Category Archives: family

June 24, Day 6 part two

So we started out a little late 8:30ish after breakfast.
We were looking forward to what looked like a town called Austin junction after the first mountain. On the map it said it had a restaurant, a gas station, a post office and a grocery store. When we got to Austin junction it was the intersection of two streets with one store and since she was the only game in town it cost us $45.00 for three sandwiches and some power bars and cookies. Gas there was $4.90 a gallon. A. 44 cent stamp was 50 cents!
We had to eat so we had to pay.
The food lasted us over the next two mountains. It was a super hard day

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After some 70 miles and three mountains we were beat as we pulled into baker city which has as many Christian churches as San Francisco has cafes and it was Sunday so Main street was closed.
We managed to find a fantastic RV campground with a beautiful granite bathroom and shower and a super clean laundry room. We set up tent and then went to the truck corral by the interstate for dinner. Super nice waitress. Awful food. Sorry there is so much emphasis on food in this but when you are exercising full on 12 hpurs a day there is a lot of focus on sustenance and how to get it

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Noah is completely done, spent, exhausted and can’t go on. The next stretch to Missoula is way harder than what we have been doing.
Noah wants to go home. We are taking a day off in baker city to figure out a bus or something to Missoula do Noah can go home from there.
He has ridden a heroic week and his leg muscles show it

June 24, Day 6 Prarie to Baker City part one

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This is us this morning after breakfast in Prarie. The waitress at the diner who was neither young or old had a full restaurant at seven in the morning being the only place of its kind for miles and miles. Still, she came out and offered to take a photo of the three of us. That’s how nice people are out here. I’m attributing it to the spaciousness of it all.

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June 21, Day 3, Sisters Or to Prineville OR

Great breakfast in sisters Oregon. There was a health food store there too.
A couple of people in sisters told us to detour from our map and go on ” the road less traveled” with less traffic.It was beautiful as is all Oregon. It was a bit tricky feeling like we knew where we were going but we did.
It seemed to go on and on however and we were way too hot. We are eating out of tiny grocery stores (what would be called “corner stores” in the city) and quicky marts and it’s cheap but a drag. These towns are so small there is not much in them and fifty miles between towns. It is hours and hours of gorgeous wilderness.
There is water everywhere. Fairy tale like lakes and literally always a river beside the road.
Just when we thought we couldn’t continue from being so tired, and thought we had another 14 miles to go once we got to the freeway, when we got to the freeway intersection, we were over joyed to see we were one mile outside of our next town which was Prineville Oregon.
We found a super candy and ice cream store that was air conditioned. We had milk shakes that we’re fantastic and then we went to the Laundrymat. There wasn’t any deterrent to buy so we hand washed with our soap and water bottles then threw them in the washer and dryer.
While they were in there, we went to the grocery store and bought dinner and breakfast and lunch for the next day.
The people in Oregon are super nice but the economy looks very depressed. It seems like fifty percent of the homes on the beautiful rivers in the country are for sale ($150,000) and a lot of the farms are too.
It is all white people in Oregon and they all seem to be Christian (Protestant variety) There are no African Americans at all, every now and then there is a Russian type. But so anyway, they are all very nice to me (a white person).

June 20,Day 2 over McKenzie pass

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There was no bus
We rode 4 miles and found a deli !!!
There I had a miraculous cappacino and after that it was 35 hard miles up a mountain!!!
There were times when we thought we couldn’t make it.most of the ride really. When we were just at the top riding wheel to wheel going soo slow a band of Mosquitos attacked us visciously. Wow! Soon After that it was down down down down into the town of Sisters Oregon which is a really nice town. We got to a bike store and realized as we pumped up our tires that we had been riding on 60 pounds of pressure instead of 100!!! AND wE DID IT!!! I’m very proud of us
After that we slept in the city campground which was nice and even had a shower

june 19, Day 1, Eugene OR to Rainbow OR

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Today we rode fifty miles along the McKensie river
We are camping in a nice spot by the river
We have a lovely set up with nice pads and sleeping bags in a nice tent.
We are all so tired we are going to bed at 7:30!!!
Wilderness is everywhere and there is fifty miles before food tomorrow. Nothing we’d call real food here. We are grateful for chicken pot pies for dinner. Fifty miles before food tomorrow and thirty of that is a 4,000 foot climb. Really? Really. At least that’s how it looks from the info we have. We have stocked up with power bars. Hoping to leave camp at six and be to food by lunch

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I’m no boy scout and I wasn’t prepared

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To find hotels so lifeless and expensive

as I am now researching this for the first time.

Two days before we leave,
I have changed my mind from inside to outside. . From hotel to campsite.
It’s more work, but will also be more fun and more people.

Today I got what we need to camp our way across.
I spent a lot of time in REI balancing out money and weight.
The cheap heavy tent or the expensive light one? Over The Cascades? the Rockies?
I got a solar recharger (sans hotel walls)
I bought a Solar flashlight and towels that weren’t really made of cloth.
A purple titanium spork so as not to engage in the plastic throw away kind
Etc
I was in an altered state moving through the sections of the cavernous store.
Resisting lots of etc

I was surprised when I got out to see that I’d spent almost the entire day there
And came out to a parking ticket.

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Changing One’s Mind

Noah has not been as committed as Sarita and I.

First he wasn’t interested and then he was.

And then he wasn’t.

He was trying to decide in an all or nothing way. We bought stuff. We returned stuff.

Recently we discovered the half-way option

He can do part of the trip.

He is starting out with us and at some point we will ship him back. This will depend on his mood and the proximity of a good airfare. Maybe Missoula Montana, maybe farther.

Sarita and I

It’s been Sarita and I from the beginning. We committed to doing this trip in December. That’s when we bought our bikes and started training.

Everyone asks us if we have a cause for our ride. We do.
Our cause is ART IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
I will tell you how to donate once I figure that out.

This is a picture of Sa as one of the winners in an art contest.
The contest was to make a poster that speaks positively to youth.
Hers says “KEEP FAITH IN YOURSELF”

So that is what we are going to do.

All the way across.