Canada to Mexico Summer 2008

Jerry's Adventure

Ridge of the Rockies 2008

Kalispell, Montana to El Paso, Texas

Lots of stupendous mountain scenery, with some desert plains thrown in for leavening. We started out going Mexico to Canada, but lately have been doing Canada to Mexico.

19 riding days, 1,943 miles, 88,000 feet of climbing _ Begin in Kalispell, Montana

Fly into Kalispell, Montana on July 28th, 2008 _

Fly home from El Paso, Texas on August 17, 2008

Comments and observations from the Canada to Mexico PacTour 2008 ride.

Overall this ride went very smoothly for me this year. There was one big event during this ride and that being a crash over railroad tracks in Anacadona, MT. This was a high-speed crash as I was following Jim and Will Slauson in a downwind paceline. The tracks crossed the road at an angle and I thought I had lined up perpendicular to them but did not. The left handle bar broke as I hit the second rail where as I then lost support for my upper body weight. I then crashed to the pavement getting road rash on my knees, back of my hands, elbows, forearms, right cheek bone, and a large open wound on my right arm that requited eight stitches to close. After going to the E Room and getting fixed up Susan picked my up and gave me a ride back to the next motel.

The PacTour team of Lon and John Lake got my bike put back together with parts from the trailer and had me back on the road the next morning which was the third morning of the ride. Great work by them and that is why I travel with the PacTour.

The other mechanical problem I ran into was having my chain open up an inside link. It started clicking, then hard shifting, and then only setting in my lowest gear on my small front ring. Hooker looked at this with me and we decided that we couldn't fix it with our hands so I hitched a ride up the road to the Motel Trailer where John Lake took two links out and I was back on the road. This happened on the climb up to the Grand Mesa so I missed about 16 miles of that ride.

My attitude on this ride became “finish today ready to ride tomorrow”. This proven a good strategy for me as I not neither the fastest nor the slowest but can ride steady in the middle of the pack. In New Mexico I rode it almost totally solo for a couple of reasons. Those being when riding by yourself you are in control of your pace and don't have to react to the dynamics of the paceline. Secondly, with debris on the road you can change your speed or line to avoid damage to tires without worrying about anyone around you.

On this trip I said I would room with anyone and ended up with Ned Nicolal from Geneva, NY who was a PacTour veteran as a rider and support crew. He was a good roommate and interesting to talk with. We didn't ride together during the day but did many of the evening meals together with the support crew.

The Ridge of the Rockies ride was an easier ride than the Northern Transcontinental as the daily mileage was 103 compared to 134. This lower average let us have some days under 100 that were like rest days. The climbing broke up the tempo and overall felt good. I rode all the climbs within myself and rode to the tops on all the climbs.

I trained smarter this year with long rides, rides with specific focus of spinning or pace for example, found a good training partner in Jeff Hitchcock, rode with Art Doyle's rides on Sunday mornings, some group centuries, and time off the bike to play at other things like golf, swimming, paddling, yoga, and time with Kathy.

The other thing going into my second ride with PacTour is that I knew more o what to expect from the PacTour group and from myself. I rode within myself never clashing, eating better with using HED and GEL, lots of fruit, bananas in the morning, power bars once in awhile when they were warm, and recovery drinks at the end of the day. I didn't drink as much pop as last year and also less Gatorade while riding. E-caps were a regular part of my diet starting in the morning with breakfast taking two and then two at every stop and if I got the yawns I would take an anti-fatigue tablet too.

My butt did great as my saddle was adjusted fore and height just right and I didn't mess with it. I used my mountain bike shoes with SPD pedals for the whole trip. They gave me plenty of forefoot room and were easy to walk around in.

Here are some of my best/worst/hardest of this tour:

Hardest climb: Teton Pass going from Driggs to Wilson heading into Jackson, WY. This climb had 10 to 14% grades, was about eight miles long, first big pass of the ride, and it was HOT. No cloud cover and the thermometer at times read 107'. The downhill side was just as steep and you could go faster than the cars if you wanted. Since the crash I am a little more cautious.

