Segment 8: Ride Day 42 - The Spiral Highway

Route: Lewiston, ID to Moscow, ID (Moscow Christian Life Center)

Distance: 43.3 miles

Riding Time: 3 hours: 51 minutes

Average Speed: 11.2 mph

Max:  33.3 mph

Weather: Beautiful cloudy, post-rainy morning climb up, up, up and out of Lewiston. A little cooler after the 2,000 foot climb with some rain sprinkles towards the end of the ride. It is pretty dang wonderful to feel chilly again… such a strange feeling! Hmm… now about that going back to Georgia in the middle of August business… what on earth am I thinking?? ;)

Current Elevation: 2579 feet

Population of Moscow, ID: 24,499 people

This morning started out with another delicious breakfast provided by yet another nearby host church. After breakfast we walked back to our sleeping church and had a short devotional provided by none other than the words of Millard Fuller. You can hear his words here:

One of my favorite quotes from his talk is this: "A planned life can only be endured." This is so appropriate, as Melissa said this morning, as we all ride these final days towards Vancouver and think and dream about what might be next. For me, this means going back to Jubilee and there are some things I am very much looking forward to about this. But in some ways I think the road is a safer place because I am always in motion, the scenery is always changing and there is some reassurance in knowing that your day is laid out for you: wake up, pack up, ride. On the road there is newness and excitement and flexibility and a sore bum and the constancy of change. There is the expectation that most of what I will be asked to do today includes riding my bike. There is the sound of silence and wind and the blast of sunlight and the laughter and conversation of strangers-turned-friends.

But the road cannot be home forever... as much as I dream about all the bike adventures I would like to pursue from Vancouver on. At some point I'll have to come down... but this doesn't mean my life has to be predictable. No sir! It just means that I have to be careful to take my road-side learnings and carry them into my life in new and creative ways... and to be ready to change even my seemingly-best-laid plans when the unexpected arises and God steps in to do something brand spankin' new.

Our ride today reflected so well this sentiment. Today our first 10 miles included a lovely few miles on winding bike paths along the river before an 8-miles climb up the aptly-named Spiral Highway that lead up the hills and on out of the Snake River valley and onto the rolling, golden, wheat-covered hilltops above. It was one of the more gradual climbs (4-6% grades) and it was absolutely beautiful to watch the road wind back and out beneath us. It was one of the few climbs I have ever done where, from the top, you can see almost the entirety of the road stretched out beneath you when you are done. When we were climbing, mostly we could just see the road ahead, but at some point, it all just opened up and we could see it all laid out below us like some amazing topographical map... but a whole lot more beautiful. This is how life works sometimes... I hope.

Spiral Highway, Lewiston, ID

On a pretty different note, I have also been doing some thinking recently about the way that cycling irons some of the wrinkles out of our broken selves along the way... how working on our legs and lungs is, in many ways, also working on our souls and the sorrows we might still carry there. Anyway so here are some words that I've been thinking about recently:

The morning drapes new and covered-over

like blankets on this valley, holding in the

water-splattered blacktop and the sunlight

and me. The movement of legs on feet on

pedals is round and rhythmic as breathing

and the wheels sparkle and spin their way up

and up and up out away from the width

of the river. The more I rise, the smaller it

looks - gentled in the mist of another dawn.

Sometimes I think it is the pain that brings

us here to this hill, almost the whole way across

the continent. It is the pain of the past and the

desire to ride it out that spins us into adventures

where there is only looking forward, carrying

whatever we hold in our memories. I hold a

friend. Another friend. Grandparents. Lost love.

The weight of homelessness. Children crying
or too quiet to cry or know otherwise.

My heart is heavy but the wind is swift past my

ears, it's song that sings right to the sore places

inside of me. Let it, let it in. Let it be. Let it in.

Ride. Ride. Ride on. Ride. We ride out

what we cannot shake. We ride out bravely

over the pockmarked and pitted surface that

is this ribbon of road and climb and fall together:

birds in lines and V's and sometimes quite alone.

Life is short. And the road, for now, is my home.

Life is short and oh-so-sweet, honey and the road,
oh the winding, climbing road, is my home.

My home.

Home.

Top of the Spiral Highway (photo by Kurt Schneider)