Butt ugly day

June 6, 2023

““Travel,” writes the author Patrick Rothfuss, “is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet.””

Today wouldn’t of been so bad even with the temperature (99.7 at one point) if it was not for the saddle sores on my butt. Makes for going uphill a real pain if you know what I mean.

Anyhow, I stuck to the road today and did not use the trail. I tried to use the trail at one point, but they recently had a covered wagon event, and the horses had torn it up pretty badly. Besides, the winds, though they have not been as strong as they were at the Columbia River, are still blowing pretty good out of the northwest. So I altered my planned route so that I would have as little headwind as possible. This did put me on a US Highway, a dual lane expressway with a 70 mile per hour speed limit. This was intentional as it was a route that mostly went towards the north east. So the wind was more off my port bow then head on. Besides I figured the passing vehicles would suck me along in their draft a little bit even if they did move over a bit. Most everyone moved over into the left lane. I discovered that the best trucks to get a boost from our car carriers. They must drag a tremendous amount of air along with him, since they have no solid sides, and the Air can wash around in between the cars.

I started early today again and it was actually kind of cold riding but by 830 the temperature had increased to the 80s, and into the 90s an hour or so later. The humidity here is extremely low. Today it was 11%. So my mouth is dry even when I’m hydrated. For a good portion of the day, I was still riding through a valley with farmland on either side. There were cattle, onions, corn, potatoes, wheat, and weeds. Funny thing about those weeds is that they were all planted in nice neat rows , and were being irrigated. I found out later that these weren’t weeds but mustard plants. I aIso saw same cat tails in the irrigation canals. Did you know cat tails can be a good source of nutrition all year long? Their roots and seeds can be ground to make flour, their early stalks can be cooked and eaten, and their seed tufts make good pillows. In fact that is what I have been using them for. I collect as much as I can find and stuff them in a stuff sack every day. Nah, I use my down jacket. But I had you going. I still have not figured out the irrigation system out here. The water seems to just pop out of the ground and into irrigation canals. So the system must be quite extensive and complicated and often underground.

There was one phenomenon that reminded me of home. I found escape potatoes and onions on the side of the road. I assume they escaped just like the chickens do from the chicken trucks at home. Sad to see these poor dead spuds on the side of the road. If they were chickens at home, they would be scooped up by the locals in no time. But instead here they lie baking in the sun. I was tempted to pick them up and save them for dinner and I probably should have but potatoes and onions are heavy and I’m already loaded down to the max.

After leaving the town of Lind, the road gets very hilly. You may call them rollers but each hill was a 2 to 300 foot climb at sometimes a steep at 7.5%. That’s not something I can roll over, I don’t know about you. I walked several times, as my walking pace was almost as fast as my cycling pace would have been, and it gave my butt a rest. I could see the Palouse to cascade trail off to my right, and it remained relatively flat traversing the southern edge of the valley. Too bad the surface is poor or it would make for a really great ride.

I believe I broke a world record of some sort today. While walking up a steep hill, pushing a bike loaded with way too much gear in 90° heat in the middle of nowhere I sang to the recordings of songs from Sweeney Todd…….out loud. Now you may think this is silly but I was quite proud of introducing a little Culture to this barren landscape. In their appreciation, the tumbleweeds drifted about in circles applauding my efforts. The dust devils even took part. So I sang an encore, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning by Richard Thompson. They seemed to like that one too.

So, I got up early. I did not get up early enough to catch up with BOB. I will try again tomorrow and send a picture if I can catch him. I did not take many pictures today, but here are the few I did.

Although the small town of Linda was very depressed, and everything was closed up, they had some neat benches on the sidewalks.

A history of the area done in iron sculpting

The trestle on the trail is out here. You need to take the road anyway.

Sort of looks like Iowa.

These small towns are very depressed. Almost everything is closed up.

Today's ride: 58 miles (93 km)
Total: 291 miles (468 km)

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