Gloria rides red bicycle

Hot and Bothered

28/2/2021

Lewistown, Montana - Beach, North Dakota
280.68 Miles – 451.17 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 1711.20 Miles – 2753.90 Kilometres

After another good sleep, I awoke to the sound of my phone buzzing. I popped my head out of the tent, looked east into beautiful clear skies, relaxed and decided this was likely to be a hot but beautiful day. As an afterthought, I looked west over my shoulder and was greeted by deer, backdropped by what could only be described as a nuclear holocaust. The sky was glowing blue with purple orange clouds falling out of it. Fork lightning was sparking its way towards us.

With some urgency, I shoved Sharon from her slumber commanding her to get up now and not do anything else but get her sleeping gear and the tent packed and on the bikes. Trying to stay calm, but panicking slightly, we decamped considerably faster than we ever had. We rushed everything into the single table shelter just as the heavens unleashed their watershed. We sat there quietly still in our pyjamas and in prayer and watched the eye of the storm split in two and proceed to travel around both sides of us. There was lightning bouncing off the ground about 600 metres both to the north and south of us, but none coming close to us.

We were somewhat miraculously protected from the worst of the storm, we got a little wet, but that was about it. Whilst sitting there waiting for the rain to clear, the volunteer fire brigade alarm went off. We watched the firefighters all rush to the station. The engine pulled out of its base with sirens blaring, only for the crew to stop a hundred metres up the road and run into the cafe to buy coffee before zooming off again.

More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.

You can read the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request.

Become a Patron by following this link.

Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this.

Cheers Kel

Sharon's Account of Our Holiday

25/2/2021

Click here to read and see Sharon's account from our recent holiday.

Shaking

7/11/2020

Leg 4.1
Missoula - Lewistown Montana
384.50 Miles – 618.79 Kilometres
Total distance ridden 1430.52 Miles – 2302.19 Kilometres

About two hours later we rode back to the 200, turned left at the lights and struggled up the dry hot 287 all the way to Augusta. When we arrived we were carbohydrate-starved and quite capable of eating every bit of pasta, bread and potato the town had. We rode our usual sortie, up one side of the street and back down the other. Most of the town seemed to be at a place called Western Bar. Sweaty and smelly, we pulled up and asked what was happening. It turned out to be the bar's fifth birthday and for a two dollar donation we could eat as much as we wanted. Oh my goodness did we literally pig out, they had a hog on a spit cooking away right on the street. First I went for the potatoes, fries and crisps, then I started on as much meat as I could find and finished off the meal with plates full of home-made cookies. It was like manna from heaven right there on the Lewis & Clark cycle trail. It was the first time I had felt full for quite some time.

Wild Animals

2/8/2020

Caramel Pig

Stage 3.1

New Meadows, Idaho – Missoula, Montana

264.53 Miles – 423.24 Kilometres

Total distance ridden 1046.02 Miles – 1675.23 Kilometres

Relatively tired, we rode on and bumped into the equally tired-looking town of White Bird. There was a scuzzy town park there, it was all we had so we settled on spending the night. Sharon wandered across the road to buy a beer and chips to celebrate my birthday again. The bar lady kindly suggested that we camp closer to the pub. It scared me a little that she would suggest this. Sharon went for a wee walk up the road and I recorded a video message for a friend in Lithuania. Whilst I was doing this, someone shouted out their window at me, “f- off bum”, wow what a compliment. I kind of liked being called a bum, however the whole tired town was beginning to look stunningly unsafe and dodgy.

Hell

12/4/2020

Caramel Pig

Stage 2.2

John Day, Oregon – New Meadows, Idaho

259.23 Miles – 417.19 Kilometres

Total distance ridden 782.49 Miles – 1259.29 Kilometres

We cycled down town and looked in a few of the cutsie shops. I wondered into a fishing shop, that kind of sold cute things including guns.

This is an excerpt from my trip dairy. It is a conversation I had with the shop assistant in the shop.

Female Shop Assistant: Do you carry a gun with you on your bike?
Me: No we carry beer spray
Female Shop Assistant: I guess it would be difficult in states where you cannot carry a concealed weapon.
Me: Yeah
Female Shop Assistant: When I am in Ontario, Oregon there is nothing more embarrassing than walking into a bank and realising I have my gun in my purse. I quickly run outside and put it in my glovebox.
Me: Is it legal in Oregon to carry a gun in your glovebox.
Female Shop Assistant: I don't know, I just don't want to set of any alarms in the bank and have to explain myself.

As soon as I could I rushed out on to the street, found Sharon and told her of the conversation, we were both once again in hysterics and dumbfounded by American gun culture.

Heaven

5/1/2020

Stage 2.1

Eugene, Oregon – John Day, Oregon

256.62 Miles – 412.98 Kilometres

Total distance ridden 523.26 Miles – 842.10 Kilometres

"The cafe was said to be historic and basically looked like a cross between a small classroom and a shipping container. As is the custom in a tipping culture, the staff were really friendly and keen to serve. I ordered chicken biscuits and gravy. It was huge, gluggy and yummy. My plate was stacked at least five centimetres high, the gravy was horrifically thick and flanked with sliced orange. We had a side salad of black coffee. Normally this kind of food would have killed us on the spot, but having just cycled about 550 km, our arteries were in good nick".

