C E N T E N N I A L   T R A I L

Washington/Idaho

Then I fall. I wish I could say I was riding 30 mph and fell off the bike when I heroically swerved to avoid a small child who wandered onto the bike trail but no, I cannot. Rather, the bike is stationary and I'm attempting to take a picture of the river. One foot is clipped into my peddle, the other is not. I twist around to take the water shot then lose my balance. Unable to get my clipped-in foot unclipped in time, in slow motion I fall over onto my knee. Fortunately, it looks far worse than it is. The important thing is no one on the path saw me fall. Nothing worse than looking stupid in front of strangers.

I jump back on the bike and ride a bit more before noticing it's starting to get rather hot.

As I continue to ride the landscape slowly starts to breakout into farmland to my right. There's a wonderful golden wheat field that looks ready for harvest.

During the course of my ride up to this point I've passed 4 bikers who all seemed to be on separate long distance tours. None of the them were riding together, they are spread out along the trail so I don't believe they were a group. Now, together as a group, all pass me when I take a rest break.

When I finally hit the trail again I eventually catch up to the trailing rider. I pull alongside and inquire if he is on a long distance bike ride. It turns out Adam and the three other riders (John, John and Patrick) are indeed together and are on a long distance bike trip. They all left Port Townsend, WA a while back and had traveled on SR-20 just as I had to get to Spokane, WA. I must have passed them on the way but didn't take notice of them. A little later I catch up with John, the ride leader. We chat for a bit and over the course of the next few miles I kept running back into the group as I constantly needed to backtrack because Idaho does such a lousy job of marking the trail.