Sunday we begin the ride up to Anacortes, where the official Northern Tier route begins. I think I heard that we're going to take three days to get there, which should be a nice easy pace - I believe it's only about a hundred miles. And we start out by riding a ferry, woo-hoo.

     We're in Kitsap State Park on one of the many islands in Puget Sound, and despite the rain I must say that I'm pleased to be out of city, out of the youth hostel. Mainly I'm just glad to finally be under way.

     So last night we camped at Fort Worden, the old Army base where "An Officer and a Gentleman" was filmed. It's on one of the several islands we've been hopping around on, and it was a fine place to camp. We even got some sun in the afternoon, enough to get a little burned. Then up early to catch a ferry to yet another island. I could find the names of these islands but I'm too lazy. However, we went through a town called Coupeville, so those of you who are following along on a map can figure it out. And then up across Deception Pass, which wasn't a pass at all but rather the space between our last island and the beginning of the mainland, and which was spanned by a terrific bridge that was a little scary on a bike, what with the wind and the trucks and all. Also it was raining.

     Tonight we're camped in Bay View State Park. We all just got done doing the traditional "wheel dipping" picture. The idea being that you get a picture of yourself with your rear wheel in the Pacific and then one with your front wheel in the Atlantic if and when you actually get there. Of course we were actually dipping in Puget Sound, but whatever. In addition, for good measure, I'm also carrying a small bottle of Pacific water with me to pour in to the Atlantic.

     Tomorrow we're off to Rockport, leaving this edge of the continent for good. On the way I'll be dumping at the Post Office my first load of Stuff I Can Live Without And Which I Would Really Rather Not Carry Over Washington Pass.

     I'm not going to blab on and on about how beautiful the Cascades are, that pretty much goes without saying.

     Tonight we're camped at Diablo Lake; tomorrow's the big climb over Washington Pass. We're doing something on the order of 4000 feet in 25 miles. Then it's 35 miles down hill to Winthrop, and our first rest day. The weather is supposed to be even nicer.

     That's it for now - not a very inspired entry, but I'm beat and dinner's almost ready.

     Yesterday we just hung around in Winthrop, a tourist town with lots of hippies and rednecks and mountain bikers. Highlights included getting my hair all cut off (I really did it), playing miniature golf, mailing more stuff back home (including my hairbrush) and drinking a lot of espresso. Oddly, it's been almost impossible to get a cup of drip coffee since leaving Seattle, but espresso is everywhere. Every little podunk town has at least one drive through espresso place, even convenience stores sell the stuff. But not a Starbuck's in sight.

     I prefer the shorter steeper climbs, because you get to the top sooner. So I should really get a kick out of tomorrow, Sherman pass, the highest one we've done - we get up it in about 15 miles, I think. Then a monster descent in to Colville. After that, we're done with the major passes until we hit Glacier, or so I'm told. I haven't actually checked the maps, though.

     Highlights from Colville include getting evicted from the city park where we intended to camp (we ended up at the fairgrounds) and walking down to the theater to see "Mission Impossible 2".

     So I'm losing interest in the cycling part of this. I wouldn't want to travel any other way, but the cyclist in me has been replaced by the traveler who has chosen the bicycle as his preferred means of transportation. If that makes any sense. I don't care about speed; I'm slow, on a daily average. I'm usually one of, if not the, first to leave camp in the morning, and one of, if not the, last to hit camp in the evening. I ride alone most of the time, and I'm prone to spontaneously stopping and just looking and listening for minutes on end.

     I'd say that 20 percent of the riding is sucky, 50 percent is quite fine, 20 percent is very nice, and 10 percent is absolute perfection. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

     Despite what I said yesterday about going slow, today turned out to be a hammering day. It started raining last night, and we had a fairly short and flat day in to Sandpoint (55 miles), so I just got in a mood and did my best to keep up with Gary, The Fast Guy. Pretty much wore me out.

     We're staying in a small warehouse owned by a friend of Terry, our group leader. We are all thrilled to be camping on concrete with a roof over our heads. We've got a handful of passes to a local health spa for showers and a hot tub, so it's pretty much the Hilton as far as we're concerned.

