Day 47 - June 10 - Ravines

"Ride the wild wind"

A Forgetful Day

I have little memory of today. I gained consciousness at around 3:30pm, saw that I had done about 70km, and started thinking about where to go to bed. If I think long and hard, I have vague memories of some climbs up hills, or a gas station I went to for a really crappy, mostly deep-fried breakfast of bean and cheese burritos, and some rice and beans. I also visited a post office to replenish my stamp supply.

I must have done my usual morning routine, and I must have looked at maps and made route decisions along the way. I took pictures of interesting things, so I must have also been looking around. Things are coming back, now that I try to recall them, but trying to remember today feels like an exercise akin to trying to remember all of the people whose hands I shook this month.

I was on autopilot that took me from point A to point B on the bicycle in the same way that I take the subway in the morning. In a sense, that's what my ride has become on some days. A simple mode of transportation. It's a bit unfortunate that this happened. After all, my days on this wonderful journey are numbered, and I should try to enjoy it as much as I can. My brain should be exploding with the sights and attractions of these wonderful places I'm visiting.

But the brain gets used to everything. With enough time, the healthy brain gets balanced, and a new norm is adopted as the neutral line. I remember my first year of university, and during that year, and the following years, I learned, developed, and built a life from a routine I was not used to. Eventually, though, I started going on autopilot. I can remember what I did in my second, third, and fourth years, and I can remember things I've learned, but in terms of self-reflection, and an image of the self, these years are a haze in comparison to my first year of university.

I spent a lot longer thinking about self, identity, purpose, and goals when I was 18, than when I was 22. Today I think a lot less about self, identity, purpose, and goals than earlier in the bike ride.

The Wild Wind

From the beginning, wind was a psychological obstacle. If I would have said that to myself on Day 27, freshly-26-year-old Assaf would have disagreed. But now, the veteran 26 year old knows that wind really is just a mood changer.

My days are planned so that I bike around five hours per day, and if, by some mishap, I only bike for three hours, nothing too bad comes of it. I have the cushion. In the worst winds I've encountered yet, I still rode 75km, an equivalent of almost four windless hours of biking. Once I started thinking about that, I realized that wind is not a game changer. Wind does not affect whether or not I will arrive, but only how long it will take. In that sense, wind is a psychological obstacle.

Now, of course wind is, in fact, a physical, earthly, objective, measureable effect, caused by physical, objective, measureable alien transport beams heating up the atmosphere unevenly, effecting a long causal chain with the ultimate purpose of slowing me down. But these extraterrestrial rascals are meeting their match with my thighs.

I'm strong enough to fight the wind, and all it can do is delay a man with all the time in the world.

Today I biked along the Oregon Trail, and got to the middle of nowhere. No one around me for miles. The wind picked up, I looked at the windmills all around me, and had a moment. Even up hills, even in wind, I'm exactly where I want to be, and I'm having fun. I bet that Future Assaf would give anything just to relive the most plain uphill windy stretch of highway on this trip. I've still got nine days left, but I'm already sad.

An Updated Laundry Routine

A while ago, I wrote about my laundry routine. Considering the weather, I've needed to be more careful with how I do laundry and prepare clothes for the next day and the evening. And so, I've decided to write a much more detailed account of how I do laundry these days.

First, an introduction to my wardrobe. I've got two pairs of biking shorts, a pair of pajama pants, about four pairs of underwear, four pairs of socks, and about five t-shirts (I never actually counted any of these. I only use two of each, more on that later), and a sweater. I've also got a pair of sandals, but they haven't seen the light of day in quite a while. Oh, and I've got my biking gloves, but I don't wash them. Yes, they are disgusting. Yes, I like it that way. Yes, I sometimes eat with them on. No, I don't plan to die of dysentery. If there are any more questions, let's take them offline, where I'll be putting on my gloves.

First and foremost, I never wash my sweater unless there's a dryer nearby. I've only worn it twice during the day, and during the evenings. On very cold nights, I sleep with it on, but it doesn't get sweaty, sun-screen-ey, or dusty. I also rarely wash my pajama pants for the same reasons as above, but when I do, I either make sure there's a dryer nearby, or that the next day is a short ride through gorgeous sunshine.

Now the fun stuff. I've got two pairs of socks that I change every 24 hours, right after I shower. Only one of them has a hole in it. Come to think of it, maybe I should start using my spares. Let's go through the sock cycle. I get fresh, dry socks from the little hooks in my panniers, one sock on each pannier. When I go to shower, I take off my used, dirty, smelly, sweaty socks, and run water through them until it runs clear. Just like washing rice. I don't use soap, since the rinse is often enough to get the sweat out. I finish cleaning other clothes, and myself, squeeze as much water out as I can from the socks, and lay them to dry overnight. At hotels, this can be on hangers, hanging off the bike, or on chairs. At campsites, this is often on the picnic table, though sometimes it's just on the grass. The socks dry a bit overnight, then get wet again if there's dew in the morning. Regardless, in the morning, I take the wet or damp socks, and hang them in the hooks of my panniers to air dry throughout the ride. You can see a sock drying in the last picture from yesterday. Then the cycle can start anew.

Let's talk underwear. The process is very similar to socks, but when I wash them, I use lots of soap. I have an ever-changing collection of soap bars that I steal from hotels, which I use at campground showers, or hotel showers when I only get those skimpy little soap bars that can barely clean one leg before dissolving into the drain. The soap bars I keep are the thick ones. Anyway, I thoroughly wash my underwear, and leave it to dry with the socks. I then let it air dry, with the leg holes hooked through my pannier straps. You can actually see my underwear drying in the selfie from yesterday.

The bike pants are a bit less regimented. Sometimes I clean them, sometimes not. Sometimes with soap, sometimes just a rinse. Regardless, they air dry during the day beside the underwear, on the other strap of the pannier.

This leaves one set of pannier straps empty, which is where the t-shirt dries off. Usually I just tuck it in, without dealing with making sure that it's linked. Tightening the straps keeps the shirt in place even in the strongest winds.

And there you have it - how to bike long distances with only one set of spare clothes, and still be fresh every day. On rainy days, things get disturbed, but since I sleep indoors when it rains, things can still somewhat dry overnight, and frankly, I haven't had any severe rain for a while, so this cycle has been going on uninterrupted for about a month now.

The Image Gallery

Who put all these rocks in this field? It's totally flat and then there's a bunch of rocks. Spooky. I'm not gonna jump to any conclusions about this, but I'll just mention the possibility of these being Reptilian eggs.

My campground was along the Snake River. I had to get out of the canyon somehow. I guess I went up the scenic route, though I doubt there were other options.



I don't know what it was for, but I thought it was neat:

I remember as a kid, seeing miniature railroads. There were always cliffs, a river, a railroad, fields, and maybe a barn. Here's something close to that.

Uh oh. Looks like I'm going to need new tires soon. I tried to go to a bike shop in Mountain Home, ID (where I'm staying the night), but it was closed. Will try tomorrow.

The road I was on was literally the path of the old Oregon Trail. How cool!


Check out this big bowl

So many windmills!

I found a tumbleweed factory. This is where Hollywood gets their tumbleweeds to film westerns. They were so tangled up that the wind, coming from the fence towards the tumbleweeds, didn't unhinge them.

The Map

Today I biked for 105km over the course of five hours and 45 minutes. Total uphill of about 600m today.

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