Kiki Bikes Across America

Tues, August 4th – Walla Walla, WA to 14 mi. east of Roosevelt (mile marker 148), WA

We woke up early, at 4:30am and rolled out about 5:30 from Michael’s house to run to Walmart and buy a few things  - snacks and gatorade and the sort. We left there about 6:30 and headed towards Oregon along the Columbia River. Just as we were leaving College Station (next to Walla Walla), another cyclist (older man on a road bike) passed us and then Chase was going pokey, so I made it my goal to catch the other cyclist ahead and try and pace myself behind him. I was cruising – the pavement was awesome (super smooth and all), and I was doing around 17-23mph or so. Just a short bit later and I caught up to the other cyclist ahead and paced with him for a short while and then slowed up to see if chase would catch up. But then I just waited for him in the next little town.

We kept on after a quick break to refuel and a pit stop and about 10 miles or so until we he started going south along the Columbia River and hit lots of wind. The wind was fierce – I just laughed because it was ridiculous how strong it was. I was being blown all over the shoulder and going about 5mph and thought, this is insane and ridiculous. We’re not going to make any decent progress at this rate. Luckily, after about an hour or so, the wind died down a bit and we were able to ride a little faster. We passed another cyclist going eastbound – Walter, from North Carolina (but originally from Holland).

Crossed into Oregon for a bit today.

Our last 20 or so miles before lunch and we were cruising pretty well – excited to be making progress better than earlier in the morning with the wind and we were ready for lunch! Plus, we saw signs that read “Portland 215″ so we liked seeing that and we were getting excited that in a couple of days we’d be in Portland.

We had lunch at Umatilla – where we’d cross the river into Washington to ride for the remainder of the trip into Portland. We just grabbed some food from Subway and then we filled up water bottles and were on our way. We ran into a group of women cyclists that warned us that there was nothing for 50 or so miles, so we made sure all of our water bottles were full and topped off! Just as we were turning onto Route 14 to head west towards Portland, we saw a sign that said “83 miles, no services” – so it felt like Utah or Kansas where there were such long distances of nothing. From Umatilla to Biggs, there was nothing really – just 1 little store in Paterson that did some sandwiches and had a few things you could buy like chips, drinks, and other snacks. Then in Roosevelt, another 40 miles or so from Paterson, there was a little store near the campground. Overpriced of course, but they had a few things, but no hot meals.

We had stopped at the store in Paterson to get a bite to eat and rest for a while. It was pretty hot out so we were loving the AC inside We rolled back out around 4:30pm and rode until about 6:30pm and had just passed Crow Butte Park when we were both losing energy. We had done 92 miles at this point and the heat wasn’t helping, the wind had picked up, and we were started to feel exhausted. Decidely, we thought it’d be good to turn around and backtrack 8 miles (4 back and then 4 to get back to where we were when the wind/exhaustion hit us) to Crow Butte Park to nap on the grass for a bit. We were hoping to continue riding into the night some and make more miles, something like 120 or so. We got to the park and both fell asleep on park benches within just a couple minutes. I conked out for about 20 minutes and then woke up and decided to roll my sleeping mat out on the ground and rest there. Chase did the same and then about 8:30 the sprinklers popped up so we got up really fast and put everything away and thought we’d go over to the campground area and see if any sites were available. On our way there, we saw 2 long snakes in the grass (like the grass where we’d been resting/sleeping), and then decided we didn’t want to go to the campground knowing there must be plenty more snakes and we weren’t looking forward to seeing anymore. So we rolled back to the bathroom area to fill up on water bottles, change back into our biking clothes, and then continue biking up the road to see if we could make it to Roosevelt in decent time. At to our luck, there was another snake waiting for us outside of the bathroom – slitthering alongside the wall next to the men’s bathroom. That was it – we didn’t want to see anymore snakes…3 snakes in the span of 5 minutes was enough.

Off we went by bike again, leaving CroW Butte Park around 9:30pm and biking ever so slowly (wind and exhausted still) west on Route 14. We made it only 10 miles from Crow Butte Park before we were extremely exhausted and decided to look for the next best place to camp safely on the side of the road. We found a spot at mile marker 148 where there was some gravel on a slope, so we pulled in there and set up a tent and crawled in and conked out about 11:30pm. We’d hoped to have gotten up after a few hours of sleep, but we were so exhausted that we slept until 5:30am when the sun was starting to rise.

GPS Stats:
103.2 miles
09:06 moving time
11.3 avg speed
33.0 max speed

Computer Stats:
105.86 miles
09:07:26 moving time
11.6 avg speed
34.0 max speed

Snake count: 3 live snakes