This is Where We Live Now

“This is where we live now!”

Our daily, if not hourly, proclamation became more of a mantra than a statement of fact. Said as a reassurance, it enabled us to build a shield of comfort between us and our Trump supporting, ATV driving, country music blasting neighbors at a BLM camping area in Arizona. Said with a question mark, it preceded our entry and ultimate takeover of the homes of friends and strangers across the desert west granting us access to laundry machines, showers, and cooking facilities.  At our quieter and more remote campsites, we screamed it loudly into the night sky, proclaiming our place in the universe as one that held meaning. It grounded us and gave us purpose in the moments we were feeling the most lost and untethered. 

Home is a confusing topic when you live on a bicycle. I felt many things on this three month journey, but I rarely felt anxious unless I was away from my bicycle. The bicycle, with all our camping gear, food, extra layers, notebooks, teaching supplies, held not only our housing, protection, and general security, but it held the key to our freedom. With our bikes we could move freely about without leaning on any other humans so long as we were stocked with food and water. Basic needs met, bikes were traveling homes that enabled us to feel comfort everywhere we went. Any BLM land, RV park, Warm Showers host’s backyard, or slightly sketchy motel was more than tolerable because we had our fully loaded bikes. With the knowledge that our bikes could sustain us we could more fully immerse in our situation and live presently in each moment. 

That presence of mind also contributed quite a bit to our feelings of home. While we did spend a lot of time planning ahead, it was much more day to day focused than we often are in our “normal” lives. Rather than planning weeks or months out, we were planning days and sometimes hours at a time. Life on the road is so subject to change that all you can do is plan for the best and expect almost anything else to happen. This uncertainty contributed, I believe, to our ability to live in the present moment much more than usual. Living in the present and constantly addressing basic needs evokes a more primitive lifestyle. This primitive awakening deeply connected us to each other, to each place we landed, and to the people who invariably wanted to take care of us in those places. 

I feel so grateful for this declaration of home even when it was said stubbornly, begrudgingly, or resentfully. I am grateful that we felt home everywhere we went because that feeling created an aura of welcoming around us that invited others in. When others came into our home they told us amazing stories about the river with hardly any prompting. Students felt our welcoming aura and heartily debated with us about invasive species, bike lanes, and how to save a dying river ecosystem. People shared secret camping spots, went out of their way to bring us water and snacks, and cheered us on from the safety of their cars. We stayed with a couple in Yuma who cooked us Thanksgiving dinner and then gave us space to just relax before crossing the border. Too many wonderful things happened in Mexico to recount in this post, but above all, we were treated like family in a place where we could barely communicate with our hosts. There was so much magic throughout our three month adventure, and this was all made possible because we brought the feeling of home with us everywhere we went. 

-Leah Weisman

An Ode to Trail Angels

We get by with a little help from our friends! 

Actually, we get by with a whole lot of help. The Watercycle Adventure is fully fueled by the kindness of our community, including old friends, family, new friends, and random strangers who pass us on the side of the road. 

One of our goals on this bike trip is to build community and foster connections across the watershed and we have been doing that in more ways than originally expected. We thought that students sending letters to their downstream neighbors would help them understand that the river runs to far more places than what they can see in their backyards, and it does that. We also thought that intentionally making time and space to hear people’s stories would allow them to tap into the tangled web that is the Colorado River basin, and it does that. On top of all of that, we have found that simply by showing up and doing what we do, we create community every place we go. 

This is my ode to all the trail angels who have supported us along the way. It is by no means a fully inclusive list, but every little bit counts, and we have received help in innumerable forms over the past two months. We truly appreciate all supportive gestures from encouraging comments to places to lay our heads at night and everything in between. Some moments of kindness and generosity have caught us so off guard, the way we have been honoring these trail angels is naming our trail treasures after people. So here is a non- exhaustive list of trail angels, we want you to know that we named a road side treasure after you! :

Colin: We are huddled under the only shade for miles, a big boulder in Capital Reef National Park, eating lunch and lamenting that National Parks don’t have better bike lanes when an RV pulls over and stops. A friendly man skips over, hands full of cold seltzers and gummy bears. He tells us that he biked across the country a few years ago with his sister and he remembers hiding from the sun under the same boulder. 

Greg: We are taking a break at an awe-inspiring overlook in Escalante after slogging up a really big hill, probably fantasizing about dinner and wondering what’s on the other side of the hill (is it more up? Or, ideally, a big down…). A man in a “Coexist” tee shirt brings us a large bag of Pirate’s Booty and cans of Pepsi and tells us about how his daughter biked across the country with a group while in college. He insists on taking our picture because Kate looks just like his daughter. We tell him about our trip in between handfuls of the cheesy popcorn. 

