Eads, Colorado: Halfway

Hey everyone- a lot has developed since the last I brought you up to speed. The biggest change being that we have finally stopped going north, stopped going south, and with excitement started heading due east. That also means our terrain has drastically changed as with the scenery. We are through climbing and descending through the Rockies, and we have entered the flat lands. There’s not a whole lot to see in these parts, but our terrain has allowed us to really pick up the pace. It also means that it’s significantly hotter.

Before I dive into more of what’s to come there are a number of people and places that have come and gone and helped us get to where we are now. Montana was really good to us. We saw gourgeous country and were greeted by so many gracious and hospitable people. Wyoming greeted us with Yellowstone National Park and with weather we had been hoping to stave off indefinitely. As soon as we left Yellowstone, Wyoming became the windfarm of the United States. I don’t think we have ever worked that hard to cross that simple of terrain. Wyoming’s wind was against us, but we were still able to make some new friends along the way.

In Jeffrey City, Wyoming we hooked up with Tyler, who we gave an honorary Team Wolfspank nickname – Blaise. Tyler became our fifth member while Andrew was still on his way to meeting back up with us. Tyler continued to ride with us and provided good company until we arrived in Walden, Colorado.

In Saratoga, Wyoming we came across Cal. Cal was incredibly generous and incredibly friendly. He instantly became someone we would never forget on this trip. Cal opened his home to us, not only giving us a place to stay, but provided us with a hot dinner, some micro-brews, and breakfast burritos. He’s an adventurer at heart and certainly impressioned us with some of that excitement.

Grand-dad Fittz, Jim, at the last minute offered us another much needed break in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He picked us and all of our gear up from Walden and drove us all the way so we could avoid the climb over Rabbit Ears Pass. In Steamboat (now a location on my favorite places to visit list) we took time to catch a flick, celebrate Chris’s twenty-fourth birthday (I cooked a huge gourmet dinner), and we even made it to a beautiful hot spring (Strawberry Hot Springs) tucked away in the mountains there. Jim closed out our trip by driving us all the way to Silverthorne, Colorado. That gave us a simple short ride down a paved bike path to Breckenridge.

Strawberry Hot Springs

In Breckenridge we met up with more of Casey’s reletives at the brewery in town. We also met Charlie and Kristen. Chris had gone out to gather us some housing for the evening since there is no camping in Breck. He was more than succesful. Charlie and Kristen are locals to Breckenridge and opened their home to us with little hesitation if at all. We were given showers, drinks, and a place to crash and watch what was left of the Tour De France. It turned out that Charlie and Kristen are really into cycling, and after talking with us for a while the night before convinced themselves that they were going to summit Hoosier Pass with us the next morning. Charlie went a couple extra steps of kindness by taking us out for breakfast at Daylight Donuts (our BOBs are now rocking their bumper stickers) before we headed out. He then went as far as to drag up one of the BOB trailers for us. I’ll definitely be visiting Charlie and Kristen again this year come winter for my annual snowboarding trip to Colorado. I have to add that it was really nice to finally be somewhere familiar.

Hoosier Pass with Charlie and Kristen

This brings me to the first of a few major milestones. Our ride out of Breckenridge was momentous for a couple of reasons. First it meant we were climbing Hoosier Pass, the highest mountian pass on the Trans-American bike route at 11,500 feet. The sign at the top of Hoosier was pretty significant on its own because it reassured us it would be the last time we would cross the great continental divide. Secondly it was also the first time the team would venture to complete a “century” (100 mile ride). We succeeded in both of those things, of course, and we celebrated by making it to church on time! Making it to the evening service at Canon City Baptist was a double victory for us. We finally made it to church, and we were invited to spend our night in the airconditioned building. Our celebration dinner, to follow, was a trip to our first run-in with Sonic Drive In. You really can’t have too much cherry limeade and tater-tots.