Best motel: Blue Mountain Inn in Rangely, CO. This was a brand new motel that had just gotten open. So it was clean, clean, clean, and the towels were great. I think Hooker ended up with one of them in his van.

Best hamburger: The Drive Inn in Rangeley, CO. Toasted buns, good meat, fresh potato fries, and good shakes. Food isn't too expensive out here on the prairie.

Best overall meal: In Truth or Consequences, NM at La Costa Steak House. We had gone to a Mexican place that was overwhelmed with business so I lead the line to leave and walk on down the road. I had a steak here done just right. Good waitress too.

Best motel bed: The Airport Marriott in El Paso.

Best motel pillows: In the Holiday Inn Express in Moriarty, NM where the pillows were marked with “Soft” and “Firm” and I think there were five pillows per bed.

Best descend: From the top of the last pass into Silverton, CO. The road had just been repaved, there was a construction zone we went through last on which then let us descend with no cars coming up from behind us. On this descend Hooker dropped Chip and was first into lunch in Silverton. The lunch stop was just up from the depot where the narrow gauge trains come in so you could hear the engines and whistles.

Best climb: The Skyway Road out of Ouray, CO. No guardrails and a several hundred foot drop right off the edge of the pavement. On this road we also had big semi dump trucks coming up and down hauling asphalt up to where they were paving.

Best surprise visit from friends: Dave and Carla showing up at the first swag stop coming out of Montrose heading into Ouray, CO. I had talked to Carla the night before and they thought they wouldn't make it so seeing them there was a nice surprise. They visited with everyone until I got there.

Best on the road lunch: The hamburgers on the grill, Chinese salad, banana cream pudding, fresh tomatoes, and grapefruit cups.

Best surprise scenery: The agricultural land in southern NM with the pecan groves, pepper fields, sweet corn, and southwestern design buildings.

Best place to ride anytime: Along water! We got to ride along mountain lakes, rivers running in full flow, and even seeing the Rio Grande running full bank to bank. Also all the irrigation ditches, they move water all over in the southwest.

Little things on the tour:

o Getting a first floor room right by the trailers.

o Watermelon at an afternoon swag.

o A tail wind

o Talking with someone you didn't know before the tour.

o Sleeping through the night.

o A really wet shower.

oCool enough at night so you have the windows open and the air conditioner off.

o Organized waiters.

o The health standards with PacTour for cleanliness.

o Ice.

o The fully equipped bike shop in the motel trailer.

o Lon and Susan

o Good tire pumps.

o Off the beaten path routes that Lon finds.

o Warm soapy water to wash your hands in at all stops before touching any food.

o Figuring out which shorts wear the best.

o Vermont bag balm, Chap Stick, and Neosporin.

o Travel insurance from AIG.

Talking with my wife on the phone every night - just hearing her voice & knowing that she's missing me.

Receiving cards at most of the hotel stops ;-)

July 30, 2008 after the crash on the RR tracks in Anaconda, MT. I hit the tracks at between 25 - 27 miles per hour and the shock broke the left side of the handle bars clean off. I then went down to the pavement, I held onto the bars, elbows in, and shoulders rolled in so I only ended up with road rash on elbows, back of hands, knees, and right face cheek. Oh yea, and eight stitches in my right elbow.

Lon and Jon Lake got my bike repaired that night and I rode every day of the ride. Getting bike repair in motel lot is why I travel with PacTour.

Twelve days later the stitches come out and Caat had her “kit” with so she took the stitches out. Mark took this picture. The elbow had quite a hole in it as the MD had to trim off the ragged skin when he did the stitching at the ER. There was no injury to the bone or even any real soreness. It did weep a little as I stretched it at night when I was sleeping.

Many of the states have nice border welcoming signs. Since Colorado is one of my favorite states to ride in it deserved an overhead lift of the bike.

Yellowstone National Park is one of America's premier national parks and I was proud to be riding in it. This is on the west side of the Teton Range that can be seen in the background. This was a scenic day with lots of flowers along the road and Lon had found a route that took us off the main line onto new pavement with no traffic. Days like this are special on PacTour.

Here Hooker in the sunflowers. Now the story behind this is last year we saw big fields of sunflowers and I told him how they follow the sun around during the day. So any sunflowers we see together are reminders of good times on the bike.

