Pushing the Limit

Day 2 - July 1, 2008

Before leaving, I said that I wanted something to test my limits. Foolish desire. The ride to Steven’s Pass was a mixture of beauty and pain. The Cascades were amazing. I’m standing in front of Deception Falls. I don’t know the reason for that name, but I do know that for this part of the ride I was deceived.

We were climbing but the climb was very manageable, almost gentle. The map says that we gain 4000 feet in 40 miles. You have to look closely to see that 3000 feet of that gain was in the last 6 miles.

We had talked to a Forest Ranger during one of our breaks; when she learned we were going up Steven’s Pass, she just shook her head. Seemed like an overreaction to me.

It wasn’t. The pitch of the road was 6 degrees, sometimes 7. The difficulty came from the fact that this pitch never changed. No flat spots, no little downhills before the next climb, just constant climbing. We crawled up this mountain, and actually, crawling might have been faster. Our speed was 4-5 mph. Usually we take breaks every 45 minutes to an hour; on this climb we took breaks every mile. Doubt crept into my mind, “You might not make it.” I thought often about the dutch word a fellow church member gave to me before the trip, “Trochsette”- determination. I tried not to look too far ahead and refused to look at the odometer to see how far I had to go. Just one pedal stroke at a time.

When I reached the top I got choked up. Don’t know why-maybe it was the emotion of coming through an ordeal. Maybe it was the emotion of doing something really hard in the shadow of multiple sclerosis. MS is often far from my mind, but much closer to my feelings.

The ride down was as spectacular as the ride up was difficult. For many miles we rode next to the Wenatchee River-at times calm and placid-a nice canoeing river-and then a wild, turbulent beast that I would not dare to raft down. It was hard to keep my eyes on the road.

At supper I ate like a horse. “Jim, how can you still be hungry?” I wondered. I was. After supper at 6, I ate a granola bar for a bedtime snack at 9. Went to sleep at 9:30.