Our ride out of Canon City was the first collision with the desert heat of Eastern-Colorado. It was… very, very hot. The heat is driving us to set our alarm clocks earlier and earlier in hopes that we might cover all or a majority of our distance before the sun bakes us dry. So comes Pueblo. Pueblo marks the second major checkpoint on our agenda. It means that we get to finally head East and start covering some distance across the country. It also coincidentally means we’ve biked over 2,000 miles. To celebrate we dined at the fine establishment of Chipotle Mexican Grill, and to escape the heat we caught a matinee showing of Captain America. It was a pretty awesome day to follow our first century and last major mountian pass. (Note: When we got to Pueblo, Andrew and Chris revealed to us that Uncle Kelly [Casey’s uncle who’s cabin on Flathead Lake we stayed at for Fourth of July weekend] had given us $100 to celebrate our Pueblo milestone, so Chipotle and Captain America were on him. Thanks Uncle Kelly!)

Unfortunately we had to go and ruin the mood by riding another 20 miles and setting up camp in Boone. Boone, for any future riders of the Trans-Am, is absolutely not your best option for camp. If you can avoid it, do exactly that. This hundred person town sits on a busy BNSF track. The city park that you are allowed to setup camp in is across the street from this track, and for some insane reason that track only gets used at night, all night long. The rumble of the passing train is rather loud and seems incessant. The worst part however is the train horn. I understood quite clearly why no one lives in Boone. If train conductors purposely blew the whistle of their engine for as long as it took them to pass through the town I lived in I wouldn’t be living their for much time at all. So, none of slept and we had a long hot 90 mile ride to Eads.

The heat of the plains states may be the worst thing we have come up against so far. Mountains were pretty tough to start out, but they were definitely something to set your eyes upon. Distance can be broken into chunks. Head-winds are disheartening, but they just force you to try harder. This heat we have come up against can literally stop us from riding. Water could be in short supply and dehydration is definitely a reality. We are waking up now at 3:30am in attempts to beat the heat or at least a majority of it.

We’ve done it though. We have come to the end of Colorado, and are Eastward bound. Please keep us in your prayers as we battle and ride against the heat and monotony of the plains. Also a thank you to everyone who has been keeping up on the blog. The team and I really appreciate and enjoy reading them. It reassures us that people are supporting us through this excursion.

Kansas!

Dubois, WY

Today we reached Dubois, WY and also reached 1500 miles! Since our last update we reunited with Andy and Andrew at the smokejumpers base in West Yellowstone and it sure felt good to have the whole group back together again, even though it was only for a short while. John (the smokejumper pilot who picked up Andrew) has been an amazingly gracious host and we can’t thank him enough for his kindness and compassion.

On our route to meeting up with Andrew and Andy we had one really long 83 mile day that ended at a great resort called Driftwater Resorts. We planned on biking 63 miles that day but when we reached our campsite we found out we had to bike 3 miles on gravel roads to reach the campsite and we would have had to pay for the site. Fortunately a woman named Rachel happened to be at the beginning of the road and told us if we biked 10 more miles we could stay at her resort for free! Unfortunately when she said 10 miles she really meant 20 but we still made it to her resort and got a free place to stay and shower! On our way to the resort Casey and I were halfway through an intersection when a man in a car honked his horn directly behind us scaring the living daylight out of me. We followed the car into a rest stop to find out why the man honked his horn at us and when Casey went to confront the man all he could say was “You were in my way.” He must be the one mean man in Montana cause other than that everyone has been super nice.

Back in West Yellowstone we spent an entire day loitering at the Free Heel and Wheel bike shop as Casey fixed up all our bikes and put Ester (Andrews bike) back together from the accident. All the employees of the Free Heel and Wheel were women so obviously the boys turned on their charm to win some hearts. Needless to say, we’re all pretty rusty. One thing all these cross country bike blogs don’t tell you about is the amount of loitering you end up doing. We’ve spent countless hours sitting in McDonalds, gas stations, hotels, etc using their Wi-Fi or waiting around for something or someone. It’s really become a fine art that we’ve mastered.

After all our bikes were in good shape again we set out to bike through Yellowstone. Unfortunately Team Wolfspank is still not whole yet as Andrew is still healing up. Andrew managed to find a Greyhound bus that will take him to Salt Lake City, Utah then will transfer him to Rawlins, WY where we will rendezvous with him on Monday. We miss him dearly. Each guy on this trip adds such a unique flavor to the journey and when one goes missing, it just doesn’t feel the same. We’re constantly hoping and praying that he recovers quickly and we can’t wait to meet up with him again.

