Member Trip report

A morning bike ride on my 70 mile loop

04/20/2019

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I have to admit, sometimes it is hard to see the mountains while I am cycling, but I have resolved to spend my spring on the bike.  I need to ensure that I can handle the daily grind on my summer trip to France, which will amount to a month across the width of the country and back again, following the routes that my grandfather took during his time as an ambulance driver in World War I.  The trip has been an obsession of mine for the past couple years, since embarking on a research project to learn about his life.  

This morning, I set out before dawn on the rough, rolling road where I live on the volcanic plateau of southern Idaho.  Ragged clouds obscured the bright waning gibbous moon, and my bike's tires hissed through damp patches on the road: more rain last night.  It's been an uncommonly wet spring here.  

I head north on the road to Sun Valley, toiling over higher and higher ridges as I punch through the belts of sagebrush-covered hills guarding the mountains.  At the high points, I spot the big peaks of the Pioneer Range in the growing light of dawn.  I go down the line, reciting their names: Old Hyndman, Cobb, Hyndman, Duncan, Salzburger Spitzl.  By golly, do I want to be up there!  Sorry, old friends, France is calling, and my knees must be up to all-day stints on the bike.

After one last high ridge, I roar down into the valley of Silver Creek and turn east.  Silver Creek is among America's most celebrated trout streams.  It flows through an idyllic landscape of ranches and marshes, and the road here is blessedly flat.  The sun breaks above the horizon in front of me, so I stop to put on my sunglasses and remove my fleece vest.  I watch a pair of Sandhill Cranes stalking through a marsh near the road.  They are magnificent, primordial creatures, looking like they belong to the Ice Age, as their ancestors surely did.  

I fly along in high gear, the beautifully smooth pavement of Highway 20 offering barely any resistance.  Yellow-headed Blackbirds make their harsh, rattling calls from beds of reeds.  I sail through the tiny hamlet of Picabo, hometown of Olympic skier Picabo Street, and chug up the big hill at the foot of the Queen's Crown, a prominent landmark in this part of the state.  I've sworn that I'll hike to the top of the Crown one day, but bigger plans always intervene.

I stop for a break at the gas station in Carey, then head down Highway 93 for home, fighting against the gusty winds that always blow during Idaho's springtime.  This is desolate country, nothing but lava and sage stretching all the way to the Albion Mountains on the Utah border.  I note the license plates of the tourists that occasionally drive past.  California, Oregon, Washington, Alberta, and an ambitious Cadillac all the way from Florida: Ma and Pa spending their golden years seeing America.

It's a gorgeous day to be in the wide open West, but my mind is already halfway to France, riding the intricate itinerary that I have plotted out along the Western Front, visiting the sites of outposts and hospitals where my grandfather served in the War.  I'm not even sure why I have become so obsessed with the life of a man who died 11 years before I was born, and why I am letting it take me far from the mountains that I love so much.  I heard stories of his heroism from my father, and I suppose I want to understand who he was, and what he endured.  And to do that, I want to chase his ghost across the Atlantic.

The air is redolant with the heady scent of sagebrush, but under it, I can catch a whiff of the insidious sweetness of mustard gas.  And above the rush of the wind, I think I can hear the sputtering engine of Grandpa's Model T ambulance.  

Yes, my lovely, lonesome mountains will have to wait.  I'm coming after you, Grandpa.


- The Trip Has No Photos -

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