Celebrating America's birthday in her first national park!

I'm sincerely sorry to those few people that check daily for an update. These last three days has been a mix of chaos and complete lack of cell reception for me. I hope you'll understand.

Yesterday, I entered grizzly best country. Let me illustrate the insanity coursing through my head with a similie. Imagine me as Frodo. Now, imagine Frodo riding his bike down the central avenue of Mordor. The One Ring is screaming for its rightful place from his bag. That was me.

I was alone. The occasional car passed, but no other cyclists. The dense forest shot up from either side of the road, blocking my view of any approaching wildlife. And, all the while, my pannier full of food was calling out to the grizzlies of the Grand Tetons, "COME GET ME!!"

On the road, fear becomes a self-sustaining monster. Once it makes its home, it grows and spreads until every tree stump in the Grand Tetons looks like a grizzly ready to strike. And do you know how many tree stumps there are in the Tetons? More than the number of Orcs in Mordor.

So I booked it out of there, traveling faster uphill than I ever have before. The route included a 30-mile, 2500-foot climb that I finished in 4 hours. Go me!

9 miles away from my campsite though, my heart broke. A flashing traffic sign on the side of the road: "Bear crossing road with cubs, next 9 miles." I stopped at an overlook and a burly German man told me I had balls of steel for biking through that.

But all went well, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still alive! I camped out in Grand Tetons National Park (my first time paying for accomodations so far). By a massive stroke of luck, I ran into two friends, Matt and Jessie, who I met last week in Jeffrey City. They're awesome and biking the Transamerica trail from Virginia to Oregon and then down to souther California. We decided to bike out together the next day to reduce the chance of individual bear maulings.

And that brings me to today, quite possibly the most fun day I've had so far on my trip. We did a short 40-mile day that got us into Yellowstone. Jessie apparently saw a moose butt, but that's heavily debated.

I'm going to break out onto a semi-related tangent here. My favorite part about riding on the Transamerica trail is the sense of community; everybody knows everybody. I've met people going west to east who've said that they heard of me days ago. It's honestly really cool.

Anyway, as we rolled into camp, we had the most pleasant surprise: familiar faces! Cyclists, some that Matt and Jessie had met in Kentucky or West Virginia, and some that I had met in Colorado, were all at the same campground! Our depressing plans for a quiet Fourth of July soon turned into a raucos affair, 12-strong.

I'm typing this in my tent now. The party was put on hold after a massive freak thunderstorm rolled in and ruined evertbody's good time.

A little about my plans for the next week: my intention is to take a slow day through Yellowstone tomorrow and end in the town of West Yellowstone, 50 miles away. A friend from the OSU Mountaineers is in the city and invited me to stay with him so hopefully that works out. That would be awesome.

Afterwards, I'm hoping to make quick work of the 330 miles between there and Missoula, Montana. I'm itching to get to the coast so I'll probably just make it a five day affair. If you have friends or family in southwest Montana, please hook me up.

Sorry again for neglecting you for three days, faithful friends and family. I just bought a ton of postcards to make up for it so keep your eyes on the mailbox. Much love.


Shahmeer

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