Yes.

When "My Gal" mentioned biking from our home in Bellingham, Washington to Denver via the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route I was surprised because 1) she knew the words "Great Divide Mountain Bike Route", 2) it's a damn long ride, 3) though we live in a mini-Mecca for mountain biking, we're not mountain bikers. That said, we are adventurous types who focus on journeys instead of destinations and shy away from anything that resembles an itinerary. There could only be one answer. Yes.

Coming back to reality, that being the fact that we own road bikes, are tourers of the highway-byway variety, have jobs, a cat, a son, not to mention other plans for summer we decided to cut out the first 600 miles of introductory pavement and travel by train to the station in Whitefish, Montana--spitting distance from the GDMBR and the meat of our adventure.

Books and blogs have been read, maps have been purchased, bikes have been modified and our to-do list gets shorter. I don't do Facebook but I do want to have something for those that want to follow our adventure as well as something for us to look back on and everything that happens between here and there.

--ph
Grand depart 126d


I’ve always called Paul “my guy,” but I never realized he used “my gal” in reference to me. (The history of such vague relationship terminology stems from our not having been married some 23 of our current 24 years of being, how I’ve always referred to it, “solid.” So the words “husband” or “wife” are relatively foreign to us and don’t come easily to our lips.) I love being Paul’s gal! And the two of us taking all sorts of journeys together, guy and gal, well, that’s what our shared life has been about.

I have to add, though, that my mentioning of this particular journey was, in truth, inspired by a destination: In September 2013, we promised our friends Bill and Maggie—who used to live in Bellingham but have lived in Loveland, Colorado, for several years—that we’d finally come visit them. And we could incorporate a visit to my brother Callen (in Denver) to boot! But how to get there in an interesting way that also gave us opportunity to see and experience a part of the country we’d not explored before…that was what I was looking for. Since Bill is a cycling friend with whom we’d just done part of the Chuckanut Century (with avid cycling friends Ray and Kitty—just wanted to mention them!), seeking interesting biking options as part of getting there was forefront in my mind. Hence my comment to Paul along the lines of, “hey, there’s a some bike trail from north of Whitefish that passed through Colorado…”

What did I get myself into with that observation? Indeed, I am not a mountain biker: I prefer to stay firmly rooted on two feet along those switch-backy, rooty, rocky, hilly trails of Galbraith and Chuckanut so popular with local mountain bikers.

But Paul said “yes,” and it was autumn, so what better way to pass the dark and rainy months than think about a summer bike trip and embrace the idea of a new challenge? The fact that there was a hot-off-the-press updated publication of a trusted Mountaineers Books guide ("Cycling the Great Divide" by Michael McCoy) just added to the serendipity of our decision. Once we learned the date of two dear friends’ summer wedding (yay, Jon & Taylor!), our planning and info gathering began in earnest: the book, the Adventure Cycling Association website and maps, Amtrak’s Empire Builder timetable (after dispelling those first 600 miles from our doorstep), Denver-area rental car options back home, rider blogs, bike needs and, Paul’s obsession--Google maps.

--Alaine (just now getting up to speed on Paul’s travel diary)
4/27/2014 – “Grand depart” now ONLY TWO MONTHS AWAY!