Day 7 (Thursday 10-27-2011): Colton, WA to Kooskia, ID

Lewiston, ID

Not too many pictures today, but I did get some awesome footage from one of the great elevations that I rode (two descents and one ascent). I got up around 6:30 and was on the road shortly before 7 (it was still a bit dark, but I didn't need my headlight on to see). I headed out onto 195 for a handful of miles before turning onto I-95. I was only on this for a mile or so until I turned off onto Old Spiral Highway which led down into Lewiston, ID, a fairly large city of around 30,000 residents. At the top was a magnificent scenic overlook of the city thousands of feet below and miles away.

Day 6 (Wednesday 10-26-2011): Benge to Colton, WA

Eastern Washington landscape

The next morning I woke up, packed my stuff and headed out. The T intersection that I entered town in went either north or south so I headed south. Five minutes or so in, I realized I had forgotten a water bottle back at the church so I went back to retrieve it. My 6:30AM wake up time turned into a close to 9:00AM actual departure time. Unfortunately, the road that I was on started heading south-west after some ways and it actually intersected with the highway that I chose to avoid last night at the farther away town! I did pass one or two dirt roads, but figured I'd skip them as I didn't want to get lost and I was holding out hope that the road would curve back east. There was another 'lost' ten or fifteen miles...

Day 5 (Tuesday 10-25-2011): Route 26 to Benge, WA

Early morning frost - the first of the season!

The start of day five was my first experience with sub-freezing temperatures and frost over my tent and bike gear. Actually, that's the first night camping ever that I think I've been in sub-freezing temperatures. My sleeping bag was quite warm though and moving around picking up camp I continued to stay warm in my cycling gear. Even though I woke pretty early, I didn't hit the road until a tad after 9AM. I started heading northeast to hit Spokane, my destination and launching point to get to Glacier National Park. However, about half way through the day I decided that probably wasn't the greatest idea already being several days behind schedule for riding and several days late in departure time so I headed back south east again.

Day 4 (Monday 10-24-2011): Ellensburg to Rte 26.

Day 4 began with a somewhat late start. I didn't leave Mel's house until around 9:45 or so (after some waffles with REAL maple syrup!) and I rode the five miles into town to look for a spare tire and perhaps search out a USB cord for my phone. I ended up picking up a Specialized Armadillo 35c wire bead tire from the local bike shop. That thing was so thick and non-pliable that you probably wouldn't even need to put an inner tube in it! It looked and felt pretty much flat-proof though which I guess is a good thing. Passing by a cell phone store I picked up a Micro-B USB cord so that I could charge my cell phone (I had forgotten my cord back in Philadelphia). Finally, I stopped at the infamous Jack-in-the-Box fast food join (remember the early/mid 90s when there was that e. coli outbreak at the chain?) to try out their burgers (not really any different or better than McD's or BK) before heading out on Vantage Highway. It was quite low traffic and ended it's run down to the Columbia River with a multi-mile, fast, flowing descent where I averaged 30+mph and hit 43mph at one point! Along the way I passed by the Gingko Petrified Forest.

Day 3 (Sunday, 10-23-2011): Snoqualmie Tunnel to Ellensburg, WA

Keechulus Lake

 Day 3 I finally figured I would make it out to Ellensburg and meet up with Mel, the host. I woke up around daybreak, packed up my gear (my tent didn't dry out in the tunnel which ended up being too damp) and hit the trail around 9. Things went well, and the weather was excellent – sunny and temperatures in the mid to high 50s. I passed some more spectacular views of the Cascades before having to make a detour onto the I-90 shoulder with 75mph traffic whizzing by to bypass some 'dangerous' railroad tunnels on the JWT.

Day 2 (Saturday 10-22-2011): Bike trail to Snoqualmie Tunnel

The John Wayne Trail

It rained pretty heavily the first night and I had to put the tent away wet as it was still raining in the morning. I was pretty concerned about the next night if I didn't make it to my Warmshowers destination in Ellensburg as I figured the inside of tent would be soaked. Thankfully, the temperature was pretty decent and the rain tapered off for most of the day. It lightly rained off and on, but nothing that required putting on rain gear, at least until the end of the day.