     They call Montana "Big Sky Country" but you couldn't prove it by me because I haven't seen the damn sky yet to judge its size. As far as I can tell it should be called "Really Cloudy And Rainy Country". Except for an hour or two this afternoon I haven't seen the sun in four days.

     On the whole, this was not one of the more inspiring days I've had. Good stuff happened, like seeing that bear run across the road in front of me and sharing an eight inch hamburger in that perfect Montana roadhouse with Terry and Lauren and Felicia - but waking up to 40 drizzling degrees and then snapping my chain on the first hill took some of the charm out of the day...

     It was a pretty tough day - long and hilly and very very wet. I rode hard, because hey, why not? It's been alternating between drizzle and downpour for the last 24 hours, and it's really getting on my nerves. So I've decided that the best way to deal with it is to just put my head down and hammer until the weather improves.

     When I woke up and saw blue sky this morning, I did a little dance and couldn't stop smiling for an hour. Anyone who's spent much time around me will know that neither spontaneous dancing nor extended smiling are things that I do very often. The blue did not last for long - we rode under clouds for most of the day - but it did not rain.

     I repeat: it did not rain today. Not one stupid little drop fell on me.

     And apparently the jet stream's up to something that should give us fine weather through the weekend, and through Glacier.

     I'm writing this from a nice hostel in the very nice town of Whitefish. I got my pedals, I got my chain, and in about an hour I'm going to get my face stuffed full of pizza.

     We're in Glacier, camped on Lake McDonald, and it rained on us most of the way here. As an added twist we had about eight miles of dirt road on the route today. I'm sure you can imagine what that was like in the rain.

     I gather the mountains here are stunning. I'll let you know what I think if the weather lifts enough so that I can actually see them.

     Tomorrow we go up Going to the Sun Highway, over Logan pass. Unfortunately the park rangers say that the weather here is supposed to be pretty much the same as today for the next few days, so what is supposed to be a very inspiring climb may well be a wet and cold grind.

     But wait, there's more! Tomorrow is the first day of traffic control on Going to the Sun - there's no shoulder up there, and lots of RVs, so bikes are limited to certain hours. The bottom line being that if we're not over the pass by 11:00 AM, they fine us twenty bucks each, throw us in the back of a truck, and drive us back down to where we started. At least that's the threat. At any rate, it's a long steep climb, so we're planning on getting on the road by 6:00.

     There were clouds, even some rain, but we saw. If you want to know what it was like, just look up "glorious" in a thesaurus and string all of the synonyms together.

     Now we're in Saint Mary, on the other side of the continental divide, and at the edge of the prairie. I'm sitting in my tent listening to approaching thunder and the first few fat drops on my tent. It's gonna get loud in here pretty quick... In fact, just as I was typing that, it started. Hmmm, that sounds like hail... Yep, hail. But I don't mind - this is the second thunderstorm that's stepped on us in the last two hours, and in between it was clear and warm. Thunderstorms I can handle, when they come and go quickly.

     The sun takes forever to do anything up here. It starts getting light about two hours before the sun actually appears, and similarly doesn't get dark at night until well after 10:00.

     We're in Cardston, Alberta, birthplace of Fay Wray. They have a grand Fay Wray memorial fountain downtown, complete with a sculpture of King Kong clutching Fay in his big gorilla hand.

     It was a lovely short ride today, just 37 miles over the most perfect rolling prairie. Off to the west the Canadian Rockies that I rode out of this morning got shorter but longer until they completely filled the horizon. It's really beautiful country. I may be thoroughly sick of the prairie by the time we're off of it, but right now I'm quite pleased to be on it.

     Tomorrow will be longer, 74 miles. And now that it's getting flatter, our daily mileage is going to increase; we have several 90 mile days before our next rest day Minot.

     I haven't seen sky like this since Mongolia. I've never raced a train before. What a perfect day, the reason I'm doing this damn thing.

     A fat tail wind pushed me 68 miles in three and a half hours, from Cut Bank to Chester. The sky is half blue, the rest harmless white fluff. The prairie is still rolling but getting flatter, with silos every few miles, some built up for grain, others dug down for nukes - both impressive in their own way.

     I crossed under Interstate 15 - that same piece of concrete goes past my parent's house and on to Mexico.

