Departing for The Big Ride Glacier

With my bicycle already having been shipped to Montana, less the wheels, I loaded my Suzuki 1000cc V-Strom motorcycle with camping gear, clothing, motorcycling equipment and my two 27" bicycle wheels and hit the road at 6:30AM on Monday, July 7. As I headed East on I-80 up to Auburn and with the sun still low in the sky the smoke from all the fires was everywhere. As I crested the summit of the ridge East of Auburn and looked out into the distance, the smoke was laying thick like fog in the many distant gulches and valleys. It seemed more like the Lost World than 30 miles from the state capital of California. As I rode on across Nevada and in to Idaho it became apparent that the smoke from the fires in Northern California had drifted all the way into Idaho. My first day's ride took me through the deserts of the Great Basin and then North to Twin Falls, Idaho. Arriving about 8:30 in the evening, I ended my day’s journey as I started it… with smoke thick in the air, the sun low in the sky… it was a blazing smoky sphere with lines of color stratifying its appearance: A dark blood red on the bottom, and lightening in color until at last the top edge was a piercing orange, almost white in color at the very top. My second day began with the spectacle of crossing the Snake River. A beautiful half mile wide gorge, whose walls showed the canyon’s volcanic origin with the distinctive mosaic appearance of flowing lava that has cooled and shattered in the pattern of irregular block and the azure blue river twisting along the lush green shore. Riding on, I rose up in to the Salmon River Mountains traveling on U.S. 93, the road that I would follow all the way through Montana and in to Canada once the Big Ride Glacier got underway. The Salmon River’s head waters start up in the Saw Tooth Mountains and flow north and the highway parallels’ the river for some 60 miles. I proceeded on a long ascent which took me over the continental divide and down in to the Bitterroot Valley and North to Missoula Montana; famous for its U.S. Forest Service Smoke Jumper School and for being the boyhood home of author Norman Maclean, who is best known for his book and subsequent movie, A River Runs Through It. I arose early the next morning and headed out of Missoula and rode up in to the Flathead Valley, home of Flathead Lake, Montana’s version of Lake Tahoe and just as beautiful in every way. I arrived at last in Whitefish Montana at 1PM and set about getting settled in for four days of training at the 3000’ altitude which would be the minimum altitude for Big Ride. The Big Ride Glacier will depart Sunday, July 13, 2008 and head North to Eureka, Montana, a 60 mile ride as planned.