He was run off the road three times on one stretch of highway, dodged things thrown by passers-by and camped in the snow, but resident Dan Humphrey said his 2,300-mile solo bike ride last fall was a great trip.
Humphrey, 53, pedaled a 1983 Schwinn LeTour Deluxe, bought at Harold Hopper’s Haines Schwinn Shop, from Bellingham, Wash. to Silver City, N.M. Traveling under the flags of Alaska and New Mexico sewn together, he started Oct. 9 and finished in his home state Nov. 23.
A father of two, Humphrey operates a local syrup company and works summers as a carpenter. His job forced him into a fall schedule for the trip and his reasons for going by bike – to attend a Utah music festival, to meet new people, to pick up his daughter in New Mexico – didn’t really add up, he admits.
“It was kind of a Forrest Gump thing… I wanted to ride from border to border.”
Besides the kindness of strangers and the struggle to keep weight on, the solitude of the adventure left an impression on him, Humphrey said.
“I’ve never been alone that much. On the bike, all you’ve got to do is take care of yourself. In that situation, you pay attention to everything you’re doing. You’re constantly monitoring your state of well-being. I’ve never been in that position where I had to think of myself constantly.”
Besides camping gear, bike tools and water, Humphrey carried a three-day food supply on a one-wheeled trailer he towed. Besides new, reinforced tires, he added four gears to his classic, steel 12-speed he described as ideal for his 6’3’’ frame and only slightly heavier than modern touring bikes starting at $1,200.
When it was built, the LeTour was the top of the line, he said. “What mountain bikes are today, touring bikes were then.”
In Washington, Humphrey rode the Iron Horse Trail, a 105-mile section of former railbed transformed into a bike lane from Snoqualmie Pass to the Columbia River, and on to Moscow, Idaho through the potato and onion harvest in lush farmlands of the state’s southeast. “I could have had all the potatoes and onions I wanted.”
Once in Idaho, he straddled sections of the Lewis and Clark Trail while reading the explorers’ journal. A few days later, in Missoula, Mont., he looked down from above on the same plains the explorers had seen. “They looked out and saw buffalo and game. I had the same view, but of cattle. It was fascinating.”
Through mountain passes, he pedaled through as much as six inches of snow. Outside Idaho Falls, with cars sliding off the road around him, he was offered a ride from a passing plow truck, but that proved little relief.
“I’d been traveling between 12 and 15 miles per hour. Here we were plowing snow at 60 miles an hour. Snow was flying over the truck. I was terrified. It was an experience, for sure,” he said.
Consuming 4,000 calories a day, Humphrey was losing weight at a rate that concerned him, ultimately dropping to 165 pounds. Gains in muscle and aerobic capacity became evident when he teamed up with another long-distance rider – a professional cage fighter – near the Utah border. The pair was pedaling up a mountainside. “It was amazing how strong I was. I had to be careful not to hurt my knees. In bike riding, knees are your weak link.”
The other rider’s bike frame came apart under the strain.
Like many bicycle tourists, he abandoned the idea of always finding a campground at night, and started tucking in along roadsides where he could. “After a while, I realized I could sleep anywhere where I couldn’t be seen.”
From Montana to New Mexico he bumped into opposition in the Mountain West to the recent reintroduction of wolves, seen by many as a threat to hunting and ranching. “Their idea of wolf management is to kill them all. People were curious. They had a lot of questions about Alaska wolves and how we dealt with them.”
Many also wanted to know about Sarah Palin.
Humphrey traveled with a cellular phone for emergencies, but said he didn’t have any serious ones. “Ninety-five percent of people were courteous and sensitive to my needs as a bike traveler. It’s human nature, I think, for people to take in people traveling alone and protect them.”
“One car out of a thousand would honk and throw something at me. Every couple of days somebody would throw something. A couple things they threw could have been disastrous, but fortunately, they missed.”
A rough day came while riding south of Chinle, Ariz., on a crowded section of two-lane highway on the Navajo Nation, where drivers weren’t afraid to pass. “It’s a wide open country and they don’t have the same regard for safety that some people have, so you get three cars (abreast) on a two-lane road. When you throw a bike in the mix, it gets crazy.”
Though he camped in the snow in Idaho, his coldest day on the road was at 7,000 feet elevation on Arizona’s Mogollon Plateau, an exposed spot where the temperature dropped to zero at night and above freezing during the day. “It was brutally cold.”
By then, though, he was close to his New Mexico home, a landscape of ranches, mines and small farms. In Glenwood, he visited former resident Janis Marston and saw the final artworks of legendary Haines painter Gil Smith after the artist suffered a paralyzing stroke.
“He couldn’t write or make a straight line, but he could hold a pencil or charcoal in his left hand. He created some incredible work. It was an amazing act of determination to do that,” Humphrey said.
He finished the trip visiting his son at college in Las Cruces and meeting up with his teenage daughter.
In Silver City, a training center for some of the country’s top touring bike racers, he made some rides with competitive riders and was gratified to keep up with ones in the middle of the pack. “I could hold my own.”