brandysadventureblog

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Snaps of the highs and lows (both mental and elevational) from the cursed Gifford Pinchot route

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Gifford Pinchot National Forest Loop (WA State)

8/2/20-8/4/20

Day 1: Cascade Locks to Trout Late (43.64 miles / 2,542 ft elev. gain)

Day 2: Trout Lake to Lower Lewis River Falls (40.31 miles / 2,491 ft elev. gain)

Day 3: Lower Lewis River Falls to Cascade Locks (49.43 miles / 2,805 ft elev. gain)

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Another reason I wanted to revisit this blog is because I wanted to write about the weekend bike trip I was able to do this past summer. It was really important to me and I’d been wanting to share my experience for a while but I didn’t because ~reasons~ (the same ~reasons~ I vaguely alluded to in the previous post). It also felt like I wouldn’t be able to accurately convey what this trip meant to me in words, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

After my first two bike trips, I set the goal of doing at least one major bike trip per year. Turns out being an adult with responsibilities isn’t the most amenable to that plan. Other adventures were had, but no bike trips lasting more than one night. This past summer, I was determined to change that.

I had first planned this route back in the summer of 2017.  Unfortunately, the weekend I planned to do it was the hottest weekend of that summer. Also, all of Oregon was on fire. I finished the first day feeling like I had just biked 40+ miles in high 90 degree temps while breathing in forest fire smoke... because that’s exactly what I had just done. I decided it probably wasn’t safe to continue on and I had a friend come pick me up the next day.

I attempted the route again in May 2019. This time I couldn’t even finish the first day. For various reasons, I was dealing with intense body fatigue and I could hardly even pedal on flat ground. Feeling defeated, I had to have my friend come and rescue me again, just six miles short of the campground.

This time around, I was determined to not fail a third time. I decided to actually train for it and began biking almost every day starting at the beginning of the summer. Even getting back into the training rides, I felt myself coming alive again. I didn’t realize how much I missed biking and it was so refreshing to get it back.

When the trip weekend came around, I was excited but nervous. I was in better biking shape than I had been in years, but this route had wrecked me twice before and there were some pretty big mental hurdles to overcome. I was shaking as I crossed over Bridge of the Gods to start, but as I rode further and further down WA SR-14, I started to hit my stride. Turns out bike touring is much like... riding a bike (sorry, I had to). The entire ride went pretty smoothly and, before I knew it, Day One was in the books.

Day Two was a completely different story. After an hour of biking straight uphill, my bike chain broke. I had a spare emergency link but I couldn’t get it to click. The only thing I could really do is coast back downhill to the general store to get to wifi and figure out what to do from there. Right before getting into town, I lost my coasting momentum and had to walk. A few minutes into the walk, I got approached by a couple who said they were also cycle tourists. They asked me what was wrong and how they could help. I told them I needed a new chain, but the closest bike shop was almost an hour’s drive away. To my surprise they were like, “Cool. Let’s go there.” It was a total faith in humanity restoring moment. They were the nicest couple and we got to chat about our past trips on the drive. After the new chain was installed, they dropped me off at the exact spot my chain had broken that morning and I was back on my way.

Or so I thought. All of a sudden, my bike wouldn’t shift gears. I realized there was something wrong with my bike derailleur. Luckily I was able to do some quick roadside bike maintenance and continue on with the climb. The first half of the ride was entirely uphill and the last half was entirely downhill. After the chain mishap, the derailleur issue, and a couple hours of straight climbing, I was looking forward to an easy end to the day. Turns out Day Two wasn’t done with me yet.

Shortly after I began my hard-earned descent, I started to come across some road closed signs. I figured there were maybe some downed trees that cars couldn’t pass by but that I could get around with my bike. I was right—there were a couple downed trees blocking the road. Turns out there was also a section of the road that had been completely washed out except for a tiny sliver just wide enough to very carefully walk my bike over if I took everything off. It took me a few trips to bring my bike across along with all of my gear, but I made it past just fine.

I loaded the bike back up and resumed speeding down the mountain. I zoomed around a hairpin turn where I discovered ANOTHER section where the road had completely washed away. This one was even worse than the other. I actually had to bring the bike down into the crater and push it up a steep incline to get to the other side. The loose gravel made it hard to get my footing and I definitely got close to falling into the abyss several times. For both of these situations, I want you to imagine it being precarious enough to be exciting but not so dangerous as to make you worry that I did something stupid (although it was admittedly probably closer to the latter).

