Our days in Idaho had one common theme: Falls!! Waterfalls on waterfalls on waterfalls :)
Our route was Idaho Falls to American Falls to Twin Falls to Mountain Home.
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| As you can see we avoided those mountains ;) |
There's not much to say about these days; they were pretty boring, just a bunch of biking.
- Some nice scenery.
- We had a really really windy day.
- For one of these days I was in the water van with Joanna. It was a hot and boring day so I tried to chalk interesting things on the road to entertain riders.
- On that day Zach accidentally stole a water cooler from our host and Joanna and I had to drive it 60 miles back after we were already almost at the host. Good job Zach :P
- We were following closely to the Oregon Trail :) There were a lot of educational signs to tell us about the history of the areas.
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| Wind farm.... a BAD sign when you're biking -___- |
Meredith decided to stop and pick some potatoes for dinner.... Idaho problems.
A storm rolling in! This is what it looks like when we're about to get rained on.
Educational sign Exhibit A
Pretty scenery
Riding Old Oregon Trail Road
Impressive buttes (lol)
Just biking the old Oregon Trail... NBD!
Wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail!!! I will not hear talk of them being ATV ruts.
They are wagon ruts.
Air conditioning during lunch = naptime.
Even if we're on a concrete floor. 4K OK.
And then: My 21st birthday! We were headed from Mountain Home to Caldwell, Idaho.
On my 21st birthday I awoke to find four of my teammates standing over my
sleeping bag, playing a terrible rendition of Happy Birthday on various instruments.
It was Paul on the guitar, Porter on the recorder, Becky on the djembe drum, and
Dan on some especially awful vocals. It was still dark in the room and as soon as
I was coherent enough to realize what was going on I was cracking up for like 15
minutes. After Happy Birthday they continued with one or two more songs as an
encore performance. It was so bad but most definitely the best wakeup I’ve had on
the 4K so far. Actually, possibly in my entire life since I am far from being a morning
person. I definitely don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard at 6 am.
Me with birthday stuff that my awesome roomie Rachel had sent me :)
Mom update: On my bday she got a port put in for her chemo, which will be targeting her liver. Currently she is recovering from the major abdominal surgery she had last week, where she had 1/3 of her colon removed because of the tumor. Recovery will be another 2ish weeks and then she will begin chemo. The port will make it easier for the chemo drugs to be administered throughout the body. She was still in a lot of pain and discomfort from the surgery but was in good spirits as usual. She finally got to leave the hospital the next day!
Our hosts had prepared us an awesome breakfast. When I went to get my bike ready to ride I discovered a special surprise: a birthday flat! My tire had gone flat overnight. I tried to start changing it, couldn’t get the tire off, and promptly announced, “It’s my birthday and I’m not dealing with this.” I then went for Plan B which was using Tom’s back tire, because he was in the van. Thank you Tom!! If I had had to change my tire on my birthday there might’ve been a rendition of “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
We got on the road and I wore my “Kiss me it’s my birthday” pin that Rachel had
sent me :) My group was Sarah, Julie, and Dave Wolfe, and we called ourselves Team
Birthday Club.
The first 40 miles of the day, until we got to Boise, we were on the interstate again...
thank you, lack of paved roads in Idaho. The interstate was pretty easy – flat with a
clear shoulder – until we got to the outskirts of Boise. At that point it got really dicey
with lots of traffic moving lots of directions, and I was kind of freaking out. We had to
go about 5 more miles until we got off, and I was really nervous the whole time. But
we made it.
At the water stops, Kiera and Ashley had a birthday playlist cued up for the water
van. All the songs had to do with birthdays :) They also did a shark circle around me
as I rolled into the water stop… and Kiera was chanting “Cake cake cake cake” for
some reason I still don’t know.
My group got 4 flats which was totally a bummer… I just wanted to get to the
host on my birthday. But you can’t be mad about flats. It isn’t anyone’s fault. I was
cheered up by us stopping at Burger King, where Sarah got us free ice cream :)
We changed one of the flats next to this extremely depressing farm.
These goats and sheep and ducks were living in filth :(
It was supposed to be a 71-mile day, but it turned into more like 75 because of a
reroute for construction.
What a great birthday present!!! We saw our first sign for Portland :)
Dinner on my birthday was awesome! They had mashed potatoes, pork, salad, and a
ton of watermelon for us. I was super happy about it. Our host was a brand new host
but was really excited about us, super helpful and nice, and very interested in our
cause. We all introduced ourselves after dinner and they asked us to do our cheer
for them since they wouldn’t see it in the morning.
After dinner my team surprised me with a birthday card and a cake!
I was lucky because Ashley is an event planner in real life and Chelsea is my roommate... so between the two of them, they knew what to do to make my birthday special :) The card had a lot of cows on it – enough cows for each person to sign it and claim their own cow. It was perfect for my team since we like cows and we always moo at them.
Then it was time to go celebrate. The plan was for the 21+’s to go to Boise from
Caldwell, about a 25-minute drive, and go to a bar. We had a couple of hotel rooms
Jared managed to get donated to us, so we didn’t have to worry about driving back
until the morning.
It took us girls about an hour and a half to get ready in the bathroom. We are not
used to being girls on this trip. We had to re-learn how to do our hair and makeup.
Gina straightened my hair with her mini straightener, which took a solid 50 minutes,
and then Ashley somehow managed to curl hers with the straightener. The poor
boys were outside waiting for us wondering what in the world had happened to us
in the bathroom.
Finally we rolled out, checked in to the hotel around 9:30, and got ready
to go out. We asked the front desk where to go and we were in downtown Boise so
their recommendations were only 8 blocks away. The bar we went to was Mulligan’s, and it was my first bar experience. It was really fun! My first drink was a lemon drop, which was my free birthday drink and which I had with Ashley.
Thanks to my teammates for buying me drinks and to Ashley for spending a lot
of money on the jukebox trying to make sure her requested songs came on. Her
requested songs happened to be Justin Bieber… and she entertained us with a solo
dance. It was a really fun night and my teammates were such great company.
I decided to have selfie photoshoots with all my teammates... so here's a selection of those:
Ashley :)
Joanna!
Dan!
We didn’t get back to the hotel until close to 3 am. Wakeup was at 5.... You do the
math. No one was feeling great that morning. Luckily I was scheduled to
be in the van, but some other people were not in any shape to ride either, so we had
some extra van passengers that day. It was all good. I got to take a nice nap in the food van.
So that was Idaho and my birthday! I couldn't have asked for a better day with better friends. I mean, who else gets to say that they biked 75 miles in Idaho and then celebrated at a random bar in Boise?! I am living the life!
Wifi has been extremely spotty so I apologize for the delay, but stay tuned for posts soon on Hells Canyon and OREGON!!
XOXO,
Mary
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