Today was a very tough day of bicycling. We rode 85 miles with over 6,000 feet of accumulated climbing, and it was very, very hot to boot. The first picture is me dunking my shirt in the Powder River to keep me cool for awhile. I tried to pay attention to traffic as I took my shirt off, so as not to cause any wrecks!

We had a number of mountains to climb as well as several really fast descents. Before one of them there was this sign (photo)which made us really excited about the upcoming speed. I nearly had a major wreck on both of these descents. On the first one a bee stung me right on my upper lip while I was barreling down the hill at about 30 mph. When I let loose of the bike handle to kill the bee I started to wobble wildly, but I grabbed the handle again, quickly before I went head over bicycle tumbling down the road. On the second descent I had taken off my helmet and put on my baseball cap so I could dunk it in the water to help keep me cool, well on the way down this hill again going about 30 mph my hat flew off, as I reached up to catch it, My bike again went crazy, and I was sure that I was getting ready for a ride in an ambulance, but I managed to get stopped and I did get my hat.

As we rode into Richland, Oregon we road up to a cafe intending to eat a bite of food. I was so distracted with all the bicycles around the restaurant that I totally spaced unclipping my shoes from the peddles, and as I got close to the restaurant I started to put my right foot down, but to late I realized my foot was locked onto the pedal and because of that mental lapse over I went with all the bikers in the restaurant watching me crash to the ground. I sprained my right wrist, scraped my leg and hand but I cleaned those up in the bathroom, and I am OK tonight.

We are in Baker City tonight and will have our last rest day here tomorrow. It has a very nice swimming pool, hot tub, and great internet, so it should be a very nice day of recuperating tomorrow.

The short video included is me riding up an 8% hill. Hills that are this steep I walk some and bike some, but I always eventually make it to the top. Sort of like life, keep plugging away, and don’t give up or quit, and sooner or later you will reach the top.

Tonight we are camped at Woodhead campground on the Brownlee Reservoir on the Idaho side, which is the Snake River. I bought a one day Idaho fishing license and some jigs and went down and fished for Crappie off the dock for awhile, no luck, so I am going to go back this evening and try again when it is cooler.

Today’s ride was good except Kathy’s bike broke again. We worked on it for several hours at camp but couldn’t get it to work. It has a 9 speed internal rear hub transmission and it quit working. We will be in Baker City, Oregon tomorrow and have a extra day there as a rest day so they are going to a bike shop and see what they can do.

We had a couple of really long, 8 mile and 10 mile, down hill runs today, I was going 25 to 32 mph most of the time. Of all the different parts of the trip these “down hill runs” probably have the most potential for accidents because of the speed and how much more careful you have to be. Most of the time when we are really going fast I have this incredibly strong urge to scratch, pick my nose, look in the mirror to see if anybody is coming, or to see how far back Cliff is, look at the speedometer to see how fast I am going, or turn and smile at the driver in the car that is barely able to pass me, but it is super important not to take your eyes off the road even for a second, keeping the bike on the road, watching for rocks, bolts, truck tire pieces, and pot holes. I sometimes wonder what I would look like after sliding on the pavement for 20 feet, that would sure make for some exciting pictures for my blog!😀

I messed up and put 52 on the last blog, it was supposed to be 53, blame it on the 104 degree hot pool.

I am not sure how successful this blog will be. I may fall asleep any minute while writing this. We are camped at ,”Zim’s Hot Springs, at “New Meadows, Idaho”, they have two pools and in the first pool the water is 104 degrees and in the second it is 95 degrees. I spent an hour in the pool and I am very relaxed and sleepy, so we will see how this blog turns out.

We rode our bicycles 76 miles today, and 2/3’s of those miles we were following the Salmon River up stream all the way to the source. It is a very beautiful river that looks a lot like the deschutes River even with large groups of rafters floating it. As I said we followed the Salmon river upstream so most of our riding was up, though it was a reasonable degree of steepness so it wasn’t a killer.

We have been seeing a number of bicyclists who are doing the TransAmerica, an official, across the U.S. bicycle route that thousands do every year. We have talked to a number of them, which is always fun. There were a couple of “old guys” at our camp site last night who were riding the TA route, and they were very enthusiastic about our route as well.

Tomorrow we are riding 77 miles with lots of hill climbing, so it is going to be a tough day. We will camp next to the Brownlee Reservoir on the Idaho side, and then the next day we will ride to Baker City, Oregon, getting closer!

Well we are close to being finished, and we have not had a single flat tire, that is a first for any bicycle trip I have been on in the past! Several of you have asked how my neck is doing. It is doing quite well, stiff at the end of a day, but not the pain I was having at the start of the trip. My neck muscles are getting in shape and also a friend sent me some muscle liniment that really works well. I am feeling good all over, neck, butt, legs, hands, and arms, all good.

