Hip Replacement week two

The entire week was about feeling better and better. The first days (Friday through Tuesday) after I came home I slept on a "deluxe" self-inflating/deflating air bed. I couldn't climb steps to my bedroom. I had to modify one of the downstairs toilets to install an elevated seat. This felt humiliating and triggered memories of the outhouses on our ranch when I was a kid. I felt better when I had to duct-tape the elevated seat onto the regular seat.
On Tuesday I was able to climb the stairs to my own bed!! The in-home therapist showed me how to climb stairs with the folded walker in one hand and using the hand rail with the other. I've never climbed Mt. Everest but in a smaller scale this achievement felt as good.
By Thursday I was given the go-ahead to toss the walker and use walking sticks!
On Saturday the in-home therapist gave me a "wow you've done good" pat on the back and signed off any further need for in-home therapy. Out-patient P.T next week after I go for my two week follow-up chat with the surgeon on Tuesday.
By today I'm walking unassisted but I carry the walking sticks for security. The pain is mostly aching joints and not much different than how my hip joints  felt before surgery. This should get better with time.

Thanks to all who have sent cards and well-wishes.

Hip Replacement week one

Day one-Surgery- I’m told to be there at 6a.m.

Take off all of your clothes. Put on this gown. Sit down and try not to be nervous. Oh, by the way, what are we doing for you today?

A hip replacement.

Which one? Use this magic marker to mark the one that will be replaced.

Both.

You mean you’re having both replaced? Wow! Someone will be in to see you in a few minutes. Make sure you remember to mark them.

______

What’s your name?

SS Number and Date of Birth?

What are we doing for you today? Wow, a double hip replacement! Don’t see those too often.

______

Good morning, I’m George I’m here to shave you. [George is unshaven this morning]Yes, even most of that area around there also. Dang! Sorry about that, did that hurt?

______

Good morning, I’m your anesthesiologist. Any questions?

Yes, I get pre-anesthesia anxiety and could they play Beethoven’s Eroica at first?

He plugs in and I.V. starts saline solutions and gives me a shot of something via the I.V.

Oh ya!!! Wow!

______

I wake up in my room several hours later. I’m thirsty, I feel like crap! But they show me how to use the medicine pump hooked into my I.V. Oh ya!! Wow!

I have tubes coming in and tubes going out. The image of the man wrapped in bandages from head to foot in Yossarian’s ward, in Catch 22, comes to mind. In the book they wait until the bag going into the man’s arm empties and the one dripping from his body fills and then they simply switch them. I can feel the catheter. Part of my body feels like a gopher that has had a garden hose rammed down its throat.  

Day Two—still punching the medicine pump as regularly as I can. Why can’t they shorten the interval? I’m thirsty, I feel like crap. My friend Peter comes to see me in the evening. He brings a goody basket with bagels, a thermos of hot water, a china cup and plate, and Rooibos tea. It’s real Rooibos from South Africa. His wife Gerda is all over being classy; who sneaks a china cup and saucer into a hospital room? Both of them and the Rooibos tea are the real thing from South Africa. I know I’m slurring my words and he’s blurry but the tea is great. My toes wiggle but my legs don’t seem to want to work.

Day Three—Did you get any rest?

How the hell can anyone sleep here when you have to check my vitals every hour or so? You night-shift guys get more sleep than I do.

Let’s try to walk the P.T says. I walk to the doorway pushing a walker. My upper legs ache. I’m off of the I.V Pump but on some sort of oral pain med. I try my breakfast again. Someone should shoot the kitchen staff I think. The jello is so hard it could be considered a lethal weapon. Maybe I’ll tuck it in a sock and whack the night nurse on the head and scoot my walker down the hall to the possibility of a better night’s sleep in the waiting room.

Day Four—Depending on how I do today will determine if I have to go to a rehab facility tomorrow. But I’m walking up and down the hall. Not eating much, not getting a heck of a lot of sleep; the bed sucks.

Day Five—Friday—Doc says I’ve improved so much I can go home today!! No rehab joint for me! Getting into the car is a challenge but I manage with some help to swing my legs in.

I'm back!!

It has been a while, a few weeks, since I last posted.  It has been a busy few weeks. For several years a friend has been talking about starting a publishing company on the Colorado Plateau. His idea turns on its head the traditional money losing publishing business. Instead it will combine the best of both the world of traditional publishing with an electronic web based platform. The company is called Torrey House Press L.L.C.  The link is www.torreyhouse.com  So if you write literary fiction or literary creative non-fiction go on our web site and check out what we want. We also just fired off a fiction writing contest.

Since returning from my bicycle trip I have been bicycling as much as I can in the SL Valley  to keep my legs and lungs in shape for my upcoming double hip surgery. I'm scheduled for 6 a.m. on November 1, 2010, the day before election day. I'm really looking forward to the surgery and I'm not looking forward to the results, albeit predictable, from election day.

When I went in to vote the other day I decided that I would not vote for anyone who did negative campaigning even though I liked them, I liked their views. I refuse to support bullying! Who would want someone who has to tear down another person's life, who uses innuendo and misinformation as the truth as a friend or neighbor or to represent you in Congress or run your state?  I think a poll I heard on Fox,  by Fox, (It's on full steam at the gym I go to) says it best: 65% of the people polled said vote all of them out.
The Tea Party has some steam this election cycle but they should have read Don Quixote before they started spouting off about going back to DC, as a DC outsider (until they've been there a couple of months and learn how things actually happen) and reducing the size of government, reducing taxes, etc. Ok, I'm all for less taxation, but I also would rather not have to pay the true costs of water, electricity, roads, medicare, agriculture, fuel, etc. Does that mean I'm a socialist?
The "vote out the incumbent, lower taxes, reduce government crowd" don't understand that their idea, while good in theory, is simply not going to happen in the current atmosphere. The denial they and all of us suffer from about who is responsible for the horrible debt we're in as a country, shakes my belief in our ability to rationally think as a species. The last administration created a huge debt and this one hasn't done a damn thing except make it bigger. The recession started three or more years ago, not the day after the President took office. We can not solve the problems of this country if we refuse to look directly at them. We can not solve the problems of this country if both sides of the aisle promote divisiveness.
Change takes time. It will not happen until we start. It will not happen if we can't meet to talk about common ground. The debt will continue to rise. Why? Because if you want to lose weight you have to quit eating as much and get some discipline!  We can't lower taxes and keep spending like a drunken sailor! If I ran my diet or my bank account like this I would be in serious trouble!




If you were going to donate to one of my charities for my bike ride I rode 1125 miles. Thanks for donating.

Twisted Rope

The first part of my bicycle tour is done for the year. I made the continental divide but the wind and temperatures were too extreme to ride further. So, if I am able to come back next spring to ride some more, I will start at the continental divide and head east on Highway 2. I don't know what to expect as I ride across the “big flat” as I've named the northern Great Plains. But we did take time out to see what we could see of Glacier National Park. In spite of the rain and wind it is a breathtaking landscape.

The east side, the short grass prairie side, the big flat, is mostly the Blackfeet Indian reservation. The Tribe seems to be working to keep the land functioning. There doesn't seem to be evidence of overgrazing, unmitigated development. It would be a stunning place to live even with the wind. All of the trees, aspen, fir, pines close to the toe of the Rockies are stunted and all lean towards the NE pushed into a permanent stoop by the wind. There are streams in the draws, ponds both natural and man-made in low areas, and lots of habitat for the creatures of the Plains. 

“That's a great view,” I said, pointing out of a west window at the peaks of south Glacier National Park. The waning moon hung high above the mountains. The red sunrise reflecting from the rocks of the peaks. The aspen along the creek behind the lodge were being scourged by the wind. Leaves exploded off of the trees every time a wind gust hit them. The man I talked to was washing window sills. He was from the Blackfeet Reservation.

“Yup,”

“I guess you get used to it because you see it everyday,” I said.

“I was born here. Right up the road about 15 miles. Now I live up by St. Mary”

“You work here?” I asked.

“Forty-one years I've been here except for two years I was in jail. Best job on the reservation. Where you from?”

“Salt Lake now but originally from southwest Colorado,” I said.

“Did you ever know Benjamin Yazzie from down that way? He was a Navajo”

“No,” I said.

“He and I were in a boarding school together when the government made us kids leave the reservation for school. It was down in Utah. So he came about halfway up and I went about halfway down. I'd never known a Navajo but he was okay. There were lots of Indians from your country but very few from the north, from up here. At least he wasn't Crow.”

“Brigham City?”

“Yup, that was the place. Lots of Mormons. Are you being a tourist?”

I told him about my bicycle trip; that I didn't really know why I had felt compelled to do it; that I had learned a lot from it about people, other places, other environments, my own contradictions. I told him I had forgotten what Glacier looked like from a previous trip to Kalispell and the Bob Marshall. I told him about seeing a sow grizzly and two cubs up Many Glaciers creek. He told me that I had driven by his place that was almost burned out in the huge fire in 2006. We talked about many things in the brief time we visited.

“Have you found out what it is that you were looking for?”

“Not quite but its like a feeling of deja vu, I feel like I've seen it before and its just at the corner of my minds eye.” I said.

