Last Minute Preparation
This entry was posted on 7/25/2006 9:17 PM and is filed under General.
Although the planning for this trip has been almost a year, it seems
that everything has to get done in the last few days. It seemed like
departure day would never come and now we’re only a few days off. Let
me fill you in on some of our planning.
Since early spring (late April here in Michigan), we’ve been in
training, including the dogs. We began with riding our normal
singletrack trails, about six miles a couple times a week. Soon, we
started pulling our BOB (“Beast of Burden”) trailers, gradually adding
more and more weight. We found that 25 pound bags of dog food offered
good “dead weight”. Later, we added panniers (saddlebags) with bladders
of water for a weight of up to 50 pounds. Hopefully we won’t we
carrying that much weight on a normal basis, but there are some “dry”
days where we will have to carry up to 8 gallons of water.
In June we started increasing our mileage. We don’t think the Great
Divide Trail is going to have a lot of technical singletrack like our
home trails, so we started riding the abandoned railroad grade north of
town, 20 to 40 miles per day. It has some slope, but nothing in
Northern Michigan can really simulate the long passes we are going to
encounter in the Rocky Mountains. We can only wait for our final
conditioning when we are out there.
Let me fill you in on some of the
pros and cons of taking the dogs. Lander and Afton are our mountain
biking family. They love nothing more than running with us, and all we
have to do is get out the spandex shorts or camelback and they are
beside themselves with joy. We have thoroughly discussed this with our
Veterinarian and read up on first aid. They’ve trained every bit we
have, running about 20 miles per day and riding in the trailer the rest
of the time. They are not always happy about being in the trailer
because they’d rather be running, but they are learning to deal with
it. We did a 3 day practice trip and they quickly adapted to the
“run/eat/sleep/do it over again” routine. We have been conditioning
their pads and bought them reflective collars, harnesses and bear
bells.
Now the biggest con is the possibility of bear encounters. We have read
exhaustively about how to deal with the critters on the trail and in
camp. We have heard the advice that “bears and dogs don’t mix”. But we
have also talked to a couple of experts from that area that indicated
that it should not be a problem if the dogs are on a leash, and in
fact, their smell or barking may deter a bear. So, with three days
until we leave, our inclination right now is to take them. They will
have to be tied to our trailer when they run, not as fun as running
free, but necessary for their safety. Our friends who are taking us
have also agreed to stay in the area for 3 or 4 days, so that if it is
just not working out, they can pick up the dogs from us in Whitefish,
MT.
And so we are in our final days of packing, paying bills, closing up
the house and finishing up at work. We will also be posting a FAQ.
Check it out for answers to many of your questions or send us a
question via our comments. Once we leave for our trip (July 29th), we
will only have internet sporadically as we stop at libraries, so be
patient waiting for an answer.
In
1998, we rode across the United States from Oregon to Virgina with our
children, Jodie, age 15 and Todd, age 12. Read about our trip
using the links below. Now the kids have grown up and left
home, so we we are taking the dogs. This time it's a mountain
bike trip through the Rocky Mountains, roughly following the
continental divide, called the Great Divide route, mapped by 
oments as well. Why do we do this? Because God has given
us a wonderful country and this is the best way to be thankful for
it. 
