July 30, 2017–Finally, our summer road tour was underway: on the first leg, we returned yet again to Eugene to pick up our bicycle, leaving on a Sunday afternoon and camping overnight near Vancouver, Washington, to be at the shop when they opened. We took a quick spin on the bike to look for any obvious problems. It seemed a bit odd feeling, but we thought it might be because we had ridden our old bike the last 168 km. We should have been a bit more vigilant, but we were anxious to get on the road.

We camped overnight again on the banks of the Columbia, at a state park next to the RV camp we had stayed at in April, then over the hills to the Yakima Valley and on to northern Idaho to visit our friends Gary and Char at their vacation home for a week before moving on to a family gathering in Montana.

Nearly 10 days into our trip, we finally pulled the bike out for our first ride, a 20-km loop around Polson, Montana. Five kilometers into the ride, it was obvious there was something wrong. We stopped, at the top of the Skyline drive, a 120-meter vertical drop on a steep grade into downtown, to find that the rear triangle (the seat-stay/chain-stay assembly we had welded) had nearly separated from the rear bottom bracket. Apparently, the bolts holding the bike together had not been tightened at the factory when the machine was reassembled. Once again, we had narrowly avoided a disastrous accident. We were also having problems with the shift adjustment. After the ride, we downloaded a copy of the SRAM repair manual and readjusted the rear derailleur to get all nine cogs indexing, but shifting remained a problem.

We also had decided that much of our discomfort on the 2016 tour had been due to poor bike fit, despite having ridden thousands of miles with the current setup. Judy had her handlebars set as high as possible, but would have liked them higher.  And, having ridden the Santana all summer, I realized my handlebars were a bit too far forward, putting too much pressure on my hands and I was sitting too far forward on the saddle. The solution was simple, and no cost: swap the stems, putting the longer one on Judy’s bar to raise it, and the shorter one on my bar to bring it closer. It works.

We made a quick trip to Hamilton to visit our bead-artist and tiny-house-builder friend Theresa at her new location and new tiny studio, then stopped at our quilting friend Connie’s house to visit with her actor/director son Dan before he headed back to New York after a season of directing summer stock at Whitefish. We spent the rest of the week visiting with relatives as they arrived in smoky Montana, so we didn’t get another bike ride. As the gathering dispersed, we headed south, stopping at the Ewam Garden of 1000 Buddhas for a quick walk of the garden before the rain started.

Although we’ve been in Shelton for nearly eight years, I’m still involved with Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 517, managing their website. In Missoula, we met Steve and Sherry at the new hangar at the Missoula airport. What a facility! But, expensive, so fund-raising is an essential part of the budget plan. During lunch, we went over a few items to add to the chapter website.

Finally, we arrived in the Bitterroot Valley for a couple of days visiting with Connie and some of our quilting friends before heading east once again for our rendezvous with the solar eclipse in Nebraska. Our past trips have also included a visit to my old workplace in Hamilton, but there wasn’t room in the schedule this time, and some of my former co-workers were preparing to evacuate their homes in the face of advancing forest fires.

The next leg of our journey would take us over the continental divide, away from the smoke, and gradually downhill toward the Mississippi River.

To be continued…

In 2016, we started our travels with a self-supported, self-contained bicycle tour. 600 km into the tour, we decided the road ahead was too dangerous and some of the stages too far, and reconsidered our bicycling future. The rest of the season, we traveled by car to interesting venues and fun, safe trails. By the end of the summer, we purchased an older (1996) cargo van and planned to use it as a bicycle transporter and camping shelter. We became more convinced this was the way to proceed after a long road trip in the car with the bicycle on top, greatly reducing our fuel economy.

Over the winter, we struggled with water leaks in the van, making yet another car trip, sans bicycle. On our return, we resolved the leaks, purged the resulting mold, and began to outfit the van with a sleeping platform that contained storage for our other camping equipment while leaving room for the bicycle. The platform folds in sections: the first allows room to move the bicycle in and out; the second folds the center section up to accommodate larger cargo between the wheel wells.

Our first van trip was to central Idaho, camping overnight en route to and from a resort outing with friends. Our first bicycle rides of the season were on snowy trails around McCall and the paved portions of a waterlogged gravel trail in a nearby valley. By June, we had signed up for a charity ride in Shelton, beginning to do some road rides to train. The week before the ride, we tested our endurance on a ride the length of the charity ride. We passed with flying colors, but the bicycle frame broke at the target distance. The chainstay on the drive side, where the most stress occurs, developed a crack that, over time, spread around the weld, finally giving way.

We delivered the bicycle to the factory in Eugene, Oregon to be welded and tuned for the rest of the season. The trip to Eugene showed us that the van needed a lot more mechanical work to be ready for an extended road trip, so we  used savings to take care of necessary repairs.

Meanwhile, we dusted off the old Santana tandem we had ridden for 25 years before we bought the new Bike Friday machine, and used it to ride the 32-km charity ride, plus a few other rides on local roads and trails, eventually totaling 168 km (104 miles). The other bicycle was supposed to be ready before our planned trip to Victoria, British Columbia, but wasn’t. The second trip to Eugene resulted in a “check engine” alert on the van, so a final trip to the repair shop for final adjustments gave us confidence that our aging truck was ready for an extended adventure.

The Victoria trip led us on several trails on Vancouver Island that weren’t paved, and the Santana proved a better choice for those paths. We had an uneventful series of rides, though with great scenery and lots of other trail users. On return, we continued to refine our camping arrangements, installing a satellite radio dock, upholstering the sleeping platform, and reducing the bike trailer to one of the two cases, as we don’t intend to break down the bike or spend more than one night at a time away from the car and don’t need the extra towing capacity. We also picked up some open-top plastic crates to hold our clothing and food supplies that fit well under the platform.

Road Trip Summer 2017 evolved as a Grand Tour: we would visit friends in northern Idaho, then family and friends in western Montana before heading east to visit family in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  On the way, we would stop over in Lincoln, Nebraska for the solar eclipse and ride bike trails in Nebraska and Iowa, plus what time permitted in Montana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

The final preparations were to arrange for the mail to be held and check 20-year-old Delia into Just Cats Hotel. And, unload the Santana to make room for the Bike Friday, which we would pick up in Eugene on the first leg of our journey.

To Be Continued…