Fourth of July Pass Miles 270-320 January 15

Fourth of July Pass Miles 270-320 January 15

Even with the temperature hovering near zero, I prefer to be on the road. But muscles and gears do not welcome arctic conditions and find annoying ways to make their displeasure known. If I am to ride the 10,000 miles I dream of riding this year, I’ll have to average 30 miles a day. I can average 15 miles per hour on the road in the summer. Winter weather slows me to ten, but the warmth and the lack of hills in the Mabee Center raise me to 20. So at the Mabee Center I can do twice the miles in half the time.

The downside? The scenery! Rows of stationary bikes and weight machines of every size and shape. Users of all ages and both sexes coming and going and working their bodies. An aesthetically pleasing environment for a short time. But driven here day-after-day by cold and snow the sameness of it all brings on boredom. Unless! Unless I shut my eyes and let my mind escape to other places. If riding a stationary bike has any advantage over a road bike it is that on the one that doesn’t go anywhere, I can shut by eyes.

With my eyes shut, the Mabee Center has my body but not my mind. If I don’t actually see anything I can imagine everything. I can even choose not to hear the radio music that wafts through the place, instead remembering the sounds of 18-wheelers coming up behind me or the high-pierced shrill of red-tail hawks soaring overhead. One minute I can be riding across the high plains desert of Wyoming and Idaho and remembering Red Cloud who led his people here. Or I can be dodging potholes and other bikers as I ride the streets of Lanzhou with Tao Jianling, my Chinese student.

I can be approaching Bert and Ernie’s in Plattsburg or Clem’s in Kearney or the Old Country Crockery Café in the Mosby flats across from Pour Boy. In my mind these outposts of rural ambrosia still can live, though in real life they no longer exist. One moment the Grand Teton looms over me. The next, I’m riding the Mississippi Trace.

Rain starts to fall as I leave Kellogg for the 37-mile ride to Couer d'Alene. As I ride, the rain comes down harder. And colder. Fourth of July Pass lies between Kellogg and Couer d'Alene, and the ascent is so deceptively simple that I am shocked when I am at the top and about to go down. Sitting at the summit and looking down the mountain through the drizzling rain, my heart is in my throat and a knot in my stomach. I don't want any part of what I see, but I have no choice

Just over the summit, the highway is torn to pieces. Under Construction: that's what the sign says. Obstacle Course: that's how I read it. Traffic is narrowed to two lanes rather than four. No shoulder. Hard rain. Slick pavement. Logging trucks, semis, motor homes and countless cars lurching by as I fight to hold my bike to the foot-wide strip of road available to me while braking hard to keep from plummeting out of control down the mountain. To my right, just inches from me: debris, rocks, sand, a guard rail, all of it ready to spill my bike and me onto the road if I make a single mistake. To my left, inches away, that caravan of 18 wheelers and vacationers rumbles by. Should I veer a few inches off course to the left, I'm a dead man.

Down that mountain for half-a-mile or so I follow that ribbon-wide path, disaster to either side. Then comes the four-mile obstacle course. Marker cones, long concrete barriers set up to channel traffic away from the construction and into two narrow lanes, and all the while the road is twisting to follow the natural contours of the land.

Wow! Riding at the Mabee Center can be nerve-wracking.

No Ordinary Year Miles 465-515 January 21

I’m 115 miles behind. I’m hoping to average 30 miles a day, every day this year. So as I write these words on January 21, I should have ridden 630 miles, when, in fact, I’ve ridden 515. I can still make 1000 by the 36^th day of the year, however. That day will be February 5, and if I make that date, I will have ridden one-tenth of the distance in one-tenth of the year. If I ride 10 out of the next 15 days and average 50 miles per day, I will be back on schedule.

Actually, I expect to behind schedule coming into April. The black ice that lurks about on the road in the Missouri winter has taken me down before. With no warning I’ve lost all traction and steering and have fallen hard on my hip and elbow. Nothing ever has broken, but weeks have passed before the pain and soreness left and I could again pedal freely. The stationary bicycle in my basement numbs my mind. Even in the dead of winter, I prefer the open road, and in an ordinary year, that’s where I would be.

But this is no ordinary year. I have publicly committed myself to ride 10,000 miles. I can come out of winter a little behind schedule and make up the distance when the weather is warmer and the days longer. But if I injure myself on a winter road and cannot ride for weeks, I will have no chance. So every winter morning early I drive to the Mabee Center and climb aboard one of their many stationary bikes. With friends and former students coming and going, riding bikes and lifting weights, with music and mirrors and people talking, the place has little of the feel of my basement bike and more the ambiance of the small town cafes to which my road bike always brings me.

I don’t want to be too far behind when April comes. With long hours of daylight and warm to hot weather, I can put in 75 to 100 mile days. Three-tenths of this year will have passed on April 18, Good Friday. To be on schedule, I should have ridden 3,000 miles by that day. If I am no more than a few hundred miles behind, I can make those up in spring and summer. I’m hoping to come out of September a few hundred miles ahead of schedule.

October and November are pleasant times to be on the road, and 50-mile days bring me to small town cafes and conversations with local farmers about this year’s weather and crops. If I can make it to Thanksgiving just a little ahead of schedule, I think I can maintain my 30-mile average through Christmas and the end of the year. I expect that bike riding and Salvation Army bell ringing will occupy me full time from Thanksgiving on.

Everywhere I ride I will be handing out my Mickey Cards.