     Spinning along with the wind at an effortless 22 miles per hour, I can hear everything - like a balloonist, I'm moving with the air, there's no whistling in my ears. I hear my tires on the asphalt, I hear the birds and bugs, and I heard that train when it was about a half mile back. Right before he caught me I looked back and dropped down to my smallest cog and started pounding as hard as I could - 35 miles an hour I was doing, completely spun out on my mountain gearing - the locomotive was catching me, easing past - the conductor blasting on his horn and waving, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs, I don't even remember what. The train inevitably pulled away and my legs were burning and if I hadn't sent my heart rate monitor home I know it would have read close to 200. I knew I couldn't win, but I gave him a run for his money for a few hundred yards.

     Tonight we're pitching our tents in the Chester city park. They've promised to turn off the automatic sprinklers for us, but I'm so used to waking up with rain dumping all over my tent and I that I don't really care if they do or not.

     It's the sort of shop you'd expect to find in a small Montana town. Meaning that they don't have much stuff. The owner had to pull a cassette for me off of one of his bikes on the floor, and it's going to cost me - 80 bucks for XT, but whatever, I don't have many options. He's back there building me a new rear wheel right now, with the best rim he had - some brand I've never heard of which only cost 40 dollars, not much money for a good hoop. Hmmm. I only hope he knows how to build it strong...

     And still with the trains. We've been on, and will stay on, Route 2 for a while, which stays with the tracks for as far ahead as I've bothered looking on the maps. It's the Empire Builder line, originally running between Minot and Havre, now between Chicago and Seattle. Mostly container freights, presumably carrying stuff from the port of Seattle to points east. Twice a day the Amtrak comes through; I've never seen it, but I recognize its passing by the brevity of the rumble...

     We're in Glasgow, getting on towards the North Dakota border. After two 45 mile days, we returned to reality today with 74. 45 is a very nice day, by the way, allowing plenty of time to stop at cafes and local museums and whatnot. But even 75 leaves some time to relax. Today I made a point of never riding hard enough to feel like I was really exercising, and that worked out to an average of 12 miles an hour. Slow, but hell, what have I got to be in a hurry about?

     The clouds are amazing: the scale of the things, and the way the air stacks and twists them around; big fatties that only inhale and climb up their own backs untouched until something way up there smears their heads right off. And they're sneaky. I look down or over yonder for a few minutes and the next thing I know six of the friendlies have coagulated in to a big angry gray bastard poised to eat me, or at least piss on me.

     We're in Culbertson, Montana - pretty much one third done, both in terms of days and miles. Also in terms of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (I've had sixty so far, give or take). Tomorrow we cross in to North Dakota and a new time zone.

     We're camped at Lewis and Clark State Park on Lake Sakakawea, a lake that Lewis and Clark would not recognize since it was formed by the construction of Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. I actually haven't made camp yet - a storm hit just as I was arriving, so I'm hiding inside the campground office until it passes.

     Even though we're in North Dakota, we still managed to get in over 3000 feet of climbing today. It goes up, it goes down, it goes right back up again, all day long. Now we're in Stanley, a nice little town with speakers playing bad 70's pop on every corner downtown. It's kind of bizarre.

     I didn't know that North Dakota was oil country. It is, though. Every other wheat field has a pump in it, and there were several new wells being drilled that I saw.

     We're in Minot, North Dakota, the biggest town we've been through since Seattle. I counted six storeys in a building downtown, quite the skyscraper. We arrived yesterday and took a rest day today. Last night we went out for dinner and discovered that it's possible to make Mexican food with what appears to be all of the right ingredients but still somehow leave the flavor out. Today was all about running errands, which seems to be what most rest days end up being.

     We've been seeing seagulls since leaving the Rockies. Someone should tell them that there hasn't been a sea around here for many millions of years.

     Okay, nothing left but tech talk today, so non-bike geeks need read no further.

     Tire news: Through Chris B's contact at Specialized I've learned that the Nimbus Armadillo tire had a design flaw. Hey, no kidding... But they've apparently addressed the issue, so I'm officially rescinding my "Don't buy" recommendation. They're good tires, as long as they don't fall apart.