Adam and Louise: After biking 30 miles in the rain the day before, we are once again slogging up a giant hill in Bryce National Park. A car rolls to a stop and out pop two good from Colorado who have been in the area visiting the parks and their family for the week. They load us up with snacks, beers, leftover pizza, and headphones, making the rest of the hill much more enjoyable! They don’t pull away until making sure we have enough toilet paper and snapping a photo to send out to our group chat so everyone back home knows we are doing alright. 

Stoney: Leah has to take a ten day break from the trip to take a medical certification course for her winter job (boo hoo…). Stoney, a kind stranger from the Facebook ether, drives out from Las Vegas to pick her up and regales her with stories about growing up in the Las Vegas valley, rafting the Grand Canyon over 30 times, and geological knowledge on the area over the 4 hour drive to the airport. We will be staying in touch in case either of us secures a Grand Canyon permit. 

Kevin and Kelci: The icing on the cake in the Leah relay is Kevin and Kelci, (friends of friends) allowing her to store her bike in their garage and then stay the night on the flip side of the course before meeting back up with the group. Kevin not only gives Leah a ride to meet the group in Peach Springs, but he also shares a ton of information about the river, Lake Mead, and the surrounding area. 

Our families, partners, and gracious hosts have been fundamental in this journey as well, but they deserve their very own post, and hugs, high fives, etc., for everything they have done to make this dream a reality. Know that we love and appreciate each and every one of you. They say it takes a village, but we know that in reality, it takes a whole watershed to make amazing things happen. So next time you are driving past a bike packer slogging up a big hill, give them a wide berth, holler supportive comments, share a snack, a seltzer, and a story and join us in this community of giving and receiving gifts for the pure joy that it brings on both ends of the interaction

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

All we ever want- gummy bears and cold seltzer! Thanks Colin :)

Colorado in Summary

As you ride through Grand Junction you will notice the roads have peculiar names…..25 ½ Road or 33 ¾ Road. Turns out, these road names are indicative of how far they are from the Utah border. So as we ride around Grand Junction we are staring at  a hard truth, “you are 25 ½ miles from Utah….or 25 ½ miles from  finishing your first state”. Yikes!  Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday we were still in Boulder packing panniers and weighing food. 

So it seems fitting now to recap everything we have learned from our pit stops in Colorado. 

Rocky Mountain National Park

“Lulu City is not an actual city” - Jenny

The headwaters of the Colorado River

“10,000 feet is always cold”

“Everyone can be manipulated with stickers”- 

Grand Lake

“Beer is expensive there”- Molly

“If you want to make friends, hang out at public libraries”- Rebecca

Granby

“People are quite connected to their water. When working with the Girl Scouts in Granby I noticed that the kids could share how close the Colorado River was to them and name different bodies of water that they recreated in.” - Kate 

Penelope loving the armpit

“We met Penelope the cat, who loves stinky armpits” - Jenny

“Relish the climbs” - Leah and Claire 

Kremmling

“The perfect place to celebrate one's 15th wedding anniversary. The Pizza Hut was super classy" - Rebecca

“5 in a tent is way warmer”- Leah

“Double check the stove burners. You can easily break your hosts $100 baking sheet” - Kate 

State Bridge

“Google maps does not record elevation changes for gravel roads”- Kate

“Google maps suck”- Jenny

“Half a mile to get to a camp site is a long way on a dirt road after 10 hours of biking.”- Molly 

Eagle County

“You CAN have too much of a good thing. We had so much support that it was sometimes overwhelming. We started to miss camping”- Kate

“Kids love us. We are good at what we do. The more you teach the better you get at it”- Leah

“There is always more wine in the basement”-Jenny

“Tool is the best band ever”- Rebecca

“Leslie paved the way for women’s soccer”- Claire

“I CAN bike up the hill without pushing...once I got lower gears”- Rebecca

Glenwood Springs

“Playing whales, while fun, is also very dangerous. Don’t play whales unsupervised”- Leah

“Communication is hard but important” -Jenny

“Mudslides can change the entire course of a river”- Jenny

“We saw rafters, fishers, a ranch, the train, a hydroelectric dam, and the highway. In one hour we saw all the pressures on the river.”- Claire

“None of those above things would be there if it wasn’t for the river, but yet the river seems like a backdrop to everything.”- Molly

Rifle:

“Bike shoes go on specific pedals because there is a left pedal and a right. If you mix them up you will be stuck at a garage sale” Kate 

“Be careful who you talk to”

We were able to watch the storm come in over the resevoir

“The reservoir is at its lowest levels”- Leah

A long slog up a medium hill is worse than a short climb up a steep hill”- Claire

“You can see storms coming for miles”- Jenny

“The storm will pass quickly and then come again. And again”- Leah 

Palisade

“Highway drivers are actually quite respectful. We only crashed into each other” - Kate 

“See Rebecca’s post”- Molly

“White wine pairs well with cheez-its” - Claire

“Palisade started as wineries, but switched over to fruit during prohibition”

It was a great time Colorado! Here is to Utah!

