We are sitting in the McDonald's a mile from our house, having a quick lunch before hitting the road, and I am grumpily texting my mom and sister about an uncommunicative job prospect. Then I check my email one last time and see that the bosses will be making a decision on Wednesday, and it's like all the irritation and fear lifts up off my shoulders. They're interviewing other people, even though it felt like they were desperate to hire me a week ago. Fine. We shall see. I don't have to make any decisions or bear any hurt until Wednesday. Let's get outta town.
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| East slope stuff |
We arrive at the busy trailhead but, luckily for our friends who are joining later, we are ahead of the "let's leave after work" crowd and snag a spacious campsite next to the vault toilet. For the rest of the night, loaded-down Sprinters, expensive trucks with camper shells, and hybrid city cars alike do the slow hopeful roll through the jam-packed camping circle before giving up or ducking into some less hospitable corner of the day use parking lot.
A couple that we sort of know from the Tetons but mostly from the internet, both writers and skiers and mountain bikers, recognize our Idaho license plates and amble over to our site. In the past we had maybe thought they were too cool for us, but we strike up an amazing conversation. She is someone I had wanted to seek out for advice - she has been freelancing for four years and I wanted to talk pros and cons and get advice. Even the twenty minutes we spent chatting made me feel glowy with bliss, like she had been sent to me with the sole purpose of making me feel better about this professional turmoil I've been in for six months.
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| Camp stuff |
Our friends trickle in. These are newer friends, as friends go, but the conversation flows easily and we look forward to the morning's activities. We agree on an early start, to my and Cy's great pleasure - we know this is a destination trail and have heard of around ten separate groups planning to ride it tomorrow from among our Bellingham cohort alone, and judging from the crowded gravel lot everyone on the western seaboard from Olympia to Anacortes made the same call.
I wake up chilled - we're up at 5,000 feet, back in the fall morning frost we left behind in Idaho - but I know it'll be warm the second we start climbing, so I commit to shorts and short sleeves from the get-go. Others do not, and inevitably must shed layers after the initial mile. I devour the first 3K of climbing, happily chatting with a woman I haven't ridden with before but whom Cy had assured me I would love. She is good to talk to and just as strong as I am on the climb. This is a rarity, I am learning. The trail is the perfect gradient to spin up with enough technical features interspersed to keep it interesting. Our group of eight reconvenes at an alpine lake ringed with larches, the signature selling point for all the coastal residents who travel to the eastern slope of the Cascades in autumn. Cy and I, the most recent transplants, see two other groups of people we know at the lake. This becomes a running theme, because it turns out we know a shit ton of people.
I eat my brie and salami baguette while sitting on the soft ground next to the water. The group lingers a bit longer than I would like at every stop, but not too terribly long. I'm not sure what's wrong with me, why I get so impatient and anxious with big groups and with people who like to take their time. I often have the excuse of a dog locked in the car at the trailhead, so I'm always afraid she has barfed or pooped or is dying of heat stroke despite the windshield coverings and fan circulating pleasant alpine air, or an overzealous animal lover has smashed our van windows to free our abused dog and now she's wreaking havoc on the entire campground. This is what I picture and it adds to the high-pitched twang of my nerves as people move slowly and enjoy their day. But if it wasn't the worry about Jolene it would be something else. I try not to seem on the outside like an incurable toe-tapper and I don't say anything to hurry the group on, but I am secretly unbearable.
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| Inside I'm seething with impatience for no reason |
It's a beautiful day and we're making great time for such a big group on such a hard ride - twenty miles and 5K of vert over tough trail. Cy is really hurting, his second brush with Covid proving as bad as the first. He describes a restricted top end, pained breathing, heavy sweat. I can only make sympathetic sounds, because I feel light as air and strong as a cobra, passing everyone as I slither muscularly up the rocky slope. This may be the fittest I've ever been.
But then I am the weakest descender of our group and I take my place at the rear for the downhills, chasing the other girls, my wrists hurting from the jarring hits on a stiff bike. It's okay though. No crashes and I'm going way faster than I would be if it were just Cy and me riding a big backcountry loop.
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| So scenic |
We rip down the long descent in a chaotic train of strong riders, politely yelling greetings to the dozens of hikers we encounter, and then back at the trailhead we try to rehydrate while also guzzling beer and cramming chips and salsa into our faces. Good talk and bad jokes flow. This is exactly what Cy and I were looking for when we moved. Throughout the weekend I feel gratitude and disbelief that we have actually gotten here, already.
The evening is predictably excellent as we tend to the campfire, figure out the next day's adventures, eat apple crumble hot from the Dutch oven, and engage in a long discussion about Dolly Parton and an even longer one about the concept of cuckholding.
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| Best camping buddies |
In the morning Cy and I break camp very early (it's easy when all you have to do is toss your chairs and cooler into the van) and head down the mountain to town, beating everyone else by over an hour. We excuse our premature departure with the convenient "gotta get coffee ASAP" line, but that's not really it. We both experience the same tangle of restlessness and foresight and anxiety about things like crowded bakeries and busy narrow gravel roads in our wide van and an ever-present need to keep moving forward. It's why we're together and why we love each other - there's no lollygagging in this relationship.
Our friends eventually trickle into the rendezvous point, during rush hour of course, and then over cinnamon twists we finally figure out our next move, which turns out to be another big bike loop, but on smooth easy trails rather than chunky ones.
It's a great ride, again, with proper climbing and following ladies into moves that scare me. It leaves me so surprised and happy with where our life has taken us. The terrain feels like the hills outside of Salmon, one of our frequent haunts in central Idaho, the same distance away from home, but with bike-specific berms and features. On the drive back, when we are an hour from the house, still winding through a corridor of vibrant fall foliage and sweating rock faces dappled with moss, I tell Cy if we were driving home from Salmon we'd be in Menan (pronounced with a nasally men-Anne), an exurb of Rexburg known only for its one big butte, a shooting range, and the ability to see the white spire of the Rexburg Temple in the distance across the dun-colored sagebrush expanse.
When we near the city and see the freeway signs listing Bellingham exits, I hit him on the knee.
"Guess what," I say.
"We live here," he guesses.
Exactly.