He asked if this was a vision quest. I felt uncomfortable answering because I knew what my friend Clifford from the Ute Tribe thought about those words, how they came about, how the basic idea had been subverted and stolen by whites. The Blackfeet man saw my discomfort and smiled. He said he could tell I knew some real Indians and what they felt about the spiritual inventions forced on Tribes and then hijacked back by white people looking for answers.

“Oh,” I said, the word for a yes in Navajo. It felt right and appropriate to say it.

“You know some Navajo,” he said.

“Some, but I've forgot most of it. I learned it when I was a kid.”

He told me that he had went on a personal journey for much the same reason and at about the same age as I am now. I asked him if he had found what he was looking for.

“Yup, it was right where it had been all the time. I just had to do some stupid shit to get to it like drinking and losing my family, being put in jail for a couple of years.” he said.

“What was it you were looking for? If you don't mind me asking.”

“I'm not sure exactly but what I think I found was me.” he said. We exchanged names. His was Arnold. Then he shook my hand and went on with his morning chores at the hotel. As I left, I passed him and smiled, nodded my head to say goodbye.

“Hey,” he said. “my real name is Twisted Rope.”

My first bicycle

I found my first bicycle in a ravine filled with other trash when I was ten. It was a rusted blue color, a Montgomery Ward bicycle missing both wheels and tires. The chain was fused, welded by rust into a tangle of links, the sculpture of a frozen snake in agony. “I can fix this,” I told my grandfather from the bottom of the ravine. Around me was the discarded flotsam of a society that he abhorred. Because of his world-view our family was slow to accumulate these things of the twentieth century and the electricity to run them! Agüelo which means grandfather in the Judea-Spanish (Ladino) that our family of crypto-Jews spoke, was smoking a cigarette of harsh tobacco hand rolled in coarse paper. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and carefully ground the ash he had shaken from its tip into the red earth. He pushed his chapao back on his head and pointed with his thumb at two saddled horses we had in the truck behind him. “Why,” he asked. “would anyone kill their legs to give their ass a ride when we have horses with us?” Indeed!

Had it not been for an afternoon temperature of 40, the 20 mph tail wind blowing out of the canyons of Glacier NP, could have pushed me at least halfway across Montana. I watched in envy as last summers tumbleweed and tumble mustard rolled across the prairie. During other wind events I'd experienced on this tour, like when I was crossing the wheat fields of Washington, I had given some thought to designing a sail to take advantage of a tail wind. But I know nothing about sails and even less about sailing. But I do know a little bit about the instability of two-wheeled vehicles at high speeds. So, it might save some brain power wasted in designing a sail and simply throw a grappling hook at the rear of a passing semi and hope for the best! But given all of the givens it is probably more prudent to get my bicycle re-tuned and return to this point next summer and pedal east. But there is something to be said about my idea especially if there is as much up on the short-grass prairie, east of the Rockies, as there seems to be in the wheat fields of Washington.

Montana looks larger than it is looking down at it from the east edge of the Rockies. Instead of being the fourth largest state what I can see could represent the remaining landscape that circles the rest of the earth; a broad band of rolling flat making Montana the largest state and largest land mass. In the mountains, above, there are trees, cascading rivers, steep rocky slopes on both sides of narrow canyons and then, like stepping out of a narrow hallway onto a large field, you ride right into the Great Plains or what some pioneers crossing this expanse named it: the Great American Desert. Less than a hundred miles north of the point that Highway 2 exits the mountains is Canada. Montana is the northern extent of the short grass prairie in the U.S. But the flatness goes north, way into Canada, past the curvature of the earth.

The rolling hills of the prairie seem boring to casual observation but here, in the grasslands and hidden draws, there is a broad diversity of life. Indeed this ecosystem has significantly more diversity than do the Lodgepole forests that carpet the steep mountain sides above it. The Rockies have a habit of ending abruptly all along their eastern flanks until you reach east-central New Mexico. There the Rockies end in the Llano Estacado, a broken country of rough hills, rocky ledges, broad mesas of piñon and juniper, sagebrush, grasses and forbs.

This place is also highly diverse when unmolested. The Llano, instead of being located on the prairie, could and should instead be located inside of the mountains that ring the Colorado Plateau. There it would blend in to the fractured lands of narrow canyons, broad mesas, and even the flat-earth part of the Plateau; the shale and volcanic landscapes of the Plateau. The Plateau is likewise a highly diverse landscape but is in serious peril from unmitigated over-use exacerbated by a drying trend well into its fifth decade.

In a car driving across the wide spaces of our globe: the short-grass prairie, the Great Basin, central/eastern Washington state, visiting the Serengeti, or watching a documentary about Mongolia, it is easy to think that there is a whole lot of flat going on across the planet. It isn't hard to imagine how the flat-earth thinkers got to their belief. I could have bought into this idea when I was a child. The broad mesas of the four-corners were generally flat. And the blue shale seemed to stretch endlessly from the toe of Sleeping Ute Mountain well past Shiprock to the south. Crossing east-central Utah, on the old highway between Crescent Junction and Price, the land between the escarpment of the Book Cliffs and the red rocks is likewise endless.

The Colorado Plateau is the confluence of sedimentary rock leaping into the sky to form a mesa edge, layers of shale deposited in deep primordial seas, the basalt and lava flows of long-extinct volcanic activity, and a conspiracy of wind, water, and time that work slowly on the mountains that ring the Plateau to flatten them.

This where I grew up: riding after cattle in the valleys of the San Juan mountains, chasing wild horses with my grandfather in the deepest canyons of Mesa Verde or the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation, or exploring the flat red earth of piñon covered mesas. Agüelo was a hard man to the rest of the world. He was a man made even harder by his stubborn reluctance to let the twentieth century into his or our family's life, a man made hard by his resistance to government, change, and people in general. To me agüelo was the model of the love a grandfather should show his grandchildren.

He and I, as his quiet saddle partner, rode quite a bit of the heart of the Colorado Plateau; both the mountains and the arid lands common to the province. He was a livestock man who raised sheep and cattle and grazed them in the summer on the high pastures of the San Juan mountains managed by the USFS. Agüelo and the employees of the Forest Service—the agency that John Nichols named “the pendejo factory (means pubic hair or congenital dumb-ass, your choice) in The Milagro Bean Field War— had a relationship built on fear of Agüelo and their big hammer: regulatory intimidation and distrust and disdain on my grandfathers part. He finally sold his grazing permits after the USFS issued him a “trespass” for putting out to few cattle.

My grandfather said the range couldn’t support full numbers and only turned out about half. The USFS “specialist” told him (my agüelo) that he didn't have the data nor the right to make that decision. I remember my grandfather standing, staring at the ranger who after a few uncomfortable and silent minutes lowered his head and said: “I guess that's all. If you'll excuse me I have other work to do.”

That was the last season we grazed on public lands. Agüelo said we couldn't make money grazing forest lands for several reasons. Our fellow grazers on the allotment wouldn't provide the day-to-day herding needed to prevent unhealthy concentrations of livestock on stream-banks or fragile soils, wouldn't fix fences or repair water holes, and frequently turned out more cattle than they were permitted to. And last that the FS employees weren’t managing a resource but were managing a process built to serve the illusion of preserving custom and culture All of this added up to costs to us that negated any profit made even though grazing permits were sold at significantly less than fair market value.

I wonder what my agüelo would have thought about the continuing issues on public lands. He would have said something like: “we're pissing into our own cup of coffee and can't admit it.” He would also have said:” . . .time to pull the cows off. If we don't it's like you taking the principle out of your savings account to spend today and going broke collecting the interest tomorrow.”

And I wonder what he might have said about the short grass prairie; a landscape that I don't think he ever saw. But I know had he ridden his horse into the prairie from the Rocky Mountains he would have gone into the Tribal headquarters of the Blackfoot Indians and before very long he and the elders would have been in a coffee shop swapping stories about another century.

Last leg of 2010 tour Just When my Legs were Reviving

My internal debate about routes to take east has been intensive. I have scoured the web for notes from others who might have ridden a certain route and I have zoomed in on highways, with Google Earth, to try to see how much paved shoulder I might find to ride on. Had we spent this much time researching weapons of mass destruction in Iraq we might never have had to go there!

My legs are doing well! And the load they're pushing along is doing quite well.

I decided when we picked up my bicycle and trailer in Missoula to try Highway 2 again. This is the highway I rode on between Puget Sound and Idaho. (Thanks to Tom and Jo for storing my equipment. I trust that the Marquis d Sade and the Machiavellian Humpbacked Bastard were well behaved in your garage!)

I went up Highway 93 from Missoula to Kalespell MT. where I could pick up Hwy 2. But the segment of that highway is a narrow four-lane without a shoulder until it makes the turn towards Glacier National Park so I stayed on Hwy 93 (with consistently wide paved shoulders) to White Fish MT. The connecting road hooks up with Highway 2 just outside of West Glacier. Then it's southeast and over the continental divide.

