake that gets squished crossing the road, how many actually make it across?

3. Why do Americans seem to collect junk cars in their yards more than any other nationality?

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4. What happens to the things that were bolted in by all the bolts we’ve seen on the side of the road? Ditto with the items clamped in by the clamp I saw? And what happened to the two sofas from which single cushions appear to have been lost on the road?

These are just a sampling of the kind of things we think about as we’re riding. Life is pretty simple on the road. Greetings from the outskirts of Colville.

Maja

Maja’s Update

/ wescov / Leave a comment

We arrived today in Tonasket, WA after a short (29 mile) ride. We were greeted by a Founder’s Day parade (we thought it was for us) which we watched from the porch of the visitor’s center, behind which we are tenting tonight–free for bicyclists. The people were incredibly nice and we are heading to the rodeo with some of them later this evening. Fun, fun! This is really a slice of Americana.

Our ride so far (with the exception of today) has been quite challenging. We started from Anacortes on Wednesday with a flat tire. Maybe that will be our only one :). I don’t know what possessed us to ride over 80 miles on the first day, given that our longest fully loaded ride before that was about 60 miles, and then follow that with another 80 miles the next day up the most challenging climb we’ll probably have, period. 42 miles uphill followed by an exhilarating descent. We arrived at our warm shower host’s abode totally exhausted at around 7:30 pm. There was really a time when we thought we wouldn’t make it, particularly as we ran out of water and there was nowhere to refill. I guess we learned our lesson! It was a long 12.5 hour day and our most challenging ride ever. But we made it! Along the way we enjoyed beautiful scenery, river beds that actually had water in them (!) as opposed to Arizona “rivers”, waterfalls galore, since it had poured the night before, and gorgeous wild flowers including wonderful wild lavender. Gorgeous! Our warm shower host was a minimalist. He designed and lives in a two room house, small living room, kitchen and dining table plus bathroom downstairs (about 200 square feet) and a bedroom upstairs, reached by a ladder. He rides his bicycle almost everywhere and when he’s low on time, he drives a moped. He rode his bike up the two very difficult passes we had just come over pulling a trailer weighed down by 150 pounds of stuff. And you think WE’RE crazy! In front of his house are the remains of a tri-maran he built himself. He’s a very nice guy and we had a wonderful breakfast with him before we set out on our second day of climbing.

Based on the trash we have seen along the side of the roads (you become quite aware of trash as you slowly cycle past), Washingtonians aren’t too bad when it comes to litter, but they do have a penchant for throwing out beer bottles and cans (mostly Budweiser), which makes up about 80 percent of the trash. Other bottles make up about 10% and the rest is miscellaneous, including such items as sofa cushions (oops), single shoes, a clamp (wonder what that was holding in place) and a badminton net.

People have been very nice and include many Canadians who holiday just south of the border because it’s a lot cheaper here. All are very interested in our ride and are encouraging.

After our first long day and then two days of climbing, we deserved a short rest day today. Tomorrow is another hard climb. We may decide to ride into Canada the day after tomorrow–a somewhat longer route, but it avoids some of the elevation of the US only ride. Decisions, decisions.

We have not had any political conversations, so far. And Washingtonians don’t seem very political, at least outwardly, since we have only seen two “Vote For” signs, and both were for Trump.

The weather has been varied and has included a night of pouring rain, with showers the next day, and now two sunny days of 97 degree heat. But still nothing compared to the 115 degrees all of you in Phoenix are suffering under. Lucky you.