July 29, Florence to Eugene

Well, today was one for the record books. We left the Lighthouse Inn at about 7:30, it was in the high 50s, foggy and the first 15 miles along the river to Mapleton were gorgeous and easy. Eagles nests in the trees, a few folks fishing quietly in the river. We had breakfast in Mapleton at The Depot Inn and crossed the river to begin climbing. Man, did we begin climbing! After about 3 miles there was a stretch that seemed straight up. There was construction going on and the temp had already climbed to near 90. By the time we reached the tunnel it was 95 and tough. We cleared the tunnel and as we continued towards Walton it climbed to 105 degrees. We were feeling really deflated until we were joined by a solo rider who looked to be in his late 20s, rail thin, he had been riding for the last two weeks starting in Sacramento and finishing south of Eugene. He said he had almost given up and tried hitch hiking the final leg. We figured if he was suffering as we were suffering, it wasn't just us and wasn't so hard to take. One more tough climb out of Walton thru Cougar Pass (seriously).
Mid afternoon we changed plans a little, called and canceled our tent camp site and set up a motel with AC to help recover. We struggled to finish but did. We ended up doing 61 miles and made it to Eugene.
Added a coyote to our wildlife list as well as multiple eagles.
Today we'll ride to a hot springs lodge & campgrounds near McKenzie Bridge, still following Rt. 126. About the same mileage as yesterday but very little climbing and the temp is breaking, the high today headed towards only (!) 95.
Happy trails - Michael

Worst day for me ever in the saddle! Who's idea was this anyway??!!!!
Tiredly, Judith

Tuesday, July 28 – Last day in Florence, OR

We have made a trek out to the Pacific today and dipped our rear wheels in the ocean. Tomorrow morning we’ll start east, riding Rt 126 back to Eugene where we’ll camp for the night. The time here has gone well and been valuable. Since arriving Sunday night I’ve had time to get the bikes assembled and tested and we’ve done a little riding here in the Florence area, found a bike shop to buy some spare spokes, shipped our train trip clothes and some odds and ends home and packed and re-packed our panniers. They don’t get any smaller or lighter with repacking. But I’m pretty sure we have everything we’ll need.
Bike specific comment – I had a bright idea, inspired by something I saw on someone’s blog. I used expanding aerosol insulation foam as filler/protection in the bike boxes. Worked great for structural protection but raised havoc with paint (stupid, stupid, I should have put the frames in plastic bags first) especially on Judith’s beautiful new bike. I owe her for this one.
Florence is a great place to start this trip. It’s beautiful in a very northwest manner, forests right down to the river and the ocean and massive sand dune area. It’s also been a good chance to load up on seafood which I doubt we’re going to see a week from now in ID.
Tomorrow will be our first real challenge. Need to cover about 70 miles, twisting and climbing, with the bikes fully loaded. We saw part of our route on the drive here and it was beautiful but there was more traffic than I had hoped for and an inconsistent shoulder. Driver’s here are pretty bike aware so it is what it is and we’ll deal with it. I’ll try to post a couple of pictures tonight before we leave.
Michael

