Yesterday "morning" I split ways with KC, Kirby, and Ksenia (KC and Kirby are high school friends, and the acronym for their three names is unfortunately "KKK". I'll have to come up with something better to refer to them...how about The Three Muskateers?). Since my attempt at blog post yesterday got swallowed up by the National Park Service's WiFi that not only slurps up your money ($24 for a tent campsite!!) but also your creative output, you missed out on a great post about the campfire songs and easy conversation we enjoyed last night. How KC scavenged wood from up the hill so that we could have a campfire over which we roasted hot dogs, decked out with condiments swiped from a nearby buffet that caters to the Park's tourists, and how after dinner Kirby pulled out his mandolin and KC pulled out his ukulele and we sung songs that lured over a small flock of nearby campers. One of the fellows had an achingly beautiful voice that put us a little to shame, but he was extremely nice and we learned that he is in a band in New York and is the great grandson of Frank Sinatra. He's not really the great grandson of Frank Sinatra, I made that up. But his voice still rings in my ears, as does the playful mandolin notes and the laughter we shared over singing Bob Dylan songs and rapping to the Bloodhound Gang's "You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals...". It was a fun night. The most fun night I've had camping, unless you call it fun being scared that a grizzly bear is lurking outside your tent only to discover that it is helmet-eating deer. That night would be more aptly described in terms like ,"relief" or "embarassment" or "frustration that my helmet, t-shirt, and anything with salt on it is now chewed up and destroyed by a salt-seeking deer".
Back to the present: I have left the black hole of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, and now I am in the Shoshone National Forest and Wind River area, which was a huge timber production site to make cross ties for the nation's railroad system. I will be rolling past a tie hack ("hack" in this case does not refer to what a dog does after it eats too much grass, but the process of cutting, flattening, and transporting cross ties to serve as a foundation for the steel rails of the railroad) memorial in a few miles from where I am camping right now on Brooks Lake. But first- let me tell you about how I got here.
Yesterday morning I was hoping to get on the trail, er, the road (I still had to leave the Tetons on pavement) by 9am since I knew I had a 3,000ft climb up and over Togowtee Pass to accomplish. But when you are with a group, especially a group of friends you have known since high school, no, middle school, saying goodbye is hard, just like Togowtee Pass would be if I started the climb after 3pm. Which I did. I got up at 7am, wrote a genius blog post that the National Park WiFi gulped up along with our $24 for a tentsite and our $8 jar of peanut butter (I might be exaggerating there), and as The Three Muskateers slowly emerged from their giant tent cave they shared, the tea brewing began and the conversation from last night about favorite and least favorite towns we had passed through on our respective trips continued. I told them where they should head to next, since they are riding crosscountry east to west (NYC-Seattle) and last summer I rode the opposite direction across the country (SF-Portland,Maine). I excitedly told them about the Bike Camp in Twin Bridges, Montana, the historic town of Phillipsburg, and of course, the Buffalo Hippies in West Yellowstone that have become a mandatory stopping point on my bike trips that take me across the country. We ended up leaving camp around 11am- I couldn't stop talking, KC got a flat, I helped KC fix his flat, we had to try everyone's pump to determine whose was the best (no clear winner), Kirby restrung his mandolin, Kseneia seemed the only camper on track that morning. But being on track wasn't the point, however there was a giant hulking weight on my mind of the upcoming Togowtee Pass. Ksenia and I stopped by the grocery store, I added Nutella to my foodstock since I had eaten some of Kirby's that morning and it was game-changingly delicious as long as I tuned out the cries of oranguantuans getting their fingers sliced off by palm oil plantation owners. We reluctantly parted ways, and I bid them adieu but wasn't very jelous that they were headed where I came from. Yellowstone is not fun to bike through. Especially when you have a headwind (lucky for them, they are heading north through the park and should have a tailwind) and have spent the last few weeks shredding the gnar on sick trails and dirt roads. Pavement just doesn't compare.
Togowtee Pass. So by the time I left the grocery store, it was nearly noon. I was hungry for lunch, but seeing a how I had just ridden from the campsite to the grocery store, it seemed innapropriate to eat my second meal of the day after riding only 1/4 of a mile. I decided that I would eat lunch at Jenny Lake, which was a 14 mile detour off the route. As in, 14 miles each way. Given my late start to the day's ride, and my creeping fear of Togowtee Pass, performing a 28 mile detour at noon only to ride another 40 miles to get up a 3,000 ft pass that was increasingly taking over my brain seemed slightly stupid. I pushed these doubts away, reminding myself that my grandmother thinks that Jenny Lake is one of the most beautiful places in the world and that scenic detours are always worth it. Besides, how often am I in Wyoming and 14 miles away from the base of the Three Majestic Teats? The Grand Tetons beckoned, so I plunged into a headwind and began my detour, belly hungry and mind distracted by the pass I was putting myself farther and farther away from with each pedalstroke.
I was not having fun. The 14 mile spur to Jenny Lake was downhill on the way there, but there was a mercilous headwind that I couldn't help but think was generated by the National Park Service to further dissuade cyclists from riding through the Parks, as if zero road shoulder, absence of "Share the Road" signs, and hurtling RVs wasn't enough of an obstacle to enjoying the scenery from the seat of your bicycle. I tried to think about how great the view was going to be from the Lake, but the view was already stunning and I was sick of riding into a headwind. The Tetons ahead of me were alluring, but they were like a refridgerator magnet that had fallen off the fridge too many times. Togowtee Pass, on the other hand, was an incredibly strong magnet like the one Ms. Ciano showed us in high school AP Physics class that could rip the braces off of our teenage faces. I was but an iron filing perched a steel bicycle, and I caved in. After 6 miles on the detour road, I pulled over, ate a tuna-tortilla wrap, snapped some pictures of the Mighty Breasts (you must remember that "Les Trois Tetons" is a reference to the female anatomy. Three boobies!), and gave in to the strong magnetic pull of Togowtee Pass.
