Passing time

(brice)

Today we rode 65ish miles over Wauconda pass to Okanogan:

This was the easiest (both distance and elevation gain) of the 4 passes we’re doing this week and it felt like it. We started around 830 and were at the top in barely 2 hours. The rest of the day was more difficult than anticipated due to some rascally headwinds. Those guys show up everywhere! Fortunately we were distracted by a big change in scenery as the pass brought us into one of Washington’s dry, desertlike ecosystems that people outside of the Northwest are usually not familiar with:

We have more great pictures but the connection is a bit flakey here so they’ll have to wait. In addition to the headwind, we were also distracted by issues with Susan’s rear derailleur. It had been mis-shifting with increasing frequency over the past week or so and began not shifting at all for short periods of time. I’m not an expert by any means but have worked through a handful of derailleur adjustments on my own; still, I was stumped.

Luckily there was a bike store 20 miles down the road; we just had to get those 20 miles done before they closed at 530. We narrowly beat the clock. I was gratified that the mechanic tried the same adjustments I had first, but he quickly diagnosed the problem as the derailleur cable itself. It was rusty and had also gotten a kink in it at some point so it was getting hung up inside the housing. A quick replacement seems to have fixed most of the issue, though a new chain/cassette is probably necessary once we get to Seattle.

Now we’re off to an early bed so we can get up and send Loup Loup pass. Two more, and it’s all downhill to the ocean.