Once again I visited the St. Ignatius Mission in St. Ignatius MT. I'm not sure why other than to show it to my benevolent chase-car driver Shen. She was less than impressed having had religion force-fed to her in Salt Lake all of her life. I didn't want to go there to find anything; I didn't lose anything there the first time. But I find the idea of a priest painting two Native Americans with halos inside of a church refreshing. Especially inside an edifice owned by a big business that has been one of the champions of the single most devastating weapon of mass destruction known to humankind: religion.

But even with the rain and fog the trip to get to Highway 2 has been cold but enlightening. My goal for this last segment of this tour is to get over the Continental Divide and further at least to Great falls if I can. The weather window is closing fast. Aspen, birch, and other deciduous trees are rapidly changing color. Other than mountain maple the colors in Utah are slow to change. So, even though I new it would be so, I was surprised to see the bright yellows, oranges, and reds especially up high in Glacier and the Bob Marshal wilderness area.

Later I will write about the foolish protectionist mentality of the NPS, promulgated by an archaic Organic Act, that contributed to a fire in 2006 (I think it was that year) that according to one ranger I visited with: burned 15% of the land mass in the park and quite a bit outside of the boundary. Much of what can be seen of the fire shows a complete burn. That is: every tree killed and not even a lone live tree left here and there as an island. The fire had enough fuel and burn conditions were just right so that the fire must have been very intense and very hot. This indicates several things but the more significant one is: archaic fire management practices whose managers do not realize or admit that even in “pristine” sites, most ecologic sites are departed from properly functioning condition.

Bottom line:even in these protected areas the “hand of man” has influenced the ecology of these sites. All along the route of this tour I have observed the same denial by the USFS and BLM that most ecologic sites are seriously departed and therefore "normal" management and uses on public lands can not continue. More later.

So, I will post this and then head out on Highway 2.

Brain Flotsam and other Detritus

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, unsolicited opinions about love, religion, economics, and politics  should be kept silent and allowed to fall off of the edge of the earth with hate, anger, religion and its mass wasting disease, weapons of mass destruction, excess adverbs and unrequited love. 

Today is either the first day of autumn or the last day of summer; I can never remember. But if I missed the equinox yesterday or if it's today I will still miss it anyway due to rain and clouds hiding the Continental Divide in Glacier national Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. I decided to try to get back on Highway 2 in Kalispell. Highway 2 is the highway I took across most of Washington state. Thanks, many appreciative thanks to Tom and Jo Graff in Missoula for storing my bicycle and trailer. I trust that the Marquis de Sade and his humpbacked companion didn't take up a lot of room in your garage. 

Fall is my favorite season, at least most of it. I love the part without a lot of snow; the part with changing leaves; cool evenings warm days; and most of all I like the smell. It brings back memories of the scent of contentment my grandparents had. The crops were in, wheat had been traded for flour, the lambs and calves had been sent to market, and the deer and elk, fattened on our hay fields all summer watched us warily for signs of predation. The autumn air has the scent of accomplishment and the breeze has enough chill in it to make us aware of measurable change. I'm not afraid of change, rather I embrace it. I remarked to one of the kids that I was fascinated by the process of growing old. I could do without the bad knees, memory issues, etc! But even these are part of my observations. I look forward to the double hip replacement I have scheduled later in the fall, if for no other reason than to see what I will be like when I recover. The doctor told me I would be less bow-legged and consequently taller! 

Fall is the season of fattening, of eating voraciously to build up fat reserves to make it through the harsh winter in a cold cave. It is primordial and I wonder if putting most of the fattening holidays--Halloween, Thanksgiving, Xmas, my birthday--in the fall and early winter was accidental or random. I told my therapist once: "I get the urge to go down to the stream behind the house and wait for spawning salmon. I salivate from the primordial memory of the taste of salmon roe, pink flesh. I empathize with grizzly bears." He took a long look at me and sighed. I wonder what he will say when we next meet when I tell him or ask him if it is weird for a practicing vegetarian to love fly fishing (catch and release of course) and having strong urges to gorge on salmon.

The absolute truth, denial, and opportunity and phase four

I finished phase three in Missoula Mt. This leg of my journey was wet, windy, and mostly cloudy but not any less contemplative and enlightening. Have I learned anything more about myself that I already didn't know?

Some, but mostly I clarified for myself more of my own contradictions. One of these contradictions is my ability to look at the big picture future while ignoring the nuts and bolts needed to make my ideas/plans work. I am simply not good at minutia. For example I was able to work with Rory Reynolds to design and implement the west's first large-scale (state wide) ecologic restoration program right smack in the middle of red-necked Utah. Both of us were large-scale thinkers and had it not been for the luck of designing a program that relied on minutia managers and finding key players, we probably wouldn't have had the success we had. And we both stubbornly refused to hear the word "No" or phrases like: "we've never done it that way," "why fix it if it isn't broken (in this case the environment was and is really broken)", "why should I care?", and "we don't have a process in place to deal with that."

One of the things I've thought about is "truth." I've said that: "the absolute truth is always filtered through your personal paradigms." This is what makes us unreliable witnesses.
"But I saw it (the accident, human exacerbated climate change, etc) differently therefore your version is wrong and if  you insist on telling the story that way you're lying!" we say or at least think it when someone shares a different version of the truth.

But the truth is either boring or very scary. For example a well written memouir--which should be about your truth--would be boring if the author didn't color in the edges of the true story as that person remembers it! One of the more serious consequences of exposure to the absolute truth is the denial that we pull on like a coat to protect our values, our world view, our version of the truth. Everyone does this!

The biggest challenges we had when we started Utah Restoration Initiative were paradigms like:

1. there isn't anything wrong with ecosystems! (in fact most systems are seriously departed from naturally functioning processes)
2. climate change is natural and no, we didn't exacerbate it! (climate change is natural but we've been changing the carbon load since the beginning of the industrial revolution, increasing silt in our reservoirs by destroying native ranges by grazing (cattle and other ungulates including some wildlife species) and arcane fire management practices, increasing devastating infections of vast public land forests and increasing silt loading by "tree farm management" practices, etc.)
3. if we only kick the cows off, quit cutting down forests like we do, etc. it will all look nice in our life time; (maybe but only if a number of things come together like we pull out of the five-decade long general drying change in the west, we change other adverse actions like: arcane fire control/reclamation policies, fragmentation of habitat, poorly planned uses on public land, poorly planned development, really poor use of water, etc.)
4. and last: why should I care? (zero sum is a hard thing to overcome!)

Part of denial is that we're stuck in the present, assaulted by conflicting media, conflicting science, conflicting world views,poorly articulated truths about the environment (especially by me!) and poorly articulated opportunities for fixing things. We have a great number of options. But we don't want to see, for example, that a southern Utah stream needs periodic devastation to stay healthy in the long-term. Instead we want to see knee-deep grass, sprouting cottonwoods waving in the breeze, trout jumping, and Bambi snuggled down in its warm bed. These are part of stream health but the nasty side: scoured stream beds, raw gravel beds, ripped up clumps of willows, etc. are just as much a part of that health. So. I've coined a phrase that fits ecologic things as well as personal "truths." I call it:  Polaroid Mentality or Snap Shot in Time Mentality. This thought process is the poster child of denial, does not allow for growth, for evolutionary change, for opportunity instead this denial blinds us to potential, to hope, to action. Everyone who has adult children has a snap shot in time of their favorite age of that child. When we first see them we usually don't speak to the adult child instead we speak to the child in that photo! Conflict!!! This by the way is one of my personal contradictions.
The absolute truth can be disheartening and very scary. But the consequences of denial are devastating in the long-term to the environment around us, our relationships with family, and with our personal growth. I am stubbornly committed to seeing the facts of life (the world around us): over-population, pollution, personal conflict, as incredible opportunities. It is incumbent on me to think long-term (I can't think any other way anyhow!); to have faith that the restoration work I've had a hand in, that my personal changes work, that I can only fix things incrementally, that I can rally just enough people to take action, and last that I may not live long enough to see the positive results of my effort!

I had to use my stubborn streak to make the miles I needed to make in order to get to Missoula in time to catch a plane. The minutia I left out was forgetting that I'm 61 and don't have the legs I once had to pedal several 50+ mile days consecutively. In this case, I got rained out the first couple of days and was able to ride just half of a daily goal. I'm not a Tour d France competitor. They only drugs I take are lots of B-complex, protein, and chocolate--dark 70% chocolate if you please. So I had to do three back-to-back days of at least 75 miles. I can and have done 100 (century rides) or even a couple of 100+ (super-century) rides but I have only attempted to do two of them back to back once.  My legs felt like wood when I finished, I couldn't feel anything from my butt both ways, my brain was seized, even the little bit of hair I have left on my head hurt!
But I did it. I ignored my butt, popped B-Complex like candy, drank protein shakes (chocolate of course--thanks to Rob my trainer at Holladay Health and Fitness in Utah who sold me chocolate protein powder), and I stopped often to see the sights. Seeing an Osprey struggling to pull a fish out of the Clark Fork (bigger than any trout I've ever hooked!), listening to the silence of the wind, the river speaking words of a language that we have forgotten how to hear, seeing a deer with her fawn resting under a shrub at streams edge, made it much better.
Part of the road (nine miles) was cliff on the uphill side, white stripe, two winding narrow lanes, white stripe and river! Oh! The distant sound of two logging trucks approaching: one upstream one downstream, the adrenalin surge needed to pedal hard around a tight curve in the hope that they would see me and at least know what they had run over, the muscle spasms in my back when I made it out of this section alive; oh yes, this is fun! When I got out of the gauntlet I stopped, and after I dislodged the bicycle saddle from my lower body, I lay down next to the river and thought about my family, my grand daughter, and how luck can work out sometimes instead of pre-planning!

