July 7 pictures

 

We packed up and left this morning; Roberta must have left with the other group.  Stopping at a small market, we found the clerk would take all our plastic tea bottles to recycle.  Sweet.

I felt much better saddle-wise, but still not nearly healed.

We rode down 93 on a beautiful day, all green and blue.  At a rest area, we poked fun at a gopher, but as I looked down its hole, I fully expected it to pop out of another hole and bite me in the butt, cartoon-style.  We also saw another coyote and osprey nest with babies.

At the intersection of 93 and 3, what I thought was an uphill turn/curve was actually a cloverleaf, but traffic was light and respectful.  93 has several causeways/bridges which are exactly wide enough for 2 cars, with no shoulder.  On one of these a truck slowed to 15 mph to stay behind us, carefully passing us after we had crossed, even though he could have passed in the other lane.

There was much more debris on this stretch, maybe because the shoulder was narrower.

We stopped for ice cream in Jaffray and ate a bunch of junk and crud, some of which looked obscene.
At the Kikomun CG near Baynes Lake, we entered at the gate and the young lady was patient and helpful, even when we collected all our change to buy freezy pops.

Stats
start ODO 386
total- 62
avg- 13.3
max- 34.8

 

July 6 pictures

 

The climb out of Radium was not nearly as bad as I anticipated and we came across Dry Gulch CG soon after.  This means we probably could have made it there last night. Right out of Radium were several lookouts over the plains/valley and there was a sign telling about the bighorn sheep.  Someone had stuck a googly eye on the sheep.  I know, I know: defacing public property.  But it was pretty clever and funny.  Roger also pointed out a cloud, which looked like a forest fire, but turned out not to be.  Canal Flats (town) was a tiny town, but it had an equally tiny park, whre we met with Bill and Linda.  Roberta had communicated with them before the trip.  From Anapolis, Linda was originally from Buffalo and she is a retired art teacher and Bill was an electrical engineer.  They were doing the divide together.  Later still, we ran into Mike again, just before the Wasa Lake CG.  Roberta shifted to camp with them, and we never saw her the next morning.

Roger, John and Jamie went to swim in the lake, but I thought it might be better for me to keep my nether regions dry. Yeah.

Jamie and I had a really great dinner of scalloped potatoes with dried tomatoes, sliced carrots, parmesan cheese and hearts of hemp.

Dwight is overnighting my old Terry perforated leather saddle to Eureka, MT. If I can just make it 80 more miles.  Thanks Dwight.  Very much.

Stats:
start ODO 316
max- 39
total- 70

 

July 5 pictures

 

The CG host (Judy?) came by late to give me more hearts of hemp.  They might be a great addition to our food repertoire if they turn out to be easy to locate in small towns.

We headed out at 8:30 and ran across Mike, stopped with a flat tire.

After about a 20 mile downhill we ate lunch at a CG and began a series of connected ascents at a pace of 5mph or less. At one plateau we met up with Mike again; he must have passed us during lunch.  We all rode together for a while for the next 20 miles of descent, 20 miles of ascent and 10 more miles of descent again.

We saw a baby bear (some also saw the mother) and a bighorn sheep walking down the street.  Then came Radium Hot Springs, where we parted from Mike.  We spent 2 hours in the pools, swimming, and in our shower washed cycling clothes. We saw a small troupe of bighorn sheep climbing a slope while we were swimming, with 5 or more including babes.

Stepping out after swimming, we noted that rain was approaching, so we booked into Radium for groceries.

Redstreak CG is just after the 93 and 95 come together.  It is a long switchbacked climb of about a mile to the entrance, but it was 7:00 and they still had sites available.  Jamie went to the head of the line and asked if they had any hiker biker sites available and they gave her a map and let us go around all the cars.  This is the second CG with community kitchen (wood stoves) and pavilions. This pavilion had lights, but no outlets.

I had managed to rub some skin off my nether regions unsing the stock Surley vinyl saddle.  I am experimenting using New Skin on it VERY CAREFULLY, masking sensitive areas.  Can you say "ouch, ouch, MOMMY....".  There is a bear box at this CG as well.

Stats:
start ODO 258
total 58
avg- 12.6
max- 38.9

 

July 4—photos will be uploaded later—no cell service on T-Mobile

It cooled off dramatically overnight, so sleeping was much better than last night.  For a hostel, the Banff Y is pretty quiet at night.  Overall, it has been quite good, except when it is over 80 degrees during the day.  The staff is exceptional.

Heading out, we stopped for breakfast, then jumped on the Trans Canada Highway for 15 or so miles, then turned onto 1A.  We saw another Great Divide rider and the riding was pretty nice, without loads of climbs, yet. There was a peregrine nest on top of a bridge, with babies.  We managed to create a wildlife traffic jam, when the cars stopped to see what we were looking at.  Turning onto 93, things changed.

One long moderate climb, followed by a long moderate downhill brought us to Marble Canyon CG. It was only 1:30, but we scoped out the CG, set up camp inside a pavilion (not supposed to, but we noticed the sign too late) and then went to hike to Marble Creek "Falls".  The Falls were actually a chasm with high water running through it.  It was incredible and rivaled Watkins Glen in NY in incredibleness. I would come back, to both Banff and this CG to hike the falls again.

Afterwards, we ate a 10-year old backpacking meal (Stroganoff)- pretty dreadful.  Way too salty.  We met Mike, traveling alone and creating his own route coming down from Alaska.  Way cool.  Apparently a woman traveling north is also here, making the cyclists almost outnumber the car campers. There is a solid block building dedicated to food storage for cyclists and Roberta saw a bear down by the river.  The CG hosts had lots of advice about bears, again bells are no good, but spray is very effective, if a bear sniffs around your tent, move to the center, (your head away from the wall).  They were really sweet.  Common joke: how do you tell black bear scat from grizzly?  Grizzly contains bear bells.

