Break on Through

"I hope you find what you're looking for." Well, I found it.

  This entire trip, from day 2, I've felt awful, sick, poisoned with unhappiness. I've spent the last two months struggling to understand why I am unsatisfied with my life, adrift in doubt. I've never been so angry with myself (how ungrateful and unappreciative can you get, right?) I've had dozens of conversations about happiness and the quest for The Dream Life and no one seems to think how I feel is unusual. It's a long story and I'll share it with you someday.

  But here's the Breakthrough, hot of the grill:
I will no longer measure the value of anything by how happy it makes me. It leads to every sin and it is the rot I feel spreading inside me. Like measuring the quality of a meal by it's volume, I've been doing this all wrong. I've now faced the void of my gluttonous "unhappiness" and it needs to be sealed, not filled. For the first time in years I know the path I must walk. And knowing is half the battle.

Photo Drop: Denver to Jackson

Two young men in the Denver suburbs were very curious about my bike

Intimidating weather on the edge of Denver

Displaced wildlife on the streets of Boulder

Blueberry waffle love in Fort Collins

Brewing equipment at New Belgium

Hop on for a tour of New Belgium Brewing

Big plans

My accommodations in FoCo

The view from the cockpit

Our hero surveys the road ahead

The bike in front of a sign with the Tetons on it

What's cuter than a three-legged puppy?

Fully equipped

Climbing at the Beehive Buttress above Laramie

Enjoying a libation after a hard day of dirt-bagging

On the way to Saratoga

The Mayor of Longmont and co. celebrate the Forth with a picnic

Dinnertime!

Breakfast!

The approach to the Great Divide Basin

Camping illegally on the edge of ranchland

Oaklandish

PB&J, chocolate milk, and etymology FTW!

Strange-looking flowers at Wild Iris...

The Jackson crew at the 5.10 Wall at Wild Iris

The dizzying view from the top

Someone show this to Charlie!

The bike in front the actual Tetons

Flax seed pancakes and elk sausage in Jackson

Clif Shots and Ke$ha

A potent combination to be sure. It's like that scene is Down Periscope (a film I'm sure you haven't seen but really really should if you like 90's era 80's-throwback screwball comedies) where the grizzled old engine mechanic pores a bottle of whiskey into the fuel tank of a diesel submarine to get an extra kick of speed. The point being, use sparingly but to dramatic effect.
Wyoming is a weird-ass place to ride a bicycle. Well, let me be fair. The Great Divide Basin (the Bermuda Triangle of the Rockies) is a weird-ass place to ride a road bike in a straight line. The land is so empty, but not exactly flat- in fact it's filled with bluffs and ravines and buttes and brush fields- and the road snakes over and around big rolling hills that obstruct the view of the approaching terrain. The quality of the light and the clouds change so much throughout the day. This makes it extremely difficult to tell if I'm going uphill or down. I swear I was going 22 mph uphill on one stretch and mashing on my bottom gear to keep moving downhill on the next. Psychologically, it's very disturbing, like when you're screwing with electrical wires and you KNOW the power is off, but you still get shocked so you're sitting there fighting every instinct to notfuckingtouchthatwireagain , but you KNOW the power is off so maybe you should try again. Sometimes I understand why the cat gives me that look of pitying superiority.
And the Wind. O Jesus, the Wind. A tailwind can give me a significant boost in speed and energy conservation, but a headwind can cut my speed in half. Half is a lot when you're expecting to have gotten to Berkeley from Davis and you're still in Fairfield. If I ever get into drawing comic books, I'll create a supervillain with the power of Inertia. The Inertiaddow will be a lurking supernatural predator that invisably freezes things and wreaks mayhem. It'll be super educational with Captain Gravity, Professor Centrifugal, and the League of Forces fighting in the name of perpetual motion. Then Entropy comes in and fucks everything up. What a dick.

Jesus, ANYWAY,
It's hard to bike against the wind. Yes? OK, moving on. In the middle of nowhere, I pass a bike tourist going in the opposite direction. He is 23 years old, lives in Oakland, and has biked 2,000 miles from Portland with $100 worth of gear strapped to a 30-year-old bike. One set of clothes, no paniers, less than half the volume of my cargo. His handlebars don't have tape. It takes me an hour to stop feeling embarrassed about my rig and realize that some people, like animals, have an extremely high tollerance for discomfort.
After pedaling for 60 miles, having done 70 the day before and 90 the day before that, I hit my first emotional breakdown. Six hours of direct sunlight, in 95 degree heat, at 6,500 ft, charging into a strong headwind after two long days and barely enough water has left me a little fragile. It's time. I slurp the syrupy caffienated Clif Shot, find the playlist I made for the winter climbing comp, and strip down to just my chamy (Chamois. Padded bike shorts?- we've been over this: turn on the Tour and listen to Phil Ligget talk about sweaty Frenchmen. You'll love it.) With Ke$ha blasting in my ear about poor life choices, I crush out the last 15 miles to Lander. If I have a limit, I still haven't found it.

