Laura and I didn't sleep very good. I woke up to an upset stomach. Lucky for us, we had been considering a short day today, in order to position us at the base of the next mountain pass. Loup Loup pass will be our second longest climb yet, yet the steepest. Our legs are still tired from the last 2 climbs in the last 2 days, so it is a good time for a break. We rode 31 miles to Okanogan, with less than 1000 feet of climbing today. It was a pretty easy ride, although I sorta struggled having not been able to hold much food or water down.

Lets say you are planning to bike up a mountain. You are expecting a cold rain. Do you wear your rain gear? If you wear it, you will be soaked in sweat, and baking. If you do not wear it, you will be soaked in rain, and freezing.

We woke up today to a wonderfully entertaining surprise....Taters had her first flat tire of the trip. She did a prety darn good job of fixing it.

It gave Rog and I a chance to nap.

SHERMAN HAS BEEN CONQUERED!!!

We made it to the top of Sherman Pass at an elevation of 5575. We had 4568 feet of climbing today. The beginning of the pass was not very steep and we were doing rather well. But as we closed in on the top it became much steeper, most of the top was 6% grade and we were down to a crawl. Katie and TJ did the 27 miles up in 4 hours, I made it in 4 1/2, and Chris and Roger at 5 hours.

I added pictures and some corrections to day 30. Take a look at days gone past by clicking Northern Tier 2011 on the upper left menu. If you dont check the photos out, you will miss out on a picture of Roger with a flooded campsite.

I just want to quickly say a bit THANK YOU to the 3 people who got Benthub back up and running. Thanks Brent for helping us get a backup of the old server. Thanks Dee for crawling through spider webs to unclog the tubes of the internet. And thanks Chuck for doing an amazingly fast transfer of Benthubs managament system and database to an entirely new server in record time.

You guys are awesome! I simply couldn't have done any of this remotely. The internet speeds here are terrible; it is hard enough sending emails and posting text based blog entries.

Anyway. Thanks Brent, Dee, and Chuck!

Today officially marks the longest bike trip of our lives! We have passed our total miles from MRT two years ago.

We stayed in an awesome room last night at the Riverview Motel in Ione. We woke up about 7:30 and got on the road at 9:00. This is pretty quick for us. It usually takes us two hours to pack, eat, and get on the road.

We left about 9:30 this morning after having breakfast in our room. We were not in too big of a hurry because it was raining. When it seemed to clear up, we hit the road.

This morning we stopped at a volunteer fire house. They were out cleaning all the equipment for an open house to the public tomorrow. They let us use the bathroom and we found out one of the guys had hunting land in Wisconsin, near Black River Falls, so he knew where we were from. We are far enough away that the only cities we can usually tell people are Madison or Wisconsin Dells. Sometimes we can just say "the middle of the state," so it was kind of neat to meet someone who could place us in our city.

We woke up at the Country Inn just south of Sandpoint and headed for breakfast down the road. We ate at a little cafe, Katie, TJ and I had another batch of really bad pancakes. It was a slow morning, and the wind was against us pretty heavily. We were still dragging pretty good from the day before.

We usually don't mind stopping for road construction flagmen, but today we got eaten by skeeters when we stopped! Then she made us wait even longer while the cars behind us passed.....as if we didn't know how to ride in traffic.

We woke up this morning after a rainy and windy night, to find out that a tree fell a few campsites over, and nearly crushed an RV. One of the passengers had to be sent to the hospital via ambulance for what turned out to be hyperventilating.

I was still awake at about 10pm when the tree came down. I was typing up benthub entries, and my connection to my server went down at the same instant. I figured lightening took out a Verizon tower. Coincedence I guess....because the power went out at home and took the server out. I will have to find someone to try and bring it back up.

We had breakfast at a pantry near the campground; huge breakfast burritos for under 3 bucks. Excellent.

It was a cooler day today, with highs in the 70s. Overcast. Perfect!

There has been very few comments to our bicyclists this trip. Feel free to send them encouragement! They are going to need it. They are about to hit the toughest hills of this entire trip!!

They do see what you post when they can. They don't comment because there is alot to do to prepare for each new day. They are all exhausted from miles of pedaling, being in the fresh air, and whatever Mother Nature sends them. Also, Chris looses a lot of sleep posting pics for us to enjoy.

I am counting on them to make this trip to the end. I believe they can do it and I believe in each and every one of them. (Even the old guy, Love You Honey)