
Yesterday was a first. I received a subscription pitch in the mail from
Sunset magazine, with ?Senior Citizen Special? emblazoned across the front of the envelope.
Okay, I do turn 60 this summer, which in itself is quite unthinkable. But Senior Citizen? Balderdash!
After all, as you read this I should be into day three of my planned two-summer ride ? one month this summer and one month next ? of the U.S.
Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. (I plan to put the Canadian extension on hold for an even later adventure.) It?s a route I mapped out for Adventure Cycling back in the 1990s, but I did most of the research in a Jeep. So far I?ve ridden approximately 20 percent of the route, and I want to up that percentage to 100 before I truly am too old to do it. I feel that I deserve it ? deserve both the joys associated with riding the world's longest mountain-bike route, that is, and deserve experiencing the pain and suffering that I have in a sense dished out to hundreds of other cyclists.
This summer I plan to pedal the northern half of the Great Divide in two stages, sometimes solo and at other times with companions. Stage one goes from Bannack, Montana, to Steamboat Springs, Colorado; stage two, from Port of Roosville, Montana/British Columbia, back to Bannack. The reason for this hopscotching approach is the inordinately high snowpack the northern Rockies have experienced this winter (and spring, and summer). If you?ve been following the
Tour Divide at all, you?ll know that racers were forced to follow several snowpack-induced alternates on pavement in Montana and Wyoming. The snow is starting to melt out, although late last week Justin Simoni ? the only racer sticking entirely to the mapped route ?
called in to MTBcast, reporting that he?d walked and pushed through nine miles of snow between Ashton, Idaho, and Flagg Ranch, Wyoming, at the northern end of the Teton Range.
I'll be aboard a most excellent ride for the summer: a dropped-bar, front-shock, 29er Salsa Fargo off-road adventure bike. Jason Boucher (aka "Gnat") over at Salsa had some nice things to say
in a recent blog post about my ride as well as those of some others, including my neighbor, endurance racer Jay Petervary. Jay has embarked upon an incredibly ambitious three-stage adventure this year in his
No Idle Tour 2011. For him, the entire Great Divide is just one piece of a very long puzzle.
Please wish me luck in my efforts to avoid the bears, lightning, and physical or mechanical breakdown, and become a Great Divide ?through-biker.? Watch for an update later this summer.
Photo by Michael McCoy.--
BIKING WITHOUT BORDERS is posted every Monday by Michael McCoy, Adventure Cycling?s field editor, and highlights a little bit of this or a little bit of that ? just about anything, as long as it?s related to traveling by bicycle. Mac also compiles the organization's twice-monthly e-newsletter
Bike Bits, which goes free-of-charge to more than 40,000 readers worldwide.
Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2011/06/route-creator-hits-great-divide.html
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