Day 45 - June 8 - Idaho

"The cold and the wind leave no window of opportunity"

Cold, Wind, and Idaho

Yesterday, I confidently stated that I've seen it all. Today, as if in response to my hubris, I encountered a new demon. Today was cold and windy. To add to this, my day was planned to be 60km of nothing, then a gas station, then another 60km of nothing, before getting into town.

Last night was very cold, and its biting tendrils lingered into the morning. At 6:00am, sunrise, it was around 6 degrees celsius - far too cold for my biking setup. Two days earlier, I had gotten rid of the extra clothes I bought with Teesie, thinking I wouldn't need them again. I cursed my stupidity, when I remembered that the real problem with cold is the freezing extremities. The face, fingertips, toes, and ears, would be unprotected even with the clothes I didn't have. Nothing that warms these things is sold anywhere now, since it's not in season!

And so, I had to wait for the loving sun to banish the cold away. By 10:00am, it was around 12 degrees outside, and I figured I'd warm up as I biked, so I left. My 10:00am departure was a delicately calculated strategic move, and was not at all caused by me oversleeping. I just happened to use the the 1000 IQ tactical wait to sleep.

There's a problem with leaving late, and that's the wind. As a general rule for biking, canoeing, or exploiting alternative energy sources, wind gets monotonically stronger as the day progresses, then dies down about two hours before sunset. If it's windy in the morning, expect a very windy afternoon. If it's quiet at 3:00pm, it will be quiet for the rest of the day. All this expertise means that on a windy forecast, I should leave as early as possible.

Today there was no winning. So I lost. I left at 10:00am, when it was both cold and windy. Before getting on the highway, I stopped at a gas station to eat some junk, and buy a bottle of coke, in case I need to use a nitro boost to deal with the junky atmosphere today. I started biking, wearing my long pants, and sweater, tucking the latter into the former, and the former into my socks.

It still wasn't enough. The battering wind blew away any warm air halo my body would produce. Occasionally, the sun would peak out from a cloud to warm me up, at times overheating me in the long sleeves, but these blissful moments were not long-lasting, as it was quite cloudy in the morning. Then I started climbing uphill, which is when I needed the caffeine boost.

I've probably written already how much caffeine affects me, but it's truly astounding in this case. After half a bottle of coke, I went from feeling every stroke of my legs, and struggling to fight the wind at half my usual speed, to going at my usual speed and not feeling any struggles at all. My mood lifted within a few minutes too. I was feeling like I would have to camp out at the midpoint gas station, and suffer an extremely cold night, and might even need rescuing. After the nitro boost, all of these worries melted away, and I was confident that I would finish the day. It might take ten hours, but I would do it.

In hindsight, caffeine might have prevented me from needing rescue today. The midpoint gas station was cash only, and I had none on me. If it wasn't for a kind stranger buying granola bars and tissues for me, and if it wasn't for my bringing a bottle of coke with me from the start, I would have probably given up at the midpoint. I wonder why first aid kits don't have caffeine pills in them.

With the rest of my soda drunk, I managed to get to the 108km mark, where there was a gas station with warm food. I ate a whole pizza, and a burrito, and biked another hour in the calmed evening breeze to a hotel near Burley, ID, to stay warm during the night's expected frosty weather.

The Midway Gas Station

As I counted the kilometers to the halfway point, I saw a sign in the distance advertising fuel and food. It could only be one thing - the halfway point gas station. With renewed energy to get there, I pedaled and pedaled, feeling the relief that I might get something to eat, or, at the very least, a bit of a break from the wind and cold.

As I approached the gas station, I noticed llamas and a donkey fenced around the building, with a small coin-operated vending machine selling pellets. A big sign advised passers-by not to feed the animals anything other than these pellets. On the other side of the square yellow building was an electric fence. I know, because of the big warning signs. There was nowhere to lean my bike, so I leaned it on one of the doors into the building.

The gas station was a privately owned one. There were no bathrooms, no warm foods, and no big corporate ads. It was just a guy in a cozy shop full of souveniers, candy, beer, and "country decor."

Everywhere around the shop were silly phrases or snarky, passive aggresive comments made to poke fun at the farming, elderly, rural lifestyle. For example, at one corner of the shop was a sign saying "warning, baby rattles," with a cage nearby. The cage was full of rocks, and baby toys, rattles, lying amongst them. There were two socks hanging on the wall, with a sign "grandpa's two piece swimsuit." The entire store was a minefield of these puns and baby boomer forwards-from-grandma style jokes.

With numb fingers (not just the ones with the pinched nerve, all of them this time), and reddening extremities, I walked around the store to admire the wares, but mostly to enjoy the warmth of the indoors, the windbreak of the walls, and the jokes. I noticed a cabinet full of copies of The Book of Mormon in many different languages, and a note that urged visitors to take one. I guess the owner is LDS.

I collected some things I wanted to restock on. Granola bars, tissues, and chocolate. I asked if they take credit, and to my dismay, the machine had broken earlier that day. I put the chocolates back, and a man behind me offered to pay for my supplies. It wasn't an offer, but rather a declaration that he was going to cover me. "I know what you're doing," he said, "and I support you. Keep at it, and bike safely."

I tried offering him something in return. A Canadian $20, some souveniers I got earlier in the trip, a Washington license plate I found earlier in the day on the side of the road. But the man didn't want anything. Still, I gave him many thanks and appreciation. Next biker I see, I'll pay it forward.

The Image Gallery

The California Trail is part of the trail system that immigrants used back in the day to colonize the far west. I'm on it!

Idaho, while hilly, windy, and cold, has some pretty spots:


Utah isn't the only state with arches!

Here's a weather phenomenon that I really really really don't want to face. I actually got scared I might get caught in a dust storm due to the high winds, but remembered the rain from yesterday, and figured that I might be safe. Still, scary prospect.

Finally, I got some flat areas with biiiig, expansive fields:

The Oregon Trail! I'll be following the historic Oregon Trail quite closely for the rest of this bike ride.

The Map

Today I biked for 123km over the course of nearly seven hours. Compare this to yesterday, where a similar distance took me only six and a half hours. That's the power of wind.

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