The sites we’ve seen have been amazing. We saw two huge Bison less than 10 yards away from us, we waited nearly an hour to see Old Faithful explode and saw the Grand Prismatic pool which was this awesome geothermal pool that displayed the most brilliant colors. After all our sight-seeing was done we made the mistake of trying to reach our campsite before a storm-front passed through and we ended up getting hailed on while biking. We had to ditch our bikes on the side of the road and duck under trees for cover. By the time we reached our campsite it was nearly 8PM and I was dreading having to set up camp and wasn’t looking forward to eating another pasta and tuna dinner. Fortunately an outdoors adventure company called Backroads was in our same campsite and had tons of leftovers and we ended up eating like kings that night…we had chocolate fondue for dessert for crying out loud. Life is good.

Other than that the one thing I cant express in words is the beauty all around us we see on a regular basis. Even with pictures it’s hard to capture the full beauty that fills ours eyes as we pedal down these roads. The sky is always brilliantly blue, the clouds look like they’ve been painted on by an artist, the trees are always waving at us and the mountains look majestic. It actually gets to the point where we see so much amazing scenery that it becomes dull for a second when you’re staring at it for 20 miles at a time. The other form of beauty we see are the people we’ve met along the way. We’ve come across a few fellow TransAm bikers whom we’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Just yesterday we met a group of 3 bikers who started in Virginia and are ending in Oregon. It was great to share similar experiences and have a few laughs with people our age and also learn from their experiences and share some of ours. Two of the guys go to Virginia Tech and offered us a place to stay when we bike through Blacksburg! What a solid community. Their blog can be found at www.tourdeawesomest.blogspot.com. We also met two women from Australia who are also biking the TransAm and we hope they are doing well and staying safe! Their blog is at www.bikeisgood.blogspot.com.

Well that’s all for now folks. We’ll try to post as often as we can!

Random counts so far:
-Flat tires Andy’s gone through in the past 3 days: 3
-Approx. 300 waves
-1 salute
-2 cat calls
-2 fist pumps
-5 thumbs up

Thanks for everyone’s continued support! We’re doin’ it!
-Napolean

Montana & mile 1000

I have been waiting to enter Montana for a number of years now. I don’t know if these were the terms that I was waiting for… I really can’t think of a better state to literally venture into. It’s really quite fitting that we would be on an adventure of a life time and come to this place. All I have ever known of Montana is that it is a place you go to when you want to have an adventure. Colorado is similar, but has become quite overrun with tourism and exorbitant prices for just about everything. I love Colorado, but this place, Montana has always had an atmosphere around it that oozed back country adventurer. I am looking forward to seeing all that we will as we pass through this place.

Now I shall be a bit more specific as to the terms on which we entered this state.

It was always the plan to get to Missoula on July 2nd. With that we were right on schedule. It was, however, never in our plan to make it into the state at all until the 2nd. This advancement in our scheduling was met with mixed emotions and quite the under-shot expectations. As a collective, this addition of making it through Lolo Pass and on into Montana was decided when we had hit our afternoon break about 20 miles short of our campsite for the night, Powell, Idaho. For an attractive hippie woman pulled up and to our surprise. She was fully adorned in her backcountry outfit and Vibram, five fingers. —It is actually quite surprising that she was attractive. It seems that the better looking women are kept from view of the Trans-Am trail, or so we have come to the conclusion. — She gave us water and proceeded to coerce us to continue biking just an extra 20 miles beyond our final destination for the night. She explained that the hot springs in Lolo Hot Springs were definitely worth ending our night in. Enticing us with the words “free entrance” made it almost impossible to resist. It was put to a vote. Despite steering off the road an hour earlier and increasing the swelling in my knee by falling off my bike, I agreed. It was unanimous then. The total mileage for the day sat at 93miles. It’s been the most we have biked in one day so far. Of those extra miles, 13, of course, were all uphill because to get to Lolo hot springs (that were supposed to be free and which we learned was also hosting some sort of music festival- Love Your Mother Earth (LYME)) one would have to summit Lolo Pass. Knowing full well that we had already ridden uphill for a majority of the day, knowing full well that it meant pushing a much wanted dinner back, we had all voted in favor of the siren’s so called free hot springs.

