another vote for “i would have given up”
props for continuing on.
Somehow I was able to tune out the physical pain by with being annoyed by my disc rotor. The arm at the time I considered like a temporary sprain. Seemed like muscle pain that would go away after a few days. Only after the muscles stopped hurting did I realize that I had some kind of bone injury also.
Just added an arm photo to my post if you want to see an extremely unlikely bruise location.
2 Likes
Dude that sounds cursed I’m glad you liked the rest of the trip. Do you have pics of the scenery?
t3 is codeine and acetaminophen, no caffeine
I didn’t take nearly enough photos.
This part of the country is dry and dusty. Mostly tourist beaches and agricultural.
Lots of beach
Typical river crossing. Had a few per day.
One town had red streetlights to not disturb turtles.
Hit the speed limit here - was proud of myself.
Best soda we found.
13 Likes
Watching the turtles hatch on the beach in Nicaragua is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen. Are you living in CR currently or back visting?
I got to see a turtle laying eggs but no hatching this year.
I’m in NYC until next winter.
1 Like
Story time.
An internet acquaintance and some of their friends were going to do the Oregon Outback, which runs south-north thru Oregon and passes somewhat close to where I live. I offered to be a local contact/bail out if needed.
That particular section, if doing the standard schedule, ends up being a stretch with no water at the overnight spot, so you end up carrying a bunch. I like any excuse to take the 'ol Subaru out and zoom around National Forest roads, so I offered, unasked, “hey, let me go do a water drop for you and your pals”.
I went out a day or so before and dropped a bunch of water and a small care package in a good shady hiding spot behind a downed tree.
About two days later, in the morning I got a text “hey thanks so much for the water and snacks! Also we might have a person with an injury who could use a ride out. Do you know if Uber or Lyft or any Shuttle service comes out this way?”
Of course I said I would come pick them up (~45 minutes one-way) and it turns out my morning was flexible and so they didn’t have to sit around all afternoon until I got off work in the evening.
I got the rider(some kind of overuse injury to a leg or tendon) + bike back to my house. They were not from the PNW and had planned to get a friend-shuttle with the rest of the group from the endpoint back to Portland and then from there box their bike and fly home. Instead they took their bike to a shop here for boxing+shipping. Then I gave them an old rolly suitcase and loaned them a big duffle bag to get all their dangly bikepacking gear and clothes and whatnot home with them. They found a decent hotel room for the evening, which I shuttled them to and bid farewell, as they had changed flights to leave from RDM instead of PDX as originally intended.
After a few days, my loaned duffle arrived in the mail along with a very nice card and some fun gifts for Roscoe, kiddo, and I. (They had also insisted on venmo-ing me some $ the day of the extraction).
The end.
23 Likes
Lessons and things I now think about.
Plan a bit more about how you will get out or who you can contact if a mechanical or injury prevents you from riding very far. In this case there’s a company Cascade Heavy Rescue that does towing/recovery for off-road jeeps and I’m pretty sure would come “tow” a bicyclist too.
There was a state highway about 12 miles up the gravel road, along the cycling route. Other riders in the group could have towed the injured to the road, and from there certainly had cell service(they got lucky and had service at the campsite in the N.F.), flagged down a truck for a ride (lots of recreational travel along this road) and/or had better chance of calling a rideshare.
Once in town there was still lots to do. For one the rider still had all the emotions of abandoning a ride, something saved up $ for and planned and new wheels purchased and traveled to and now having to leave mid-journey and not complete. And now they were in a strange town completely unoriented.
They were able to only hobble around short distances, with their bikepacking bike and gear which might be great for riding but sucks for walking around or trying to lock up on the street (did they even have a lock?) and then carry various dangle-bags by hand. Where can they put their stuff? Where can they just sit and think? How long does it take to get oriented in a strange town -if you have an uber pick you up in the woods, where do you even tell them what your destination is? What about medical attention for their leg? Is there even Uber/Lyft in whatever town they land in? Hotels? Can flights be re-arranged? Etc. etc.
I had never really thought about how much it takes to be plopped somewhere new totally unplanned.
They were thankful for my help, they could spread out all their gear on my back porch, use my bathroom and water and food and wifi. I gave recommendations on places to possibly stay*, bike shops that might pack their bike, bus routes, uber/Lyft/Cabs/Airport shuttles. Ways to get back to Portland if they decided to go there vs. try to re-arrange a flight out of RDM. All the stuff that I know in my head but would take time to look up on a tiny phone screen and then make decisions while your leg is killing you and you don’t really know anything about where you are.