     It's flatter now than it was the last few days heading in to Minot, and there are getting to be more trees. Still not a lot, but more than there used to be, which was pretty much none.

     And also: there have been aches and pains all along, that's to be expected. Sore back, sore neck, aching muscles, saddle sores - all of those are manageable, and I've been managing all of them. But I'm really worried about my Achilles tendons. They've been giving me sporadic trouble since day four, but for the past week they've been giving me more serious problems. I can't put anything in to my pedalling without a lot of pain. If I absolutely must push, I have to clip out and stand and use my heels, and today it got to the point where even spinning in my granny gear with no load was hurting. I've been eating Ibuprofin like candy, and tomorrow I'm going to start icing. But basically, I'm riding lame. And my fear is that if I've developed tendinitis and keep riding on it I could be setting myself up for potentially permanent problems. So today, as I was beating my head against the wind and rain for seven hours and hurting all the way, I had to admit to myself the possibility that I might not complete the trip as planned. What I need is time to recover, but there just aren't enough days built in to the trip schedule. The most likely scenario would be that I would hole up in a hotel somewhere until I feel solid again and then make a run for the Atlantic by a more direct route than originally planned. I would miss New England, which would be very disappointing, but at least I would complete a full cross country trip. Obviously, I very much hope it doesn't come to that.

     Tonight we're in the Glenfield city park, and the mosquitos are just out of control. I have never, ever seen them like this before.

     It's a nice little town. So many of the small towns that we've been passing through are pretty much dead. Nice and tidy, but all the shops shut down, the grain elevator the only active business, and no kids - mostly just old folks living where they've been living for fifty years. But Hope seems to be healthy. All the businesses are still open, there are several cafes and even a museum. We're camped in the city park next to the public pool and it's pretty much a big noisy pot of kid soup.

     So I'm in Fargo, doncha know. Well, actually I'm in Moorhead, Minnesota, but it's just on the other side of the state line from Fargo, and part of the same general urban area. We're in the dorms at Moorhead State, which means (drum roll...): No god damn mosquitos shoving their pointy little idiotic noses in to me tonight! Also laundry and showers in the same building as I am.

     That is so true. I've found that one of the surest ways to lose touch with the reasons that I'm out here is to start fixating on how many miles. How many I've covered, how many to go. And the surest way to remember why I'm doing this is to make myself stop, just stop, dammit! And stand there and listen to and look at what that annoying head wind does to the wheat fields, see that it's not a head wind at all, just air doing what air does. Pay attention to the birds, the amazing variety of calls from every direction. Consider the people who live here, who have raised children in that farm house right over there. And yes, stare at the clouds until they start to do funny things! The reasons for riding a bicycle across America have little to do with riding a bicycle across America; the reasons for riding a bicycle across America are everywhere, and it's up to me to pay attention to them.

     We're in the town of Pennington, at a campground on one of the countless lakes we rode by today. I'm not sure what this lake is called, but the one just down the road is called Leech Lake. Eeeww. Wading, anyone?

     Tomorrow we're going to Grand Rapids, where the rest of the group will lay over on Monday. But not me, I'm going to ride on and defer my layover day until the following weekend, in Red Wing. I want to try going solo for a week, see how it suits me.

     I'm in Grand Rapids, hometown of Judy Garland. It's a nice town except for the paper mill right downtown, and like Stanley, it has live bait machines right next to the pop machines, one of which I took a picture of as proof to those of you who expressed doubts when I first mentioned them.

     I'm camped just outside the town of Malmo, on Mille Lacs Lake. I had intended to stay in a hotel tonight, but there weren't any for another 15 miles, so camping it was.

     I'm in Cambridge, in my first hotel of the trip. It was a real grind getting here. Yesterday pretty much wiped me out, I really could have used a day off today. And there's a steady breeze out of the southeast, which of course is the direction I'm heading. Not a strong wind, like we fought in North Dakota, but continuous, and pushing against it all day when I'm already beat has left me even beater.

     I just ordered a pizza, and there had better not be any friggin' Velveeta on it.