Thus the house of cards started to tumble quickly. Nothing was as we had hoped. Montana was not going to meet the expectations we so highly set for ourselves that night. The climb was far more painful. The sun set and the temperature dropped. We were sucked of our remaining energy. It was freezing once we summited the pass. The downhill ride that we always look forward to in redemption of the hill was almost unbearable because of how cold it had gotten. When we had finally reached Lolo hot springs the springs were in fact not free at all. They were not even outdoors. The music festival was not so much a festival but a hippie rave in the woods. The incessant techno thumping, pyrotechnic explosions, and lack of heat carried on till roughly 4:00am. Dinner was a disaster. Our simple rice-a-roni and baked beans dinner somehow ended up crunchy and fairly inedible. Sleeping was out of the question, and if any of us managed to catch a couple z’s they were tainted with wild dreams of us chasing each other around with blow torches. Simply put, it was the worst night we have had.

On a more positive note making it to Lolo Pass did mean that we had completed our one thousandth mile, crossed into four states, changed time zones, we only needed to ride 39 miles the following day to Missoula, and we have a weekend at a lake house 70 miles from our bikes. Plus this is Montana and there is immense beauty to take in here that we have only started to see. Yellowstone is sure to make this state worth it. At least I pray it will.

Till the next time
Brian (Sherlock)

Bend, OR

Oh my, oh my…

Hey family and friends. It’s been a week as of today and we’ve completed nearly 400 miles of riding. Our bodies are tired and our spirits are on the up. I feel like its been weeks since we have had contact with the outside world. We have seen so much and done so much since our Monday Father’s day post. The terrain here in Oregon is a novel of scenery. Just yesterday we rode through three national forests, a desert, a volcanic mountain pass, and climbed over 5000ft of elevation. Today we rode further north through a snowy mountain pass with mounds of snow over seven feet tall. It’s JUNE! Andy has schooled us in the ways of trees and plantlife. As most of the species of plantlife are so different for him. He’s really excited about these trees we keep seeing. I was even told to chew on some root that he scavenged during our lunch break yesterday. My tongue was tingly numb for the next ten minutes…

The GPS is still on the fritz apparantly, sorry about that. Hopefully that’ll work itself out soon.

My favorite thing to share with you all are the pictures here are some just from yesterday and today.

Crescent City, CA

Hey All,

Thank you for checking in! The past couple days have been a whirlwind of activity from the minute we touched down in San Francisco.
Jennie Zhao, Andrews sister, graciously hosted us at her home and we spent the entire day in San Francisco re-assembling our bicycles. There were some minor catastrophes from the shipping and tweaking of our bikes including a bent fork on my bike. We also had to make sure everyone had the right equipment and spent a few hours at the bike shop getting all the equipment installed. We were awake for a total of 23 hours straight and were exhausted by the end of the day.

yeah... not a whole lot to say about this.

We met up with Samy Chaoui, a good friend of ours, in San Fran and grabbed dinner with him and Jennie. Man that guy is great. It was refreshing to see friends and family so soon!
The next day we woke up early and grabbed a rental car and drove 300 miles north of San Francisco to what will ultimately be our starting location for the trip, Crescent City, CA. The ride was long and all of us are anxious to be riding our bikes instead of sitting in a car but we’ve enjoyed each other’s company, seen some amazing scenery (we drove through a Redwood tree!) and are taking it easy until we get going.
We’ve been blessed so far on this journey and God has kept us safe. We’ve already had a close call with a truck while biking around San Fran but we’re all in one piece and ready to get going. I can’t explain how nervous and anxious I am and my butt is already sore from a short bike ride but all is good and we’re pumped. These are some of the smartest, talented and good looking guys around me so I think we’ll find ourselves out of any situation.

This is how we ride in the car.

It’s late and we’re ready to explore the Redwoods tomorrow. Tomorrow will be our first day biking towards our end goal. Our plan is to go about 40 miles northeast through Jedediah State Park and will be stopping to hike and explore God’s amazingly huge Redwood Forest.

one of the amazing giant redwoods

 

first dinner on the road

Our next major destination will be Crater Lake, Oregon and we should arrive in about 3 days time. Our GPS has been activated so if you’d like to find our exact location at anytime please check the link on the top of the page and send us some love, you have no idea how far it goes for our morale. You guys are amazing!

~Chris ‘Napoleon’ Ahn