Just as my bike and I emerged on the other side of the crater, a car came rolling around the corner. They had apparently also not been informed that the road had been yeeted down the mountain. I asked if the rest of the route had any more surprises for me and they informed me that, other than some potholes, the road was more or less intact. That was a huge relief as I had been contemplating heading back up the hill to the previous night’s campground because I was worried that I’d come across something even more impassable than what I’d already experienced. The car turned around and I loaded my bike back up. Once I was sure they were well out of earshot, I screamed at the top of my lungs like Jack and Fabrizio on the bow of the Titanic. (For the record, I did not scream that I was the king of the world, but I damn sure felt like it.) 

The rest of the route was pretty chill, but I was running several hours behind schedule. When I rolled into the campground, there weren’t any sites available. I decided to make several loops, looking as tired and hungry as I could, hoping someone would take pity on me and offer to let me set up my tent on their site. I must have looked pretty pitiful because it only took me two loops before a woman named Verna asked if I wanted to stay on her site with her and her daughter. Apparently she used to be an avid cyclist and was excited to see me roll up on my bike.

Day Three was comparatively uneventful other than I biked up a fucking mountain. I can’t remember if it was the most elevation I’ve covered in one day, but it was certainly done in the most condensed number of miles. My strategy was to bike for half a mile (slightly more if I could), wait for my quads to stop screaming, bike for another half mile, and repeat that until I got to the pretty viewpoint that let me know I had reached the top. While I was enjoying the view, a woman came up to me and socially distantly tossed me a pack of energy chews to help get me through the rest of the ride. She informed me that she was a cyclist (wtf does everyone bike here?) and that she carries around energy chews to give to anyone she comes across doing a long bike ride. She invited me to join her and her (making some big assumptions here) gaggle of older lesbian friends (I think she was also making some big, but accurate assumptions about me) on their hike. Any other day, I would’ve loved to join their gay little hiking crew, but my legs wouldn’t have appreciated it that day and I had to decline.

The rest of the ride was all downhill and there was nary another human in sight for a good chunk of it. I used that as an opportunity to sing Brandi Carlile songs loudly and off-key and shout various obscenities at the top of my lungs. When you have an opportunity to do that, I highly recommend not passing it up as it’s very cathartic. I took some obligatory, self-timer photos in front of the Bridge of the Gods sign (oh hey, Cheryl Strayed) before rolling back to my car in Cascade Locks, feeling prouder of, and more like, myself than I had in years. 

I’m not really a God person, but it did feel like something larger than myself was at work here. (Seriously, what are the chances that I would find the exact two people I needed to to take me to get a new chain and that a random car would pull up to a washed out section of a closed road to let me know that the rest of the route was clear??) Everything aligned on this trip just as it needed to. I wasn’t meant to complete that route the first two attempts. I needed to complete it at that very moment in my life. I didn’t quite know at that time that I’d be making some really important life decisions just a few weeks after the end of that trip, but that trip helped give me some of the strength that I needed to move forward with those decisions. There’s really nothing like a bike trip to help you realize your self-worth, to remind you that you can do hard things, and to relearn to rely on yourself while staying open to the help and support others are offering you.

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I’m back?

February 17th, 2021

Heyo! Guess who remembered her old tumblr login?  (Me. It was me.) I honestly kind of forgot tumblr was a thing outside of screenshots posted on other social media sites. Apparently it still exists but you just can’t watch porn on it now because Yahoo bought it or something? I don’t know.

What I do know is that you can still revisit your old trip blog, get super nostalgic, and decide to write a couple more posts on it. It’s at this point I should probably mention that I’m composing this post on my phone, in my bed, with the lights off and my cat snoozing at my feet, at 3:47 am after maybe 3ish restless hours of attempted sleep, so if it gets weird, that’s why. (I mean, I was just talking about tumblr porn, so I guess it’s already gotten weird.)

Why am I deciding to post again? Because that’s what the readers have been asking for for years. Just kidding. I only had like 3 readers before anyway. (Shoutout to my aunts and that one girl from OkCupid several years ago who did a very thorough internet stalk of me before our date. I’m sure they’d all be very excited to know that I’m posting again. Especially OKC girl. I hope she’s doing well.)

All jokes aside, why I’m really doing this is because I’m currently at a point in my life where I’ve been spending a lot of time ruminating on who I’ve been and who I want to be. Revisiting the musings of 21/22 year old me was a pretty jarring reminder of a person that I used to really like and that I feel like I’ve lost over the last several years. I wanna get that person back and this seems like a good first step at doing so.

