Beartooth Highway Tandem Ride, July 2010

How do you follow up an 8 mile ride up the Going to the Sun Road on your honeymoon? Hiking up to Grinnell Glacier on your 1st Anniversary? Climbing the 2nd Flatiron on your 2nd Anniversary? You do a 12 mile ride up the Beartooth Highway on the tandem on your 10 year anniversary! Crazy. I know. I'm kind of nervous about the 25th one...

At the 11th hour, we were still trying to figure out what to do. Should we camp, hike, drive a long way to see friends for a few hours? What should we do? We really like Red Lodge, so we decided to do something there. I suggested we take the tandem and do a little cruising around the area. You know, find a nice road and cruise?! Right. We foisted the kiddos off on family, then headed out to Red Lodge with the tandem in the back of the truck and the camper hooked up. We found a campground Friday night, finagled our way into a spot by a creek, and relaxed. Here's a collage of our campsite...If you click on the collage it will expand into approximately a 5x7 photo. Then you can click again to further zoom...

The next morning, Michael went out to get the bike ready. He found a flat tire. We had forgotten to let out the air before the climb in altitude. oops. Then we discovered we didn't have a spare and all the tire fixing goo was really old and dried up, and now what? A woman walked by on the road of the campground. Their little doggy ran off and she was retrieving it. She asked if we were going cycling and we told her our dilemma. She said they were going to ride up the Beartooth Highway too, and she'd check with her husband to see if they had a spare spare tire. (yes, you read that right!) Soon, her husband came back with two spares and an offer to ride with us. Really nice couple...totally forgot their names. They are in the collage below...she's the one holding her bike overhead. She doesn't do well with heights, so this was a great accomplishment. He drove their rig up, rode down on his bike, then we rode up and she took the rig down. Riding up those switchbacks was enough; she didn't want to ride down them!

I really thought the ride was going to be tortuous. After all, I had spent the summer sanding and refinishing, and that's what we did every weekend too. The only time we had ridden was the Sunday previous when we coasted down into town, got an ice cream treat, then rode one mile uphill to home, a grand total of maybe five miles. Good thing I lead cycling classes at the Y. At least I have some endurance. We figure we averaged 8mph on the climb. That's good for two 40+ people on basically their first ride of the season. Here's a collage of the ride...If you click on the collage it will expand into approximately a 5x7 photo. Then you can click again to further zoom...

And now, a map of the switchbacks...

We rode to the "Vista Point" where we took the photos of us by the tandem. This was about an 8.7 mile ride from the campground area we started from. We took a break, then decided to ride further up the road. (Don't ask me why... really, don't!) So, if you look at the map above, we figure we rode off the upper right corner of the map...to a total of 12 miles.

We enjoyed a fruit leather and Clif bar, then started the descent. The tandem has a drum brake on the rear wheel and I, the stoker, run it on the captains' command. So, I set it where he told me to and we cruised. One switchback before reaching the vista point again, Michael said, "Uh oh, that doesn't look good. The front tire is starting to bulge." great. I was already freaking about the next 9 miles downhill. (Trust me, I'd rather ride uphill.) We rode into the parking lot of the Vista Point, I hopped off and went over to one of the two trucks parked there. We knew at that point there would be no more riding. Just as I started talking to the woman in the truck, explaining our predicament, telling her our tire was bulging, Ka-POW! It blew! Sounded like a gunshot. She was the support truck for a motorcycle group...eek! Anyways, she brought us down to the campground where our truck was. That may have been scarier than riding down on the bike...she was a little crazy. Some pics of the tire follow...

So, all is well that ends well. We didn't crash. We didn't die. And we are getting a new front tire this year. And we'll carry extra tubes. And we'll make sure we don't do such a strenuous ride again on a 10 year old tire. I promise.