Kiki Bikes Across America

Sunday, July 26th – 8 miles north of West Yellowstone to Virginia City, Montana

Woke up to the annoyance of having to go pee this morning. Well, I woke up at 3:45am and had to get out of the tent to pee. I’m tired of having to pee in the middle of night – it’s frustrating waking up and having to get up in the cold and go outside. Anyway, so I woke up at 3:45am and then again at 7:30am to pee so got up and Craig was up as well, and then I woke Chase up. We started packing up and rolled out about 45-60 minutes later and then Chase and I stopped at the first turn to sit down and have some breakfast (cinnamon raisin bread with peanut butter and then some apple sauce). Tasty! Then the three of us hit the road towards Ennis, Montana (65 miles from the start of the day). We did great riding today as we let Craig lead most of the way (he has a nice fast pace and a lighter load then either Chase or me)… and we were going downhill most of the way to Ennis. We were cranking anywhere from 16-25 mph or so on the way to Ennis. Our average speed for the first 66 miles was 15.9 mph and we got there in just over 4 hours, I think. It was awesome – we were really making great progress. We arrived to Ennis around 2pm and then Chase and I made our bagel sandwiches while Craig went to Subway. We then set up shop at Subway for a while to do some internet research for our route and to check email, respond, etc. and all that fun stuff. It’d been almost a week since we last had access, so we were there a while. Craig rode on as he was hoping to make it up the last big hill for the day prior to the storm. We hung out in Ennis for a bit longer and then were about to head out, but the storm was looking bad and there was lightening, so we decided not to continue. We went back into town and met a couple of other cyclists who were heading to Denver, so we spoke with them a bit and then decided to get ice cream from the former Dairy Queen Bar. I wound up with a large raspberry shake which was amazing, but totally unneeded!

Breakfast of champions alongside the road. Apple Sauce + Cinnamon Raisin Bread and peanut butter

After another long break while waiting for the storm to pass, Chase and I finally left Ennis about 7pm and started the 14 mile trek to Virginia City, Montana. We had about 8 miles of uphill grade and then 3-4 of really nice and steep downhill. On the downhill, Chase hit 40mph exactly as he hit the 3,000 mile mark and I hit my new record speed ever… I hit 55mph on the downhill without even really needing to pedal much, which was pretty awesome. I was psyched that I got that high of a speed and luckily I didn’t have to worry about big turns coming up or any traffic, so I just sat low and crouched down and easily hit 55mph – who knows, I probably could have hit 58 mph if I’d pedaled just a little harder.

Chase, Me, and Craig at Earthquake Lake

We rolled into Virginia City around 8:30 and debated whether or not we should continue. I wanted to do a century and it would have been doable since the road is downhill for quite a while before we hit another series of uphills. However, I wanted to top off on water, so I asked this lady and she told me to go to the community center and fill up there. So I did and there were the rest of the JMU guys (The “Z Team”) and Craig, so we wound up just crashing there with them. We’re staying in a really old gymnasium and sleeping on the floor inside which is great since it’s less work to put up a tent and take it down in the morning. So I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep tonight!

We did 80 miles today with an average of 13.6 mph, which is pretty awesome, especially with our 8 miles of uphill at the end of the day.

Me and Chase riding behind Craig

So we’re estimating an arrival to Astoria, Oregon between August 5th and 7th, so we should be well on target if the route is as we expect – a fair amount of downhill along the Columbia River in Washington. Our route across Idaho is approximately 170 miles from the Montana border to the Washington border on highway 12. We’re hoping to knock that out in 2 days, but now thinking about it, it’d be really awesome to cross the state of Idaho in one day – granted, that’d be something like crazy, but aren’t we crazy?