Day 74 – Post Falls, ID

The route looking forward was terrible. Highway riding with a narrow shoulder or the abandoned railroad ballast. Those were my choices. I laughably treated myself to a fancy breakfast as if it was my last meal. Instead of eating at the gas station, I decided I needed to take a breath and have a decent meal.

As I ate some overpriced tourist pancakes and eggs, I wrote in my journal:

To be consumed by fear. I know it now. The heart pulls on your muscles from the outside in. It wants you to fold into yourself.

I will not promise God my soul and yet I will beg Him for my life.

My alternates to the highway are a worn down remote ATV trail. I fear bears and injury and not having access to help. Or finding a ride somehow. But hitchiking with a bike is so cumbersome. For some very stupid reason, I can’t get myself to cheat (hitchike), twice in a row.

Yes. Hubris. I concede. If I wasn’t a fool, I’d find a ride for the next 120 miles. But I am a fool.

If I do die, do not lament for long. It would sadden me to know that people were sad in my memory. I would rather they dance with joy, and perhaps try knowing for a day, what it means to be a fool.

For only a fool can know true courage, love, and what it feels like to fulfill a dream.

A fool is foolish enough to dare to live, something few of us do before we die.

I gaze at the smoky sky — tangerine blues, what do you sing of?

Let these days be not the beginning of my life’s end, but the end of the bginning. I wish to live and to love, more. There are so many more people to meet and to love more. Have mercy on me.

I will recognize that all this talk sounds crazy. And it was. I had not gotten proper sleep or rest in eons. My camping pillow and pad had holes in them. I was incredibly burnt out. Everyday, I would cycle over 50 miles, and spend the rest of the day pouring over maps to carve out a safe route. I scoured the internet for traffic volume data, and looked over every inch of highway I would have to bike for blind curves and bottlenecks with no shoulder using satellite imagery. On top of that, I had to find places to sleep everyday, places to refuel on water, and places to eat.

It was an impossibly difficult task that drew the last of each nueron I had. Every time I sit down to eat, I no longer chose food. I ask the waiter or cashier to surprise me. It is quite literally exhausting to even choose what to eat. I am plagued with a decision fatigue so thick it clouds my judgement enough to cycle on the highway when there are decent alternatives, as it is more simple and requires less thinking/planning.

In the morning, I ran into Michael, the first bike tourist I ran into in all of Montana. He came down from the trail I was thinking of tackling. He was carrying more stuff that I had seen anyone carry on a bike this entire trip — a full cargo trailer with an e-bike that didn’t power anymore. He even had a log in his trailer.

He swapped intel and he assuaged me that the trail was a lot better than I had previously gathered. If he could make it with hundreds of pounds of gear, surely I could to. He did warn me though, that at some point, in addition to the forest fire smoke, that there was a coal mine on fire next to the trail?!!!

He was running on a slow leak so I gave him my patch kit, he gave me an anti-clot gauze in case I was injured in the upcoming Montana wilderness. He let me pump up my bike tires with his full floor pump. We swapped numbers and were on our way.

The first section of the trail was not awful, as promised by locals. I even ran into two other bikepackers who gave me more intel. The path would be rideable until Haugan, my stop for the night. After that, no one knew.

I rode into town where there was a motel that allowed people to camp in the back, along with a gas station and restaurant. I chatted with some campers and asked about the trail moving forward. They knew the trail and had only done it on an ATV before. At one point they said I should just go on the highway, at another point they said that I should go on the trail. They were as conflicted as I was. I said I’d be back and headed over the motel and restaurant area for some food.

My former hosts in Dalton, OH, and now Ohioan grandpa and grandma, Larry and Lois Ramer, tried to pay for a motel room for me that night (I have them tracking my location so they knew I was at the motel). They called the hotel clerk and arranged to put me up for the night. I called them and refused, explaining there was already free camping! Although a few minutes later, I began to regret it as I remembered how thick the smoke was.

The gas station had no more hot dog buns and thus not much for dinner, so I was forced to splurge at the restaurant. As I locked up my bike to go in, an exuberant Russian man began to inquire about my trip. His name was Max.

After a few minutes, I was in his semi truck. And a few minutes after that, we were chatting about everything from God to climate change. And a few minutes after that, he was buying me dinner.

My favorite thing he said was when he explained that the universe was simply too perfect for there to not be a God. He compared the world to the inner workings of a watch. Infinitely complicated and perfectly crafted. How does the moon turn at the exact same rate as the Earth, he asked me.

The ride with Max helped me get over the dangerous mountainous trail/roads that I was worried about. After that, I would be in the clear.

The smoke became thicker and thicker as we drove into Post Falls. I had never seen anything like it before. I arranged to stay in Post Falls, ID, with a boy scout master I met back in Wyoming, Scott.

This way, although we had driven straight torward the source of the forest fires, I would at least be indoors.

Scott and his wife Valley welcomed me into their home. I had the privledge of being in the company of their son, Regie, and his wife Ella, along with Valerie, their old neighbor who was now crasing in the basemenet along with her son, Dusty.

Valley shared their family story, and all of their trials with faith, love, and loss.

My favorite thing that she said was that God was one of her best friends. I thought that was pretty cool.