Almost there.

While planning this trip, I imagined it would be a little like my previous cycle tours in Tasmania, New Zealand, Britain and Ireland.  There would be lots of time off the bike - hiking,  swimming, kayaking perhaps, visiting various attractions - so I'd need a decent range of off-bike clothes and accessories.  In fact, I've carried these things, almost unused, right across the country.  The tour has somehow turned into a whirlwind ride across America, in which the pleasure of covering the distance - of actually cycling across a continent - has been as important as visiting significant places.  On reflection I think this has happened because I'm on a designated cycle route - the TransAmerica Trail - that has maps and specific destinations, while my earlier tours have been improvised using general maps and information, and my own curiosity to plot the route.  I had intended to deviate from the Trail and visit the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park but I've come to realise that these are part of another trip.  This one is about seeing America from the saddle of my bike and I'm loving it.  Believe me there's plenty to see.

Rolling through the wide glacial valleys and over the mountain passes of Montana has been one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip.  I share Steinbeck's enjoyment of this vast, empty place, and I even concur with its fairly corny tourist hook of "Big Sky Country".  Although the the geography is radically different - the fourteen thousand foot snow-capped mountains for a start - there's something reminiscent of Australia here.  There's a sense of of space, of uncrowdedness that definitely speaks to my little outback soul. 

If Montana was about sweeping vistas and soaring peaks, Idaho was all wild rivers and pine forests.  After our lovely, hedonistic rest day in Missoula we climbed the Lolo Pass (nine thousand and something feet), crossed the state line at the summit, and rolled gently downhill along the Lochsa River for what became the easiet ninety mile day ever.  After the pass, we hardly pedalled for the rest of the day: we just coasted and admired the scenery. 

The pay-off, two days later, was a tough day that included three mountain passes and a headwind.  The Cycling Gods never let you get away with an easy day: there's always retribution. 

Gain a Belgian, lose a Belgian.

Just before we crossed the pass, I glanced in my rear-vision mirror and saw another cyclist overhauling us.  He greeted us in what I thought was Dutch, but was in fact Flemish.  Sieman had been in touch with our Belgian contingent, Stefaan and Wim, via their blogs and email, for weeks. Being tired of riding alone, he had put in a 150 mile day to catch up with us.  Two days later, Stefaan left us to chart his own course to Portland, Oregon.  We had swapped a generous, funny, compulsive organiser (labelled the Belgian Bullet because of his strange evening headwear in Yellowstone), for a delightfully disorganised and whimsical 20- year-old political science student with some surprising capabilities of his own - including bicycle spoke replacement.

Ryan the "spokesman".

Despite a day of coasting downhill in the Lochsa Valley, Ryan still managed to break a spoke.  His response to these mishaps is to improvise with string (actually FibreFix emergency spokes) and to resolutely refuse to carry the necessary tools to remove his rear derailleur cassette which must be done to insert a new spoke on the drive side - the side where they nearly always break.  Geordie logic?  We all appreciate the entertainment of watching his rear wheel wobble precariously as he descends steep and dangerous mountain passes. 

The long-awaited return of the Religion Report.

As we've moved west, the number of churches per per town has diminished, as have the weirder religious billboards, the Ten Commandments signs in front gardens, and the American flags flying outside private houses.  I can only conclude that the average western American is much less pious and patriotic than his eastern compatriots - a poor moral specimen altogether.  Just when I was becoming despondent though, there it was, right by the side of the highway in rural Idaho: the Yahweh 666 Warning Assembly!  I noticed that this august group had also joined the Adopt a Highway program, commiting them to cleaning up the litter along a two-mile stretch of road.  It seemed just a little incongruous to me.  I mean, if their warnings about the imminent apocalypse are accurate, who cares about about a few McDonalds wrappers and beer cans on the roadside!

Nearing the end of the trail.

It took us just four days to track across Idaho in a southwesterly direction before entering Oregon - the last state on the TransAm for an East-West rider.  Again we were coasting down a river valley - this time the Snake River.  I was out ahead of the group, having made an early start.  The road was quiet; the morning sunny and still.  As I quietly glided around a bend, there in front of me was a bear.  It was a young Black Bear, about the size of a very large dog, and it was preoccupied with the ripe blackberries at the side of the road.  I'd read that the colour of Black Bears could actually vary quite a lot, and this one was a beautiful gingery brown with a large tuft of blond-tipped hair between its shoulder blades.  Just been to the hairdresser (beardresser?) I guess.  I gently coasted to a stop and reached for my camera, which unfortunately was in my rear pannier and not easy to get to.  I must have made a noise, because it looked up, nearly jumped out of its skin, and scrambled straight up an almost sheer rocky bank, huffing and puffing with effort and fright.  It got to the top, took one horrified look back at me, and disappeared into the pine forest.  The whole episode took less than ten seconds I suppose, and I got nowhere near my camera, but it put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

An encounter made in heaven.

Last night (July 29th) we camped in the park at Mitchell, Oregon, a tiny town in the dry prairie country that covers most of the centre and east of the state.  It had been a hot day's riding with a fairly serious mountain pass in the middle of it, and we settled down in the town's only cafe / bar for a few cold beers and a hamburger before setting up camp by the creek just across the road.  A group of four cyclists, all men in their 50s, arrived from the east, followed by their support crew - their wives - who were carrying their gear in a car.  They were a sort of semi-official club, complete with matching cycle shirts which identified them as The Clydesdales, and indeed, they were all hefty specimens.  We soon discovered something else about them: they were all California winemakers and vineyard owners from the Napa Valley, and the support vehicle contained about 200 bottles of theire own produce, some of which they generously shared with us.  The wine was excellent, the company exceedingly friendly, and the night became quite a long one.  As we finally staggered off to bathe in the freezing creek and set up camp, we were all invited to visit and stay with them in Napa should we ever be passing that way, and guess what!  In a couple of weeks, I will.

The last pass.

Today (July 30th), carrying our hangovers with us, we climbed over the Ochoco Pass (four thousand and something feet) and coasted down to Prineville, where I'm sitting in the excellent public library writing this before riding the last 20 miles to Redmond where we'll stay tonight.  Tomorrow, we cross the last mountain pass (although certainly not the last big hill) of the TransAm: McKenzie Pass, which will take us over the Cascade Range and down to the cool, damp, foggy Pacific Northwest coast.  In two days time I will have cycled across a continent, but that's not the end for me.  Another 10 days or so of riding will take me down the Pacific Coast Trail to San Francisco.