Day 6
Day By Day Notes From The Road
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This document updated July 6th, 2004
Spokane Washington to Sandpoint Idaho - 76 Miles
By Erwin:
Today we were lucky with the weather: a strong tailwind, mostly sunshine but only moderate heat. If this is the way the next few days will be, I might actually start enjoying this ride ;-).
The ride started with 10 or so miles to get out of Spokane, WA and onto route 2 east. We basically followed route 2 the whole day. At first it was a little busy, but later, when we were biking along the Priest River, the traffic relented and the scenery became just stunning.
The Priest River is a wide river set between high pine trees and steep sandy cliffs. We followed the left bank of the river, so that the ride was fairly flat and we constantly had scenic "wallpaper" on our rights. With the tailwind, the ride went so fast that, when we reached the town of Newport after 46 miles, I could have believed that we had only gone 26 miles: tailwinds rock!
Personally, my chafing issues on the inside of my legs have pretty much disappeared - the leather bag balm and a day off the bike really helped! Still, as we're basically sitting on our two sitting bones at the bottom of our hip bones, these two little bones are getting pretty sore. It's key to take care of ourselves by using balm/grease when biking to avoid rubbing and baby powder when sleeping to keep things dry. Still, there is no way to avoid just toughing through some pain to get your bones used to the pressure. Luckily usually it feels fine for the first 40 miles of a ride.
Tomorrow, we're on the hook for 88 miles through fantastic scenery. We're also in for some solid climbing. And, yes, we're entering our third state! After leaving Washington and entering Idaho today, we leave Idaho tomorrow already and enter Montana. We also enter a new time zone tomorrow! Montana is a big state, however and we'll stay there at least 8 days! I am still looking forward to it!
By Lucija:
As Erwin has mentioned, the biking is starting to become a bit more routine. When we are told that the ride will be a certain distance, with a certain amount of climbing, with certain amount of wind, I can translate that into the difficulty I will feel, the number of sandwiches I will have to make, and how to dress properly. Since Erwin (again) did such a good job describing the day, I'll pick a theme to write about - food.
Breakfast: If we are lucky to be staying in a university or camping at a high school, we usually eat breakfast in the school's cafeteria. This means that we load up on a lot of eggs and pancakes. Otherwise, the "breakfast team" gets up before everyone else, puts on a HUGE vat of water, which is later used for coffee and oatmeal. On those days we usually have bagels and cereal with milk.
Lunch: Lunch is eaten basically anytime during the ride when you need some extra energy. We carry "lunch" with us on the ride. It consists of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, every day. I'm averaging two a day. I usually also eat 2 bananas, 6 cookies, and one energy bar.
Dinner: We have never had to make dinner for ourselves (this is good news, because we're pretty tired by the end of the day). So far we have eaten at university cafeterias (very good!), at high school cafeterias (pretty good), at local restaurants (okay). The cafeterias are the better options becasue of the selection of food - the restaurant choice means that we are eating pasta or pizza.
Photos:
Priest River
We made it to state 2 - Idaho!