The sign reads “Death Valley” and it could have been that long ago. This was on the “up” side of the Flaming Gorge where it was hot and the road just kept going up and up. The light cloud cover you can see was a blessing as this was a very hot day and if we would have had to climb out in the direct sun you could of put a fork in me and called me done!

Many days were so much fun that you just had to smile. What could be better, age 62, and riding my Trek from Canada to Mexico in nineteen days.

Riding on the wheel of Master Lon on a New Mexico morning. It is always fun to get to ride around Lon; he has just so many miles that he has ridden all over America.

If this was a video you could hear the thunder encouraging us to ride faster so we wouldn't have the lightning right over us. I ended up with a flat later and the storm caught up to me and I got wet. Since it was hot the rain wasn't cold but still not fun to ride in the rain, thunder, and lightning.

Now we didn't get to ride up to this summit on the PacTour but it is one that I did for training in May 2008. It is Haleakala on Maui so this is a true 10,023 foot climb plus on this ride I had very high trade winds right on the nose up to about 6000 feet. That tested my resolve to just keep pedaling, as you will get to the top. Kathy drove support for this ascent as she has done on three other occasions. The bike is a rented one that is a bit heavier than my Trek. Notice the high tech water bottles; recycle Maui! On this trip to Maui I got in about 600 miles of riding in two weeks coming off a winter of hiking up hill on Vail Mountain for my cycling cross training. Seems to have worked OK.

My daily table: Day, miles, average speed, maximum speed, riding time, feet climbing, and feet descending.

7/29/08 147.3 17.2

34.6

8.33.28

4332

3777

7/30/08 107.4 17.0 42.6 6.15.58 4862 2788

7/31/08 101.8 15.9 35.0 6.19.58 4333 4475

8/1/08 89.9 13.8 31.3 6.28.37 3784 1763

8/2/08 134.3 15.2 51.2 8.48.21 8308 8426

8/3/08 114.8 15.1 38.5 7.34.09 4347 4278

8/4/08 93.59 16.2 29.7 5.44.26 2455 1561

8/5/08 148.0 13.7 44.1 10.46.18 9227 10129

8/6/08 51.0 15.3 43.6 3.10.56 1801 1835

8/7/08 91.0 14.8 37.5 6.35.38 4260 4130

8/8/08 99.5 14.1 39.6 7.00.38 5031 5421

8/9/08 112.2 12.7 43.8 8.46.10 8964 7554

8/10/08 119.4 14.4 42.2 8.15.30 7414 5828

8/11/08 81.5 17.0 39.7 4.46.59 2289 4245

8/12/08 99.5 14.9 36.1 6.25.23 5234 4263

8/13/08 118.4 17.0 34.7 6.55.14 2611 4125

8/14/08 76.5 15.0 36.9 5.04.44 2963 3020

8/15/08 80.3 16.4 32.7 4.52.33 1250 1540

8/16/08 63.8 15.8 36.4 4.00.39 1897 1717

1930.2 14.2 51.2 136.24 85362 86442

Comments about some of the activities per day:

July 26, 2008. Fly in day two days early. I got to stay with Lee and Mary Kaufman in Kalispell. They were great hosts, I got to ride 60 miles on Saturday, got to within 38 miles of the Canadian border, and on Sunday Lee took me over to Glacier National Park.

They were super hosts but if I do another trip will just come in one day early.

July 29, 2008. First day on the road and started out riding with Jim and Will and then we picked up Kaat and Mark. We were on the flats so I could keep up with them; I knew this wasn't going to be an all day thing for me. I had the mental approach in riding that I wouldn't chase and push myself to fatigue. Then rode with Ralph, a RAM team over 40 finisher and his college classmate Matt, a PHD who works for Boeing as an engineer and commutes to work by bike. He turned out to be a very strong climber after about a week. He injured his knee early in the ride, took a couple of days off, and then came back easy to finish strong.

July 30, 2008. A flat and you are dropped! Good riding today as I felt strong and this was on a route that we rode last year. This was also the day of the crash that could have been much worse but was bad enough as it was.