Next and last phase for this phase is Missoula to Great Falls. I need to finish this part of the tour on the eastern slope.

A view of 9/11 from a rock in the Clark Fork River

Today I had breakfast in a small motel on the Flathead Indian Reservation, in or close to Ravalli MT. My blog has been full of contradictions I am painfully aware of, paradigms and stereotypes that have been confirmed or busted, and a shifting, more positive worldview.
I grew up in the Four-Corners in Colorado on a remote ranch to feral people. Around me were the reservations of the Dine', Jicarilla Apache, and Ute Mountain and Southern Ute Indian people. I learned Navajo before I learned English. My observations then and now are of the tremendous contradiction between the image of the earth-loving people of literature and common speak and the reality of the living conditions these people endure. My friend Cliff, a South African journalist, brother of my friend Peter who lives in SLC, told me that our reservations were not in the running for crime, squalor, poverty compared to the shanty-towns in South Africa. I agree.
Another friend of mine, the keeper of traditional/cultural ideas, values, knowledge for a Tribe in Utah told me (with a crooked smile)  when I asked him about the number of non-Indians wanting to be part of the Native American Church: "you people (whites) all want to be Indians but none of you want to live on a reservation to learn how!"  He went on: "the American government gave us blankets with smallpox to try to kill us. Got some of us, so they gave us whiskey and now drugs, and STDs. It's killing a few more. But the worst thing you gave us was Jesus Christ who invented the Native American Church, and the National Park Service who reinvented our histories and traditions. That has been deadly not so much in lives but to our spirit. We don't have the energy to fight off your (white people) crazy stuff and pick up trash!"
The Flathead Indian Reservation has probably transitioned through these feelings. There is still visible poverty, the impacts of drugs and alcohol, the visible contradictions between the traditional view of Indians by whites and the reality of being forced to live apart from mainstream America. But they have also do wonders with their farms and ranches. The Tribe has set aside the National Bison Reserve and seems to be interested in ecologic restoration. I will come back up here and spend time visiting with Tribal members.
Before I leave this area for Missoula I want to visit the St Ignatius church just north of here. I have no desire to worship, because I do not and have not since I was about eight or nine. I want to sit in the church and think.
My mother converted to a Pentecostal faith around the time my brother was born. She was a fragile woman who always seemed puzzled by the intricacies of personal relationships. Even though we lived in the country and she had just learned to drive, she drove my brother and me, each Sunday, to a Pentecostal church in Durango Colorado. Rain or shine, blizzards, herds of sheep, stray deer or elk in the road; we went to church each Sunday. My father stayed home, stuck in the quagmire of his bitter thinking.
The routine at my mother's church was predictable enough that without owning a watch one could tell what time it was. First, exactly at 930, the minister greeted the congregation and for four or five minutes he admonished his parishioners to get ready to relinquish any transgressions that they had incurred during the week or suffer the consequences. They sang a couple of hymns. My mother always sat close to the piano so she could watch it being played. It was one thing she really wanted to do; my mother would have given up anything to be able to play the piano.
After the children, including me, had been sent to another room to have a bible lesson, and within a few minutes of us leaving the minister would crank up the amps of guilt and threats of retribution. We could hear him in our study room. I could hear the congregation shouting hallelujahs, speaking in tongues, the thumps of some falling to the floor in the ecstasy of receiving the holy spirit.  I thought I could smell the scents wafting out of the gates of hell that had been opened to receive bad people. But for whatever reasons I could never hear the songs of angles waiting by the gates of heaven to greet good people. It always made our teacher nervous, so nervous that she didn't notice that I slipped out the back door about the time the shouting of hallelujahs from the main room shook the windows of the church. As an aside I put the puzzle back together several years later and determined that our teacher was with child and not married at the time.
I ran down the street to the Catholic Church getting there just in time to hear the priest chanting a mass in Latin. The church was dark lit by hundreds of candles around the walls. Pre-Vatican II Catholics were still wallowing in their own traditions. I loved hearing the clicking of rosary beads, the whispered prayers of old ladies wearing black mantillas. They rose and sat by rote seemingly not paying attention to the Latin chanting. They were in their own world, praying I assumed then, just in case they dropped dead during the service. I was in my world sitting in the back pew, thinking about my mothers god and how it seemed to be different from the Catholic god. But mostly I thought about Roberta, daughter of one of our farm neighbors, who had developed physically quite early. I sat in the back and lusted for her, daring the more forgiving Catholic god to zap me into a pile of cinders.
I want to go into the St Ignatius church, not to visit god, nor to lust after Roberta. I want to sit in a religious place and think about 9/11. Yesterday on my very long trip from Thompson Falls to Ravalli I stopped and sat on a huge rock at the edge of the Clark Fork river. While I watched an osprey fish I thought about 9/11.
When I go into the church on the reservation I want to compare feelings, to see if my thinking was different in a place I was more comfortable in yesterday to a place that represents the darkness of our world. (I don't suggest that Catholics have cornered the market on repression. I could have stopped in a mosque, a synagogue, a Pentecostal church and had the same feeling)
I have listened to a number of people on this trip. I have heard fear, uneasiness, racial tension, and some hope. Since 9/11 we seem to have become a more divided nation, a less tolerant nation, a nation where it is OK to practice overt "soft" racism, to practice religious intolerance. We have become a country of short-term memory. How many remember the balanced budget at the end of the last decade? (balanced does not mean we didn't owe money!) How many Americans, who believed the President when he said "If you're not with us you're against us," understand where those words have led us? Our own religious right is one hallelujah away from strapping dynamite to themselves. Would they seek out the "infidels" to kill? I doubt it. We would do as they (infidels) have done and seek to destroy those in our country who are different from us.
This blog entry has been depressing but I really do have hope. I think that the more rational people on both sides of the political fence will see that a coalition of rational thinking is needed to bring balance to a divided nation. It is these people in whom I think the hope for a brighter future lingers yet untapped. The tails of the curve of normal distribution (thanks to Fred for this metaphor) have been plundering hope and good will, tainting common sense with fear and innuendo, preying on our collective insecurities to spread rumor, hate and discontent. Are we satisfied to let them continue? I'm not. Think AJ think! How do we get the middle of the curve of normal distribution to take back their brains, form their own thoughts, rationally sit down and negotiate a new mainstream world? I know it's there. I just need to sit on a rock by a river and contemplate. I need to listen to more people. I need to smile a bit more.

Butt Bumping Buxom Mennonite Matrons

One of an ever increasing number of things that bother me include the guy on the airplane wearing a day pack. It isn't the wearing of the day pack. It's when he turns in the aisle to try and cram a bag--that clearly exceeds not only the size but weight requirement--into the overhead compartment, his day pack, that he isn't aware he's wearing like a hump, smacks into my head. And then as he turns to seek help from a flight attendant he smacks everyone in the closest four seats.
Point?
I was contemplating which of the rapidly ripening bananas I wanted to buy, at a really small grocery store, to replace the ones I lost (or that were stolen by big foot) yesterday, when I backed into the back side of elderly Mennonite woman who was contemplating some other outdated item. I was chagrined! Who was totally clueless about his surroundings this time? !
There are several Mennonite settlements along highway 200. Something about the draft horses (even though they use tractors) grazing in fields reminded of the draft horses my grandfather had on the ranch. As a child I remember a Mennonite colony (?) very close to my grandfather's ranch in SW Colorado. He traded them bulls, rams, and an occasional saddle horse (that he stole from the NPS as yearlings and then gentled) for produce, honey, fence posts, hay. . . .   They have been gone from that small mountain valley for years. As I rode past a couple of the colonies today I wondered if any of them living here had ever lived in the Four-Corners.

Marquis de Sade and the Humpback Machiavelli Bastard posing in front of a Mennonite store

I stopped in Belknap hoping for a cup of tea at the Belknap store. No tea. But this tiny store is crammed full of the most incredible selection of fresh produce, farm raised staples: wholewheat flour, beans, honey, etc. And they had a bakery. I've been good about not buying donuts and such, but. . . . I had to try a raspberry tart (fresh raspberries and home made cream cheese). WoW! As the song goes (I think): "I'm in heaven, simply heaven and I'm so in love that I can hardly speak. . ." I sat on the bench outside and thought seriously about licking  the wax-paper napkin. If I lived in this area I would weigh close to a ton; all you can eat fresh farm raised stuff and fresh tarts. None of their farm-raised stuff was organic, instead as it was explained to me (my words translating from proper Mennonite language into my version of proper English) "we don't use anything foreign. We use lots of fresh dairy barn cow slops on all of our crops." So I bought a tomato to cap off my experience with the tart. I must have looked like a vampire with red gore leaking from the sides of my mouth. The Mennonite woman who came out to talk to me was a bit taken aback by a grown man from the "outside" sitting by her (their) store dripping red gore all over the front of his windbreaker.

