Thursday, June 08, 2000

We left Colfax under very cloudy skies, and it had rained hard during the night. After breakfast we headed towards Palouse WA on highway 272. We knew that it was going to be a difficult day when we started climbing before we even left the city limits of Colfax. This is the first time that I can remember that we could not maintain a speed of 4.5 miles per hour. Going up this grade we spent most of the time between 3.0 and 4.0 miles per hour. As we traveled to Palouse, the ups and downs all had very steep grades.

We were almost to Palouse when the sky gods decided that it was time to wet down any bicycle rider who had just finished two days of perfect bicycling weather. I put on my “happy boots” and a raincoat and we proceeded down a long grade to Palouse. We entered the town still being rained upon. The highway crossed one railroad track and then went up what seemed to be a 20% grade where it crossed two more railroad tracks. After some more climbing and a left turn, the highway was supposed to turn left but the road was closed for modification. We followed the detour and found ourselves going down a very, very steep hill into downtown Palouse. At this point our average speed was 8.2 miles per hour.

Since we were now tired of being rained upon, we looked for a place to park the bike under cover and take off some of our wet clothes. We spotted the Oasis Café, which had an awning for the bicycle. However, it was closed. We rested under the awning for a few minutes, until a very kind, gentleman invited us in. He told us he had just gotten out of the veterans hospital in Spokane and Seattle and he was trying to decide if he should reopen his cafe. He offered us coffee and told us how the restaurant had been flooded 4 feet deep in 1996. We lingered with him for about ½ hour at which time we again got back on the road. While we were resting, I put the digital camera and the cellular phone away where they would not get wet and die.

The bad news, it continued to rain. The good news, all grades after Palouse WA were not so steep. We continued on our way to Potlatch ID. It was noon when we arrived so we stopped for lunch at a small café that was also a handcraft store. The owner was very nice and talked all the while we were there. The rain had died down when we left. We started out going up a long climb. By the time we got to the top, I was tired of lifting the wet, heavy “happy” boots. We stopped and I removed them. In a little while the rain stopped. We continued on. We traveled through Harvard ID and headed into white pine forests. We were climbing steadily but were now traveling 15 to 18 miles per hour. And then the sky gods again began releasing moisture. At first it was just sprinkles but as the road got steeper, and we slowed down to 9 to 10 miles per hour, it rained harder. We eventual slowed to 4.5 miles per hour and the rain continued to fall.

We reached Emida ID where we stopped at the Wagon Wheel Café to again dry off and put on dryer clothes. When we left the rain had all but stopped. We did not get more than sprinkled on the rest of the way to St Maries ID. We went over to crests between Emida and St Maries. Both Mary Kay and I were so tired that we just barely made it to the top of these hills. When we got to St Maries all the streets run up and down. We stopped and asked where the motel was. Then we went down a hill and up a hill and down a hill to the motel. The motel owner let us use his dryer to dry our wet clothes. The dryer melted Mary Kay’s polypropylene leg warmers. Other wise it worked wonderfully. We went out to eat, came back and found that the front tire of the bicycle was flat; I removed the tire from the rim, patched the tube, replaced the tire on the rim and proceeded to fill the tire with air. I had just finished when I looked at the side of the tire and saw that the tube was going to come out the sidewall of the tire. I deflated the tire, removed it from the rim and discovered that the sidewall of the tire had a bad cut that required that the tire be replaced. So ended our day.