We are constantly bombarded with decisions to make. Some of great consequence, many not, though we probably still give them too much worry. Lots of amazing soul satisfying riding has been happening here, and sometimes you make the decision to go home early instead.
On Sunday, Kerri, Sue, and I headed out to ride a big fun loop, and importantly, to finally tick off one the very well know downhills around here that I have not yet ridden. Mostly I just want to ride *all* the trails, but I like to pretend that I need to ride them to give customers first hand advice on the rides; a large part of what we do at the shop is stand in front of the big wall map and describe trails to visitors. We took the indirect way to the top of Hardesty Trail, pulling in lots of extra single track climbing on Sawtooth Trail to get there. The Hardesty Trail was whoop inducing, grin producing downhill fun! Five stars, I would definitely do it again. Since I was coming off my work week and had also been out the last two evenings taking in some outdoors live music, I passed on the fourth of July celebrations to rest a bit and get some things done at home. Besides I had some packing to do…
Scott Taylor was looking for a swamper again (the person who walks behind the sawyer and throws all the wood off the trail, and probably more importantly, keeps a safety check on the sawyer). A new section of trail is being added between Bunchgrass Ridge and Fuji Mountain, trails I rode in 2017 on the Oregon Timber Trail. If I went out to help Scott, this meant I had a free ride to the far end of Bunchgrass and could do a huge singletrack ride back to town the following day. The only catch was this meant I had to pack and bring my bikepacking setup with me. Scott picked me up early Monday morning and from the moment we rolled to a stop, mosquitoes could be seen swarming the car. We changed into our boots and long-sleeved shirts before ever opening a door and then immediately sprayed ourselves down with DEET. Fortunately I had also remembered to pack my headne;, it would have been a miserable day without it. We put in a great work day and though the cloud of mosquitoes never abated, fortunately they did not manage to bite me through my clothes very often. After that we headed to the closest lake, which was refreshingly low on mosquitoes as long as you stayed in the sun, and had a cleansing and cooling swim. After that Scott returned to town and I went to pull my tent out of my bike bag to set up a mosquito free haven in the shade.
I had packed as lightly as possible for this single night of camping since I had a tough day with lots of bike pushing ahead of me. I ate “cold” leftovers (it’s still constantly hot here, but not over100F anymore, thankfully) and knew that mosquitoes were a much bigger concern than rain so I had decided to bring my super lightweight single wall tent that is a bit worn and I’m losing trust of it in a solid rain, but I was pretty sure was still fairly mosquito proof. I reach into my bag, open up the stuff sack and… I accidently brought my tarp, not my tent. I had no way to make a barrier between me and mosquitoes besides wearing my, fortunately, very lightweight rain gear, but still… I guess the headnet was going to continue to be my savior, but if you’ve ever been in this situation you know that it is nearly impossible to keep the material 100% off your face, especially when in a reclined position; the mosquito with its greedy little proboscis always finds a way. And then there is the act of trying to eat dinner, quickly lifting the veil and shoving one spoonful of food in your face at a time, followed by slamming the barrier back down. Not a relaxing good time.
It was a long, but beautiful evening. At a certain point of the night it usually cools down enough that the mosquitoes finally decide to go to bed (or wherever they disappear to). Sometime after 10pm I finally achieved a little bit of peace, only one or two of those little buggers singing near my ears at a time. I woke up to a moonless, star-studded sky several times and reveled in its grandness, this quiet and beautiful vision made all the challenges seems worth it. I planned a 4:30am wake up call, both the beat the heat on the route, and to hopefully get a few mosquito-free hours of pedaling; with any luck maybe I could soon pedal into a ecosystem just different enough that the mozzies were not at peak proliferation.
I wake early as planned, to a thick cloud of mosquitoes already once again using every resource at their disposal to gain access to my blood and the distinct smell of forest fire. What? There had been no smoke up here yesterday. Two distinct strikes against the plan for the day. If the buggers were on me now, they were going to stay that way for at least most of the day, not to mention I had no way to change into my riding clothes without making myself ridiculously vulnerable to a bloodbath. Also, this seemed to be a new fire and I had no idea of its location and no way to find out without adding a significant amount of pedaling to one of a few choice vantage points for cell service. This is one of the big disadvantages of the Spot tracker and emergency beacon I carry compared to the Garmin ones with satellite texting – I can send an emergency SOS (though with no accompanying information), but can not receive information. This has come up before with wildfire, if I had a two way device a friend who knew my location could text me if they knew a fire had been reported near me and tell me to get out ASAP. The combined one two of the air attack and fire concerns made it a fairly easy decision to abort the mission and ride logging roads downhill to the highway and back home. Riding on the highway here is petrifying and to be avoided as much as possible. I had almost an hour of downhill pedaling to get home; fortunately from 6-7am on a weekday the road was pretty quiet and I was only passed by a handful of big rigs, including a couple of the always terrifying double trailer trucks.
When I first started descending from camp the smoke was getting worse and creating the eerie pall in the air that those of us in the West know all to well, but by the time I reached the highway, the air was pretty clear down low. Arriving home around 7am, I definitely hadn’t had the adventure I planned, but an adventure was had! And a delicious hot breakfast and a nap were had as well!
Despite the heat we are managing to keep our garden alive and growing. Here are a few pictures of what’s up in the backyard!
First green beans! 
My first EVER zucchini!! 
Zucchini flower.
Signing off, with love. ~ Maude
You are so adventurous, I admire your courage. The garden looks good. Sorry you didn’t get the ride home that you’d hoped for.