Oregon

Day 3 travel to OR, July 25
Welcome to the Dakotas. Things don’t look much different but as the morning goes on things slowly change and are looking more like MT as I remember it.
People on the train are a very interesting collection. There are quite a few Mennonite and Amish families, which I guess makes perfect sense as they’re less likely to fly anywhere. Seating in the dining car is managed to fill out every table so as a twosome we eat each meal with another couple. We’ve had the chance to meet some nice folks (and some not so nice, or at least not so happy folks) and as always, it’s fascinating to watch their responses when we explain where we’re headed and what we’re going to be doing. For people who do not bicycle the entire idea often seems impossible or at least incomprehensible. You can sometimes see in their faces the unasked question – Why, why would you do such a thing? We try to explain the whole thing and some connect pretty enthusiastically.
As the day progresses we work our way across ND and into MT. We also change from central time to mountain standard time which means we’re two hours behind family and friends back home. This serves to increase the mounting sense of disconnection from home. That’s going to be a strange dimension to deal with. Email will make it handier in some respects, but not everyone emails yet, so it will be different. We’re hoping that my son will get my Mom & Dad set up on basic email within a week and that will make everything much easier. The puzzle here is that being disconnected from home and routine is in many ways a big part of the point of this trip, but at the same time being disconnected is hard. We’ll sort it out as we go.
Around dinner time we approached Glacier National Park and then drove through a large part of the Park as we ate. Absolutely gorgeous views. In some ways not so different from the Adirondacks at home, but even more so. The train stopped in Whitefish, MT long enough to get off for some fresh are which was cool in that we were here in 2000 as part of a bicycle trip and I remember Whitefish well.
We’ve already begun to track wildlife that is different for us. We saw a prairie dog in one of the small dusty towns in ND and a small group of antelope (prong horn?) on a hillside in MT. Still waiting for that first grizzly (me, not Judith, who says she’ll be fine with never seeing one).
During the night the train will split with part continuing to Seattle and our part (we hope) going on to Portland. From there we’ll take a bus that is somehow part of our Amtrak ticket to Portland and another to Florence, OR.
Day four, travel to OR – July 26
Well, it was a short night. We stopped in Spokane, WA so they could split the train. That woke me for quite a while. During the night we passed into Pacific standard time so with my body still somewhere between EST and CST it was very early here when I was up for good. We’ve begun to follow the Columbia River which is the border between WA and OR. The scenery is very different from home and very impressive again. It changes quickly from desert-like buttes to heavy forest on both sides of the river with Mt Hood very clearly in sight to the south.
I’m very curious to see what the weather is like as we hit Portland and then Florence. Crossing ND and MT the rest stops were brutally hot and it has been very hot throughout the North West. It has something to do with us – in 2001 we rode for a week in Maine and they experienced the hottest temps ever recorded there.
We arrived in Portland on time and had only about a hour before the Amtrak bus to Eugene. Staff was enormously helpful and friendly, gave us recommendations for lunch in Eugene and pointers for Florence too. Their advice about Eugene was great and we ended up getting a nice lunch there just a couple of blocks from the train station. Guess what – it’s 96 degrees here and people are stunned by the heat. So am I – and the idea of riding thru this soon with fully laden bicycles is daunting to say the least.
We arrived in Florence at about 6:30 after some delays with the bus link for the final leg. Our motel (The Lighthouse Inn) looks fine, modest but clean and friendly and only steps from where we were dropped. Our bikes are both waiting for us in our rooms and it is a full 30 degrees cooler here on the coast than in the inland area. We got some dinner in the Old Town riverside section of town and turned in. More tomorrow.
Michael
Welcome to Oregon
Oregon's state flower is the Oregon Grape, the bird is the Western Meadowlark and the motto is "She flies with her own wings". I think this means "She rides on her own bike"! The capitol is Salem and the state slogan is "We love dreamers". (Not sure why a state needs a motto and a slogan but there you go.)

It's really beautiful here and everyone is warm and friendly but I can't wait until we actually get started....
Judith - the Glorius flyer

Day two - travel to OR - July 24

Well, the bunk arrangement wasn’t bad and true to reports, sleeping on a train was actually pretty good. Occasionally the rocking or noise woke me up, but generally it was great.
Train travel is different, the tracks of course run through very different parts of communities than the roads we use most often. Generally these are the more industrial and often the more run down areas of towns. I was awake for awhile at around 4:00 am (no surprise to those who know me) and watched out my window as went thru Cleveland. I know Cleveland pretty well from past travel but it was fascinating to watch it from a perspective I don’t know and stranger still to be horizontal watching out a train window.
Dinner was about what you would expect considering that some poor folks are trying to prep your food while rocking (sometimes violently) down the tracks at 60 miles an hour. Our waitress Mary is a classic. I asked about how they do this, where they start and finish, etc and how long she’s been doing this? “Too long, honey. Thirteen years. My legs are shot, my knees, my legs and my back are shot.” They use paper order forms at the table which you sign and note your room number on. Judith also went ahead and checked off her own selection for dinner. Mary was quick to start her all over again, no, no honey, that won’t work, these go thru a computer, I have to do that part.
Entertainment is where you find it.
We arrived in Chicago and had a couple hours layover which allowed us to get outside, get some lunch along the river and enjoy a beautiful midday. Next segment, the “Empire Builder”, train 27 to Portland. This is a double deck train called a Viewliner and we have a roomette for two again, this time upstairs. Guess what? This one is even smaller and we’re in it for 2 nights. Oh well. We departed on time and make great progress across IL and WI, though the Wisconsin Dells area which was pretty scenic and into MN. Maybe compensating for the view tighter quarters, the food on this train is not bad at all. Have to keep loading for the upcoming ride.
We go to sleep in MN and will wake up in ND.
Michael

