Decompression
During our 68 nights away from Chapel Hill, we stayed in 58 unique towns and cities across 12 states. Because most of the towns we were in had populations less than 1,000 people, it was typically a short process to get to know our way around town. We ride into town from the east, see the gas station on the right, the park just behind it, and the diner another block away. The next morning we ride out of the west side of town. So when we got to true cities like Cleveland, Ohio, or Billings, Montana, it was almost overwhelming to figure out how to get from place to place.
With 50,000 plus residents and a campus swarmed with nervous first-year students and their accompanying families, Chapel Hill is a bustling metropolis along bike trip standards. My first night back in town, within about an hour, I was driving (a car) again. While it struck me as odd that I could go 35 miles per hour up a long hill, what really caught me off guard was navigation. It’s not that I expected to forget how to get around the town where I’ve lived for 21 years, it’s that for more than two months I had never known a place so large, so well.
We rode eight days from Sandpoint, Idaho, to Anacortes, Washington, mostly on WA-20, the North Cascades Highway, after finally getting into our western-most state on our day out of Sandpoint. Spirits were high and only Loup Loup Pass between Okanogan and Twisp, Washington, came close to bringing the group’s excitement down a notch. But, then again, we rode down into Twisp, home of the famous Cinnamon Twisp Bakery, featuring nothing better than a Cinnamon Twisp pastry weighing in at about a pound. Out of Twisp we only had three days until the end.
Climbing Washington Pass was the most beautiful pass we encountered. Tall evergreen trees stayed close by the 20 odd miles to the top. It got hot, but there were a number of crisp mountain streams cascading next to the road all the way up where we could stop for five minutes and cool off for a while. No one was in a big rush to get to the top, so we were all spread out, some more than a couple hours. After we snapped some photos at the top, we dropped down a couple miles to a wilderness campsite. Our penultimate day we dropped about 5,000 vertical feet into Concrete, Washington. For our final dinner together before the end we went to the only bar in town, enjoyed karaoke night, and then stayed up an extra hour or two going over everything we had encountered and experienced during the past nine and a half weeks.
After the customary multi-hour break right before the end, we rode the final miles into Washington Park in Anacortes on August 18. We were greeted by friends, family, snacks and one big ocean to dip our tires in. We took an hour to relish in the sight of the Pacific before setting up camp one last time in the park and heading out to a big pizza dinner in town. The next day we were busy getting our bikes to a shop to ship them home and then driving the two hours down to Seattle. We spent a couple hours looking around the city before going to one final trip dinner.
The two days between finishing, coupled with a cross-country flight home served as a valuable transition time. The flight was one step closer to feeling that sense of finality that we were all in search of. At first, the end just seems like a day, then two days and a third day off. Not until classes resumed four days after I got back did it hit me that I wasn’t on the bike trip anymore.
Of course, it was only one bike trip. Tomorrow morning at 3 a.m. Brian, Jonah and I are attempting a double-century ride to Wilmington. This summer was not the final cross-country bike trip either. There will be more. More wind; more mountains; more riders; and certainly more miles.
Thanks for reading.
We biked it. We liked it. We’re itchin’ for the next one.