Day 1 (Friday 10-21-2011): Seattle to a bike trail

Departure at the I-90 bridge

My first post about my experience cycling across the country! I'm not typing most of these posts the day that they happen so I'm not sure how that changes the reading experience as events and experiences have a chance to mellow, sink in, and perhaps take on a different meaning or tone in my memory as compared to typing them day off. Without constant internet access and only a three to four hour battery life, I mainly just use my laptop when I'm at some place that has internet access, a power outlet, and I have time to kill (ie, not during daylight hours).

My bike and stuff...

Just a heads up before I get going with seven days of updates: my Internet connection is dreadfully slow so I'm just going to post up text for now - I'll add photos later to make things look pretty!  The first two days should already be up on Facebook.  Before I get going with 8 days of updates, here's a list of all the stuff that I brought with me.

Bike:

64cm Windsor Tourist

Front wheel swapped for a Shimano 2.4 watt dynamo hub laced to a 32 spoke wide Velocity rim

ReeCharge regulator/battery to transform (and store) the AC power from the hub into useable 5v power to charge electronics through USB cords

NxNW... MT to WA

The Cascades

Tuesday I finished off my journey by arriving in Seattle. Suprisingly, today featured what I thought was the most boring section of driving on the whole trip – the roughly 150 miles between Spokane and the Cascade Mountains. It was completly flat, and I don't think the highway turned once. Very few trees either, just miles upon miles of irrigated farmland and grassland. Pretty much the only interesting things I saw along this portion of the drive were giant house-shaped stacks of hay.

King of the Road - WI to MT

This would have been helpful
to know a few weeks ago...

The Black River Valley in WI

  Sunday I drove through the rest of Wisconsin to North Dakota. With an early start of around 7:30AM and 75mph speed limits the whole way, I figured today would be a good day to attempt a driving challenge: 1000 miles in one day! A rest stop in Wisconsin featured a scenic overlook of some pine barrens where I discovered the answer to a Quizzo question from a few weeks ago that our team didn't know regarding passenger pigeons.  Just a few weeks too late!

Driven - PA to WI

The Willis Tower in Chicago

After a multi-day delay from my originally planned departure date of Tuesday morning after I returned from New York, I finally headed out from Philly on Friday morning at around 11AM. Nothing really eventful happened on Friday and I made it out to Ohio before calling it a night. It did rain off and on during the day, quite heavily at some times and surprisingly that was the only rain that I drove through on my entire trip. I was a little worried about driving a manual as the only practice I had was half an hour or so of practice weeks ago when Goran first let me know about his request for someone to drive his car to Seattle.  I actually didn't stall at all during the first day until I was driving around that night in some town looking for an open wifi signal.

Sunset somewhere in Ohio

I happened to run across a Tim Horton's at my stopping place for the night so I compared one to a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts sold at a gas station (no, I did not eat them all in one sitting like I would normally).  The prepackaged Krispy Kremes won hands down.  So far they have knocked down Ambler Donuts, Tim Horton's, Little Debbies, supermarket bakeries, and Dunkin' Donuts with ease.  Can Krispy Kreme be overthrown?  I doubt it...  I also was finally able to find and eat at an elusive White Castle.  Quite greasy but not bad.

Empire State of Mind

Bear Mountain Oktoberfest

Better late than never, right? Anyways, over Columbus Day weekend my friends and I made our yearly bike trip up to NYC and beyond. Two familiar faces were missing although we did pick up two new travelers this year as Brett (Houser) and Chat joined in.  Chris, although in town from Oregon, was visiting with family and Jackie had school work to attend to.  Friday night was a flurry of activity as I worked on my bike, went bowling, then came back and continued working on my bike until around 3:45AM.  I woke up at 6:15, ate some breakfast and headed out with Chat and Cooper, both of whom had stayed the night at my place after coming down from Columbia University the previous night. We met Trevor, Matt, Brett, and Nick at the Walnut Lane Bridge traffic circle at 7:30 to begin our journey north bound.

AT hiking in Rocksylvania

The beginning.

This Saturday my dad, brother and I did our yearly section hike of a portion of the PA section of the Appalachian trail.  This is our 4th year and we traveled southbound from Smith Gap Road to Hwy 309 and stayed overnight at the George Outerbridge Shelter.