Back among the living!

My private dining room in the Holiday Inn – soon to be joined by another COVID+ rider. Yes, it’s a storeroom.

Frost on the tents in West Yellowstone. Going to sleep at 70 degrees (21 C), it was hard to imagine that it would be 36 (2 C) by morning. We had to sleep with a pile of clothes to put on as the temperature dropped. Again I rued my decision to leave the sleeping bag in the closet.

The creeping cold comes like an Ambush in the Night.

We slept on the high school football field, with meals in the Holiday Inn – white tablecloths for dinner, red for breakfast. 25 miles in the COVID bus followed by 40 on the bike as I work to get back into riding shape.

As I finished the last dose of my 5 day drug regimen, things started to look up. It took the full 5 days, but I feel better. Now it’s mostly the rigors of life outdoors on the road; that and the need to regain the strength I lost.

We rode through Mesa Falls on a Scenic Bypass. I was going to ride the COVID bus to the water stop to leave 40 miles to ride. Due to circumstances I wasn’t dropped until the Scenic Byway so I rode part of the route twice to get to the 40 miles I wanted for conditioning purposes. I have no pictures of the falls from 4 years ago because we rode out of West Yellowstone in a hailstorm and cold rain continued all day. Today’s 75-80 and sunny was highly preferred.

Lower Mesa Falls

Alpine meadow

At 10 AM, Grand Teton appeared on the horizon, perfectly framed by trees on both sides of the road. We were aimed straight at it, though it will be a while before we get there.

At the end of the ride I found a root beer float with my name on it.

COVID-19 has changed my life in ways I hadn’t imagined. Riding alone early in the pandemic made me realize I wanted to make this trip and that I was willing to retire in order to do so. COVID helped me decide to retire earlier than I planned to.

I look for places to eat/drink outside; now to protect others from me instead of vice versa as it has been for 2.5 years.

Sitting with a dying man as he enjoyed possibly his last pleasurable moment helped me to savor those moments. Having COVID-19 myself this week put me through a lot. I still have flashes of “COVID brain”, like today when I got out of the shower and realized I hadn’t brought clothes with me. I put my wet cycling clothes back on and made my way to my tent for clean clothes.

I found emotions much more powerful, with tears easy to come by. I bought a plane ticket home, ready to throw in the towel on this ride, and now every mile feels like a gift. Tomorrow will decide whether I get on that plane or give up my seat and prepare to ride through Wyoming next week.

Riding today felt good. I had the occasional burning sensation in the main stem bronchus, for those of the anatomical persuasion – windpipe to the rest of us.

Tomorrow we climb Teton Pass and descend into Jackson Hole for a day off. We’ll be staying at a science center outside of town. If I make it over the pass, I’ll let you know.

Hail! Hail! The gang’s all here!

Only a metric century today, done before noon, but clearly not a rest day.

The forecast was for thundershowers overnight. It was windy with scattered showers in the early evening, but I awoke at 3:40 AM to a bright light in the sky. It was too high to be an area light at the school. Crawling out of my tent I confirmed it was the nearly-full moon in a clear sky.

I had breakfast at “Running Bear Pancake House”. It was sunny when I arrived there and got steadily darker. They opened the shades, then turned up the lights.

Leaving the restaurant, I was warming up slowly when a 3 person paceline passed. I swung in behind, warmup over, as they were going considerably faster than my warmup pace, but this was not a day to ride alone.

As we started up a gradual incline before the pass, it started to rain. We saw lightning ahead. The rain got harder. Then it got harder in a more literal sense as it changed to hail.

We crested at 7072 feet during a brief respite from the rain. That is my one picture from the day. No time for anyone to pose touristically. It was cold (42 degrees by my thermometer) and the rain was coming back.

We had to control our speed on the descent due to the wet, cold, and low visibility. We arrived at the first water stop at a turnout. I promptly rode off the pavement and put my foot down in a 6” deep puddle. I changed from rose-colored to clear lenses in my glasses at that point.

Strictly for survival, we continued on at 22mph. We were on a US highway with no shoulder. It was sometimes hard to tell which was worse – pushing the wind in front or eating the spray from another rider in back.

A word about pacelines here: yesterday I was thinking, “I didn’t come this far to stare at the backs of other riders”. I rode alone all morning, looking at the scenery. Today I was thinking, “There is safety in numbers.” I stayed all day with Steve from Seattle and Ally and Ed from New Jersey. At the lunch stop we picked up Corey from the Twin Cities area.

I decided that my decisions day-to-day are personal ones, not moral judgments.

Before lunch we turned onto the “Mesa Falls Scenic Byway”. I saw signs for how far we were from Ashton and knew that our remaining mileage was about double that. At the moment it seemed cruel, but the scenic byway was beautiful and I sat up and enjoyed the scenery, scanning the surrounding woods for critters. I didn’t have to scan to see the elk that cantered across the highway just in front of Steve.

Lunch was at the waterfall. The only pictures I have are mental ones. Hot chocolate, hot soup, and grilled cheese sandwiches saved the day.

After lunch we continued on the scenic route. The rain abated and for about 30 seconds on one climb, I could have sworn I felt heat radiating up from the pavement – Corey confirmed it.

I needed a new song:

We rolled into Ashton with it not raining (at least I don’t think it was). It was too wet to hang anything out to dry. I discovered I was dry under my rain clothes (except for hands, feet, and head). I had wrung out my gloves several times during the day.

The sun came out so I cleaned and lubed my bike and brought stuff outside to dry. The sky turned black and lit up with lightning and I hurriedly moved everything back inside.

The storm passed, a near-miss. Tomorrow is over Teton Pass, 8431 feet and a 10% grade. Weather here seems to change by the minute so I’ll figure out what clothes to wear when I wake up. That’s the first order of business every day, before I get out of the sleeping bag.

A future post will talk about my daily routine. For now I’ll just say that I’m pretty active at work; not used to sitting this many hours/day.