There is a lot to the story of how I got disconnected with my old self that I’m not gonna get into here (gotta save something for my memoir, ya know?). I’ll just say that for ~reasons~ I stopped traveling by myself as much, I stopped writing, and I also stopped liking myself. That’s not to say I didn’t do anything cool during those in between years. I did go on a 4 month, 48 state road trip (which is objectively p cool) as well as other smaller adventures and some exciting sports-related things. But I did stop doing a lot of things that were just for me. I want to start doing things that are just for me again. I want to get back to more solo adventures (can someone plz watch my cat?), I want to write more and tap back into my creative side, and, most importantly, I want to start liking myself again.

This still won’t be a super active blog because I’m not currently going on a ton of adventures (did I mention we’re in a global pandemic?), but I do want to pop in with a few recent updates for now. As I go on more adventures, I plan on posting about them on here.

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Day 32-42?

June 9th-19th, 2015 (written February 17th, 2021)

Apparently I didn’t think the last 10ish days of the trip were worth writing home about, which is weird because they totally were. I posted about them on Instagram back then, but I feel like they deserve at least a little acknowledgement on this blog, so here goes. 

Disclaimer: I’m writing this 5 and a half years later. It’s based completely off of my memory and Instagram posts because I also apparently didn’t think these days were worth writing about in my personal journal, which, again, is weird because they totally were.

From Dublin, I flew to London. I remember being very overwhelmed with planning this part of the trip because it turns out there’s a lot to do in London. During the biking portion, most of my planning was just figuring out how long to bike, where I was going to sleep, and what Irish dairy products to consume. Now I had to figure out what to do in a city that I didn’t even originally plan on going to.

According to my Instagram I:

Did the Harry Potter Warner Bros. Studio tour (where I definitely cried multiple times)

Stayed up until ungodly hours to watch the USWNT play in the World Cup

Took a selfie with Big Ben

Sat in a park shirtless for some reason

Took a selfie in front of Sherlock’s house

Went to Platform 9 3/4 and had the person behind me in line take a really shitty photo of me that I tried to semi-successfully redeem with an Instagram filter

Came across a hilarious newspaper layout fail (win?) of a headline about machete murders next to an unrelated photo of a smiling woman

I then popped over to Cambridge to visit with a friend who was going to school there. I also ended up randomly bumping into a friend who I didn’t know was going to school there, which was fun. I remember making a joke about how the Brits like their beer warm and flat which is the opposite of how I like my beer. It was definitely a “had to be there” joke and I don’t remember what I even said, but I remember it got a lot of laughs and that’s stuck with me because I desperately cling to any and all validation I can get.

From there, I returned to London to fly to Edinburgh. I got confused by public transportation and ended up getting to the airport a minute before the gate was supposed to close. In one of the more exciting moments of my life, I got to be That Person™ sprinting through the airport. Turns out that was all unnecessary because Ryanair is a notoriously bad airline that never runs on time. All that excitement was for nothing and I got to wait in a very long queue while drenched in sweat.

I don’t actually have a ton on my Instagram about Edinburgh even though, to this day, I have maintained that it is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been and would love to go back to. The layout of the city is really interesting because it’s built on several hills. There are steep winding roads and bridges and buildings have two stories on one side but 5 on the back and nothing makes sense. It’s where JK Rowling got a lot of her inspiration for the world of Harry Potter and I definitely cried any time I caught something reminiscent of Harry Potter as I was walking around the city. I toured some castles, hiked up some mountains, and drank a gratuitous amount of hot chocolate. I also learned a ton of fun facts about Edinburgh, like that the main train station sits in the spot where they used to drown accused witches in literal human shit water. 

The end.

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The amazingness that is Trinity College's library

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The tiny tiny Guinness tasting glass, the view from the top of the brewery, and my first full pint of Guinness ever

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With the Girl Skate Ireland crew at the mini ramp

