In Sickness and In Health in Idaho

I stopped for the second time on the 1,000 foot climb to rest, this time curling up on the ground in the fetal position beside the road. To put this is in context, when I am touring I often have a 3,000 foot climb for breakfast and another in the afternoon; however, today this mildly graded 1,000 foot climb felt like it might be my undoing. The tears came — a mixture of fear, frustration, and the weakened physical and mental state imposed by illness. Mostly fear: if I carried on what if I literally could not pedal myself back to the car, what if I continued to feel worse?

Jesse flew up to Idaho to meet me for a two week vacation, a honeymoon we might as well call it. Our plans were to first attend the Sawtooth Valley Gathering, a music festival, and then to cycle the northern half of Idaho Hotsprings Bikepacking Route. The festival was enjoyable though hot — temps pushing the 90s and no respite from the sun to be found. As is often the case in the mountains I had been experiencing a mildly frustrating level of allergies. The one night I spent in a hotel in Boise waiting to fetch Jesse from the airport revealed to me just how much better I could breath if I removed myself from the outdoors and the endless onslaught of pollen and dust. The final day of the festival my allergies had ratcheted up a notch and I was reduced to being a mouth breather, sleep is always a miserable experience when you can only breathe through your mouth. Repeatedly waking, gasping for air, and a mouth so dry that the describing it as parched seems…like a failure of the English language, or at least my mastery of it. Monday morning I awoke feeling just as congested and out of sorts, but our bikepacking trip was to start today and start it was going to do. I felt bad enough that I wondered if I should take a Covid test, but opted against it. Ostensibly I didn’t take the test because we were in a hurry to get on the road, but really I think I didn’t want to know the answer if the test turned up positive. Besides Jesse and I are so careful, we still mask in all public locations and both of us had avoided Covid thus far. Yes, we were at a large gathering of people, but it was outdoors and we always stayed on the fringes of the crowd, not in the thick of things. The few times we took the five minute shuttle ride we wore high quality masks. It was probably just allergies. I’ve experienced allergies this debilitating before in Colorado.

Day one of our ride we managed a respectable 45 miles and ended up at Deer Flat Camp (a more prescient name than we realized) despite my less than health-full feelings, we were doing it; who needs to be able to breathe on a bike tour? That night as we made dinner the overly friendly deer arrived, very interested in our dinner and Jesse’s salty helmet. Shortly after going to bed we realized we needed to bring our shoes and helmets inside our miniature tent or they may be gone, or at least chewed up in the morning.

On day one I also managed to destroy my only shirt for the entire trip. Lots of extra sunscreen application on my back was required for the rest of the journey.

Day two found me curled up on the side of the road in the fetal position, my second rest break on that paltry 1,000 foot climb — this was not good. What if I really was sick with Covid or any of those other viruses that are still all around us and we ignore? What if I continued to get sicker and literally could not pedal back to the car? It’s probably just bad allergies. I probably just need to sleep inside for one night and then I will be able to breathe more easily. Both of these possibilities meant cutting our loop short, but the writing on the wall was starting to crystallize. I eventually surmounted that climb and we made it to a campground at a literal and metaphorical crossroads where we stopped early, swam in a lake, and I got lots of rest. Eventually we decided we needed to take a left turn to Cascade, cutting our planned loop in half. On morning three we managed another mountain pass and then descended into the small town of Cascade, getting the only hotel room available, thanks to a last minute cancellation. I posted up inside the room with AC and filled my body with good food, cough drops, and rest.

We were now committed to the shorter loop, but I still hoped to feel better for the second half of it. While my congestion never really cleared, I did a bit better the following day and we made it to our desired landing place of the Silver Creek Plunge Campground. On the way to Silvercreek we got caught in a traffic jam — of sheep! I have encountered sheep, their shepherds, and notably their sheep dogs on public lands many times on my trips over the years. I have also been threatened by their aggressive dogs numerous times so I approach these situations very warily. We were on a remote dirt road and waited for a good 20 minutes while the shepherds eventually got all the sheep off the road and up a gulch. Only one of their dogs was a big white one that I picture as a traditional sheep dog. The others were more traditional cattle herding dogs that weren’t nearly so aggressive to humans. In fact one of them wanted to befriend us and eventually peed on Jesse’s rear tire which entertained me greatly.