August 1, 2008. My bike is fixed and I am riding the day after my crash. It was a hot and head windy day but we got to ride along the Gallatin River today where at lunch I soaked my feet in the ice cold mountain fresh water, boy did that feel good.

August 2, 2008. The first big climb of the ride, a 10% plus ride up Teton Pass into Jackson Hole, WY. It was hot, steep, and long but the passes in Colorado won't be as steep but longer and higher.

August 3, 2008. A beautiful Sunday morning to ride out of Jackson Hole down through the South Holbacks. At the end of this day I took an early nap when we got to the motel that felt good.

August 4, 2008. This was a 93-mile day with the beginning of the day riding along Big Bear Lake one of the premier fresh water lakes in Utah. Rode with Will and Jim for much of the day along the lake.

August 5, 2008. The Queen's Day, the longest day of the ride which is taking us through the Flaming Gorge, a long descent with a long climb out starting right after lunch. We got a bite of a break today as we got some cloud cover on the way out so that saved us about 10 degrees. After getting up to the top we even got some open range where some cowboys were herding cows right down the road so we ended up riding through the herd to get by them. Not ready sure if the cows would want to charge us as we got into their space. They didn't but they did leave piles on the road to ride around.

August 6, 2008. A short day on the road. Everyone was in a great mood and the pace was easy. I broke a spoke on my rear wheel and it took quite some rim flexing to get the wheel bent back so I could roll onto the end and finish.

August 7, 2008. Douglas Pass day when on the south to north RR ride they had snow. We got rain from the summit all the way to lunch. We were covered with mud by the time we got into the motel in Grand Junction.

August 8, 2008. Grand Junction to Montrose which means going up and over the Grand Mesa where on the way up I blew up a chain, so I hitched a ride up forward to the motel van as John Lake was driving that today so he fixed my chain and I rode on. I missed part of the climb but got back on the road.

August 9, 2008. Montrose to Durango going down to Ouray an up the Million Dollar Highway. Dave and Carla met me at the first rest stop this morning, which was a surprise as I had called them the night before, talked to Carla, and she they had errands to run in the morning and they lived on the other side of the range, we were going down. Nice to see them close to their home turf.

August 10, 2008. Durango to Chama, which give us lots of climbing, sunflowers in the shoulders, hot, and as we left lunch we were just ahead of thunderstorms the rest of the day. I was riding with Hooker making very good time staying in front of the storms when with a big bang I blew out a sidewall on my back tire. I had patching stuff with for a sidewall failure so was able to ride in at about half speed but the storm overtook us. I told Hooker to go ahead but he stayed with me. He is a very loyal friend to have.

August 11, 2008. Chama to Espanola now takes us to New Mexico. The time on the road now gets a little shorter and the overall mood of the group is great. We rode down a road that Kathy and I had driven when I worked in Denver when we took a trip down to Sante Fe.

August 12, 2008. Espanola to Moriarty. Just a plain day on the tour, eat, ride, and sleep.

August 13, 2008. Moriarty to Socorro was another easy day. I'm riding New Mexico solo just because I can and it seems the people in pace lines are getting more flats as the roads here are kind of dirty with debris that can cause flats.

August 14, 2008. Socorro to Truth or Consequences where I had best evening meal on the road. A older motel was home for the night but there was a Denny's right across the street so in the morning I went over to have a breakfast of eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, pancakes, and milk. Nice change from the PacTour breakfasts. I wasn't the only one who thought that.

August 15, 2008 Truth or Consequences to Las Cruces which is the last stop in New Mexico where I have ridden the whole state solo. The scenery has been a little more interesting than what I thought it was going to be as with the rain they have had it was very green, lots of different crops, and irrigation ditches that must be hundreds of years old.

August 16, 2998. Las Cruces to El Paso, the last day on this tour, out of New Mexico and into Texas with one last climb as we head into El Paso. On the summit of the climb we could see way into Mexico which looked just like Texas. We also had a head wind until we go to the south side of El Paso and turned north to the final motel when we picked up a tail wind. Quite a finish to ride down a big city street at 25 miles an hour keeping pace with traffic with the best tail wind of the trip.