Susan and Brice's Bike Blog

(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.

(Susan)

(Note that the previous post now has all the proper pictures uploaded.)

Tonight we’re in Kettle Falls, at the base of the enormous Sherman Pass. Getting here today the weather was schizophrenic–the rain would start coming down and we’d have to stop and put on all our layers, and then the sun would come out and it’d get hot and humid and we’d have to stop again and take everything off. There was pretty scenery:

Once we got into camp we had to lay out the tent, fly, and etc to dry them out in the sun after the good soaking they got this morning. The RV park we’re camping at here is another really nice one, complete with a flock of tame bunnies:

I briefly noted in yesterday’s post that the Ione RV park was subpar, but didn’t explain why. This may be a good opportunity to go into the relative differences between good and bad RV parks, of which we have become quite the conossieurs. In short, nice ones are nice because somebody cares enough to keep them up–mow the lawn, make sure there’s no dog poop on it, clean the bathrooms, replace things as they get broken, etc. Often the nice ones, like this one here in Kettle Falls and the one we stayed at two nights ago in Newport, are accredited or recognized by national organizations of some sort and feature recreational areas as well as just the pull-in spots and hookups. But, as Tolstoy said, nice RV parks are all the same, and the bad RV parks are all bad in their own ways. For example, the park in Gackle, ND that we’ve been warning all the east-bound cyclists about for a thousand miles had no working bathrooms and was littered with trash that included a broken toilet seat. However, the owner appeared to be in possession of all his faculties and let us stay for free to boot, perhaps out of a sense of guilt. In contrast, the bad RV park we stayed at last night in Ione, WA, featured an owner who was completely baked out of his gourd when we first met him, but somehow not quite stoned enough not to spend the entire night getting outrageously high on his front porch, which doubled as the RV park office. Unfortunately, we had to walk just feet front the porch to get around to the bathrooms–which, though technically functional, had not been cleaned since the last time the owner was sober. The owner, who looked just like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, shared the evening with an odd collection of men ranging in age from 19 to 50-something; by the time I walked past for a late night bathroom trip the conversation had devolved to making odd noises at each other and then giggling, an occupation which stopped uncomfortably when I came by. [“Herrrrooooo,” said Dennis Hopper to me from the porch.*giggles* “Hi.” “How are youuuuu?” “Fine, how are you?” “Being noisy!” *giggles*) Then, after we’d gone to bed, we were woken up by the lot of them arguing about where their shoes had gone. In short, we were pretty motivated to get out of there this morning despite the incessant rain.

Anyway, tomorrow it may or may not rain as we ascend our 4000 feet in 20 miles, so we’ll try to take lots of pictures as long as we’re not miserable. Tuesday is supposed to be solid downpours all day so it looks now like we’ll be taking a rest day in Republic before continuing on with the next 3 passes.

(Susan)
Today we rode south from Eureka to Libby along the eastern edge of Lake Koocanusa, which was created by the Libby Dam, a distance of over 70 miles. Despite the 100% chance of rain, there was no rain and the day progressively got warmer and sunnier. The terrain was fun and hilly and nicely blocked the headwind we were supposed to have. Overall, it was a really enjoyable day of riding.

There was a teensy problem, though. On one downhill, I was peering intently at the map, trying to make out something printed in fine print, when I ran over a big rock on the shoulder in such a way that it ripped the wall of my rear tire and caused a blowout: (A blowout is when the tube explodes from being forced out a hole in the tire while under pressure.)

So I had to take out the tube and patch it:

And then Brice knew a handy trick for reinforcing the wall of the tire at the rip to prevent a repeat blowout:

The dollar bill solution lasted the next 35 or so miles to Libby and we’re hoping it holds until Sandpoint, ID, the next place with a bike shop, where we can get a replacement tire. There is a sporting goods store in Libby where we got a couple new tubes; they did have tires, too, but they weren’t exactly the right size and weren’t up to snuff for a long-distance tour anyways. So we’re going to cross our fingers.

Here’s a bunch of pictures from the road today, of the lake and the dam: