Training Notes

During the few months prior to departing, I tried to train to prepare myself physically for the 3000 mile trip from Fort Clatsop, Oregon to St. Louis, Missouri. I began by riding about 37 miles per day on those days I had time (back in May) and then upped that to 50 miles per day as soon as I was able. I rode a route that went northeast on H Highway to Excelsior Springs and then from Excelsior Springs on O Highway down to Orrick. I would then turn west-northwest on new Highway 210 until I could get onto old Highway 210 which would take me past the Liberty baseball park and recreation fields and then to Highway 291 back to Liberty. O highway gave me a good number of hills to train on since I figured I would need the stamina for the mountainous terrain to come. I usually did this route in about 3.5 hours with one stop at a gas station in Orrick. I got to know the owner there who told me about his family, his faith and the car accident that put him in a wheel chair (where he was the first time I met him). He has been recovering and is now up on both legs although still in braces.

I continued training through May and then had to go to Puerto Rico for field work for a month in June but resumed training in July. I then returned for a week to Puerto Rico prior to coming back for a few days to pack and leave. During my last week in PR, I worked too hard and got too little sleep due to work having not proceeded as well during the summer as it should have (I’ll just leave it in the third person for now). Anyway, when I went for my shakedown ride (fully loaded with all the stuff I will be carrying with me), I felt pretty bad. I felt as if all I wanted to do was fall asleep on the bicycle. I also stopped more and it took me a full two hours longer than normal to complete the same 50 mile route. Hopefully, with better rest, things will go better on the road. On August 6, 2006, I disassembled my bike (racks and fenders had to come off, packed it in a box kindly provided by the guys at Biscari Brothers’ Bicycles and headed to Omaha, Nebraska, Kindly transported by my lovely wife, Tac.

Missouri City

While training, I had the opportunity to observe the small town of Missouri City. This is a small community just off new Highway 210 in the Missouri River bottoms. I pass through this town because it gets me off the larger highway and, at the beginning, it allowed me to bypass a significant hill. I passed through this town maybe 10 or 11 times before I saw the first human being. This is a town that used to depend on river travel then on rail travel when the river boats stopped running. After Highway 210 was built, the town probably depended on it for its livelihood but, with the construction of new Highway 210 (about a mile north of the town), old Highway 210 enters the town on the east but is blocked off by guard rails crossing the road at the west end of the town. I can still travel the old highway by lifting my bicycle over the guard rail and motoring down the thin strip in the middle of the road that remains as vegetation slowly overcomes the asphalt. As Missouri City withers, nature reclaims what was once the dominion of humans and their cars. I wonder how many similar towns, abandoned by river boat and train and truck, I will see withering in the American west as I travel routes opened by Lewis and Clark.

General Observations on Travel

One interesting thing about travel is the people you meet and the conversations you overhear and sometimes become a part of. While sitting in the first class cabin of American Airlines flight 1894, I was amazed at the insanity of how we were being doted on by our flight attendants while people back in coach were paying good money for crackers and peanuts (literally). While there, I overheard one flight attendant say to the other, “Why do I always get all the heart attacks?” She had been looking for the first aid kit (couldn’t find it) because someone back in coach had poison ivy and needed some benadryl. This turned to conversation toward health issues on airplanes. Thus the comment… So being the curious type I asked, “Do you get a lot of heart attacks on airplanes and, while I am asking, are there any free seats back in coach?” The less hazardous of the two and the one who will get me all my drinks for the remainder of the flight replied that they get a surprising number of heart attacks on airplanes but she is sooo glad that we now have in flight defibrillators as if that is supposed to make me feel better considering that the more hazardous flight attendant couldn’t find the first aid kit. And is this really the kind of conversation that the people at headquarters want their flight attendants to be having with passengers. It makes me wonder when they will show the movie Flightplan or Cast Away as the in flight movie.