Palisade Peaches

All I heard about on this trip so far is Palisades has peaches! Well peaches are delicious and my first peach in Palisades lived up to my expectation; juicy, sweet, and no gross soft spots, but my five biking comrades neglected to tell me that Palisades also has vineyards. And vineyards have wineries- girls day wine tour on bikes!

I learned the best way to fully enjoy a girls day wine tour is to first start out by waking up before the sunrise, talking yourself up in the bathroom mirror at the campground, and jumping onto I70 for a short, yet forever lasting five miles of biking. Now I, as an Oregonian, think that is crazy. One cannot simply bike on one of the busiest highways in Colorado. Alas my Coloradan biking partners educated me that if there is no alternative route you can bike on the highway in Colorado. So we did! It was loud, terrifying, exhilarating: I had moments of panic thinking of what my mom would say for putting myself at such risk, and moments of pure adrenaline as semis passed me mere feet away. I’m happy to report we only had one SMALL accident in which a biker hit a bush growing onto the side of the road, which resulted in a chain reaction, and poor Kate bounced off the guard rail. Thankfully she was fine! However, her bike took a little jolting and we all predict she will come to know the full extent of the bike damage when we are the furthest from society in a cell phone dead zone. As we have learned, that's how those things usually play out. 

After highway biking we merged onto a lovely country road with rolling hills and vineyards and fruit trees for miles. Leah became our designated wine tour guide as she read the official wine tour map in downtown Palisades. 

Our first stop was a peach stand! We boosted our vitamin E levels while enjoying a local peach, snickered at the peach/rear end picture on the store sign, and proceeded to our first winery.

There were wines from three local vineyards: a traditional winery, a fruit winery, and a mead place (is that also a winery? Unsure). As we are six white girls we resisted our natural urges to just order rose, and we all sniffed and tasted four different fruit wines (no mead drinkers in this group). Ann was our delightful wine server and though she seemed timid at first, we quickly won her over with our charms and smiles. And of course, an official Water Cycle sticker. While sipping our wines we saw a wine tour horse and buggy go by, which is almost better than bikes. We purchased a lavender wine and bid Ann farewell and biked on. Unfortunately we quickly came to a large steep hill and while everyone powered their way up, I walked my bike up and contemplated throwing it off the hill the whole time. Biking is a wonderful, calming experience for me, until I have to bike uphill. Then it’s a pure mental battle. But my bike lucked out today and I pushed it safely to the top. Thankfully as soon as I made it to the top of the hill the next winery was nearby. We rolled into a very polished winery that had old cars sprinkled around the property. Kate had the genius idea for everyone to put on their Hawaiian shirts for this stop. So as we are obviously classy gals, we promptly yanked off our smelly biking shirts and put on our fresh Hawaiian shirts in the parking lot, to the delight (or horror) of the other wine patrons sitting outside. We strode into the winery looking like the multicolored bad ass broads we are, and met the delightful Neal,an obvious wine connoisseur. Neal may have been a little hungover, but he was a wine professional and had a frog tattoo so we instantly adored him. We opted for the white wine and rose samples and found a nice big table outside to accommodate our wine tasting and impromptu camping food lunch. If you have ever wondered if white wine pairs with tuna, Cheez-its, and tortillas, the answer is yes. And it was great to get the fellow wine patrons to stare at us some more. We like to be memorable. After our wine and tuna, we waved goodbye to Neal, and headed to our new home in Grand Junction. Or rather that was the intention till we passed a brewery and decided, you know what’s better than wine? Beer. So we stopped at a lovely brewery for beer, nachos, appetizer sampler, and a game of snakes. If you haven’t ever played snakes, let me break it down for you. You turn your body into a snake and make hissing sounds. Jenny is the supreme ruler of the game but we have months to practice and catch up to her snake level. After snakes and beer we finally made it to our home for the evening and promptly fell asleep after our exhilarating girl’s wine day bike tour.