     I'm staying in the Super 8 just outside of Stillwater, Minnesota tonight. Stillwater, as it turns out, is a tourist hell on a par with Carmel. It's rotten with Shoppes and precious little B&Bs and whatnot and of some profound significance in Minnesotan history which I didn't hang around long enough to learn about.

     Roll the tent from the rear to the front so that the trapped air has somewhere to go and I don't end up wrestling with a nylon balloon. Pitch it not where the shade is now but where it will be a few hours before sundown. Leave the straps dangling sewn side up so that the stuff goes on the rack easily in the morning. Clear the computer. Make lunch at dinner time the night before to expedite departure. Check the water; if it's good, fill the bottles, if it's smelly, fill up at a restaurant in the morning. Buy new consumables before I run out and throw the old tube/jar/stick away immediately, even if there's some left. It's wasteful, but I'm not going to carry round two of anything that I only need one of. Nine lungfulls of air will fill the Thermarest, and lay it left rear to right front tent corner so that my head and feet don't smash up against the walls and there's room to the left where my sleeping bag zipper opens. Wash clothes whenever there's a chance, even if it's just one pair of shorts; I never know when I'll next encounter a washing machine. Don't waste time trying to send e-mail from a USWest pay phone, they always choke. Lube chain every three days if it's dry, every day if it's raining, and top the tires off at 90 psi every other day for smooth rolling. Etc. etc. etc.

     I was amazed when I first laid out the U.S. map I bought in Minot and saw how far we'd come. But now that I've got the thing handy I check it too often, and just like that watched pot of water that never boils we don't seem to be getting anywhere. Or maybe it's because we've been heading south so much lately when our destination is to the east.

     In Montana we rode with the container freights constantly hauling who knows what back and forth beside us; here we have the barges full of the same being similarly shoved up and down the river by tugboats. The tugs are big, not like the ones I've seen in harbors. These have several decks and look fairly plush, lots of curtained windows with air conditioners sticking out of some of them. They must carry a fairly large crew, judging from the apparent accommodations, although I've never seen more than one or two above decks at any given time. Presumably they work in shifts. At any rate, it looks like a pretty cool job to me.

     I also need to thank Jerry and Marty, who have for many years hosted the Northern Tier groups in the Davenport area. They weren't able to this year, but still found time to use the powers of their mini van to help transport all of us to dinner.

     We're in Illinois now, my mother's home state. We're staying in a campground near Cambridge. I'm told that Illinois, Indiana, and southern Ohio are about as close to completely flat as we'll get on this trip.

     Now it's later, I'm in Odell, and it never did start raining. It took me a while longer to get here than I had expected it would, due mostly to my getting creative with the route. I had a fine shortcut laid out, but my road turned to dirt and then ended at the railroad tracks, even though the map showed it as being paved and going all the way through. I persevered and eventually found my way through the cornfields, but it took a bit of doing.

     In previous states there was often good reason to stick with the official route, because it was generally laid out to pass through particularly scenic areas. But here in this part of Illinois the scenery pretty much falls in to one of two categories: corn or soybeans. So there isn't much chance of missing something spectacular by finding a way to shorten the day, and seeing which of us can most effectively do so has become something of a daily competition.

     Since the roads in this part of the world divide the land up in to a neat grid of one mile squares, it wouldn't seem like there'd be much difference between one route through them and another; everyone would have to zig and zag the same total distance, regardless of how many segments the zigging and zagging might be broken up in to. But while the map shows which roads are paved and which are dirt, the map is often wrong, and that is why choosing wisely (or at least luckily) where to zig and where to zag can result in a 55 mile day instead of a 60 mile day.

     And the most common questions I get are: Where are you going? Where did you start? What route are you taking? How many miles do you ride each day? How long will it take? Why are you doing it? How did you get three months off from work?

     I haven't started getting creative with my answers yet, but I may have to before the trip is over just to keep things interesting.

     And just for the record, here's a partial list of the road kill that my perspective as a cyclist has afforded me the opportunity to view/smell at close range over the past two months: raccoons, possums, snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, skinks, skanks, skunks, birds (including finches, flickers, wrens, crows, hawks, geese, pigeons, sea gulls, warblers, pheasants, starlings and grackles), turtles, tortoises, hares, woodchucks, beavers, gophers, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, moles, voles, weasels, ferrets, stoats, whistle pigs, groundhogs, ground dogs, flat cats, deer, cows and beefalo, as well as a lot of other things that are a dozen Michelins and/or days past being identifiable as anything other than thoroughly dead. One really does miss so much in a car.

