Steve's TransAm Adventure

Today Brian and I had breakfast at the Sweet Wife Baking restaurant, which was really good.  They served great pastries and traditional breakfast with a flair.  I then went to the Trailhead bike shop where Devin replaced my chain.  He had never seen a failure quite like mine.  I had the chain checked for wear back in Pueblo CO and it was fine, so I am surprised it went from fine to broken so quickly.  Touring is hard on chains and wheels.  It is not uncommon to replace a chain once or twice in a TransAm journey, and I have heard many stories of problems with cracks in the back wheel (including Brian’s).  Most riders split the weight between front and back racks.  The bike will shimmy on downhills if you put all the weight in the back, and it is hard to manage if there is too much weight in front (the handlebars always want to turn and the front wheel roll when it is stationary).  Consequently, about 60 of the weight of gear is on the back. ...

56 miles, 3954 ascent / 3169 descent, 5:35 saddle time, elevations:  start 2645, min 2164, max 3925, finish 3437.   Pine Valley heading south from Halfway Today we ate breakfast at the Pine Valley Lodge before heading south on our way to Richland.  Every ridge or mountain range we ride over opens onto a large valley with another mountain range in the distance (that we will also cross over).  The route started with a climb of 1066 ft in 4.5 miles, followed by a descent that went on for miles :) into a lush valley and the town of Richland (appropriately named). Two pretty big creeks ran through the valley and fed into the Brownlee reservoir.  It is interesting that although much of the surrounding area is classified high desert, there were no obvious signs of water shortages.  I haven’t seen significant signs of water shortage since leaving Colorado.  In fact, many of the valleys in Wyoming, Montana and Oregon have large rolling or circle irrigation syst...