Chewelah, WA

By now, it’s clear that we all have our own motivations that get us through the ride and to the church. For instance, John P. needs to be the first one there. Ian rides fast to be the to get a fan and set it up near his thermarest so he can sleep soundly at night. Pen is motivated because the sooner he gets there, the sooner he can go back to sleep. Kate has a sixth sense for finding Dairy Queens. Reed’s guided by his stomach looking for the next snack or meal. And Sean just wants to get off the damn road (he doesn’t take well to the stresses of the road like passing cars, heavy traffic or rough road).

Today, it was obvious that we wanted to get out of the sun as quickly as we possibly could. We left Sandpoint around 6:45am and made like mad for Chewelah. I rode with Jessie for most of the day and we made a good team, before I knew it, we had already gone 25 miles.

The Washington state sign was a dud. It was placed high and therefore not possible for any fun picture opportunities; we’re hoping that the sign on the way out of the state/country is better. Fortunately, there was a McDonald’s right at the border for a quick restroom break and to fill up my camelbak with ice.

Dan set lunch at mile 35 and decided it’d be a good idea to pull off into the forest for lunch. I’m not sure why he choose to pull so far in, but I do know that it was tough to see and Jessie and I nearly missed it, Kate and Lindsey missed it later in the day.

We caught up with Kathy and together we attacked the last 20 miles climbing through a mountain. Chewelah is a small ski town and we passed right by the entrance to the ski mountain. The uphills on Flowery Trail (elevation 4,046ft) were tough but we all managed and finally caught a sight for sore legs: the diamond, yellow traffic sign with a truck on a downgrade and another sign with 8 miles on it. Amazing.

The church in Chewelah has been hosting us since the beginning and over the years they’ve picked up on what makes for a good stay. Since we had to wait for the trailer to get to the church, a bunch of people played volleyball in the yard. I choose to stand in the cold creek on the edge of the yard for a good 20 minutes relieve any leg soreness. They even arranged for the local pool to open solely for us to take showers and swim. There were plenty of funoodles for all.

And then there was the food. Since the first group arrived after morning service and the congregation was finishing lunch, they let us eat their leftovers. In addition to that, they had a snack table filled with fruit, cookies and drinks. Dinner was set for 6:00, but since we arrived early, they decided to hold “pre-dinner” at 3:30. They cooked up trays upon trays of hot dogs to tide us over until dinner. One person even brought a gallon bag of huckleberries to munch on, quite the generous move since a gallon of huckleberries goes for $40.

After a filling dinner, as usual we gave a presentation about Bike and Build. Today was special though, since it was the world premiere of Bike and Build NUS 2008’s video. B&B has a standard video that we show but it’s been played year after year and getting a bit dated and well, it doesn’t have any of us in it. So, Anson and Kevin have been working diligently throughout the trip, gathering and taking pictures and videos and editing it into a 6:00 minute video. It’s leaps and bounds better, especially since it has a picture of each of us and our roadnames. I believe they are planning to make a more general video for next year’s route to use. Oh man, it’s so good, I’ll try to get my hands on a copy and post it.

We have 7 days of riding left and as Joy informed us, it’s going to be a tough week. We still have plenty of mountains and passes to go over; it’s not downhill from here in the least bit.