Again it reminded me of my grandfather who took me with him to bring a truckload of fresh tomatoes back from the truck farms around Delta Colorado. He did anything to make a living. He bought and sold fresh fruit and produce, contracted laborers in the truck farms, raised cattle and sheep, stole horses and made whiskey both of which he sold to the Mormons over in Bluff and Blanding Utah. I sat in the back of his truck eating tomatoes, throwing the smaller ones at road signs, and finally throwing up all over my jean jacket. I still love a home-grown tomato raised in natural cow slop.

I was rained out today. I made it as far as Thompson Falls before I had to bail. What an incredibly beautiful place. I don't know if there is a waterfall or not but the Clark Fork river runs through town; Osprey perch on pines and other trees growing in yards watching the water below for fish; and there are just enough red necks here to make me feel like I'm home. I've started to believe that this social group may actually be a cousin species. Who's to say? Maybe we, the educated and cultured elite, are the side branch that is doomed to die out. Maybe the next dominant hominid species will be red necks. If so I'm in. I grew up as a red neck.

Lost all of my bananas

Tuesday September 7--North Spokane to Clark Fork in one very long day!! Some rain and cloudy but pleasant otherwise. The roads—highway 2 from Spokane to Sandpoint Id and 200 from Sandpoint to Clark Fork—have had adequate shoulders with a couple of tight places on Hwy 200.

A few miles east of Sandpoint Id is another in a long line of coffee kiosks on the NW. (However, as you travel east they get fewer and fewer until you get to Clark Fork where you might not be able to get a cup of decent coffee.) The coffee kiosk is called Colleens Coffee Corner. As you might expect Colleen runs the place with the help of Jan. Both are part of a group of motorcycle riders who sponsor the “Scootin Sisters Ride Toys for Tots.” What a pair!

The vistas have been splendid. Open pine forests and a huge lake from Sand Point to here. The lake is the remains of Lake Missoula that flooded this entire area carving out the deep canyons and gullies in Idaho and Washington states and formed the Columbia gorge all the way to Eugene Or. I would have like to have seen the ice dam break and watch the tremendous volume of water cut through basalt to carve the canyons. You can go to "http://www.nps.gov/iceagefloods/ for more information. As an aside, why does the NPS always appropriate all of the cool stuff? One would think that because a great number of miles of those gully cuts are on BLM lands and the old Lake Missoula would have been partially on USFS lands, that these two agencies would be on this.

As a further aside, my observations across the northern part of the country has been that BLM and the USFS may have outlived their usefulness. The BLM, contrary to their protests otherwise, is not fulfilling their mission as laid out by FLPMA. And the Forest Service never really practiced what some of their more enlightened employees suggested that they do: sustainable vs. politically expedient timber production. This coupled with a five decade general drying trend in the west has resulted in seriously degraded public lands. If you add cows and OHVs to the equation, unmitigated development around cities and towns, the fragmentation of habitats as a result of these activities and oil/gas development, you have a serious mess. On a brighter note, we have been trying to do something about this in Utah.

Somewhere west of Clark Fork is a town called Hope. It clings to the side of a hill above the huge lake mentioned above. There are fruit trees, an apple here a pear there, berry bushes, a grape vine or two seemingly untended. The golden delicious were just coming in! And the pears. I stopped to pick a couple and then rode on. I hadn’t ridden a hundred meters or so and I saw a black bear eating fallen pears from the ground. He/she looked up at me as I rode by less than three meters from it. I stopped just beyond and tried to dig my camera out of my bag but the bear ran across the road and up into the trees.

Wednesday September 8 Clark Fork to Trout Creek. I didn’t get as far as I wanted today. I had another flat less than three hundred meters from the east side of Clark Fork. But the sun was shining. Later, clouds rolled in and I had to shelter under trees on occasion to keep from getting soaked. Once I got to Montana I noticed that many of the citizens are armed. Side arms usually. Why? Other than a lone coyote that ran across the road in front of me, that bear yesterday, there doesn’t seem to be anything to fear except maybe other armed people. I was stopped at an overlook having a peanut butter and jelly burrito and a motor home pulled up. The man jumped out, side arm on his belt, took a picture and jumped back in and rode away. He didn’t even look around to see if there were any desperadoes waiting to take him hostage nor did he look at me. I had a bandanna wrapped around my head. If he would have seen me he might have captured me thinking I was a member of Osama’s bicycle brigade, sneaking through Montana, seeking to destroy sacred road-side shrines, pervert our youth, or undermining an American’s right to bear arms (with our without tattoos) and wear a sidearm. Tis a strange world we live in!

When I stopped at the overlook next to the gunslinger I had several bananas strapped with bungee cords to the top of my trailer to keep them fresh. I was going to have one but I worried that the gunman might think I was reaching for my side arm and shoot me dead. I can't imagine dying with my banana in my hand. A few miles from said overlook I stopped at yet another overlook to have a banana.They were gone! Conspiracy? Did the gunslinger's wife sneak around me and steal them hoping to provoke a holy war in the wilderness? Did a bigfoot snatch them when I was pedaling up yet another long hill?
Finally rained out. Staying in Trout Creek about 20 miles shy of today’s target. I don’t have cell phone coverage but I do have wifi. Last night in Clark Fork I had enough bars on my phone to call the moon, if I stepped outside of my room and stood next to the highway, but no wifi. I just don’t understand technology.

Partly Cloudy but a hope for sunshine

It might be that my mood has been compromised this morning because it is seriously partly cloudy in the NW. Seriously partly cloudy is a weather term that I'm proud to say I coined. It means 80% clouds with 90% humidity, 5% blue sky, and a passive/aggressive breeze;just enough to cause the tops of trees to sway slightly. It is a high humidity wind that doesn't soak you all at once but it adds moisture to your sweater one molecule at a time. It whispers that you're getting cold, maybe hypothermic, because of your belief system not because the wind chill is low and you're soaked through after a couple of hours in the wind.

I don't think that it is the cloudy weather that is influencing my mood. I think it is that I've been brooding about being profiled yet again at the SLC international airport. The last time was at the Las Vegas airport coming home from a business trip in western Arizona. That time they used a very attractive young woman who wore the security uniform quite well and who was all about smiling. She walked down the line waiting to go through security and asked the more olive-skinned and darker passengers if: "they were having a good day" and while reaching for their ticket: "can I help you with your ticket?" "Oh I see you're going to visit the middle east/Mexico/etc. Have you been visiting our country for very long?" etc. On occasion based on some sign that I couldn't see her give other TSA employees would also visit with certain passengers. They didn't seem to be as pleasant. When she came to me and went through her spiel I told her I was going back home to Utah and thought but did not say: "I'm technically an illegal alien. My family came to what is now the United States well before the Pilgrims bumped into a rock in the NE. They've been here since the middle of the 16th century. But better sense prevailed. I knew I didn't have time to win that fight so I smiled back and handed her my ticket.

Phase Three starts tomorrow

In the morning I will get on a plane and fly to Spokane. I will gather all of my equipment (I know the bicycle is safe but the trailer?) spend the night and head out early Tuesday morning for Montana. I am taking the route north through Sandpoint Id and then dropping onto Hwy 200 that heads more or less southeast towards Missoula; the target for this segment. I have to really pedal hard to make it by a week from today (Sunday) as I want to be in SLC for family coming in from L.A., a meeting of the Behavioral Health group that I chair for SL County, and a meeting of Writers @ Work which I also share. In the words of Bokonon (Cats Cradle? by Vonnugut) "busy, busy, busy."


I will return later in the month to continue east. I want to at least get over the Continental Divide before I mothball for the winter.

Other random thoughts.  I watched a documentary on Neanderthals a few weeks ago that suggested that our cousins had adapted quite well to a number of habitats but failed to evolve technologically, hence their demise. After some speculation and after watching the "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on TV I have to disagree; I don't think Neanderthals died out. I think they adapted well to the societal habitats of the modern world. I think they are walking among us! Their tools have also evolved. I submit as proof Glen Beck. His tools aren't a club and spear but innuendo, misinformation, and the ability to leverage mass displeasure and hysteria. And understand this: he is damn good at it!! We don't need this kind of rhetoric. It solves nothing and further divides out country. I pity us: those who follow him blindly and those of us who walk around impotent  not knowing how to work with his stuff.

I wonder if the people who live here give a damn what Glen or I think?

Why don't cyclists wave?

