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.