Epic Day

Yesterday started innocently enough. We ate a hearty breakfast of blueberry pancakes (Thanks, Peggy!), finished loading our bikes and were on the road by 10:00.

We didn't fight urban traffic leaving the Seattle area. We contended with it. Cyclists who fight traffic will lose.

We took a rest stop in Sultan. On the way out of town My bike started to make a strange sound. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. I stopped to investigate and found a tetanus-y looking nail in the side wall of my rear tire. It was bent at a 90 degree angle. With each turn of the wheel it struck the seat stay and chain stay. Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.

I made the repair and threw the dead tube into a pannier for patching later.

In Illinois rumble strips mark the shoulders of the road. On parts of rte 2in Washington, a rumble strip runs down the road's center line. Riding on a shoulder back home, the sound of car tires on a rumble strip signals approaching danger. Out here it means a driver has gone wide around you.

We took another short break at a wayside espresso hut that was used as a set for the movie Harry and the Hendersons. After this, things got unpleasant. Seattle lies at about 200 feet of elevation. We planned to stop for the night before reaching Stevens Pass but missed the campground and kept climbing.

And climbing.

My smallest gear is a 30 x 32. It wasn't small enough. First I ran out of gears. Then I ran out of legs. The sun was setting as we approached Stevens Pass, elevation 4040. Altogether we climbed about 3000 ft in the last 15 miles.

I am not ashamed to say that I pushed my bike part of the way. I am only slightly embarrassed that it was about 4 miles.

Altogether we made about 67.5 miles.

We made it to the closed ski resort just as the last light of the sun vanished from the sky. We set the tent up in a gravel RV parking lot and spent a cold, waterless night. Frankly, I didn't care if I ever rode a bicycle again.

Easy Day

After a cup of bad camp coffee, We started this morning with a long, cold descent from the pass. Breakfast was chocolate chip cookies served by the Chelan VFD at a little rest stop 14 miles down the road.

20 minutes later we stopped for lunch at the 59er Diner. The waitresses are all named "Flo." I had a huge banana pancake, a slab of ham, and one egg over easy. I recommend it.

We pedaled down busy Rte 2 past fruit orchards to Wenatchee Confluence State Park, a pleasant enough place to camp tucked away behind an ugly industrial area.

After a much needed shower and shave, we dropped our panniers and rode into town for a calorie rich supper. Somehow we scammed free pie from the server for dessert.

Back in camp, while I was patching yesterday's flat tube, BJ discovered that my front tire was now flat, a victim of the dreaded goat's head thorn.

As long as I had the patch kit out...

My odometer now reads 132.9 miles.

Self-Contained?

It occurs to me that, in order to make this "self-contained" tour happen, BJ and I have already had to rely on the kind efforts of many other people on our behalf. Our spouses, my brother, Pastor Chris, Hardball and his family. No doubt there will be more along the way.

"Self-contained" is a relative term at best. We are all inter-connected and reliant.

Sadness and Seattle

We had an eventful day of travel (Is there any other kind?) but I don't have time to go into it all just now.

We spent today in Seattle. This morning we visited the REI mothership, mean flagship store where I bought a couple of bungee cords and a folding tire to carry as a spare. Then we had lunch (thanks, Hardball!) at the Sky City Restaurant, a revolving restaurant atop the Space Needle.

In the midst of all this tourist activityI received phone calls and text messages with the heartbreaking news that Bob had died. You may not know Bob, but he was a good guy, a solid church member. I never spent an unpleasant moment in his presence. Bob always had a cogent comment about my Sunday sermons. I'll miss him.

I am doubly saddened by the fact that I cannot preside at his funeral. Pastor Chris will do an excellent job, I know. Still...

This afternoon we reassembled our bikes and then took a short shakedown ride with Hardball's 12 year old son Orrin who set a blistering pace.

Tomorrow we ride.

Waiting

I'm packed.

I've taken care of every last detail I can think of.

I got a "six-week" haircut on Friday. I mowed the lawn on Saturday. (My brother asked, "Will that be Melanie's job when you're gone?" I answered, "Everything will be Melanie's job when I'm gone.")

I said goodbye to the people at church yesterday. I said goodbye to Melanie this morning. It's nice to know that I will be missed. A little sad, but nice.

I gave the cat his shot. I changed the furnace filter and emptied my wastebasket. I washed a few dishes.

BJ should be here in about an hour. His wife will drive us to the airport.

There is nothing to do but wait.

I hate waiting.

I think I'll go floss my teeth.

Fundraiser?

The second most frequently asked question about this ride has been "are you going to make it a fundraiser?"

The answer is no. I'm not interested in taking pledges, collecting funds, and all of that.

But, I'll tell you what. If something about me attempting to pedal my bicycle a ridiculously long distance inspires you to open your wallet then, please, by all means make a contribution to your favorite worthy charity.

And if you don't have a favorite worthy charity, click here  and give whatever you can to the ELCA Malaria Campaign.

This Has Been A Busy Week

BJ's sister and brother-in-law live in Seattle. That's why we're using that city as the jumping off point for this adventure.

The brother-in-law (we call him "Hardball" for reasons I don't care to explain) was kind enough to loan us a pair of sturdy cases made specifically to transport bicycles so that we could ship our bikes ahead. They were supposed to arrive in Illinois on Monday, but a train derailed somewhere in the southern part of the state and set delivery back a day.

