OBDR Day Two

Sunday, July 10th, 2011 (or see the previous day, or start from the very beginning)

Today was the day that we realized this trip was more than we’d bargained for.

“Seven hundred and fifty
miles of gravel,” they said.
“A superhighway,”
they also said. They were wrong.
That’s not the route we were on.

But first, we had to pack. Good lord. How long did it take me to break camp that first morning?

Erik: “You guys ready yet?”

Daren and I shake our heads.

Erik putters around camp and takes about a million photos.

“Ready now?”

“No.”

Erik memorizes The Book of Numbers.¹

“Ready now?”

“Nope. Hey Erik, how many in the tribe of Manasseh?”

“32,200. Hey Stacy, any chance you might be ready to go before Gabriel blows his horn?”

Oh, snap! That Erik is feisty for a scholar.

Eventually, we bid farewell to Jones Crossing Forest Camp.

We decided to ride back up the road to Paisley. We arrived too late last night for the store to be open and we wanted to restock with water and food for camp that night.

In Paisley, we were greeted by the gas station being open. LOLWUT? Remember, this is the gas station that everyone said was closed on Sundays, and we’d even called them yesterday to make sure. I guess today was special. Then again, I doubt Daren minded having a good reason to ride fast last night.

We soon left Paisley behind as we climbed up Winter Ridge.

I dig this photo from the southern part of Winter Ridge even though fast-moving clouds made consistent lighting impossible.

A downhill runway
for jumping off a mountain,
trusting a frame of
aluminum and fabric –
and people call us crazy?

There I was, riding along all doo-doo-doo, when two things occurred: I heard the frantic beeping of a bike’s horn, followed by the feeling of the rear end of my bike undulating dramatically from side to side.

I managed to stop the bike without dumping it, a bit puzzled at this turn of events, when Daren pulled up along side and said, “Your rear tire just went flat.”

It certainly did.

Look at me, changin’ that tube and stuff.

It’s a good thing Don Weber made me practice changing all those tires. I managed to pick up the only nail along the entire length of the OBDR.

We had a heck of a time getting the bead to set on the rim. We tried soapy water, inflating/re-inflating, bouncing the tire hard off the ground, making sacrifices to various Elder Gods, but a stubborn few inches refused to git. Ahh well, it’s time to ride. What’s the worst that could happen?

We went thisway. We went thataway. Sometimes the trail disappeared.

So we admired the flowers.

And turned around to go back the way we came.

Oh look, it’s Slide Mountain.

And Bigfoot.

One of us decided to tackle an epic water crossing.

Much of the forest is dead on Winter Ridge. Dead due to an invasive beetle.

Dead forest, wheels jump
broken branches, fallen logs
in red cinder dust.

The paper Benchmark Maps we carried with us featured an innovative difficulty indication system.

Our insistence on sticking with the official OBDR route as closely as possible put us on an awful lot of tiny solid red lines — the infamous “You Poor Fools”. My first “I’m not sure I can do this” moment occurred in the middle of a tricky section strewn with large chunks of fallen branches and an alarming number of logs that required jumping, logs that seemed to grow in diameter as I bumbled along, served with a side dish of deep red cinder.

And then there was the mud.

I distinctly recall seeing this patch of muddy ruts approaching far too quickly to do much of anything but pushing hard to the far right edge, pointing the front tire at what I prayed was a path least likely to edge-trap, and rolling on the throttle.

Just when I thought I had made it, I felt my back tire begin to grab the edge of a deep rut and somehow I gave it just enough gas to slide the rear over and save the damn thing.

I didn’t get far, however, as a rather large log completely blocked the road ahead. It had been there a while, and enterprising travelers had simply rerouted around it. As I reached the other side of the log, I spotted Daren waving at me to turn around.

Erik’s bike decided to take a nap instead of a mud bath.

As I rode back to the scene of the napping, I noticed an empty glass bottle in the middle of the road that hadn’t been there moments before. Someone² with a penchant for drinking Frappucchinos had stowed his empty in the plastic garbage bag that swung from the back of Daren’s KLR.³ A hard bump ejected the bottle through a hole in the bag, through the air, and right into the back of Daren’s helmet.

Needless to say, Daren was not a fan of being brained in the back of the head by empty bottles.

Erik remained in high spirits.

The Scrambler was righted and we continued along more tiny red lines.

This is not the gravel superhighway you’re looking for.

As we approached the northernmost tip of Winter Ridge, the trail turned easier.

We found a nice view.

And now we begin a long stretch with no photos. My first excuse is that what we were doing was boring (trying to find drinking water in Summer Lake).

My second excuse is that we were all hanging on for dear life as we bounced along a ridiculously rocky and desolate powerline road. We hadn’t made much mileage, but we’d been out a full day, and the rocks were almost too much for me to handle. But I didn’t even have the worst of it — Daren was riding this shit with 6 liters of water in a water bladder sitting in his lap!

He later likened it to riding with a squirming toddler.

I was very grateful that neither Daren nor Erik killed me after I made a navigational error and missed a turn, which not only forced us to ride up a difficult section of large rocks — but back down as well.

Physically and mentally drained, we decided to look for a place to camp, and soon found one on the edge of a dry lake.

Don’t try this at home, kids. (And don’t watch if you’re a safety nazi.)

I fell asleep to the sound of a howling pack of coyotes who were rather pissed that we’d chosen to camp on their turf. So I slept with my knife in one hand and my phone in the other, because I was in the middle of nowhere but by god I had perfect cell reception. I could reach out and touch someone.⁴

Continued in OBDR Day Three…

• Total Distance: 85.93 miles
• Uphill Distance: 35.31 miles
• Downhill Distance: 50.66 miles
• Maximum Speed: 54 mph
• Average Moving Speed: 27 mph
• Average Speed: 10 mph
• Total Time: 08:30:39
• Total Elevation Gain: 8360 ft
• Total Elevation Loss: 8159 ft
• Maximum Elevation: 7123 ft
• Minimum Elevation: 4209 ft

1. Erik is a gentleman as well as a scholar. [↩]
2. Erik [↩]
3. Hey, it’s better than a set of panniers made from Tidy Cat litter tubs. [↩]
4. “Coyotes ate my baby!” [↩]