Blue View - The GART and the State of Bicycling
/As Marcie mentioned in her last couple of blogs, we’ve been riding the Wyoming segments of the GART (the Great American Rail to Trail bicycle path, in case you haven’t been tuned in). We now have bragging rights. We’ve completed the entire Wyoming portion of the GART... all 17 miles of it! (Wyoming has a ways to go before the remaining 491 miles of the proposed route have been converted to one long continuous bike path). Marcie will be filling you in on the details of the last couple of segments next week, but I couldn’t wait to break the news.
So, we’ve now completed one state of the twelve states along the route, or a little more than 8%. Some may look at it from the “glass half empty” view, of course, and point out that we have only completed 17 miles of the entire 3700 mile proposed route, or about 0.5%, but we have always been “glass half full” people.
Seriously, though, we have ridden considerably more than those 17 miles, and so far, we are enjoying it... so much so that we’ve decided to take it to the next level. Idaho has completed the GART across almost all of its panhandle, about 90 miles, and we’ve decided it should be our next biking goal. Our plan is to park Blue at one end and take as many days as necessary to ride to the other end, staying in local lodging along the way. Then we’ll continue the ride to the nearest car rental place, hire a car for the day and drive back to Blue.
I’m thinking about wearing my helmet all the time
To accomplish our new goal, we needed to increase our investment in gear. Our son Brennan and our nephew Erik, the family bike gurus, advised us to get good helmets, then pay particular attention to the points that come into contact with the bike... hands, feet and tush (my word, not theirs ). We’ve already invested in the basics... better seats and helmets (as clumsy as I am, I’m considering wearing mine pretty much all my waking hours). We bought good helmets, and fortunately , haven’t needed them yet. It didn’t take too many miles, however, to realize how important it was to protect our nether regions.
This came as a surprise to me. When I was a teenager, my brother and I lived on our bikes. When we were 11 and 14, respectively, we rode from Denver to visit cousins in Loveland, roughly 60 miles away, on mostly homebrew, single speed bikes. (When our mom found out, she forbade us from riding back, drove to Loveland to pick us up, and worst of all, took our bikes away for a month). We did all that saddle time without padded shorts or fancy seats... but I guess my ass was tougher then. Of course, back then when my brother and I went camping, we slept on the ground with nothing more than sleeping bags and a tarp. We certainly didn’t need hi-tech, ultralight air mattresses and tents like now. But, just like camping, that was then and this is now. Maybe someday we’ll toughen up, but in the meantime, both Marcie and I need more padding on our tushes than what’s there naturally.
First on the list was padded seats, followed closely by padded shorts, and, oh, what a difference. After six or eight miles, we no longer walked quite so gingerly. The next purchase was an anti-chafe cream that we apply if our ride is going to be more than ten miles or so. The brand we bought was Chamois Butt'r, which is applied liberally to the nether regions before donning the padded shorts. Or as Brennan suggested, “Put it anywhere there’s hair “.
Once our tushes were taken care of, we moved on to our hands. We bought gel-padded gloves to keep them blister free.
Next, since we’ll be doing a multi-day ride, we needed to get the gear for that. On the list was panniers to carry enough stuff for a few days, and rear bike racks to carry the panniers. We also bought hydration packs, which are backpacks that contain water bladders, allowing us to rehydrate as we ride. I also bought a tire pump, a tube patch kit and a bike multi-tool that includes most of the bike tools we may need for minor repairs.
Mounting the rack. Unfortunately, i Still need a few parts
So far, our $89 Walmart bikes are holding up just fine. We may yet decide to upgrade to better bikes, but they’ve been quite adequate for us so far. However, most all of our new purchases can be used on different bikes if we do ever decide to upgrade.
To figure out where the GART is and whether we’re on it, I downloaded the TrailLink app. This is the official app by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the “nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors to build healthier places for healthier people”. I bought a little gizmo to mount my iPhone on my handlebars, and I can use the app to track our progress.
Finally, we bought the Idaho gazetteer, which is an oversized, 80+ page book of maps and detailed information covering the state. Among other things, it shows most of the campgrounds and forest roads, and is great for planning purposes.
Checking out the IdAho gazetteer
Some of our new gear was shipped by Amazon to pickup points along our travels, some we located at the occasional REI we encountered, and the rest was found at local Walmart stores. The bike racks which “fit 90% of bikes” didn’t quite fit ours... I need to round up a few bits at the next big box or hardware store we come across before I can finish installing them, and the panniers are still enroute from Amazon. Other than that, we’re pretty close to trying everything out.
We’ll make a few short dry runs before we’ll be ready to set out on a multi-day trip. This is much like when we were gearing up for our long treks in Europe; before we left, we loaded our packs up and took our trekking poles on walks around the golf course and the nearby wetlands in Las Vegas. This generated some strange looks... people tended to give us a wide berth, and this was long before social distancing was a thing.
We still have a lot of traveling to do and things to see before we get up to northern Idaho and the next segment of the GART, however, and Marcie has some great blogs in the works that should keep you interested, amused and informed. Stay tuned.