I’ve noticed that other than the one finger salute—a reaction to real or imagined conflict—most bicyclists do not acknowledge anyone, including fellow cyclists, when they meet on the road. Many don’t even look across the road/street at an oncoming bicyclist. Some will say “hey!” when they’re next to you waiting to blow a red light. I find that at best I acknowledge other cyclists with a head-toss, a salutation I learned from my cowboy grandfather. I studied the issue several times as I pedaled across Washington State and I came up with some possible reasons why we bicyclists aren’t a bit more friendly, show more camaraderie with fellow cyclists. After all, we seem to share the same passion.
I don’t or seldom wave because lifting one hand from the handlebars makes me feel insecure. At my age I’ve accumulated quite a bit of unmitigated insecurity and I’m not sure my therapist wants to hear it or if either of us will live long enough for me to download everything I have to tell him. So far we’re several years behind.
The number of miles I’ve ridden, how much lactic acid has built up in my quads, how bad my butt aches, or how gregarious I feel, are the factors I use to put effort into a head-toss. Am I the only cyclist that will admit to these physical and emotional limiting factors?
Cycling clothing fits a bit snug, maybe too snug, and it could be that the tightness is cutting off blood supply to the social part of our brain or causing enough discomfort that it makes us less social.
Cycling clothing is colorful but very expensive. Maybe cyclists are worried that if they wave they might tip over and ruin/rip/bloody their/our investment in overpriced togs.
Cyclists who purchase the incredibly expensive Tour d’ France riding clothing act like they’re riding in the Tour. Ask yourself the question: if you’ve just defrosted the freezer, removed the sofa cushions to remove a year’s supply of dog hair (and spare change), and are bored enough to watch the Tour, how many Tour riders do you see waving to the crowd? Even when they come in first they only wave when they’re wearing the yellow jersey. And because of the camera angle who knows who they’re really waving at?
I haven’t found a solution but I will go back and ride more and think on this some more. However, in the meantime, I would urge fellow cyclists to try to wave when a car driver gives us space on the road, lets us cut in even though we haven’t signaled, accidentally uses their signal light to inform us of their intent, isn’t weaving/texting, weaving/fighting with the kids, weaving/shaving, putting on lipstick, talking on a cell phone, or blowing a red light. Also, when cyclists blow red lights we should keep in mind that when two objects collide the one with the smaller mass absorbs quite a bit of the energy of the object with the larger mass!! Oh, and if you do wave with the one-finger salute make sure your mass can out run the larger mass, because it might just be pissed!!

If you're in Spokane and need you bicycle worked on or just want to meet some really accommodating bike shop keepers and workers, stop in at the Bicycle Butler at 6520 north Ash. www.bicyclebutler.com

What's Next?

Over time I have traveled through most of the states but usually, at, or exceeding the speed limit or flying in and out. Except for states I’ve lived in I’ve never spent the kind of time (pace) in a state that I’ve spent in Washington. I spent time in the coastal ecologic and social zones and have pedaled at 10 mph through the Cascades and almost succumbed to dehydration surrounded by wheat! I stopped and talked to quite a few people in the small towns scattered across Washington State. I found the people to be a bit stand-offish at first, until I made an effort to visit with them. Then they shared, in some cases, more than I wanted to hear! They were direct and straight-forward. It was refreshing.
All of them, I think, thought I was a bit crazy for doing what I’m doing. Especially when I didn’t have a ready answer to the question: “Why?”
I don’t know why. I do know I’m not seeking a revelation about my contradictions, my world view, nor am I seeking a revelation that will lead to the creation of another religion. I couldn’t take that kind of pressure. I can barely manage my thoughts about my own beliefs. I can’t imagine what it would take to manage the thoughts of followers. I think in part the trip is to see what I have left in me. I also know I want to get a feel for what other people are thinking. It was fun to listen to their stories about the land, work, politics; to try to answer questions about Utah: Did I know any polygamists? (yes, quite a few) Was I Mormon? (nope!) And there were also questions about my ethnicity. Are you: Italian, Egyptian, Spanish, . . . . .(fill in the label for any ethnic group with olive skin)?
They did ask why, at my age, I was bicycling across their state. One of my contradictions is that I’ve always seemed to do things backwards. It would have made more sense to have done this in the first half of my life instead of now. But it never occurred to me then to do something like this; when I didn’t have to main-line Ibuprofen; when I could sleep on the ground and not realize why I was so stiff in the morning. Don’t you just love contradictions especially your own? Investigating them and then either embracing change or embracing acceptance and mitigating, is a great feeling. So is saying: the hell with that one. I can live with it!
When I return to my journey, either late next week or just after Labor Day, I will tackle the Rockies. I’m not sure what route I will take. If anyone knows safer routes let me know. I’m not overly concerned about how steep a hill is. One of the advantages of doing it at this age is that my ego and I have reached detente. If it doesn’t like me bailing off and pushing the bicycle then it can . . . . . !!

Who says that WDOT doesn't have a morbid sense of humor? 

This farmer is proud of his job!

End of segment two

Friday was the end of segment two of Killing My Legs to give My Ass a Ride quest. I rode into Spokane about 1 p.m. and rode just over the Idaho border to Post Falls. And then I came back to the west side of Spokane close to the airport. Today I will take my bicycle (Marquis de Sade) to the Bicycle Butler in NW Spokane and when I leave for Utah tomorrow I will leave the Humpbacked Machiavellian Bastard (trailer) at the Airport Econolodge and hope for the best for both. It is great that both businesses have agreed to help.
Have I found the Grail, enlightenment, a pot of gold or even a personal rainbow in segment one or two?
No, but I think I can see a glimmer of each starting to clarify in the next segments. I have seen and observed some very interesting things about the landscape, people, and myself. I have seen and talked with people of many backgrounds: Native Americans, recently made American immigrants, farmers, retired people, bus drivers, electricians, shop owners/workers, convenience store clerks, bank clerks, cowboys, café owners, migrant workers, a skin-head, winos, and town employees, to name a few. I’ve discussed the state of our country with people who are involved in the Tea Party, Republican Party, Democratic Party, and many who would not commit to an affiliation.
They all have some things in common. Many more of them, than I would have thought, are trying to stay informed. They worry about the economy, many are very tired of war, some are worried about the atmosphere of divisiveness perpetrated by our leaders, others just want to make enough money to pay their bills and keep their house. Most are seriously influenced by the half-truths and innuendos that are the bulk of information found on talk radio, FOX and CNN, and the internet. (the guy in the room next to mine at the EconoLodge had talk radio on all night last night) Some don’t think President Obama is an American; others scoff at that idea, but most are starting to wonder if he has a vision for the country, if he has the pair he will need to guide us out of the quagmire we’re in. All most all agree that Congress: “stinks” sucks” “are a bunch of ____ing rich guys” “only care about lining their pockets” and in general should be kicked out. All are frustrated because they don’t know how to go about reforming a group of “corrupt and immoral” leaders who are in charge of reforming themselves. Most have the same feeling about state Legislatures.
I think I’m seeing a pattern. It has been hard to ask questions without inserting myself, my opinions, and my world view.
The landscape is as diverse as are the people: pristine coastline, rivers, forests, mountains, and high prairies and timber clear-cuts on private holdings and on public lands, acres of orchards with fruit of all types, grazed-out sites, and acres of wheat (more than I could imagine!), peas, hay. It is a land with a recent volcanic past. Basalt is everywhere. The landscape has been eroded by the wind, rain, ice, poor management, unplanned development, and most of all by time.
I didn’t know if I could get this segment done. I had planned a much longer time thinking I wouldn’t be home until the middle of next week. But in spite of trying to die of dehydration, developing a sore butt, etc I covered a lot of ground in a short time. Just in segment two I bicycled about 360 miles in five days and overall I think I’ve peddled close to 550 miles. I have to check my bicycle computer against Map Quest to see for sure. Especially since some of you have committed to supporting one of the charities I’m promoting by donating by the mile when I finally bail for good. Thanks to all of you who are stepping up to contribute.
I will return to the quest probably the second week in September. In the meantime I will populate other pages with ideas, thoughts, photos, etc and try to keep the energy of this blog flowing. Thanks for following and for your great comments. I will reply if I haven’t already in the next few days.

Spokane today?

Yesterday was a great day to ride. 55 deg when I left Wilber. I'd like to say that they had replaced all of that damn wheat overnight with vineyards, carnation plantations, or simply grass. But, NO. There is only wheat or bare ground all the way to the horizon. If you have gluten issues don't ride a bicycle through this part of WA. It must be like being lactose intolerant and driving through the dairy country of Wisconsin.
Several people have told me: "We out produced the Russians this year." I was born in the Cold War era that had a subset of the Space Race. But I didn't know we were in a gluten race with them. In a way they have kind of won some of the conquest ("we will not conquer you we will bury you." or something like that from Nikita Krushchev) in that we got many of our more pernicious weeds from them, ironically in wheat shipments when they were winning the gluten race during the dust bowl ere.
In Creston I stopped at Big Bobs Mercantile where I was asked if I needed any fishing supplies! There was one room full of fishing gear. I looked out the window at wheat. The only thing that broke the horizon was a grain silo where they were delivering wheat almost around the clock. Fishing? Dust trout? Wheat bass?
Just a few miles east of Creston the road finally made a large curve towards the SE where there were Ponderosa Pines, willows around small wetlands, native grasses (not wheatgrass), and a coyote pup sniffing at a road marker, maybe thinking about marking his/her territory. "Not a good idea to mark your sign on a busy road," I advised it. And a breeze with the scent of something besides wheat.

My tour is: Killing My Legs to give My Ass a Ride. My legs are tuning up quite well. My rear end is suffering. So I had a small roll of Duct tape and some foam padding for my computer and I made a seat pad.