Up, Over, and Through

I was ready to be bored and alienated in Laramie. I couldn't have been more pleasantly surprised. Like bracing yourself for Mos Eisley and getting picked up in a T-16 to go blast womp rats. I met my host, Evan, downtown and we biked together up the hill to his house. Evan is employed by the university there and lives with his wife and three bassett hounds* in a beautiful home on the edge of town. He's very involved with the bike community and personally organized a public cycling event in the city park on the 4th of July. He drives an Outback with a bumper sticker proclaiming the local bike shop's slogan: "We still hang bike thieves in Wyoming". He also seems to really love hosting bike tourists. I'm one of many, many guests in his home as evidenced by the well used guestbook on the nightstand.
I doubt I will meet a more generous host on any trip ever. He fed me tons of tasty food, insisting I take the biggest portions. One of the dogs got into a bag with some of my snack food AFTER HE WARNED ME not to leave food where the dogs could get it and he still replaced it. He took me climbing with his coworkers on my rest day and set me up with a place to stay in Lander. His house has a generous basement and I had a guest room and bathroom to myself. It was freakin' sweet. Also, the food co-op there is amazing. I've never seen such a concentration of tasty food.
I spent the next day summiting Snowy Mountain (still snowy, probably from last year because God knows it snowed enough then and not nearly enough this past winter) and relishing the descent into Saratoga. I met a group of six cyclists from a small town between Boulder and Fort Collins on a four day, 350 mile loop around northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. The group included the mayor of Longmont and a woman driving a SAG wagon (Support And Gear (come on people, it's Tour d' France season- get with it!)). They passed me just as they were pulling over for lunch and I got invited to join their picnic: a red and white checkered affair alongside a babbling stream. Delightful. I stopped in Saratoga after 60 miles of riding and took a nap in the town square. When I came to, I noticed a strong tailwind and decided to continue on. I pedaled another 30 miles and made camp at a rest stop beside highway 80. I bathed in a nearby river and passed out on the southern boarder of Nowhere, WY.

_{*So the Basset hounds were pretty ridiculous. I guess I haven't spent much time around that breed, but they look super weird- like awkward oversized dachshunds. That there were three of them at once was especially odd; my brain couldn't handle the repeated image the way it can with common things like pens or chairs.}

Beer Preasure

On the second of three nights in Boulder, I had dreams of chasing and being chased. I awoke with the sense that it was the perfect day to pedal to Fort Collins. So I gathered my maps, made a huge pile of pancakes, and snuck out a day early. In just two days of riding I've rolled through gravel, dirt, grass, rain, and mud. I'm glad I kept the beefy tires and slapped on some fenders. My gear would be dirrrrty!
The approach to Fort Collins required navigating the suburban sprawl of gated communities and golf courses that has crept ever southward since "FoCo"- I'm not kidding, they actually call it that- has been consistently ranked one of the best towns to live in, apparently by some creepy conservative publication. I had anticipated something like South Davis, but South Fort Collins is it's own community of 50,000 people. I had to bike 12 miles to get to Old Town!
For those of you keeping track at home, the ride to Boulder was 40 miles, to Fort Collins was 50, and to scenic Laramie at the foot of whose antiquated and prestigious university I am now collapsed was 65. More on pace data later.
I really loved Fort Collins. I'm already excited to go back. The people are super friendly, the bike shops are super cool, and the bars are super nice. In general, I don't enjoy going out to drink; too expensive, too noisy, too many assholes. I sat at five bars in three days and had a blast at all of them. Good, cheap beer and good, stimulating conversation. Cute girls, hip parents, the works. There are two really cool, open bike shops that have approachable mechanics. One of them is part of a bar/ coffeehouse where you can ride your bike onto the sidewalk, into the open garage door, past the bar, and back into the shop. Hipster heaven, except I didn't see any hipsters! You can see why I'm excited.
For the first two nights I stayed with an awesome family I found on Warmshowers.com, a couchsurfing site for bike tourists. Such nice people! The mother, Julie, (who I cannot describe better than her friend at the food co-op:) "a delicious snack of a lady", was incredibly kind and gave me list of places to go and people to meet and she made smoothies from local fruit and yogurt and she told me all about the tour she had done a few years ago. Her husband, Bob, graduated from Cal and seems to be something of bike nerd/woodsman/distracted parent. I found a full clip of bullets between the fair trade brown sugar and rainbow sprinkles- and I've played enough Goldeneye to know they were for something much larger than a handgun.
I slept in a camping trailer in the backyard. I hope I never own a car, but if I do, it'll be a Tacoma with a camper in the back. I've seen too many dirtbag rigs in the Valley to think I'd want a Westfalia. Anyway, this camper was so cute and the screen windows let the breeze in and the sunrise woke me up each morning and the backyard was so beautiful with it's veg garden and chicken coop. Wow. Blueberry waffles for breakfast and a slow ride along the very elaborate bike path network to downtown. The bike paths follow the numerous creeks that wind West to East, going through tunnels under major streets. Julie was quick to point out that the surface streets are faster, but Bob only wanted to know which sections I hadn't had a chance to explore yet.
Maybe it's Bozeman this Winter then FC in the spring and through to the fall. We shall see.

