The Mountain Passes

John has been having quite the adventure the last few days: when he and I last spoke (Monday night), he had completed three mountain passes, the first one being the toughest biking he’s ever done: 34 miles up and 26 miles down. After this first one he was exhausted and found a place to pitch his tent. Memorial Day weekend made it difficult to find a place to stay but he had read about a private home that catered to cyclists, offering a place on their lawn with access to their bathroom. He knocked on their door but no one was home, so he pitched his tent and decided to check in with them in the morning. He set up his tent with the sleeping bag and mat cozily tucked in and took all of his gear out of the paniers. All of a sudden, sprinklers popped up out of the ground and started doing their thing. John frantically pulled up tent stakes and moved gear to a dry place, but not before EVERYTHING got soaked. He ended up hanging all of the wet things in a garage and slept on his soaked sleeping bag and pad on the concrete garage floor. I’m happy to report that the next couple of days went much better and as of this writing he will only have one more pass to go over (in the Cascade Mtn. range). For those of you following a map, John was in the town of  Omak as of last night.