Stats:
avg speed 11mph
max- 43.7
total miles- 34
beginning mileage- 224 (must be subtracted off every entry)

Putting It All Together

Slept fitfully because of the heat. When everyone was up, we went to Safeway for breakfast and ate in the park near the river. In the morning we assembled our bikes, marvelling at the ingenuity of the bike mechanics and their strategies for handling anticipated "hot spots" where the bikes might get compressed by the baggage handlers or rub through the boxes. Jake from Campus Wheelworks used old innertubes to protect things like the ends of the racks and the seat post and such, along with paper towel tubes to keep the frame from getting scratched by the racks rubbing. I wish I had taken a photo of it when we pulled it from the box.  Jamie's bike—the mechanic had taken a short piece of 2x4 to keep the rack from getting bent by compression.

We spent the rest of the morning shopping for food and gas and then packing panniers.
Roberta showed up around 2:30 and put her bike together and packed up. Jamie's bike wouldn't shift on the front derallier and we finally figured out that a water cage bolt had come loose and lodged in the derallier. It took a long time to figure this out because the bolt looked like it belonged in there.

We went to dinner in a pub and the waitress chopped out our bill by person and let us run our credit cards. Awesome.

I did my laundry, because i had managed to get oil on my shirt i couldn't get out by handwashing. Bed by 11:30.

July 4 pictures

More photos

You can see what the flooding did in some areas. In this case the bench survived.

Arrival in Calgary

I got to the airport 2.5 hours early to make sure United would take my bike. They did and so I had a lot of downtime.

The flights went well and I even got to watch them load my bike on the plane through the very small baggage door.

In Calgary, I was afraid I wouldn't recognize Jamie with all her hair cut off. I figured her boxed bike would give her away, but when she came through, no bike. United put it on the wrong flight, but sent it via courier to Banff at around 1:00 am. Roger arrived like a premature baby and shot out of the shoot in record time, which meant we almost walked by him at Tim Horton's. I recognized him because he had a boxed bike.

The shuttle to Banff traveled through the extensive flood damage between Calgary and Banff. The municipalities scrambled pretty fast to put things back together quickly and in some cases did a quick, but nice landscaping job.

Banff was around 90 degrees and the inside of the Y never cooled down, leaving us to swelter at night. We stowed the bikes, went into town, ate dinner and went for a walk.

The Bow river had reeked havoc in Banff and was still flowing extremely high. Falls were not falls, but sluices and giant rapids still were tearing at the banks.

We got to see the Banff Hot Springs hotel, which reminds me of some Bavarian castle, high above us.
John came in around 12 am and everyone crashed as best they could in the heat.

A thank you.

Books are lovely to have on a trip, but bicycling and backpacking trips make weight and space considerations come to a head. This year I bought a Kobo book reader, on which I can put hundreds of free classics from Project Gutenberg.

As I was making a case for it and looking through my stuff for some way to keep it closed, I found this patch, probably given to one of our kids by our friend Rick.

This got me thinking...

About all of the people who made my appreciation for the outdoors possible.  I tried to list them off in my head: My parents. They started me camping and backpacking very young. The joys of birds and mosquitos, how to fix a pack, how to paddle a canoe. My partner/husband, who introduced me to cycling and touring. Rick, who taught me to look under the rocks. My children, who taught me to slow down and skip more, even with a pack on and remember how to damn up a stream. My fellow travelers, who taught me new ways to do old things.
Thank you.

No, it does not snow in Buffalo in June

But sometimes it looks like it is.  Cottonwood seeds.  As beautiful as snow, but no mittens required and you can't sled on them.  Or at least I haven't tried.

New Orleans impressions:

Trolleys grinding, with hinged wooden seats, houses built on top of one another, music, music, music, brick streets; there are hundreds of wonderful reasons to visit New Orleans. But is it a good place to ride bikes? Yes! Though New Orleans is not the most progressive city in which to cycle, it has some distinct advantages. In the French Quarter, the streets are narrow and distances are not great, so it makes far more sense to bike than to use a car. In the Garden District, streets are wide and many of the side streets are traffic light. There are also Neutral Zones (medians to people outside the area) where joggers and mountain bikers traverse without worry. Currently there is also a ferry across the river, free to pedestrians and cyclists. The city and its population are making extensive progress in its bike friendly endeavor, building bike lanes and paths and creating bike centered maps. We rented bikes from Crescent City Bike Tours, located on North Rampart.  They worked to find us bikes we would enjoy riding (we are more the road bike type than the comfort bike type). The day began with a tour, which was led by a guy who obviously loves New Orleans and was very down to earth. The tour was very small, so you could hear the guide and were not constantly waiting for the back of the pack to catch up. They gave us a map, which we later used independently to travel up to City Park and Lake Pontchatrain.

Bike Friday- Trendsetting

I so rarely see another Bike Friday, it was very cool to see this group with two.  On the TransAm, heading west, you could see they were a merry bunch. The two women, Jena and Jami were riding in support of Migrant Farm Workers and this is their blog.








And then the next weekend!  Three Bike Fridays! This group was traveling via Via through Canada and jumping off the train, unpacking their bikes, riding around then hopping back on a train.  They seemed to have it down to a science.

Testing for Leakiness

Here we have a GooTube, purchased from EMS.
 
It contains Hot Sauce, an essential cooking element. Since it seems like a dicey thing to carry, testing it under pressure using a marble mortar and pestle seemed appropriate. Although if you squeeze it when empty, the air gets out/in, it shows no indication of leaking the hot sauce. It might not be trustworthy under the pressure changes experienced in the cargo hold of an airplane, so it will be placed in a ziplock pre-fight.