While my pedals slowly turned over and the increasing gradient became more and more taxing, I found myself talking to him. Telling him that I was going to be ok, that he had done a good job raising me, that I was going to miss him. All the things I had said in the hospital room a week earlier, this time surrounded by alpine passes instead of monitors and life support machines.
On July 4th, 2019 I received a call that will forever change the course of my life. On the other end was my Mom telling me that my father had been hit by a car while out on a morning bike ride. When a former ER nurse tells you, “It’s bad”; you know what to prepare for. My only question for her was if the driver stayed with him. I got the answer I already knew was coming; “No.” Eight hours later my wife and I are standing over my father in the hospital covered in gowns, surrounded by IV’s, and on life support. Twenty-Four hours later we are saying goodbye to a man who was one of my best friends and my example for how to live. Seventy-Two hours on and we are immersed in a police manhunt for the driver, grieving over our loss, and I am writing statements on behalf of my family, trying to summarize my father’s life in the matter of a few words. All of this in the span of three days. Three days ago, the biggest thing on my mind was my upcoming one-month sabbatical from work and a 400mi bikepacking trip in Idaho with three friends. Now I am trying to figure out who killed my father and how I feel about this whole thing. My wife and my mother encourage me to still go on the trip. They tell me it is what he would have wanted and that it will be good for me. So I went…
Taylor, Corbin, and I picked the Idaho Smoke ‘n Fire 400 route after Colorado experienced a record setting winter and the CO Trail was still under significant snow. We all met in Salt Lake City, drove to Boise and rolled out on a six-day bike tour that would take us through remote mountain passes, forgotten towns, and over some of the most beautiful terrain I have ever ridden through. We met die-hard conservatives who had loaded gun magazines stashed around their diners, friendly locals who offered future stays in their guest houses, and plenty of people who looked at us like we were crazy people for riding our bikes in general.
Everyone says the mountains can heal you. The beauty, the solitude, and being one with nature can help mend your soul. What about for those who aren’t ready to be healed? What should I have expected from nature when I didn’t even know what I needed or how I felt? What I found was a simple gift. A break. The ability to press pause on life and escape what happened and what lie ahead. The sheer physical effort of riding 400 miles and climbing over 30k feet requires you to be present in the moment and not let your mind wander too often. Add in the fact that I didn’t want to be the guy talking about his deceased father the whole time, it was actually pretty easy to find a balance of processing in the rare moments you could and fully committing to the experience we all agreed to have. Taylor and Corbin let me talk about it when I wanted to and were totally content to roll down the trail joking about interactions we had with eccentric locals that day. More often than not I opted for the eccentric interactions.
We opted to ride the route, which is host to a race each September, in the traditional counter-clockwise direction. Even though we weren’t racing, we wanted to follow along and get the same experience. While we slept and ate (mostly) well, when we were riding, we were riding at race pace. As Taylor would put it, we were in, “Fuck shit up mode” a lot of the time. To be honest I think we were all motivated by the thought of our next meal, the next swimming spot, or getting to the top of one of the many demanding climbs the Smoke ‘n Fire has to offer. We rode hard, enjoyed creating culinary masterpieces out of gas station resupplies, and took a fair amount of cool mountain river swims. Corbin has a great photographic eye and brought along his camera to document the trip. I’ve never seen someone ride so hard with a full backpack of camera gear. I can’t wait to see the amazing photos he got from smashing it up the hills ahead of Tylor and I just to get the shot. By our last day out on the trail we were tired but full of great memories and inside jokes. The climb up and over the mountain range back into Boise seemed to never end, but we were rewarded with stellar descent and a chocolate shake with an extra-large water.
Nobody in the group had been to Idaho before this trip. By the end we all left impressed with the vast amount of public lands, varied beauty of the landscape, and how much untamed country there was to offer. From pine forests and flowing rivers, to alpine passes and random airfields in the middle of nowhere; Idaho didn’t disappoint. On our drive back to Salt Lake City I tried to figure out what I learned about myself or if I was in any different place about my father’s untimely death. In the end I had to accept that this trip was simply a gift of time. For 6 days I was able to step away from tragedy and put the real world on pause surrounded by some of the best company I could ask for. Thanks for the gift guys.
Dedicated to Chuck Vogel 1954-2019.
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