After leaving Montana, we camped out by Rose Lake in the Idaho panhandle, near Coeur D’Alene Idaho and Spokane Washington.
At this point in the trip, I recognized that my bike had been abused and neglected for far too long and I decided to spend half a day spinning wrenches.
Tech geek observation: mountain bikes are getting ridiculous. My goal was to silence a bunch of creaks and rattles. In order to do this, I had to separate my rear hydraulic brake hose, take off my wheels, take off my fork and handlebar, feed all the cables back out of the frame, add padding to all housings and hoses, reinstall everything, and then completely redo all the rear end suspension pivots and…oh yeah, pull apart the bottom bracket and cranks to regrease the spindles. Oh, and regrease the pedals. And regrease the clutch in my rear derailleur. So silencing the machine was trivial.
So after tinkering with literally every system on the bike, we opted for a mild ride in the Idaho Panhandle Nat’l Forest near where we camped. This would be a great shake-down ride to check and make sure there were no future high-consequence surprises in the next trip into the backcountry.
We toured around the Fourth-of-July recreation area. Very scenic and lots of signs of animals, but we had a very quiet ride and enjoyed the wonderful forests. Quietly.
Total time: 02:15:43