On our way...to Oregon at least - Departure July 23

Today was crazy. Doing everything necessary to shut the house down for three months in addition to tying up all the loose ends of the bicycle trip created a fair bit of buzz and tension but we made it.
Our daughter Leah picked us up in the afternoon and took us to the Albany Amtrak station where we were joined by Leah’s wife Donna and their two and a half year old daughter Sarah (one of four grand-daughters and two grandsons). Had fun watching trains with Sarah, who was very excited about the whole train thing (somehow she decided trains were going to Coney Island?) but she also got it into her head that she was getting onto a train, so of course there was some upset as we boarded. We’ll miss all the family but particularly the grand children.
The Amtrak part of this trip should prove interesting. Our train left Albany on time, which is a great start and not necessarily a given for Amtrak. We’re on the Lake Shore Express to Chicago, which is just a single overnight and we have something called a “Viewliner Roomette” which provides us seating and converts to sleeping arrangements for two. This turns out to be a fascinating study in space utilization that crams a toilet (!), a fold down sink and two comfortable seats into a space about the size of two phone booths. The space converts into two bunk beds for sleeping. The sleeper car has a fulltime onboard attendant to help with whatever needs you might have and there is a full service dining car with meals included as part of sleeping car booking. In our case our attendant is a pleasant guy from Eastern Europe with heavily accented English. This turns out to be very appropriate as I’ve decided the whole roomette thing reminds me of nothing so much as a space capsule for two and specifically a Soviet space capsule – everything almost sort of works.
Bonus (maybe) – leaving at 7:00 pm, I figured we were too late for dinner and we didn’t grab anything while leaving but we’re in luck at will be eating at 8:00.

Bicycle trip specific – I updated all the Adventure Cycling route maps in the morning before we left (while watching the final time trial stage of the Tour de France where Contador put the icing on the cake). Adventure Cycling maintains and sells maps of various bike specific routes across and around the country. As cyclists using the routes submit updates on road changes and such with camps and motels addendums are published on their website. Since we had bought our set back in 2001 there was quite a bit of updating to do. It’s a cumulative process where you must review every one issued since your map print date, so it’s pretty interesting. Also fascinating to watch various inns, restaurants and camp sites close up, reopen and even close up again during this time span. No great surprise when you consider that the route by design goes thru some pretty sparsely settled areas.
Also, got an email that our bikes have arrived and are waiting for us in Florence, OR. We’re going to the Lighthouse Inn in Florence which has been cited by several transam blogs as being a good value, convenient and cyclist friendly. We’ll arrive there Sunday night, I’ll use Monday to assemble our bikes, Tuesday for a loop out to the Pacific ocean and then we’ll set out Wednesday morning on the ultimate trip.
Michael

WAIT House connection

Well…..here we are. In less than 3 days we leave and I am skittering around the edges of panic! I’m excited about this huge adventure but it’s mixed with a large amount of WHAT THE HECK ARE WE THINKING??!!

We’re fresh off a week on the Cape with our family and that does make leaving a little easier for me plus I’ll be carrying the latest pictures of our beautiful group to show off whenever the opportunity presents! We both know how enormously fortunate we are that our children and grand-children are all secure, happy and well and this brings me to the charitable component of our cross-country trip.

During this past year I have been volunteering with WAIT House in Glens Falls which is a great organization for homeless and at-risk youth from 16-21 years old. I have come to really admire the staff and other volunteers and am so impressed by their passion and commitment to helping these kids. Our own interest in this cause comes from very personal experience as it occurred in our own middle class, suburban family with our son James during his last couple high school years. His drug and alcohol use caused him to make choices that lead him (like too many others) to leave home but having no place to go, he stayed with friends or just crashed wherever he could. He was homeless, had no direction or guidance and his downward spiral continued until finally at 21 he started the long way back to reclaiming his life. We are grateful to be able to say that today he is strong and healthy in mind and body and we are so happy to have him back as a fully participating and beloved member of our family (yea James!). And while we very much admire the strength and determination it took to do this on his own, I wonder if it would have taken him as long to find his way back to us or if his journey could have been easier if WAIT House had been available to him then. Plus, we’re very excited about the “Transitional Living Program for Homeless Pregnant and Parenting Youth” that will open in the spring of 2010 (ground-breaking will be while we are on our trip and I’ll be so sorry to miss it!). In this program, WAIT House will be able to give shelter and support services to homeless kids who have, or will soon have, kids of their own. Youth who often have not been parented themselves will be able to learn how to become successful mothers and fathers in a stable, nurturing environment and I feel like we have a real chance to offer hope for a good future to them as well as their kids. When we get back from our trek in the Fall I will be excited to see the progress on the new house and will be anxious to get back to being a part of this terrific organization.