More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.

You can read these the full chapters by signing up to become a patron or by very very special request.

Become a Patron by following this link.

Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this.

Cheers Kel

Organic Oregon Hippies

28/9/2019

Stage 1

Astoria, Oregon – Cottage Grove, Oregon

266.64 Miles – 429.11 Kilometres

It turned out that we were staying at a hippy commune. We were given a room with a soft bed and an ensuite. I was struggling though, struggling with the seemingly obvious fact that so far all Americans seem to be vegan. For tea, I had the choice of eating tofu or polenta. I knew tofu, it is what the dogs leave on the lawn after their night's wandering. Polenta was an unknown, I presumed it didn't have meat in it, but I gave it a shot. It was the same colour and flavour as everything else I had eaten over the last week; brown and cardboardish. I had dried sausage in my pannier, but was too scared to munch on it, just in case the meat police jumped on me and kicked us out of our lovely room.

More partial chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.

You can read these the full chapters by signing up to become a patron.

Become a Patron!

Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this.

Cheers Kel

Caramel Pig

3/8/2019

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Peddling the Dirt across North America

Consciousness found me sprawled out amidst Baltic pine and hazy, filtered sunlight. I woke to the shriek of a bloodied woman hysterically shouting, “my God, my God, what have I done to him?” Indeed this incompetent wannabe cyclist had succeeded not only in busting my collarbone, but also in careering my bicycle along a not altogether unexpected, but different, road.

My Lithuanian doctor was happily corrupt and after threatening multiple times to operate, he opportunistically slapped on me an elbow-to-elbow butterfly plaster. The expectation was that I would bribe him to get something more comfortable. I didn't bribe, but I did suffer. My arms were fixed, strutting full-length slightly in front of me. I couldn't roll over at night and even in my far-sightedness, I couldn't read. I tried watching Eurosport, CNN and listening to the radio, but quickly tired. I soon discovered that if I placed my computer about 50 cm to my right and cocked my head on an angle, that with a little difficulty I could make my MacBook do what I wanted it to do. It was here where the dream was cast.

In my boredom, with the help of the Ride With GPSmap-creating platform and America's Adventure Cycling Association, I mapped road by road, street by street, path by path a cycling route from the west coast of the USA 8000km clear across the continent to Canada's east coast. It was my dream to ride it and my expectation it would never happen.

But happen it did. Our work in Europe came to a natural conclusion and we found ourselves with a block of free time and two tickets for two people and two bicycles to sail from Southampton to Brooklyn, USA.

We had tour-cycled before, in fact we had become quite slick in the art of living off a leather saddle, but we had only toured in Europe and were not quite prepared for the brashness of polarised Donald and anti-Donald Trumpians. We didn't visit to make America great again or to make Canada polite: we came to smell her morning mist, see her sun rise, endure the coffee and experience her people. We came for small towns, quiet roads and empty landscapes. We sailed into New York City.

In Europe, bicycles have a wonderful piece of high technology called the bell. It is a contraption designed for collective community-orientated cultures to effortlessly tinkle their way through seemingly unnavigable communal spaces. In America, the circular metre around you is your space and no one shall enter, regardless of a frantic dinging bell, screaming Kiwi or 50 kg of Hungarian bicycle hurtling towards him or her.

Day 1 in the USA barging my way across the Brooklyn Bridge was the first and only time I have ever suffered from bell-blister. It was also the closest my wife has ever been to being run down whilst on her bike. It seems Big Apple taxi drivers only give way when you don't and if you hesitate then you are roadkill. Sharon hesitated, the cab didn't - the result could have been yellow paint down the side of her pannier. The collision was only avoided because Sharon howled with the ferocity of a living tenderised dog, scaring the horrified driver and gaining herself a police escort to the other side of the road. It could only get better from here.

We chucked our bikes on Amtrak and caught the train to Oregon. On arrival in Portland, we pushed my bike to a bike shop to repair the damage Amtrak had created. One hundred and sixty US dollars worth of mechanical wizardry and a few days later, we were eating oysters and drinking craft beer with dear friends on the eve of our 5000 mile transcontinental adventure.

And that is how it began, from a seaside broken clavicle to SPD clips at the Pacific mouth of the Columbia River.

More chapters of our wee bike ride are to follow.

You can be the first to read these by signing up to become a patron.

Become a Patron!

Sometime in the near future the complete adventure will be released as an eBook. Patrons will get a free copy of this.

Cheers Kel

Become a patron

28/4/2019

It was a wee 8000km ride from Astoria to Cavendish. We rode over mountains, along the flat, through 40 degC heat and in the snow & frost. The coffee was bad, our food was worse, but the people were all...well okay, most of them were lovely. I put butt cream on every day, didn't shower a lot and consumed enormous amounts of Root Beer.

The crazy thing is, not only do I want to tell you about it, I want you to pay me to write the story and as a token of thanks, I will try neglect to explain why a 'Porta Potty' is the number one priority when searching for a campsite.

Saddle up, clip in and ride with me.

Cheers Kel

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