Rebecca 

Ready Set Go

And they are off like a herd of turtles! 

There is nothing fast about bike touring, in fact, part of why we love it is our slow pace. It takes time to load up gear for the high-alpine mountains, the dry, hot desert, sweaty exercise, and professional in-school teaching. It takes time to ride 50 miles on gravel, pot-holed roads. It takes time to explain why we are riding our bikes 2,000 miles along the Colorado River visiting schools, libraries, and community events throughout the watershed. It takes time to plan a never-been-done, epic adventure.  What does not seem to take too long, though, is connecting with a place and the people we meet as we travel through small towns and big cities on this wild adventure. 

After two years of looking at maps, reaching out to sponsors, collecting bike packing gear, and convincing ourselves this was actually possible, our crazy plan was finally coming to fruition. With gear strewn about Molly’s backyard, moments before departure, I said, “we are riding down from the Alpine Visitors’ Center, right?” Molly stopped what she was doing, looked up at me quizzically, and said, “oh, I never thought of that, that sounds great!” And thus began a beautifully-designed, highly-planned, well-organized trip of making things up as we went along. It is not that the planning was not vital and well-executed, it is just that bike packing trips into the unknown require much flexibility. We have been on the road for almost a month now and we are becoming quite limber. 

Each one of the six riders in this group joined for her own reasons and started with her own expectations for the journey. Having started from very different places, we are now riding down the same road and experiencing a similar reality, however I can only speak for myself in comparing expectations to reality.  I knew we would be riding our bikes a lot. I did not know how complicated that would make getting around a new town every few days when you don’t know where anything is or if there is a giant hill to get to wherever you are trying to go. I knew we would be working with hundreds of children. I did not know how few of them would know where the Colorado River headwaters were and where the river meets the sea. I knew that we would be passing through some beautiful areas. I did not know how much that beauty would reflect in the hospitality and kindness of the people who lived there. 

Lovely campsite views

As on any long adventure, there have been speed bumps and road blocks along the way. A literal landslide that destroyed the only road to take us where we were trying to go, forcing us to creatively problem solve our way through a canyon. Hills that look big from a distance and feel bigger when we are cranking up them with 60 pounds of critical weight strapped to our bikes. Miscommunications that result in too many breakfast burritos, or worse, not enough breakfast burritos for a full day of teaching. All challenges aside, over the past 500 miles of riding, over 1,000 students reached, and countless flat tires repaired, the best part of this journey has been taking time. Taking time to get to know each other as teammates. Taking time to get to know a town from the library out. Taking time to unpack, repack, unpack again because you forget where you put something, and then repack again the panniers to get ready to ride (and then maybe unpack again to find sunscreen you forgot to apply). Time is precious and we don’t always get enough with the people and places we love, so it has been an absolute pleasure to slow down to the pace of a bike to take time to enjoy this incredible journey and the amazing people and places we are meeting along the way. 

-Leah Weisman

Panniers Full of Gratitude

Gearing up for this trip, we have spent a lot of time trying to get “sponsors” or companies to help us out with gear. This led to mixed results. We were fortunate to receive lots of bike lights from Niteize and reflective stickers from RydeSafe, among others. While we are so grateful for these donations, I want to bring attention to the Real MVPS of this trip: friends and family. 

Now, these photos are common on social media...a person laying amongst all their gear. Brands, whether sponsors or not, highlighted to try and get a little corporate attention. 

Well. Here are my brands. 

• Ant Michelle (Spelled “Ant” because of our 22 year long inside joke) Check out that awesome stove! It lights everything from white gas to diesel to rocket fuel .And that red fuel bottle….its been to Glacier National Park and back before being shipped cross country to my little mil box. 

• The outfit? 100% my best friend Jacquie. She has literally given me the shirt off her back. If you need Costco Merino wool...she is your gal.

  • Dancing Lady socks: Jacquie.

  • Bike shorts: A gift from Jacquie before my first bike tour in 2017.

  • Tank top: Jacquie gave that to me at the SE Alaska State Fair.

  • The puffy: I mentioned I needed to get a puffy for this trip and her response was, “check your mailbox on Tuesday”.

  • Even the bag that holds all my clothes was given to me out of Jacquie’s own gear supply. 

• Sneakers, gloves, and long underwear are the simple basics that always get overlooked. But not today thanks to my supportive and generous partner and his pro-deals. 

• There is no such thing as a free lunch, but the equipment to cook…..well…. The pocket rocket stove was a gift from an old beau when we lost my other stove in Denali National Park. The pot set? Jacquie. The food bowl and spork have been with me since my first backpacking trip with my mom in middle school. 