     So we got seriously rained on for the first time in ages last night and this morning, but it was a warm rain in warm air and not so bad. I left camp early and went off route in to Huntington because several days ago I failed to follow my own advice and passed a laundromat by without washing anything. Sure enough, yesterday I ran out of even dirty clothes, leaving myself with nothing but twice-recycled filth to wear, and Huntington was the nearest town that I knew would have a laundromat. I got really in to it and even washed my sleeping bag and pillow. Oh, the little things that have come to thrill me.

     I don't know if I've just reached corn field saturation point or what but the last few days of riding just haven't been particularly inspiring to me. Not bad, pretty enough, but just kind of a an unremarkable day's work.

     We're camping in Avery tonight, and tomorrow we're taking the day off and going to the big amusement park at Cedar Point. I wasn't going to go, because while I love roller coasters, I detest amusement parks. But they've just opened a new roller coaster there, over 300 feet high, and I just can't resist that - so Cedar Point it is.

     My heart is still in this thing but I am glad that the end is in sight, because I am tired. Tired of pay phones. Tired of slimy campground showers or having none at all. Tired of riding my bike, and tired of riding it carefully so that I only hurt a little. I'm tired of telling my story to ten people a day. I'm tired of bad water. I'm tired of pitching my tent and taking it down and pitching it again. I'm tired of searching for laundromats every other day. I'm tired of camp food and I'm tired of restaurant food and I'm especially sick to death of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Holy God am I ever sick of those worthless gooey little bastards.

     What's hard about this trip has changed over the course of it. In the beginning it was the constant struggle with the lifestyle that was difficult, and with the weather, and the group dynamics. But as I've grown used to life on the road, the hard things have become subtler, more internal. At first when I started feeling like I couldn't do it, couldn't deal with the rain or life in a tent or the group, I could fire myself up with stubbornness and angry determination - "I'll be God damned if I am going to let ANYTHING keep me from making the east coast!" But I'm almost there now, and the struggles aren't as gross and obvious anymore. Rain, big deal. My tent, that's just where I live. Dealing with the mental fatigue that comes from doing this day after day is my biggest challenge now, and that's harder to really fight against. I can't swear at it, I just have to ride it out.

     I have ridden past just this scene - the bathtub shrine and the bullet-scarred deer statues - at least half a dozen times in the past week. Interesting.

     My hornet-stung legs are a swollen achy itchy mess. And as an added bonus, one of the vicious little buggers nailed me right on my left achilles tendon. Thanks for helping out, pal.

     "How did you manage to get three months off of work to do this?" As I mentioned before, that's one of the questions that is most frequently asked of me, and I find the implications of that to be disturbing, and sad. It shouldn't be such an alien idea to people that someone should lay claim to a fraction of a percent of their precious lives to explore the world. Doing so is not professionally lax or irresponsible. It is sanity. Work hard, America, but don't forget who owns your life.

     I rode through my first covered bridge today - two of them, in fact. They were appropriately quaint, but the realities of the road have necessitated the addition of modern warning signs shouting in fluorescent yellow about low clearances and whatnot. Kind of takes some of the fun out of it.

     Their trip is longer and tougher than ours. Their stuff's on their backs, not their bikes. They don't go through towns every day. They don't get showers, they have to filter all of their water, their food sucks and it takes about five months to do the whole trail as compared to our three. It's generally more taxing and harder to complete than a cross country bike ride. It looks to me like a grueling but rewarding way to spend five months; I might have to give it a shot some day...

     Wow, Maine: how could that be? How the hell did I get here? How could my memory of Culbertson, Montana, one month in to the trip, be two months old? How could it all be one thing, one long path across the country?

     Final odometer reading: 4559 miles.

     Thanks to everyone for reading this log and sending me their support; I've truly appreciated it. I'll probably do a few more retrospective entries over the next week, but this will be the last of the (almost) daily "Where's Peter now?" postings.