As far as Michael and I go, we’re not looking for pledges or for anyone to “buy miles” as you would for a traditional charity ride but please, take some time to check out the WAIT House website (www.hycwaithouse.org) to get a full appreciation of what programs are offered and, if you are inspired by our trip or simply because it’s a great cause, a donation to WAIT House would be greatly appreciated.

Happy trails,
Judy

Equipment

So a little about equipment and what not. First, of course, there are the bicycles. We're both riding touring type bikes from Rivendell, a small speciality builder in Walnut Creek, CA. Mine is a Saluki, Judith's a Glorius. Both steel frames, beautifully built and featuring comfortable geometry with relatively upright riding positions. No clip pedals, no special riding shoes. We'll be using both front and rear panniers to carry all of our clothing, bicycle support stuff and camping gear.
Camping equipment is all pretty much standard backpacking stuff with a focus on light weight where possible. (REI, Backcountry and EMS have become our friends over the last months of prep). We'll carry a small tent, sleeping bags with pads and some cooking gear. We don't expect to cook that often but want to have the option and certainly want the capability to make some morning coffee to get ourselves going. We expect to camp most of the time and, depending on weather and inclination get a room of some sort once a week or so.
A great mystery and challenge in all this is clothes. Even in August it's likely to be cold in the morning at altitude so we need to be able to cover a fairly large temperature range and yet not carry so much that we need a pack horse (not an option, I'm not volunteering for that duty...). But again, backpacking stuff to the rescue - technical hiking clothes are pretty good at just this kind of thing so we think we have it covered. We'll have full rain gear of course even as we hope to never touch it (sure...).
Even tho the plan and intent here is to really disengage from our usual routines we will be carrying a small netbook type PC so that we can update this blog and stay in touch with essential emails. And cell phones, cameras, etc. It's looking like we're each carrying about 35 lbs of stuff and I'm interested to see how it all sorts out in the first couple of weeks. We can always ship stuff home as we identify things we don't actually use.
All of these things are becoming pretty much locked in now, as we'll be leaving later this week. We decided to take a train from upstate NY to Oregon, feeling that the lost time (three days out vs a flight of half a day) is worth the transitional nature of the train trip. Things have been very hectic for weeks and the train trip should make for a real change out of all that and into this new daily mode. The train also takes a northern route that looks pretty interesting. We've never done an over night (let alone several) on Amtrak so are very curious about that part too. I'll let you know how it goes.
Michael

Route

Alright, so a little about the route we'll follow. We'll be riding most of our way along one of the classic transam routes mapped by Adventure Cycling. That means we'll stick mostly to secondary and back roads, we'll ride through many national forest areas and availability of services, food, camping and other lodging is pretty much laid out in front of us. We'll follow their route across Oregon, across Idaho, into Montana where we'll go through Missoula and then down through the Bitterroot Valley to Yellowstone National Park. We've wanted to ride through the Bitterroot since 2000 when we were scheduled to ride there with Cycle Montana and much of the area was on fire. Rode up and around Flathead Lake instead, watching ash fall like snow on our tents. Now we'll have our chance. Our daughter Leah will join us for this Montana section.
After Yellowstone, we'll leave the standard route for a while and cross Wyoming towards Devils Tower in the North East corner of the state. From there we'll head into South Dakota and ride the Black Hills and parts of the Badlands. These choices were made in part to see these pieces of special land and landscapes and also to visit some sites with Lakota and other Native American significance.
After South Dakota, we'll work our way down to Iowa and cross Iowa to Fairfield where we have some history and some friends that we would like to see. Iowa down to Missouri (in and out of Illinois), into Kentucky and though Virginia to the Atlantic along a standard transam route. Parts of South Dakota into Iowa will be on the Adventure Cycle Lewis & Clark route and the Iowa to Kentucky will be on their Great Rivers route.
We're thankful (in advance) for this system of maps and also to many people who have previously blogged their own similar trips. The availability of riders diaries full of camping and eating tips as well as journals of daily experiences, good and bad, is a huge advantage and lets us feel somewhat prepared for what is in many ways a sort of daunting departure. Nothing like Lewis & Clark of course, but compared to our regular daily routine, this is radical. We're excited, a little nervous and getting more ready by the day.
More soon on equipment and other prep.
Michael