Well, the big adventure riding across Wyoming and through Montana, visiting three of the most outstanding national parks in the US, actually begins in New York City on 30 June. I’d been home for a couple of weeks in May after riding fifty-nine days from San Diego, California to St. Augustine, Florida (the Southern Tier) and was still feeling pretty frisky and looking for a bit more adventure. I’d signed up to take the Adventure Cycling Association Leadership Training Course in Denver from 6-9 June and was figuring out how I might expand that trip into a continuation of my two-wheeled rambling around the US.
I decided to take the train to Colorado, influenced somewhat by the Swedish movement called “flygskam” or “flight shame.” I have been trying to cut down my air travel as much as possible. By this time each year over the last five years, I’ve probably averaged about 150,000 kms in the air by mid-July, but in 2019 I’ve only flown 67,300 km on a business trip to Beijing and Nairobi, and a quick flight to Dubai and back for the World Governments Summit back in February, as well as a flight out to San Diego to start my ride across the country. I still hadn’t been on an airplane for five months until taking the United Bicycle Institute course in September! That is some kind of record.
When I was planning my train trip to Denver, I stumbled on the announcement of an Adventure Cycling Bike Travel Weekend that was being planned for Chicago over the first weekend in June. The grand plan started taking shape. I’d take the train to Chicago, spend the weekend riding out to the Indiana Dunes State Park, return to Chicago, head off to Denver on the train, take the Leadership Training Course and then ride my bike north to Whitefish, Montana to take the train home to New York City.
During the last week of May, I finished work on my Seven Cycles touring bike, replacing the chain and cassette, mounting the racks and organizing my needed gear. One of the lessons that I had learned from riding from California to Florida was the need to keep all the necessary crap organized so that I didn’t spend extra time looking for stuff every day. I organized my stuff into a set of packing cubes:
I had a cube for:
- All of my electronics, which contained a waterproof bag to keep the necessary chargers, USB power banks, extra battery for my headlamp, small power strip with USB ports and bluetooth devices nice and dry;
- My grab-and-go shower stuff, with lightweight towel, hard bar shampoo and soap, toothbrush, razor and stuff that I’d need as soon as I got into camp each day in the shower;
- A miscellaneous cube with “spares” that included my bear-bag and rope, some bolts and washers, lock-tite, extra tube, chamois cream, some emergency stuff like waterproof matches, lighter tinder;
- A “health” cube with prescription meds, my antibiotic cream in case of saddle sores, NSAIDs for those nagging back muscles, sunscreen, insect repellent;
- My cycling clothes that included three jerseys, three bib chamois, wool Rapha cycling sweater (very useful), cycling vest, sleeves, Showers Pass jacket;
- the “Aprês Bike Clothes” that contained my heavy padded cold-weather pants, Merino wool t-shirt, swimming trunks, short pants, underwear, Royal Robbins long sleeve travel shirt;
- gloves, socks and misc;
- my rain gear, including my faithful Bear Grylls jacket, Showers Pass rain pants, lightweight Pearl Izumi warm rain pants;
All very organized.
I’d also replaced my old Revelate Designs non-waterproof handlebar bag with a new Revelate Yakataga Dry Pocket waterproof bag, since I had always had to use ziplock bags inside of the old one to keep important stuff dry in the rain. Excellent addition to that important space between the brake levers.
The bike was tuned up (thanks to John and Yee at Conrad’s Bike Shop) and ready to roll.
Ready to load into the luggage car on the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited for the trip from New York Penn Station to Chicago.
Our train arrived in Chicago on Friday night and I burned some Marriott (Bonvoy) points to stay at the Westin Chicago River North, to compensate for spending eighteen hours in coach class, overnight across Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. The trip out to the Indiana Dunes was fairly uneventful, except for some lousy camping and bad food. But I survived and rode back into Chicago on Sunday night to the Westin, where I was greeted by some cool hotel staff who I had met on Friday and were waiting to hear my adventures on my return. The next day I boarded the Amtrak California Zephyr for a very long and delayed trip across Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska to Union Station in Denver. The flooding across the Midwest had taken its toll on the railroad infrastructure and we had to go through a flooded train station in Davenport, Iowa on the banks of the Mississippi:
We were further delayed by a derailment of a freight train due to flooding as we crossed somewhere in Eastern Nebraska. We finally arrived in Denver about thirteen hours behind schedule. Little did I know that freight trains get priority over passenger traffic on the rail system in the United States, so we had to wait for several freight trains to proceed before us over the repaired tracks. It was a long, long trip to Denver.
I had a great time staying with Bob and Michele Perchonok at their home in Denver, before joining the Leadership Training Course (LTC), which began on Thursday evening at Cherry Creek State Park. I may write about the LTC at a later date, but leave it to say that I was not impressed by the content, structure, scope or instructors, although I did complete the course and got my certificate. There is certainly room for improvement in how Adventure Cycling does “leadership” training.
However, now that the course was out of the way, I was free to ride my bike. Pam, my wife, had found a new apartment for us to move into and move-in date was not until 1 August, which meant that I didn’t have to get back to New York City until the start of the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development on 9 July, which gave me a window of four weeks to ride north to the Canadian border.
One of the other participants in the course, Mike Lowham, offered to give me a lift in his cool van, up to his home in Lander, Wyoming about 500 km northwest of Denver, along the Transamerica Bike Trail. Getting dropped in Lander meant that I could spend some extra time taking the Grand Teton spur down to Moose and Jackson Hole, before heading up to Yellowstone and could skip over about four days of beautiful but not that scenic stretch in Northern Colorado and Southeastern Wyoming. I was anxious to get into the mountains!
Mike and I drove out on Monday morning, dropped off some of the other participants at Denver’s Union Station, and then headed over to Wyoming State Highway 230 heading north towards Saratoga, west along Interstate 80 and then north from Rawlins. Our plan was to drive in the opposite direction as the lead riders in the Trans Am Bicycle Race (TABR), which had started the week before from Astoria, Oregon headed to Yorktown, Virginia. The TABR is a self-supported ultra bicycle race of 6,800 km and riders usually average more than 300 km per day, sleeping when they can in bivvy sacks or in cheap motels, consuming huge amounts of calories and finishing in sixteen to twenty days.
Using the TABR mobile app, we were able to track the riders so that as we drove north and they were pedaling furiously south, we would stop to cheer on each rider by name and hand them cold cans of Coca-Cola. Needless to say, the riders were thoroughly exhausted, starved for human contact and eager to inhale a cold soft drink.
Mike and I stopped and chatted with about fifteen of the riders, all the time looking for my friend Brantley Tindall, who was eight or ninth place in the race at that point. However, we must of missed him while going through the town of Rawlins, where we stopped to buy Big Mac hamburgers to pass out to him and other riders.
In Rawlins, Mike and his wife Dannine, cooked up a great dinner and gave me a comfy bed to sleep in for the night, before I took off the next morning to begin my bike ride.
Another cyclist, a guy named Fedor from Siberia, also stayed at Mike and Dannine’s place that evening. They are Warm Showers hosts in Lander and Fedor had just ridden in from Rawlins about the same time that Mike and I arrived in the evening.
Next up… Part II The Ride Really Begins in Rawlins
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