Catfish in New Medows ID
 

This post is a few days old, as I received it from Catfish at the end of August. Due to the problems with the forum and logging in...it's taken a few days. Here goes...

"6 hours on the bike today: left Cambridge at 8am stopped for pancakes at the local diner. I met 2 guys traveling on motor cycles. One guy never stopped talking the other just kept nodding his head and agreeing. I quickly tuned him out.

The day started with what else? A climb. Nothing serious but there was this fierce head wind that kicked my a.. all day. A hill that should have just slowed me down was actually work. I stopped in Council ID at the info booth and got talkin to the lady behind the counter. She let me use her computer to do email and a short post on the board. The climb got steep from there for a good 5 or 6 miles and the head wind was brutal. All of a sudden I got into a heavy forested area and it sorta blocked the wind and the hill didn't seem quite as hard.

For some reason I was going through water like eggs through a Hen. I was thinking I might run out then spotted a campground. Pulled in and there was cold spring water comming out of the pipe. I stayed and had lunch. A Bagel, raisins and ice cold water. Yesterday while riding through Hells Canyon I found a peachtree and an apricot tree. Both had ripe fruit. Today I found some plumb trees with ripe fruit. I'd like to catch a fish to have something different to eat. I went through a mill town at the top of the last hill today where they turn trees into wood. There was stacks of logs, mountains of logs, waiting to get fed into the machines and come out lumber. They had irrigation sprinklers spraying these log mountains with water to keep them from ever catching fire. This whole area is so dry it could all go up quickly.

So I got to Zim's Hot Springs. Ole man Zim is long gone but some other people run it now. 8 bucks to camp including the use of Hot springs. 3 pools 97 degrees, 104 degrees and the one the water comes out of the ground is 140 degrees. Too hot to go in that one. Ok I get showered and go in the pools. There I meet Julie, a woman with a lot of questions with her boyfriend who isn't talking much. She asks what I do for a living. I'm not sure where this is going so I tell her I don't do anything and start to tell her the short version - 50 words or less of my story - she thinks it's all cool. By now Dave the boyfriend perks up and tells me his story. he had been a bigtime Hi-tech buy - 9 years ago in a rountine airflight, the plane losses power and drops from 54000 ft to 19000 ft in a matter of seconds. Everyone on board is faced with sure death - the pilot gets the plane down with 1 engine. As he said he and many others had a prinal scream that day. He quit his job after that and his life is completely different now. Doing odd jobs and loving life, he thanked me for listening to him. You know every one has a story to tell.

I just found out this weekend is Labor Day I'd better try to get off the road by noon on friday. Tomorrow's terrain is somewhat flat with some down hill. The next day is Whitebird Hill. First "real" challenge of the ride."