Day 8 (93 miles)
Trip Start
Jun 13, 2008
1
9
36
Trip End
Aug 09, 2008
Newport,
Washington,
United States
Sunday, June 22, 2008
today's ride was the longest to date, both for me and the trip. i was a bad boy and didn't train with super-long distances... the ride started off with some fairly tough rolling hills as we pedaled over a range of hills. it wasn't a mountain pass, but the first 30 miles were steadily uphill and we had a 10 mile descent down into a river valley afterwards. although this descent wasn't the zippiest, it was still a lot of fun because it had a series of wide, sweeping turns that we were taking at 30-35 miles per hour. there were even a couple of instances where we had to slow down to reach the recommended speeds on the signs for autos! at the base of the hill, we met up with the early risers and started in on the 50+ miles left. thus far, we usually go swooping past them at some point in the day. after we went by, george and maxine decided to give us a little run for our money and went tearing past us on their tandem
hills outside of colville
. dan is a little competitive, so he took off, and then so did i because i'm supposed to keep up with him (and going fast is fun). we managed to overtake them again, but not without a lot of effort on our parts! we stopped near the town of ione for lunch at a cabin that had been transformed into a restaurant. they made a deliciously greasy cheesesteak that made great fuel for the rest of the day's ride. shortly after leaving ione, we crossed a bridge and followed the pend oreille river upstream for almost 45 miles. this was a really pretty stretch of road, but also unfortunately was our first taste of headwinds on the trip. before owning a bicycle, i had no idea of what a huge role aerodynamics play with forward motion. a little bit of wind at your front or back makes an enormous difference... a light wind can help push you forward or backward by up to 3 mph or so. therefore, pushing into a headwind over a long period of time is tiring and annoying. plus, it's noisy with the wind in your ears and you can't hear the cars coming up behind as well. not fun! well, to combat the headwind, we started to be a little naughty... although we signed papers saying we wouldn't draft (where you ride a foot or so behind someone so they cut the wind for you), we started doing it anyway. the reason we're not supposed to draft is because it's potentially dangerous and accident-prone due to the close distances between cyclists. but...after getting used to the people you ride with, it really becomes a boon on windy days.
along this road, i saw out of the corner of my eye what appeared to be a smooshed turtle, but i didn't get a good look
weeds blowing in the wind in ione
. i was asking brad if he had seen it when suddenly we saw a live turtle on the shoulder of the road jump in surprise as our bikes zoomed past. there were a number of marshy spots along the river, and with them came a lot of turtles. we didn't see too many more dead ones, but quite a few living ones. i was hoping to come up with a "why did the turtle cross the road?" joke... julie stopped to save one of them, and we named him skookum after a nearby RV park (and because it's fun to say!). later on, we passed a stopped car, and the driver was shuttling multiple turtles from the middle of the road back to the river.a few miles later, we were in idaho, and there was much rejoicing...yay! we kept hearing rumors about terrible mosquitos on the other side of the cascades, and we got our first taste of them at the campground. as soon as we had jumped off our bikes, the mosquitoes started to swarm us. one of the great advantages of bike clothing turns against you once you stop in mosquito country--they're made of thin, porous material. the campground itself at the albeni cove was really pretty. as the sun was setting, the lake got nice and glassy. the sunset seemed to last for hours, too... i noticed something interesting, too. we were approaching the very edge of the pacific time zone, and sunset and sunrise were almost a full hour earlier than when we were on the coast in washington.
