Wallace, ID

Superior, MT had been hosting Bike and Builders since this route began! Amazing. The school we stayed at was super comfortable (air conditioned, plenty of bathroom stalls and showers), and the church provided an amazing ribs/corn/salad/dates crumble/strawberry rhubarb crumble/water dinner. You think I'm kidding about the water, but I'm not. At many places, they give us soda, but no water which is all I really want right off the bike.

We talked a bit with the parishoners while eating, and I learned a little bit about rodeos, since one was about to start the next day. Apparently, there's the rodeo clown that has to distract the horse/bull and let the cowboy get away, and then somehow run away themselves or reach the barrel. Jeff and Jake C. told me to abandon architecture, and that it was my new calling in life. (!!!!!!!)

We missed the rodeo by a day, but we did get to watch "team roping:" a calf is let loose, one person lassoes the horns and the other lassoes the back feet. There was this one father daughter duo that was amazing. The girl got the horns, and the dad got the back feet, which definitely looked a lot harder.

The church members also provided an amazing breakfast for us: pancakes fresh off the griddle, sausages, and 2 eggs easy over. We caught one of the early rodeo events, which was barrel racing. It's a mainly women sport that involves running around barrels in tight circles. It looked pretty technical, almost like a criterium?

Barbara and I rode together for the most part today, and made it through not one, not two, but THREE MOUNTAIN PASSES. The first one wasn't that high, but it was gravel uphill and downhill. We were only slightly off the cue sheet: we'd missed Old Highway 10. The second was on Mullan road, and it was to avoid construction on I-90. It was about 5 (?) miles of climbing, but there weren't any cars, and it wasn't that steep.

The last one was on I-90 ... on a shoulder with broken pavement, shards of rock, gravel, and random tire pieces off of trucks. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty awful. And after we'd been climbing for a good 5 miles at least, we saw a sign for Lookout Pass and got really confused, because we weren't sure if it meant that the uphill portion of the Pass hadn't started yet. Fortunately, it meant we were 1 mile from the crest and a NEW TIME ZONE!

The downhill was also really terrifying. There were grates that were parallel to the road, which spells instant crash for any cyclist who happens to run over them, fast moving cars and semis, and cross winds. Also, we were incredibly high up over the mountains, the view which we could not really stop to see without some grave mishap. My hands are now sore from riding on my brakes the entire way down at around 26-7 mph. I might have drifted up to 30 mph at one point, but that was the limit.

We also saw the entrance to a bike path paralleling I-90 after a while. I at first refused, remembering Jake Schorr's bad experience with one, but we watched it follwing I-90 for a while, and Barbars was able to convince me to try it out. It was awesome. Such a short distance away from the freeway, but a different world. It was in a steep valley with what looked like walls of pine trees and a stream flowing in our direction of travel.

Wallace, ID is nestled into a mountain valley just like Superior, but it looks somewhat more affluent (?) or at least historical to a certain extent. There are flat storefronts reminiscent of older American towns and I-90 is elevated above.

This huckleberry milkshake is amazing. And now that it's August, we have 9 days til Seattle!