Tuesday afternoon we packed our bikes. This involved a goodly amount of dismantling. The wheels, pedals, saddles, handlebars, water bottle cages, rear derailleurs, and one brake arm had to come off. We got everything broken down and packed up tight and now our bikes are on a brown truck somewhere between home and Seattle. Barring further railroad accidents, they should be waiting for us in Washington when we arrive next Monday. Then it should be a simple matter to disentangle all of the cables and reassemble our bikes.

Should be.

I hope.

In the meantime, this has been a crazy week. In addition to my usual duties, I had a funeral Wednesday afternoon. I'd also made a commitment to teach a half-hour sampler class for a Diakonia program "Come and See" event Wednesday evening.. And then there's everything I've had to do to get ready to leave. I actually prepared seven weeks worth of worship bulletins this week.

As I sit at my desk writing this post, the floor behind me is littered with stuff: camping gear, bicycle tools, toiletries, clothing. It should be everything I need for a month on the road.

Should be.

I hope.

I'm not sure how I'll get it all on my bike. I comfort myself with the fact that my packing list is shorter, and probably lighter, than BJ's.

I figured out a clever way to transport my tent poles safely. I'll tell you about it if and when they get to Seattle.

Velocipedic? Saturnal?

When I have told people about my upcoming adventure, the number one most frequently asked question has been "Are you going to blog about it?" The best, most honest answer I can offer is, "I'll try."


When I exchanged messages on the subject with my friend Keith, I told him I would need a name for the blog. "I'm thinking of something like Brant's Bike Blog," I said. "Unless you can come up with a better name."

A moment or two later he replied, "I like the word velocipede."

Okay, velocipede is a good, though somewhat obscure, word. From the Latin meaning "fast foot," the word was coined in 1818 by Frenchman Nicéphore Niépce to describe his version of the conveyance pictured above. It is now used to describe any human-powered land vehicle. I didn't know until today that Keith had done a quick search of the internet to find synonyms for "bicycle."

I'm pretty sure that I coined the adjectival form velocipedic. It gets flagged by spell-checkers, anyway. The saturnal part of this blog's title was contributed by another friend, Emil, who is a PhD classicist.

In an email correspondence, Emil noted the irony of calling this trip a sabbatical. Because sabbatical comes from the word "sabbath" calling a pastor's leave of absence a "sabbatical" makes it sound like the proverbial busman's holiday. Emil suggested an alternative: Saturnalia. I objected.

Saturnalia, a Roman festival to the god Saturn, was celebrated on December 17. My problem with the term was not because of its pagan connotations, but because of its association with winter. Riding across the Northern tier of the United States in September could get cold.

I've told people that I'm not worried about getting snowed in at a mountain pass. I carry a knife and BJ is meaty.

Yes, that is a sick joke. BJ and I have both laughed over it. Be warned, if you continue to read this blog, there may be more "humor" of this sort. Anyway, I don't want to have to go all Alferd Packer out there, so I told Emil that the term saturnalia is off the table.

Emil countered with a final offer. "I'll drop the I-A," he wrote. Thus the word saturnal was minted and the irony, according to Emil, complete. Saturn, you see, gave his name to the seventh day of the week, which the Jews called the sabbath. So, saturnal is a parallel  construction to sabbatical, more (or perhaps less) appropriate for a pastor's holiday.

With that I have probably explained any humor out of this blog's title. I might also have outed the anonymous individual who made the first comment on my previous post. Oops!

Having struck upon the phrase velocipedic saturnal, I hurried to register it before anyone else could snatch it up!

How It Began

It was a Saturday morning. I think it was in December. Melanie and I had walked downtown to get a little exercise and run a few errands. We stopped in at the bike shop to say "hi" to BJ and he told us that he was planning a ride in September, a self-contained bicycle tour from Seattle back to Dixon and then maybe on to Bloomington, Indiana. He expected to average 65 miles a day. There was an implied invitation in what he said.

When we left the shop, Melanie said, "You should go, too."

I tried to shrug it off. It has been a few years since BJ and I last toured together. My situation has changed. There were a lot of hurdles in the way of my going. But Melanie kept talking it up all the way home.

"You should go while you're still able."

I asked her, "Could you live without me for a month?"

She could.

"You'll have to give the cat his shots."

She said she would.

"Well, I'll think about it." I was beginning to take the idea seriously.

On Monday, I called my brother. Our 81 year old mother has impaired cognitive functioning. She has required a lot of attention from us both. I told Jeff what I was thinking.

"Could you take care of mom for a month?"

He said he could.

After worship the following Sunday, I ran the idea past my church council. It would mean I'd be away for five consecutive Sundays. They approved the idea. So on Tuesday, at my weekly pastors' text study, I asked my friend and colleague Chris, "What are you doing in September?"

She said, "Give me a week to think about it."

The following Tuesday she agreed to cover my worship and pastoral care duties. She insisted, however, that I call this trip a sabbatical.

"I won't do it if this is just a vacation," she said. So it's a sabbatical.

And that cleared the last obstacle.

I have been riding, and training, and tinkering with my bike, and gathering my gear, and on Monday, August 27, BJ and I will board a plane bound for Seattle.

I'm excited and maybe a little nervous.