And, while on the subject of in flight entertainment…American Airlines opts for “CBS Eye on American”. This is basically a long paid advertisement for CBS programs, among them, Entertainment Tonight”. The ET promo is done by Mary Hart. I no longer own a television so I may be overly sensitive but, am I the only person who thinks Mary Hart is one of the scariest chicks around. She talks like she took speech class from William Shatner and her mouth is so large and her gestures so exaggerated that she looks like a bobble head version of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Now, don’t think that because I am complaining that I have anything against in flight entertainment. I enjoy movies like “Take the Lead” (Antonio Banderas reforms a bunch of inner city kids in detention hall through the magic of ballroom dancing. OK, I slept through it.) and “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” (as if the original wasn’t bad enough). In reality, the Mary Hart bobble head beats the hell out of listening to the person sitting next to me outlining her journey to Kansas City as the jumping off point for her combined tour of the Precious Moments Museum and the Laura Ingalls Wilder “biogeographical” pilgrimage. At the time, I thought that woman was pretty unhinged. It never occurred to me that, had I regailed her with my plan to bicycle the Lewis and Clark Trail, she might have regarded me as the unhinged one. After all, she was traveling to Kansas City by plane where she would get in a rental car and drive to the Precious Moments Museum and then set out on the less than 1000 mile trek following the route of the Ingalls family (of Little House on the Prairie fame) throughout the upper Midwest.

I, the truly unhinged, plan on traveling just shy of 3000 miles, unsupported by a sag wagon, on a bicycle, solo. I’ll squeeze the whole route into the 50 days between the end of my field season in Puerto Rico and Septemer 23, 2006 (the 200th anniversary of Lewis and Clark’s return to St. Louis). And I’ll kill three days traveling to Portland, Oregon by train that still puts me 87 miles short of my ultimate starting point, Fort Clatsop in Astoria, Oregon. Part fo this is due to finances (planes being much more expensive) but part is due to the satisfaction I find in working my way down toward a more Lewis and Clark style speed (although I will be covering distance much faster than they did). I traveled by plane (fast modern jet travel) from Puerto Rico to Liberty. I then took a car (relatively fast, modern automobile travel) to Omaha, Nebraska where I boarded the California Zephyr (slow, modern train travel) to take a three day, yes that’s three day, train ride to Portland, Oregon. At that point, I will reassemble my bicycle and start a long trip using the mode of transportation only second slowest to walking in order to make my way back to St. Louis, Missouri.

I have heard it said that one hallmark of the truly insane is their firm conviction of their own sanity.


6 August 2006 – The Journey Begins.

I awoke this morning and went to church for what may be the last time in a while. After church, I packed my bicycle in a used Trek box provided by the guys at Biscari Brothers’ Bicycle in Liberty. The box had straps for securing the bicycle frame to the box and had custom made slots of padding for different parts of the bike. My Fuji Touring is probably feeling pretty cushy under the train right now. I hope it doesn’t expect this kind of treatment always.
After packing my bike, I went to school to clean a lab that my Animal Behavior students and I left pretty trashed at the end of the spring semester. When I returned, I planned to pack my stuff in the car, shower and hit the road with Tac for a leisurely trip to Omaha, Nebraska. Until my phone died. I had a few new messages and when I tried to retrieve them, I got no sound out of the phone. We tried to take it to the Sprint Store in Liberty (hours from 11:00-6:00 on Sunday) but they were closed at 5:00 for an “Area Meeting”. The manager apologized for being closed when they said they would be open but that still left me with no phone. The fact that I was about to embark on a 3000 mile trip without a communication device was immaterial. So much for the “service” we are paying for.

Well, after a start reminiscent of Lewis and Clark’s (3 miles the first day with people left behind who had to catch up, etc.) we were on the road and then everything was better. I got a little more organized while Tac drove and then we talked. We left Liberty at 5:30 and arrived in Omaha at 8:15. We found the train station (easy) and then went to nearby Old Market for dinner. We ate at Vivace, a nice Italian place with me in my convertible pants and William Jewell College t-shirt. After moving away from a young man try into impress his date with how long and loudly he could talk we were seated next to some middle aged women out for “girls night out”. After a loud set of interchanges about why their cell phone cameras took substandard photos and numerous attempts by the more than patient waitress who was serving them, they departed. All in all, a pretty nice meal and a pretty enjoyable time.

Tac drove me to the train station where I got my tickets and checked my bags. Five dollars extra for the bike. Tac took a picture of me and the boxed bike with the baggage cart in the background. The baggage cart looked like something the settlers might have used on the Oregon Trail (see photo).We walked around a little and then Tac headed home. I got my “boarding pass”. It is basically a piece of paper with my destination, my car number and the number of people traveling with me. I place it above my seat and that “reserves” my seat. It seems an archaic system fraught with potential error but it seems to be working with as few people as are on the train. The train arrived about 35 minutes late and we departed about an hour after we were scheduled to. I got on board and fell promptly asleep.