It worked for a while but. . . . .so I stopped in Davenport so I could plan the rest of my trip. I needed a wifi spot but according to the person at the bank: "there aren't any wifi spots in town." I found the Black Bear Motel owned by Kimberly and Mark Elwood. Great people. They invited me to supper. We had a great discussion about political issues. They are very knowledgeable. Both are active citizens, something our country is painfully missing. They will ask you your political views but I think that regardless of your views they welcome you to their business. However,I can't say they will invite you to supper.

Plans: I'm riding into Spokane and as far north on Hwy 2 as I can by Saturday noon. I will be leaving my bicycle and possibly my trailer at the Bicycle Butler in Spokane. They have graciously agreed to tune up my bicycle and store my equipment. How great is this!

I'm off. More wheat today? Probably. I'm starting to seriously dislike bread or any thing derived from wheat.

Morning Tea

Every morning I have a couple of cups of tea. Nothing finer. This may seem odd given how many coffee shops and coffee companies there are in WA. I loved coffee but I gave it up for tea; usually black, with a bit of Splenda and milk. On this trip I brought two Assam teas--Black Tarajulie and Borengajuli. I found them at the Tea Grotto in SLC. When I'm camping the milk part is somewhat problemetic as I don't carry a cooler but I've learned the correct amount of powdered milk to add. It isn't as good but. . . .

I'm slightly just under 100 miles from Spokane. Given the heat and that I have been Killing my Legs to give My Ass a Ride for real I don't think I can make it all today. So I might dry-camp somewhere along the way. I will post more later when I get to a wifi hotspot.

My life was saved by a gnat

Tuesday August 17: Went to a bicycle shop in Wenatchee and had to cool my heels at a coffee shop (fortunately in WA there is one on every corner. Must be an ordinance or something) next door. At 10, when the bicycle shop opened, I asked one of the guys to take a look at my bicycle as I was hearing some noise. He tinkered with it and pronounced it fixed. And off I went, very late in the morning. I got to Waterville (aptly named) and bought four liters of water knowing it would be very hot along the rest of the way. I was wrong. It wasn't hot it was @%&^#!!)(*^ hot!

It is the wheat harvest in Washington so I felt like I was back on the farm. Combines lined up like synchronized swimmers, their front reels pulling the wheat into the cutter, and their rear ends extruding chaff and straw. I thought: wouldn't it be great to cut off a couple of pounds of wheat heads, bring them home, separate the grain from the chaff, grind the wheat into the same kind of whole wheat I ate as a kid, and then on some special day, makes biscuits for my kids, just like the ones grandma used to make. How cool would that be!!

The steady climb up the Colombia river wasn't' to bad but the climb up Orando Canyon to Waterville should have made me stop and see if Greyhound traveled that route. During my speculative moments through the first wheat fields, past Waterville, there were hills, but even with the increasing heat they weren't to bad. Then I zoomed down into Moses Coolie, one of the many canyons cut by the floods from glacial ice dams breaking in western Montana.  But the other side of the canyon wall was waiting. It wasn't brooding, menacing, or even acting like it cared. It just stood there its basalt walls radiating heat. The four mile downhill zoom into the canyon (called coolies here) took me no more than 15 minutes. The climb out took me two hours and I almost died of heat exhaustion. I failed to mention that after you make the climb up on the "plateau" into Waterville there are few cars and a very wide paved shoulder. How nice is that?

But I hadn't been drinking enough water touring the wheat fields, thinking about harvesting.

The east side of Moses Coolie is up hill for at least fifteen miles. You see a crest and think: "all right I'm almost to the top." Then you crest and see hiding behind it yet another slight incline and another steep hill with yet another crest. This went on for fifteen miles to the point that I was wondering if this wasn't the place that inspired the song "Stair way to Heaven."  I would crest and then my raised hopes would be dashed. I thought I was having a Ground Hog Day experience.
Did I mention dehydration? Heat? The fact that I've spent way to much time in the hot places of our country and should have known better?
As it got worse I could tell I wasn't sweating. Bad sign. But I was to busy cursing WADOT. "Why do you have to build roads so damn straight? And with all of the millions of hills in WA why can't you find one to build a road down off of? Or just go around them. Build a bridge across Moses Coolie with the funds that were to be used in Alaska to build a bridge to nowhere. At least here the bridge would lead someplace. I was swearing at many things: wheat, WADOT, the sun, my shadow (why can't you pull a little bit I yelled during my increasing delusional state), and I cursed the kid that readjusted my derailleurs. As I was climbing they skipped all over. Oh and I named my bicycle The Marquis de Sade, and my bicycle trailer The Humpbacked Machiavellian Bastard! And I cursed the gnats whether evolved or created I didn't care. And I cursed the people who did care. I was going so slow the gnats had time to get into my helmet and raise generations of little gnat babies in what's left of my hair.
During my ranting one flew into my mouth. Down my throat. And then in desperation tried to swim back out causing me to gag and cough. I stopped. Damn, I'm kinda dizzy the science part of my brain said. So I started drinking water trying to flush the varmint down the hatch. It took about two liters to sink him. Within minutes I had drowned a gnat, drank enough water to at least start to break even, and I wasn't dizzy. I was still, however, cursing and adding to the list above. I did take gnats off until today (Wednesday).

On Tuesday night, having survived almost 70 miles of mostly uphill road in heat somewhere between 100 and 105 (depending on who you asked) I stayed in the only motel in Coolie City.

Today I took it easy. Everything still hurt from the near-death ride from yesterday. So I rode as far as Wilber WA and booked yet another motel room. Tomorrow I will try to do at least half of the distance to Spokane. I'm well ahead of schedule and have to think about going beyond Spokane and sticking to my original flight on Wednesday, or going back to SLC early and then coming back earlier than I expected. I'm still cursing WADOT and wheat and the names of my bicycle and trailer stand.

Monroe to Wenatchee WA in one day!!!

It might be the extra oxygen at the average elevation on the west side of the Cascades, but on Monday I pedaled along, stopping for breaks, and stopped to photograph a statue of Sasquatch at a kind of shrine. It was also the place where someone filmed Harry and the Hendersons(?).

I got my second wind just east of Skykomish close to the base of the really steep part. I started up the winding climb to Stevens Pass but even with the bail-out ring on the rear cassette, I had to bail and push my bicycle up the hill. I'd like to think that if I were 30 yrs younger, if I didn't have a completely full trailer to pull, and. . .and. . .and! But I'm not and along the way from 30 yrs ago I also have come to grips with the needs of my ego so I bailed and pushed. I hadn't pushed very long before an electrician stopped and offered me a ride to the top.  It didn't take me long to negotiate with my ego and pride. I unhooked my trailer and, with "Tom's" help loaded my stuff. In the 6 miles to the top I heard about Tom's two ex-wives, the poodle that he now lives with, the migrant camp that the "government" has put up for cherry-pickers close to Wenatchee, and things that he likes now which I can't print. Indeed, after mile 3 I was thinking I might ask to be dropped off and push the rest of the way up the hill. But I distracted myself and made it to the top of Stevens pass.
Should I camp or pedal off of the pass and see how far towards Wenatchee I could get. It was about 4:30. Have I mentioned that in general it is downhill all of the way from Stevens Pass to Wenatchee? So, I "let 'er rip! Every once in a while I stopped to check my brakes, watch salmon swim/jump up a fish ladder, stopped to check my brakes again, and once to make sure (as a member of the Utah Morality Posse) that a couple on a small beach had clothing on, and zoomed down the hill averaging 28 mph!!  At one point I was coasting at about 35 then I remembered a semi I saw in Utah that had jack-knifed due to his speed, so I slowed down.
Tom was correct about the migrant camp. There is a small tent city set up in a county park just west of Wenatchee.
Today (Tuesday August 17) I push to the top of the dry plateau between Wenatchee and Spokane. If there is w-fi along the way I will post.

 If you've donated to one or both of these non-profits, thanks.

Seat Hogs, lost airline pilots, Fajitas and UPS

Invariably, when I fly, I sit next to either the very anxious flier (male or female), next to the seat hog, or worse, between them. In this case, I was on a regional carrier that sat people two to a side so I only had the seat hog to contend with. I got to know him quite well and not a word was spoken. Indeed, I'm not to sure what language that word would have been in. I got to know his elbow (in my ribs so I couldn't sleep), that he snorts, snores, and whimpers in his sleep, and his right leg got to know my left leg quite well. When he was awake he coughed and hacked and --- see legs above!!  This guy was probably the reigning champion of seat hogs in my many years of flying.
But we flew right by Mt. Rainier: literally right by it. We were on our approach so the plane was just below the summit and it seemed like we were just a few hundred meters from the ice fields. Great view. When we landed the pilot went into one gate, then they backed us out and we went around the concourse (it's circular and each gate can be approached from both directions), parked on the tarmac for a few minutes, started to turn into a gate (which because of the circular concourse) was just three gates from the one we pulled into at first! Oops wait a minute! So we hung a u-turn and went back around the concourse to our original gate. We probably "drove" several hundred meters, to get a hundred meters between gates.  Confused? If so, you might just be good pilot material and could fly a regional jet for a Delta contractor! Given the parking experience maybe we were actually closer than we were supposed to be to Mt. Rainier.