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Day 27-31: Dublin, Ireland

June 4th-8th, 2015 Miles biked: 53.52 Time on bike: 5 hours and 14 minutes Total miles biked: 1065.7 Total time on bike: 109 hours and 33 minutes ~~~~~~~~~~ As planned, I spent most of the first couple of days not doing much more than sitting in coffee shops and eating food. My friend Helen, from rugby, was coincidentally supposed to get into Dublin my first full day here. We had planned to tour the Guinness brewery, but her plane was really delayed, so we ended up checking that out the next day. I preferred the Jameson tour that I did in Midleton a bit more, but the Guinness tour was pretty cool. At one point, they taught us the proper way to taste Guinness and gave us these tiny tiny pint glasses full of Guinness. The adorable-ness of the glasses was probably the highlight of the tour for me. I am staying with a woman named Marie who runs a group called Girl Skate Ireland, which is sort of similar to Skate Like a Girl. She lives about 8 or so miles outside of city center, so I have still been getting a good amount of biking in each day. Of course I got a little bit of skating in as well. We met up with some of the other Girl Skate Ireland folks and started off skating at this new library that has a few obstacles and a nice, smooth area to roll around on. Then we headed to an indoor space which is kind of random but has a tiny micro mini ramp and some other skate-able things. The mini-ramp was pretty challenging to skate because it was so small and I was skating on a borrowed board that was kind of hard to ride, so I didn't do all that much skating, but it was still nice to get back on a board again. During the rest of my time in Dublin, I did some more coffee shop sitting and got quite a bit of work and travel planning done. I also visited the Leprechaun Museum, Kilmainham Gaol, and took a tour of Trinity College. The Leprechaun Museum wasn't as tacky and touristy as I thought it would be. It is actually more of a museum of Irish folklore and story telling and they teach you about fairies and giants and other legendary creatures in addition to leprechauns, which it turns out, do not wear green at all. Kilmainham Gaol is the main jail that held many of the political prisoners involved in the Easter Rising and the Irish independence movement of 1916. Many of the big names in the Irish independent movement were held there and quite a few wer also executed there. Having been bombarded by Harvard tourists for four years, I was a little hesitant to take the Trinity College tour because I didn't want to be one of *those* people, but the tour ended in their famous library that holds the book of Kells. I didn't really have any interest in the book of Kells, but I really wanted to see the library. The library is amazing. It is made of dark wood and the two-story high shelves that flank each side of the room are filled with old, leather-bound books. There are old-fashioned sliding ladders so that you can reach the higher shelves and small doorways in the shelves on the top level so that you can get to the other sections. We were only allowed to walk down the center of the bottom floor, though. It is a place that I could see myself staying hours on end in, if it wasn't filled with people, which it was, so I only spent a few minutes there. Tomorrow I will be heading to London in the late evening. I will be staying there for a few days and then going to Cambridge to visit a friend. After that, I will be headed to Edinburgh, Scotland for a few days before returning to Dublin to finish up my sightseeing and get all my affairs in order for my trip back to Portland.

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I tried to find a "Welcome to Dublin" sign for the photo op, but couldn't so I settled on the Ha'penny Bridge which is an iconic Dublin spot

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Day 26: Glendalough to Dublin, Co. Dublin, Ireland

June 3rd, 2015 Miles biked: 42.57 Time on bike: 4 hours and 10 minutes Total miles biked: 1012.1 Total time on bike: 104 hours and 23 minutes ~~~~~~~~~~ I MADE IT TO DUBLIN!!! I don't think it has really hit me yet. I don't know what I was expecting to feel when I got here and I am not sure exactly what I am feeling. I had spent so much time thinking about getting to Dublin that I didn't really think about what it would be like to actually make it here. I guess there is a bit of personal pride and accomplishment and it is kind of bitter sweet, but mostly what I am thinking is, "now what?" I mean that both in the sense of wondering what my next adventure will be after this one, but also in the very literal sense of what do I do now that I have made it to Dublin. I got here a week earlier than I thought I would which means I still have more than a full two weeks before I leave for Portland. A large part of me is ready to return home to Portland. I have really started to miss it and I also have quite a few things that I need to get done or get started and being in Portland would make that a lot easier. However, I know that changing my flights at this point would be ridiculously complicated and expensive, especially given that I have a bike to consider, so I don't particularly want to deal with that. Plus, having an extra week in an area of the world you have never been too isn't really a bad problem to have. Currently my plan is to hang out in Dublin for a few days and do nothing. I am gonna give myself a few days of just sitting in coffee shops and recharging after going non-stop the for the last month. Then I am going to slowly transition into checking out the Dublin attractions and eventually make my way over to London and maybe Scotland for a quick trip since I am sort of in the area, or at least as much in the area as I will be for the foreseeable future. But for now, nothing.

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On the route to Glendalough

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Photos from Ballybeama Pass that I somehow forgot to post!

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Day 25: Bunclody to Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, Ireland

June 2nd, 2015 Miles biked: 48.01 Time on bike: 4 hours and 40 minutes Total miles biked: 969.6 Total time on bike: 100 hours and 13 minutes ~~~~~~~~~~ In the morning, I was provided with orange juice, eggs, bread, and other fixings so I could make myself some breakfast. It was nice to have something more than just excessive amounts of toast and jam. When I was heading out, Arthur was a sweetheart and kept asking if I needed anything and ended up sending me off with some digestive crackers, which are basically cookies and are a lot more delicious than the name makes them sound. Today was one of the hillier days of my trip, but the weather was much much nicer than yesterday, so there really isn't much to complain about. Just after I got to my hostel, the winds picked up and got really gusty. It looks like I once again finished my ride just in time. Glendalough is part of Wicklow National Park and is, I have been told, an incredibly beautiful area. But, yesterday's ride took a lot out of me and I don't feel like dealing with the gusty winds, so I am going to have to pass on the opportunity to explore the outdoors. I have decided instead to enjoy some tea, call my grandma for her birthday, and start figuring out what I am going to do when I get to Dublin TOMORROW(!!!!!!!).