While I waited, I was exposed to a new version of television. I’ll call it Upper Midwest TV. While the news was on, they of course took time out to give advertisers the opportunity to hawk their wares. While I’m normally expecting pharmaceutical commercials (Hi, I’m Bob Dole…), I was a little amused at their absence. In their place were ads for things like YieldGard Plus Corn and RoundUp Ready Corn 2 (the sequel?) which are of course varieties of corn that have been bred to either withstand pests or withstand common herbicides meant to kill weeds. These products are guaranteed to increase your yield $2-$13 per acre. This should all cause us to wonder at the extremely marginal existence that farming the upper Midwest truly is.

7 August 2006

I woke up at about 7:40 just outside of Denver. We were informed that our route was being changed due to track construction on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. Our route now takes us north of the Colorado Rockies and over the High Plains of Colorado and Wyoming. We pass the Denver Stockyards (photo) and end up at the Denver Union Station. Smokers are reminded that this is a non-smoking train and it will not stop between Denver and Salt Lake City so they had better smoke now. The chief attendant mentions that maybe this is a good time to quit. The up side of this is that we won’t make any of the normal stops and that will put us back ahead of schedule.

After I kind of got myself settled, I called Tac to check in. As we talked, we passed a prairie dog town and shortly thereafter, a herd of about 20 pronghorn antelope. We then saw a herd of bison being raised for meat (the pronghorn and prairie dogs are presumably wild). We also passed a large wind farm blades slowly turning, churning out electricity. We are passing trough a lot of what looks like sagebrush. I have begun seeing lots of magpies and even saw a merlin. I have now seen so many pronghorn that they don’t even warrant mention. The Rockies are far off to the south, blue in the distance.

8 August 2006

Still on the train. The other passengers have located the power outlets. There are three available on the entire train for those of us in coach to use. Competition is fierce. I charge up while I do other things (gawk out the sightseer car) and then take the computer back to my seat to write. I assume that Amtrak designed its cars before the wired age when we all had to plug in ourselves every few hours in order to function. Even Mr. J. Smith (no lie) who works in the lounge car has a PS2 that he is playing with when he is not serving anyone. They also designed their trains when women got a dressing room and men didn’t warrant anything but a toilet and a sink.

Overnight we passed through Salt Lake City arriving 1.5 hours ahead of schedule at 10:30 PM. We were warned not to go into the downtown area (about five blocks from the station) because we might not make it back in time and it was very dangerous. In fact, it was very nice and would have been nicer had anything been open. I needed cold medicine as I have been plagued by a cold since the day I left. So, I headed out. I passed through a nice shopping district that seems to be SLC’s answer to urban renewal and then got directions to the local Maverick from a bicycle cop (very cordial). On the way I found myself across from the Mormon Temple (it was on Temple Street, duh!). Elaborate but smaller than I thought it would be. It was dramatically lit but I really did not have time to take a proper photo. This is also Ground Zero for Mormonism. There are lots of Mormon related buildings in the blocks immediately around the Temple and they seem to own quite a lot of the real estate in the immediate vicinity. I got my goods and headed back to the train and made it with 20 minutes to spare.

At night they show movies in the Lounge Car. This car has large picture windows and t.v.s installed at the end of each car. Lucky for me, they were showing the movie that I purposefully slept through on the plane back from Puerto Rico less than a week ago (Ice Age 2: The Meltdown). I retired to my seat and tried to sleep. Later they were showing Mission Impossible 3 (I think that is the iteration). An hour and forty minutes of Tom Cruise grimacing with determination while everything around him blows up.

I woke up this morning at 7:40 somewhere east of Winnemucca, Nevada. We were going through sagebrush country and then entered a valley that was covered in wetlands in what is essentially a desert. It was such a startling contrast to the surropunding terrain – bright green areas right next to brown to sage green areas with a pale blue sky and parched brown hills in the distance. A river was running through the valley and I saw a plethora of wildlife in and around it. White pelicans silhouetted against the blue sky; western and pied billed grebes diving in the pool; coots paddling around; great blue herons and other egrets fishing in the shallows. Wonderful! I wanted the train to stop so we could walk around.

About 30 mile later, we came to the town of Winnemucca, Nevada. The Amtrak Station looks like one of those bus shelter cities use with stick on lettering like you get at your local hardware store spelling out “AMTRAK STATION WINNEMUCCA, NEVADA”.

It is strange how, on a train, you never really know exactly where you are at any given point without the familiar landmarks of road signs and mileage markers. You have to give yourself up to the rhythm of the train and a slow rhythm that turns out to be. Space begins to be meaningless. What matter most is that occasionally it stops and you can get out and stretch your legs, fill your lungs with fresh desert air and for some, fill up your lungs with cigarette smoke. Amtrak is a non-smoking environment!! Lots of people got off. Smokes were lit. Surprisingly, some people got on. I took some photos and they called for “All Aboard” and off we went, now some 3-4 hours behind schedule.