There are several things one can do with broccoli, including:

1. Leave it in the field or better yet plant something edible instead like corn that can be turned into fuel (at great environmental expense) or turned into whiskey. (Then the environmental expense doesn't count)
2. Feed it to someone who really likes it;
3. If you have to make it for me don't boil or steam it into a green noodle cook it so its crunchy.

I had the best vegetarian fajita in Monroe WA of all places. Corn, peas, carrots, mushrooms, green and red bell peppers, and green beans and broccoli cooked to perfection. And the green beans didn't squeak!

The woman who drove the shuttle car I hired to take me from SeaTac to Monroe was from Romania. She had a interesting perspective about immigration. I asked about issues with undocumented workers in Seattle and she said, in her view, no one seems to care that much, at least in Seattle. There, in her opinion, was no movement to take over the role of the federal government by copying the Arizona law. I'm sure there are workers here from south of the border but they aren't as noticeable as they are in Salt Lake. Where thank god we have them because lawns wouldn't get mowed and our roads (where they work on road crews) would be in genuine third-world condition. I suspect that on the east side of the Cascades they will be more visible given the amount of labor needed to support the massive fruit industry.  Washington State has a fairly conservative but enlightened state government. How would it be? By the way if the INS is monitoring this blog she--the driver--is now a U.S. citizen. She knows more about American history, American government, and our founding principles than the average high school graduate in Utah and all of the Tea Party together. 

Ok, so I once had the reputation that I could pack 5 pounds of crap into a two pound box. I winnowed down my crap from last night (see previous posting) and flew to WA. I just finished packing my trailer and I got it all in but I would need a semi-tractor to pull it. So I unpacked it and tossed quite a bit of crap into a duffel bag that I will take to UPS in the morning before I head out. The irony is that I carefully packed it all to get here then I'm going to send it home via UPS. because I'm so cheap my skills for cramming lots of things into a small space will be tested so I can buy the smallest box and it won't cost more than the contents are worth to ship it home. Is all of this crap that valuable? What can I say? I won't know until it's time to pay.So, I will get a late start. Fortunately UPS is very close to several coffee shops.

Segment Two starts tomorrow

I've always been pretty good with math so here is a problem: My Burley bicycle trailer will haul about 50 # comfortably. The gear bag I'm taking tomorrow on the airplane weighs about 60#. Somewhere, tomorrow, I will also have to add food! So. . . . . between now and tomorrow at 8:30 when I leave for the airport I have to shed about 20#.
When I left home (mid-teens) I had all of my clothing, all of my equestrian equipment including a Heizer saddle that was given to me by my greatgrandfather, a toothbrush, a 25/35 Winchester lever action deer rifle, several books, and my dog. All of this (except the dog) fit in the trunk of the Ford sedan I stole from my parents and I still had room for the luggage of several more people if I had taken any passengers. I had enough room to haul cargo for hire!  I thought I was rich! Now my wealth is measured not stocks and bonds, gold buried in the back yard, the value of my wisdom, but rather in stuff! I could run the next space mission given the redundant stuff I have packed in my duffel. How many riding jerseys, bicycling shorts, helmets, gloves, sunglasses, etc do I really need? In thinking it through and looking at a map of Washington state it occurred to me that surely somewhere along the way I can find new stuff that I might need! I must remember the basics when I go shopping in Monroe WA: toilet paper, a tube of toothpaste because invariably Homeland Security confiscates my almost new tube of toothpaste at the airport, Cholula hot sauce, a spoon, and fuel for my stove.

I do have extra parts for the bicycle because I know that between Monroe and Wenatchee and between Wenatchee and Spokane there are probably few bicycle shops. I could buy parts for a tractor, feed for my cows, white bread and bad coffee almost anywhere along the way but bicycle parts?

I bought the bicycle I'm using (a Giant) from Contender Bicycles in SLC several weeks ago. I mentioned to Reed, the store manager, that I needed something that was light weight, could pull a cargo trailer, and didn't cost more than a new Subaru. He fixed me right up. When I went in yesterday to buy some parts he not only remembered me, my trip plans, but also remembered the modifications he made to the new bicycle for me. He and his staff are superb and they know bicycles. Go in an see them.


On Monday morning I will head east on Highway 2 over the Cascade range. As I pedal along I want to stop in each small town and visit with locals. I want to get a feel for what people in that part of the world are thinking concerning current issues.This is going to be a pulse check for me. I want to see if my worldview has been as seriously influenced by the Utah lens I look through, as I suspect it has been. I have been growing evermore concerned about the divisiveness in our country. It seems that much of our information comes from the personal opinion of pundits (both sides), the well-stocked but questionable data from the internet, and small soundbites that are almost impossible to fact check if one is so inclined. Leadership at all levels seems to be seriously dysfunctional. Even at the local level, in Holladay Utah, it is clear that the Mayor and our town board have been compromised by developers and personal interests. It seems that citizens are susceptible to radicalization because they are more concerned about keeping a job, making mortgage payments, keeping the boat they unwisely bought with a second mortgage. They don't have or don't feel they have the time to think for themselves. A patriot is not someone who follows blindly rather it is someone who questions and thinks for themselves before acting.
But does every state have Gail Ruzekas, Mike Noels, and clones of the other scoundrels that we keep in power in Utah? If so (and I think they do) are these "leaders" as morally bankrupt, ethically challenged, and myopic as ours?

I might not like what I hear but I'm going to give it a go. I need to know so I can start thinking about how I can influence change. But I'm not going to let it get to me. I still intend to look at the landscape about, gather roadside blackberries, and if I get the chance try to find the place I'm sure I saw Sasquatch a few days ago.

Sasquatch

On Highway 2 over the Cascades I think I saw a Sasquatch sitting besides the road. I wasn't on my bicycle but rather in the car so I couldn't stop to confirm my sighting. He/she was sitting beside the road in front of a gas station in Skykomish. I tend to think that the creature was a male because he (?) didn't have a shirt on. The creature was very hairy. It had long hair with a bunch of hair tied up on top of its skull that kind of drooped over the rest of its head like a small umbrella and it had a very full beard. In the flash-glimpse I has of it I could tell that the only visible feature on its face were two very dark eyes that followed the trajectory of the car. It sat in a yoga posture, with both bare feet resting on its knees. He was wearing what looked like dirty chinos. I think it was eating a hot dog and for sure was drinking a Coke as there was a super-huge plastic Coke cup next to it.I'm also sure that it was a Sasquatch because Washington State ranks number one in sightings followed by California. I would have to question California as second as they have very liberal "medical marijuana" laws and because (or consequently) there are a lot of sick people there with prescriptions. Utah ranks quite low probably because we only have a couple of NPR stations.

I watched a TV program on History or Discovery, maybe Animal Planet, about groups that do "research" on these creatures. They call themselves "Crypto-zoologists."

From Wikipedia (Stupor-pedia?): 
Cryptozoology (from Greek κρυπτός, kryptos, "hidden" + zoology; literally, "study of hidden animals") refers to the search for animals which are considered to be legendary or otherwise nonexistent by mainstream biology. This includes looking for living examples of animals which are extinct, such as dinosaurs; animals whose existence lacks physical support. . . .I interrupt to say that on the web site : http://www.bfro.net/  (Big Foot  Research) there seem to be numerous sightings and other "proofs" that provide physical support for the existence of Sasquatch and of Big Foot (I think these are different species, but more on this later) at least in this Hemisphere.
Back to stupor-pedia:
According to authors Ben Roesch and John Percy Moore, "Cryptozoology ranges from pseudoscientific to useful and interesting, depending on how it is practiced." They further note that it is "not strictly a science", that "many scientists and skeptics classify cryptozoology as a pseudoscience" and that "papers on the topic are rarely published in scientific journals. . . . . no formal education on the subject is available. . . .

Photo:

Photo and location of the photo with tanks to BFRO

________________

So, I have decided to be the worlds first crypt-ecologist because I think science makes a serious mistake by studying specific species and their habitat and forgets to study that species interaction with other species and their habitats. I believe that Bigfoot and Sasquatch are different species but that they might have over-lapping ranges. Sasquatch photos and the creature I saw in Skykomish lead me to believe that they (Sasquatches) have significantly more hair and are lighter in color. More like Chewbaca (spelloing?) from Star Wars if you will. (By the way I might not spell check anymore because it seems that crypto-zoologists have set a trend by not spell-checking or even proof reading their papers and findings. open research link above and peer review this comment) I will also change the way I report out. For example when I reported scientific findings before I would say: "those data seem to suggest . . ." Now I'm (foloowing the lead of noted crypto-zoologists on tv) I wil say: "My research offers deffinitive proof that. . . ."
More later. I have to check my field notes and go back on the link above to peer-review other research.

In closing, however, I would add that now that I'm the worlds first crypto-ecologist I will be waiting for an interview from NPR's Science Friday or from X96 Radio From Hell's  Ask a. . . .(insert profession here) feature.You have my number!