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Day 24: Waterford to Bunclody, Co. Carlow, Ireland

June 1st, 2015 Miles biked: 41.67 Time on bike: 4 hours and 22 minutes Total miles biked: 921.5 Total time on bike: 94 hours and 33 minutes ~~~~~~~~~~ At the very start of today, as I was refilling my water bottles and packing up my snacks outside of a convenience store, an old man stopped me and said, "get off the road and go back inside. This is no weather to be cycling in." He was quite right. The first hour wasn't bad. The rain held off and the wind was at my back. I got to New Ross, where I was going to take a break to visit the Dunbrody Famine Ship, with little trouble and in good time. The Dunbrody Famine Ship is a replica of a boat that was used to ship thousands of emigrants to Canada and the United States during the years of the potato famine. The conditions were quite horrendous, with disease running rampant and families, and sometimes complete strangers, having to sleep in groups of 8 people on bunk beds that might (un)comfortably fit 2 or 3 people. These ships were nicknamed coffin ships because so many people died on them. Still, for many poor folks in Ireland, taking their chances on these ships was better than taking their chances staying in Ireland. Before the famine, Ireland's population, including Northern Ireland, was 8.2 million. During the famine, around one million people died and another two million left the country. Ireland has yet to return to pre-famine population levels and the island's current population is approximately 6.4 million. Just as the tour was ending, it started pouring rain. I dragged my feet a bit, sulking around the gift shop and cafe, but looking at the forecast, it was only supposed to get worse as the day went on, so the sooner I started back up, the better. I told myself that the next three or so hours, no matter how bad the weather, would not be nearly as bad as a journey to America on a coffin ship during the famine years, so I had no right to complain. The rain never let down and it was cold and windy. The only saving grace was that the wind was at least at my back for the most part. Just as I was rolling up to my final destination for the day, the weather got even worse and the rain came down harder and the wind became stronger, the direction more erratic. I had finished my ride just in time. I found the place I am staying tonight off of AirBnB because there weren't many other options. The cheapest bed and breakfast I could find was €45 and I didn't want to spend that. This place was $85 for the night, which was a lot, but I had an AirBnB gift certificate that I needed to use before it expired, so it worked out alright. The place is really nice. It is a sort of apartment attached to an old fancy cottage that the host lives in. It is divided from the rest of the house, so you can have the space to yourself, but you can also easily access the rest of the house if you want to interact with the host. Arthur, the man who owns the place is super nice. I showed up to the door completely soaked and he set right to making a nice fire in the wood burning stove in the living room so that I could warm up and set my clothes out to dry. His partner was craving junk food, so he went out and bought us all burgers and chips for dinner and I sat and spoke with them for a while over dinner and tea. They are both really lovely people. The apartment has a TV, so I am enjoying the opportunity to veg out a little and watch some bad reality shows for a bit.

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Watching the Titanic sink from the safety of my fake lifeboat and feeling surprisingly emotional

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The town of Cobh

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Day 23: Youghal to Waterford, Co. Waterford, Ireland

May 31st, 2015 Miles biked: 50.97 Time on bike: 4 hours and 48 minutes Total miles biked: 879.8 Total time on bike: 90 hours and 11 minutes ~~~~~~~~~~ When I set off this morning, I was planning on biking to a small town called Clonmel. About a mile into the ride I reached a roundabout. I could either keep going straight ahead to Clonmel or take a right and head to the city of Waterford. The original route headed north to Clonmel before cutting east the next day. By going to Waterford, I would be going east and then have to cut north the next day. Waterford would be quite a deviation from the pre-planned route, but I figured that I was at least heading in a direction that I would be going to eventually, so I took the turn toward Waterford. Unlike Clonmel, Waterford had a hostel and a bit more going on, so I figured I would rather go there. Waterford is considered Ireland's oldest city, which is impressive because a lot of Ireland is really old. Waterford is also home to world-renowned Waterford crystal. However, still not feeling particularly great, I had little interest in checking out any of the historical sites or the Waterford crystal, and I just plopped myself down in a pub. The pub was really cool, though. It looked like a mix of an Irish pub and a Wild West saloon. Plus, they had really good French fries. Who needs to check out historically significant sites when you can sit in a pub/saloon and eat French fries, am I right?