When I was growing up and watching westerns on t.v. on Saturday afternoon, the train conductor or station manager was always checking a nice shiny gold pocket watch on a nice shiny gold chain as if the checking in and of itself would make the trains run on time. And it seemed that the only time they ran late was when some nefarious outlaw waylaid them in route. But now I know the significance of the watch checking. They wanted to know precisely how far behind schedule the trains were running.

Lewis and Clark had their won timekeeping troubles. One of their charges was to map the areas they traveled through. This required knowing, in an absolute way, their position. This could only be done by measuring ones longitude and latitude and, in the case of latitude, you needed to know what time it was relative to the time at Greenwich, England. So they brought one of the wonders of the time with them – a wind up chronometer. Unfortunately, sometimes they forgot to wind it and sometimes it stopped even when they did wind it. When this happened, they had to halt their progress and wait for noon at which time they would, as best they could, determine the exact moment of noon based on observations of the movement of the sun. Then, resetting the chronometer, they would take a series of readings that would allow them to calculate their position.

We passed through Reno, Nevada which is on the Truckee, River. It is stunningly beautiful. Clear mountain water coming from snowmelt up in the Sierra Nevadas with people fly fishing and rafting down the river. The train follows the river up into the Sierra Nevadas and then crosses the summit and we start heading down to Sacramento. We passed Donner Lake where the Donner party was stranded for that fateful winter. Thoughts of cannibalism float through my head as I watch some truly memorable scenery pass by the window.

9 August 2006 – Still on the train.

Day three of train travel and it all begins to melt together. We got in to Sacramento last night at about 5:30 and my next train was not scheduled to leave until 11:59 PM. I asked about storing bags and the station agent looked at me like I was the first person to ever ask. As soon as I made the move, everyone else on the train followed suit. After that, I went off in search of food. Since the train station is down near the capitol, things generally close up in the evenings. There is an open air mall (not a strip mall but arranged like a regular mall but open, with awnings) so I headed down there. Ended up eating at the Hard Rock Café mainly because I could get a Guinness. I would have taken in a movie but the timing was al wrong (or so I thought). I walked over to the Capitol building and took a few pictures. Nice but, once again, I thought is would be bigger for a state like California.

I walked back to the train station as everything was closing down. Talked with a woman named Angela who tried to convince me that the predictions in Revelations were coming true and these were the harbingers of the end times. Part of her argument was that we wouldn’t know when the end was coming but that did not stop her from trying to convince me that it was now. Her primary evidence seemed to be that Jerusalem is “surrounded by armies”. I mentioned that it seemed to be surrounded by armies in 1947 and 1967 but the end times did not come. When I asked her what was different about this time and she was hard pressed to come up with any other examples of our impending doom. Oh well. My skepticism is probably another convincing piece of data supporting her claim.

We finally got on the train at 2:00 AM. The people in front of me decided to talk for the next 45 minutes even though most of the rest of our car were trying desperately to sleep. They finally turned in themselves. The train is so crowded that some people did not even get seats. I had gumption and got on early and found a seat. The attendants seemed overwhelmed at the number of people getting on in Sacramento. Evidently, this line at this time of year is very crowded.
This morning I awoke as we were passing Mount Shasta which evidently got a new coat of snow a few days ago. It was pretty. We also passed Upper Klamath Lake which is the largest Freshwater Lake in Oregon. It is bordered by extensive wetlands and I once again witnessed lots of waterfowl including those mentioned before and a black crowned night heron. I have never seen so many grebes in one place. Strangley, although the lake is the largest, it is also the most shallow reaching a maximum depth of only 12 feet. This is partly due to the particulars of its formation and the fact that all the tributaries that feed it no longer flow into the lake and it is slowly drying up.

We are making our way north to Oregon and then will cross the state to get to Portland. I suspect we will get there sometime around 6:00 or 7:00 this evening which means I will overnight in Portland and try to get up tomorrow morning early and make it to Fort Clatsop in a day. I will then try to make it back to Portland and then on to Hood River by Saturday because my friend Aaron Shiels is going to a wedding there and I hope to hook up with him.

Currently at least 4 hours behind schedule. I will probably shed public transportation after this train ride and make it the remainder of the way on the bike. I am getting antsy to be on the road and don’t really want to be cooped up on a train or a bus any longer.