• My dear friend Liz had this one person tent which she lent me when I led 15 teens on a bike trip. Still not sure if it was a gift or a loan, but she is in LA right now and this tent is in CO…..soooo…guess it is a gift now.  

• The Brooks saddle on my bike was lifted from my partner's bike the day before the trip. He wanted to make sure I was comfortable. The front bag, a gift from my sister. 

I am grateful for every fancy new item in my setup, but nothing compares to these old things. The things that fill me with memories of love every time I pull them out of my panniers. Thank you to everyone who has my back and has filled my panniers with love and support.

The Journey Begins!

Molly here. Although “The Water Cycle” is only recently making its public debut, this idea has been in the works for quite some time. Here’s where this tale begins, well my version anyway…         

“No way!” I shouted. My dad and aunt were the unexpecting first receivers of my excitement that this project might actually take off. In a fit of mumbles, I jumped up from my seat and paced around the empty restaurant, reading my email in a frenzy, before eventually running outside.

“I’m at work but I’ll call you later,” Kate answered her phone. She was clearly in the middle of something, probably a group of middle schoolers who were secretly loving their environmental education field trip but would never let it show. We got the grant! We got the grant? Wait, we got… the grant! I couldn’t believe it. I eventually regrouped and over lunch explained what was going on to my dismayed family members.

During the summer of 2018, I received a letter from Kate with a last-line solicitation looking for adventure buddies for a bike trip along the Colorado River “from source to mouth… as a way to develop a sense of place.” We had met that same summer in Haines, Alaska at the state fair through friends of friends. We’d casually talked that day but solidified our connection when we each, independently, wandered off to the same open field to soak up the light of the full moon only to find a moon-bathing buddy in one other. We ended up talking on the roof of a baseball dugout for hours, eventually agreeing to be pen pals and sneaking a ride on the fair’s rent-a-slide. For the next year, we wrote. It was mostly Kate at first, sending me hand drawn letters and homemade granola. There were notes written with inspirational poems, on pieces of tree bark, and even a mix cd featuring female frontwomen, “a soundtrack to being a woman in all its forms.” I knew I liked this girl.

We eventually met up in Colorado, my home state, where Kate was attending graduate school. The idea of this bike trip grew over the next year, adding components and riders along the way. The idea was to follow the river, offering watershed education programs in schools and community groups and collecting stories of local connections to the river in each town we passed. While many people have rafted the river, we thought biking would offer us a more human connection (large portions of the river itself are in wilderness areas, far away from human development) while still maintaining a low carbon footprint. We would travel slowly and on roads, where the people are, spending time in communities and getting to those who intimately with the river.

Along the way, Kate found Deirdre, a writer, advocate and conservationist with past experience studying and tracing the Colorado.  Somehow, despite them both working full time and Deirdre going abroad, these badass ladies turned this idea into a fully-fledged project and started submitting grant proposals. And that brings us to this February, where I rather rudely interrupted lunch upon receiving news that we had received the National Geographic Early Careers Grant. All of a sudden, this silly idea we had was very real. We now had money and the backing of Nat Geo. We could really make this happen.

         Since that fateful day a few months ago, I’ve come to realize that this project has the potential to connect people and landscape in a way I, and I think all three of us, have always dreamed of doing. I’ve always had a special connection to the idea of “place,” whether it was the community park I explored as a child, my family's backyard pond or the vast wilderness of southeast Alaska. The landscape around me has always been essential to my understanding of the world, my own identity, and how they relate to each other. In working with the public, however, I was dismayed to find this is typically NOT the case. And then I spent 3 summers studying and falling in love with a glacial landscape… only to realize and watch every day as that place fell apart at the ignorant hands of humans. I like people- it's why I first became a park ranger. I also wholeheartedly believe we really are all doing the best we can. And so, I had to understand how the goodhearted park visitors/cruise ship passengers I was interacting with could rattle through excuse after excuse sipping cocktails at 8 am. So few of these people understood how their overpriced AM happy hour was impacting this place that they oooh’d and awww’d over, claiming to “love.” How could I convince people to consider “place” in their everyday decisions if they had no concept of their connection to that place? Bridge the gap, plant the seed of connection. Show them how they impact the land and vise versa. Show them how they impact each other.

And so, I came home to my first place and am excited to build bridges and plant little seeds all along the river- to teach the science, share the stories, and explore what true connection can really do.

Stay tuned, more to come from The Water Cycle crew! Want to support this project? Check out our Support page and contact waterbicycle@gmail.com for more information.

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Letters from Kate <3