We eventually carried on to Silvercreek — we needed to make it there because the following day involved seven miles of singletrack climbing of unknown quality. The days were still very hot and we desperately needed to complete the singletrack climb in the cool morning air and we had no idea how long it might take.

On the singletrack I’m feeling a little better, the climb is going well, and I’m actually enjoying myself a bit. I had noticed that morning that Jesse was more sniffly than usual, but riding in the cold morning air often produces that effect; however, after we had been pushing our bikes on the upper reaches of the climb for awhile Jesse let me know he felt really, really worn down and needed to sit down and rest a bit. Shit. He never gets tired before me; he was getting sick, which meant whatever I had definitely wasn’t allergies — it was something contagious. Eventually we made it up the singletrack and down a trail that was way more fun than either of us had dared to hope.

The descent landed us at Deadwood Reservoir, and following one more climb we were back at Deer Flat Camp. At least we knew what to expect from the deer! We packed all our food carefully away, brought our helmets and shoes over to the tent, and were hiding from the flies, mosquitoes, and the sun. From inside the tent we heard the deer approach and I watched as it licked Jesse’s handlebar grips and then started working on something lower on the side of his bike that I could not see. That deer was going to town on something — probably just licking, not chewing, but still. Eventually I got up to go over and see what that deer was up to — it ran away and I could see that it had licked the entire huge side of Jesse’s very dusty frame bag completely clean. It was wet and shiny black with deer slobber. The animals really had a thing for Jesse on this trip! By this point, day five of our trip, my conditions had notably improved — my throat felt better and my energy was increasing, though I was still producing copious amounts of snot and would wake up with uncontrollable coughing fits during the night. Jesse on the other hand was definitely in the thick of it; however, we had no choice but to carry on. With a little luck we would make it back to Stanley and our car the following day. The next morning we made good mileage and decided to push on through the final 20 miles of highway riding back to town. Jesse took the lead with me drafting and we pushed hard the whole way, especially the last 20 minutes when I realized the bakery where we wanted to get second breakfast was probably closing soon. We made it to the bakery with 5 minutes to spare and each enjoyed a large delicious egg breakfast and bottomless cups of coffee.

As exhaustion was starting to set in the we pushed through the effort of getting our bikes unpacked and broken down so that they both fit in the van and headed out of town to rinse off in nearby Stanley Lake and camp for the night. I had one Covid test with me and the following morning decided one of us needed to use it. If it was Covid I would probably still test positive even though my symptoms were waning, but since Jesse was clearly in the thick of his illness we decided he should take the test. Yep, a clear positive result right away.

Covid finally got us and our planned 10 day trip had been reduced to five days plus we still had almost a week available for car camping and or the occasional hotel, as needed. I joked that this was in fact our honeymoon and we were testing the “in sickness or in health’ part of things, though Jesse reminded me that we never actually said those words. We made it almost 2.5 years without getting Covid and honestly given how mild our illnesses were we made out pretty good — thank goodness for vaccinations with booster shots!

It’s now 11 days after my first symptoms and other than still having slightly high snot production I feel almost back to normal and Jesse is fairly healthy again, as well. We have spent the last three nights camping next to a lake north of McCall Idaho, getting lots of sleep, swimming a bit to cool off and we have even started to enjoy some hikes and bike rides again.

Try this link for video of the Sandhill Cranes. I couldn’t see my screen, so sorry the birds are often off screen, but the sound of their calls is completely worth it! https://photos.app.goo.gl/7PuFWvRRJB9yxqVH6

In the end we sampled a number of Idaho’s natural hot springs and Jesse returns to Santa Barbara by airplane soon and I head back to Oregon for two more weeks. I’ll be taking a two week fulltime class I am really excited about — but more about that next time.