Breakdown

Refuge

I should say first off THANK YOU to the person who paid my bill at Follett's bike store in Lewiston. I was shocked. Somebody's a pretty good detective.  Justin, at the store, wouldn't tell me who it was. Nor how much. For the record, I got a new tube with sealant on the wheel, three extra tubes, and four CO2 capsules, which allow you to pump up a tire in seconds.

After Sonny gave me a ride to Pomeroy Wednesday night, I checked into a hotel -- the kind that doesn't offer ice -- and spent the night and the morning futzing with the back wheel. I finally changed the tube and reset the tire, and the wobble was gone, so I started out. The highway was replete with workers spreading pea-sized gravel on the road, and I had to wait in line with dozens of other cars as oncoming traffic took its turn on the one lane that was open. When my turn came a couple crew members threw my bike in a truck and I got driven across. Getting on, I thought: Finally I can ride.

I rode about four miles and had a flat.

I spent an hour by the side of the road changing the tube, looking so pitiable that a man driving a street sweeper gave me a bottle of gatorade and a bottle of cold water. I was pretty well supplied, but I took it nonetheless. Finally I started out again, and climbed to a summit (the lonely, distant house pictured above) -- just three or four miles on. There were warnings for truckers to check their brakes, and a sign warning of a steep, five-mile descent.

The road was wide, unlined, and filled with the new gravel. Trucks passed me honking, and I could only just hold on and hope they would give me space, and that I wouldn't lose my nerve. A mile and a half downhill my back wheel started to wobble. I wheeled to a stop by the guardrail to see that I had another flat.

My spirit broke and I became preternaturally calm. I'd blown through three tubes in a day, and had no more tubes, and inspecting the one I'd changed, I could not find the leak, in order to patch it. I started walking -- no shoulder, gravel roadsides -- and I stood still, clinging to the guardrail, whenever a truck came at me. I watched with a pleading eyes the pickups going my direction, hoping one would stop -- but, really, it would have been dangerous for any of them to stop.

I walked about two miles, and pulled into the little lane leading to a house on the lefthand side. The yard was filled with cars, motorcycles, tricycle-motorcycles, RVs and big box trailers; the house was a wreck; and the sheds were filled with tangles of hoses, equipment and more cars. Hoarders? Yard-sale entrepreneurs? Hard to say. I walked around the house, but it seemed vacant, so I walked on.

It was a very dangerous road, with no accommodation for anybody not in a vehicle. The Northwest, finally, had failed me.

I had no phone reception, but I saw messages I'd missed earlier, including some from Joel, a reporter at the Lewisburg Tribune, seeking a time for an interview. (Kristi had set this up). He wanted it today (Thursday), and asked when I would be getting to town. When I got reception I pulled into a wider space in the road and left him a message: "Hi Joel. This is Jon Olson. I don't think I'll make it to town tonight. Is tomorrow OK? Or, heh heh, if you want to come and pick me up, we could talk in the car on the way to town."

Joel's text: "I'm headed your way. About how far from Clarkston are you?"

So I got saved again.

If you'd asked me before I left if getting a ride or two was cheating, I probably wouldn't have answered, but I would have thought so, in some way. But out in the big wide world, you would have to be insane or naive not to choose safety over risk, life over death. The mountains don't care if you die, the truckers surely don't care. But I really really care.

*

Joel brought me to Hell's Gate State Park, south of Lewiston, and I set up camp. The woman in the RV next door said, "Boy, you look tired."

Today, a photographer came and took my picture for the paper! For surviving the hill! Look for the story online in a day or two!

And I spent the day in town at the bike store and doing laundry. I love doing laundry.

Idaho's first Territorial Capitol Building, 1863.