Supplemental: The Tablet

Before I get started I just want to share with you that I don't know how to spell "supplemental", my spellchecker does. All I can think when I look at that word is, if I ever start an acid jazz punk band, it will be called Supple Pup and the Mental Kittens. God, did Patrick Stewart struggle with this? Ugh. ANYWAY,
I love my tablet sooo much. At the moment, it's a little limiting for posts. Take a look at my older posts from last year and you'll see the difference in formatting, but I want to talk about travel utility. Every morning at breakfast I load my itinerary into the Google Maps app. The bicycle directions feature highlights the most scenic and pleasant route, which is rarely the most direct. Major streets are always faster and so obvious on the map as to be self evident. I can optimize the route on the fly and refer back to the map throughout the day. The initial route is saved by archiving screen shots of each section. If I get too far off, there is usually wifi near most major intersections. Some of you have been riding with GPS for some time, so this may seen a little stale. I think this system is more pure. Once I'm out the door, the images I'm using are static. I still get to squint at the tiny writing and spin the thing around trying to get oriented. It feels like fumbling with a very thick, glowing map.
I also use it to read during downtime. I just finished the Hunger Games and am already hooked on Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, the author of my absolute favorite book Snowcrash. Reading with this thing is great if only because you don't need to hold it open while you eat. It also lets me network with people I meet or stay with along the way. There might not be much more to say about it, but this thing is my companion, my onboard navigation computer, my little chunk of the future keeping me company out on the road. The inside flap of the case is accumulating the handwritten notes I've been making about routes and phone numbers, so the whole package is begining to resemble a travel log.
For anyone curious about the tablet itself, it is a basic Nook Color booting off a micro SD card with Cyanogen Mod 7 to make it behave as an Android tablet. This doesn't void any warrenties as it's fully reversible and requires no hardware manipulation.

Urbane Adventure

Riding out of Denver towards Boulder in 94 degree heat was what I imagine it must be like to do Bikram yoga in a steelmill. Fumes and noise and the constant threat of being runover by someone in an improbably large truck. Navigation was a headache with so many turns and streets and cars. So many cars! I'm reminded of a standup bit about noticing two logging trucks pass eachother on the highway. "If they need logs over here and they need logs over there, one phone call could save these people a lot of trouble!" Apparently landscaping is a big deal out here; I've never seen so many weedwhackers in one day.
Boulder itself is a pleasant blend of weedwhackers and, well, weed. There is clearly a lot of money in this town, but the kids on "The Hill"- the local name for the student ghetto- keep things real for everybody. The downtown pedestrian mall reminds me of Burlington quite a bit, but the Colorado spirit of dangerous outdoor hobbies is pervasive. I would love to live here as a teenager or financially solvent 30-something, but alas there is no relief from a quarter-life crisis to be found here. I visited a friend from Crested Butte who teaches kids mountain biking at a terrain park on the edge of town. The afternoon thunderstorm rolled in and I took cover with the grounds staff in a garage. I joined them in a wordplay game to pass the time and ended up with a couch to stay on for the night. This seat-pant-flying thing seems to be working alright.
The riding has been easy, with no mechanical issues to speak of. My knees are holding up, but each time I rip out of my clipless pedals I wonder if that will be the last time. The air is hot and thin and I can't drink enough water. Maybe it's all the beer.