We haven’t had cellular or WiFi for a couple of days now so you have been missing me😀! We left Lolo Hot Springs and bicycled along this river called the Lochsa River all day long yesterday, it was very beautiful. We then camped at “Wilderness Gateway Campground”,which is right next to the river. The sound of the river was loud, but sleeping in my tent 15 feet from it was awesome. I wished that I had thought to get an Idaho fishing license before we got to camp, because it looked like a great trout fishing river, and we saw people fishing in it as we bicycled next to it. Today we left “Wilderness Gateway” and rode along the Lochsa some more for 51 miles, and then Kathy’s bicycle broke, some screws that held the pedal on to the sprocket broke. Tom had gone on ahead with the motorhome, and we had no cell service where we were, so Cliff and Kathy started walking pushing their bikes, and I took off on my bicycle hoping to get cell service pretty soon. I got to the town of Kooskia, and they had no cell service there, but the local tavern had WiFi so I went in there and ordered a cup of coffee and called Tom using WiFi. He answered and I asked him where he was, and he said he was in Kooskia across the street from the Selwig Tavern, so I walked out and waved at him. By the time we got Cliff and Kathy picked up and Kathy’s bicycle fixed the day was shot, so we rode our bicycles for 51 miles and rode in the RV for 25 miles, and now we are in Grangerville, Idaho at the “Bear Den RV Campground”. The 25 miles that we rode in the RV included a very, very big, huge, steep, awful, killer, mountain and as we drove up it in the RV, with the engine in low gear and laboring, I silently prayed, “thank You Jesus for breaking Kathy’s bike.

Today we rode from Hamilton, Montana to Lola Hot Springs. It was 65 miles and though it was very cloudy all day and cold, it didn’t rain very much on us. The first 40 miles were on the “Bitterroot Trail”, a paved bicycle trail. I love riding on bicycle trails because you can enjoy the scenery and the ride so much more when you don’t have to be keeping track of traffic. Also, most bike trails are fairly flat so the riding is much more relaxed and casual. When we finished the trail we had a 25 mile ride up toward Lolo Pass. Even though it was uphill the entire 25 miles it was never above 6% grade, and so we handled it pretty good. Overall it was a very nice day of riding.

As the name implies there is a hot spring here so we went and sat in it. It was very hot and felt so good. I sat in it for so long that my legs were rubbery and I thought I was going to have to find someone to help me back to the campsite, but I MADE IT. I sure am hoping that tomorrow is a day without rain.

This is a picture out the window of our RV that we are all sleeping in tonight. You can’t tell very well from the picture, but it is monsooning out. We just read a weather alert that the Bitterroot River has gone above flood stage in Darby which is 6 miles from where we are camped and the river running 20 feet away is the Bitterroot River. Man, I hope this RV floats.

we left Wisdom, Montana this morning at 6:30 am all bundled up wearing all the cloths we brought on the trip, with our rain gear over that. It was very cold, felt like freezing temperature, and wet. We bicycled about 72 miles and went over the ” Continental Divide” again. Once we got over that, it was 30 miles of downhill right to camp at “Anglers Roost Campground” outside the town of Hamilton, Montana. When we got to the summit and started down the other side we were inside a cloud and couldn’t see very far at all, wso we did a lot braking, and kept the bikes right at 15 to 20 mph. It was a very, very steep downhill for 8 miles before it leveled out a bit to a comfortable 2 or 3 degree downhill. I am sure the disk brakes on the bike were toasty hot when we got to the bottom. We typically set up 2 tents each night with me in one, Cliff and Kathy in the other and Tom in the RV, but it is such a muddy, rainy mess we are all going to crowd into the motorhome tonight. It should work fine unless Cliff or Tom snore to loud. Tomorrow we go over Lolo Pass and will be staying at Lolo Hot springs campground. There really is a Hot Springs there and they have a hot tub and swimming pool and the pool is 100 degree water! It is pouring rain outside right now as I am writing this but it is supposed to start clearing in the morning, and by the time we get to Lolo Hot Springs tomorrow it should be perfect for camping in a tent and for swimming in a warm swimming pool.

I introduced you to Tony awhile back. He can’t speak or hear, and everything he owns is on this bicycle and the little trailer that he pulls behind it. I would guess he has around a hundred pounds on his bicycle and trailer. He just rides around the country, mostly in the South during the Winter, and in the North in the Summer. I don’t know his story, but I have his email and I have connected and I plan on communicating to him regularly in the days ahead.

I have thought about him off and on over the last couple of weeks since we have met, mostly wondering how he got started on his lifestyle, why he lives like that, and what it would be like. If I had zero responsibilities and was free to do what He is doing, I wouldn’t choose to live his lifestyle because there are to many things about it that I wouldn’t like. But there are a few things that are appealing to me, and I think about how to apply to my life in my present situation. A major one is he is not tempted to buy much because he has to carry it around the country on his bike, owning something is not worth the work it takes to take it wherever you go. One of the first words that our kids said when they were little was, “mine”, and they usually said it with passion and volume in order to make their point. “Ownership” of stuff is a natural attraction of our flesh, and I am always buying more, reading the Cabella’s catalog, looking around on eBay, Amazon, and Craig’s List to see if I can find a deal. One Bible teacher I admire wrote, “The more I own, the less Christ owns me”. That is a scary statement considering how hard it is for me to get rid of stuff, and how easy it is to buy more stuff. I am not sure yet how I am going to make it happen, but I am going to work at deliberately simplifying my life, and owning less.