I had to get back to work and said I’d be happy to drive them wherever needed afterward no worries. They ended up taking a bus to drop their bike at a shop, then to urgent care, then Lyft back to my place right about the time I got home. They hung out for family dinner at my invite, then said goodbyes and I dropped them at the hotel.
Edit to add: and damn all that stuff costs $$$. If you had to pay for extraction, transport all over town, bike shipping, hotel, new flights, that adds up quick. Not to mention medical stuff. It could turn a shoestring budget bike-camping trip into a serious expense very quickly. At my previous job our health plan included the option to add on MASA air transport/evac insurance coverage very cheaply. I have heard good things about them and what they cover but thankfully never had to use myself.
*I would have let them use an air mattress in our home office, or camp in the yard/on the back porch, if they couldn’t find a place to stay and had asked. TBH I feel kinda weird about not offering, but this was only a friend of an internet acquaintance, not someone I knew at all.
10 Likes
I took a wilderness first aid class for the first time this spring and kicked myself for not taking one 15+ years ago. It definitely would have influenced my mindset around this sort of thing and has made me better prepared in case things do go sideways. (Also, from my high school era lifeguard training, I was very much in the “front-country medicine” mindset of all the things you’re not allowed to do. Whereas in the backcountry, there’s a lot more improvisation allowed.)
That’s one thing about the ultra-minimalist gear approach that makes me nervous. It tends to not work well when things go sideways. You don’t have enough clothing to deal with hypothermia or provide padding when splinting an injury. You don’t have a lock. You don’t have the spare cable, tire, 3rd spare tube, random bolts, …
When bike touring, we’ve definitely relied on both the kindness of strangers and on getting mom on the phone to help do some research and sort out logistics (this was pre-smartphone). In particular, our worst incident was hitting wildfires in Montana that kicked my asthma into overdrive. A woman at the visitor center on the Fort Belknap Reservation gave us a ride in her minivan to Havre so we could catch the train. She wouldn’t even take gas money. And my mom called the next several stations along the line to figure out which town wasn’t full of smoke and then booked us a hotel room because the train arrived in the middle of the night.
3 Likes
When I took my wilderness first aid class, I sat in front of a group of EMTs who gasped when the instructor talked about more interventional actions like feeding the patient, giving meds, etc.
2 Likes
Yeah, my class included an EMT, a volunteer firefighter and search and rescue team member, and a near-retirement surgeon. It was interesting to get their range of perspectives on scenarios and treatments.
The other mind-boggling thing about WFA to me is that you really don’t have to be that far out in the middle of nowhere - it applies if you’re >1 hr from an ER.
3 Likes
I always think about this when I’m out in the mountains, I was a lifeguard/first aid/CPR insteuctor for many, many years and I have to think outside of that.
It took us a few years but wife and I started packing a basic first aid kit on hikes and bike trips some years ago. At least the necessities to keep a person from bleeding out, stopping anaphylaxis, sat phone if in a place without easy access to cell signal, etc. I really want to take one of these courses but like with many other things I really want to do, I haven’t gotten around to it.
The first aid courses we do at my work are outdoors ones. Im not sure how i got on the list, but ive been doing them for years. I didnt do the last one so i guess im expired. Having said that, the kit i take bikepacking is pretty basic. I guess our country is tiny and we always have spot trackers or epurbs if it goes pear shaped, as it did in TTW last year when Steve Halligan broke his femur.
Anyone know of good 30* tents that compressed fit well in an 11L saddlebag?Could do a quilt but would rather not.
Anyone have one I could borrow for the end of Sept? (kinda kidding?)
Tent or sleeping bag?
If you mean bag not tent, I’m pretty sure I could JUST squeeze my Nemo Disco 30 large into a 13L sea to summit big river dry bag (in terms of girth). It’s a wider spoon bag so I’d assume a regular mummy would be fine.
I think the Riff is the slightly higher end Nemo spoon version that should pack down even better.
I fit my 20 deg bag into a 8L topeak frontloader, so pretty sure you should be able to fit any light bag into that size saddlebag but YMMV. mine is a big agnes greystone 20.