Riding Solo!

That's an exciting title - and an exhilarating feeling, especially since I managed to conjure up a day of perfect transition from riding with the group to being on my own, with a little of each. It was hard and a little weird to see my group riding off to breakfast Monday morning, as I slept in a little (on purpose) and then loaded all my gear on my bike. Which, given the insane amount of stuff I'm hauling, took a while. I had breakfast with a few of the crew staffing the group, then took off on a slightly different route - taking a nice short-cut they couldn't get a group permit for, through the western entrance to Grand Teton National Park. Which meant that later in the morning I managed to catch up to a few people from the group, and even got to have lunch with people at the Picnic stop! (Picnic always being a highlight.)

One of the things I was challenged by (ok - worried about) as I set off on this Big Day was the fundamental question of where I would sleep this night. My original idea was to camp at the top of the Togwatee Pass, which is also along the Continental Divide (which I think I've crossed three times in the past week). But this is Grizzly territory. As in, big mean bear. I couldn't get confirmation anywhere that the campgrounds up there have bear boxes to protect your food... and the rangers in Teton Park told me about a camp before you get to the pass that does have boxes. So I decided to stay there. Note to those of you who are worried about me: see how thoughtful and careful I'm being?

This also meant I had to ride "only" 50 miles - a lot less than I've gotten used to, and a good opportunity to get used to how the bike handles carry so much stuff. (It was mostly flat, too, which helped.)

And a great thing about the campground (a little rustic place managed by the forest service) became evident as the afternoon wore on: in the evening there were eight of us camping there, seven of us on bikes! Turns out it's on the Adventure Cycling Trans-America route.

So this was another part of the transition - being on my own, but with friendly company. I hung out and had tea & dessert with four other riders, two from Holland, and two from Texas. I'd expected this to happen at some point along the trip, but not the first night - so that was a great gift.

My goal for Tuesday is to make it up and over Togwatee Pass and then down to Dubois in time to watch the Uruguay v. Netherlands game - let's see how that goes.