After a needed day of rest, Paul is back riding – backtracking so he can go DOWN the Spiral Highway and meet his best friend Bruce at Winchester on Sunday. He did 51 miles today to get from Moscow to Lewiston – in HOT conditions (near 100 degrees) where the countryside was black from the recent fires. He met the “long haired guy”, the “drifter” and “Bob” who thought he was nuts for planning the next leg with Bruce out of Winchester. But they shared a lemonade to cool off and parted amicably. He’s at the Hell’s Canyon campground tonight (reportedly very nice) and had all ready met his neighbors before the nightly call home to report that he was still alive and well before heading out for dinner. The fires are an issue, but Paul thinks his planned route will be okay.

For those of you who are keeping track, Paul has had 3 flats so far. And he seems to be meeting more people on bikes traveling east to west (and therefore almost done with their trip), probably because they are passing each other. He missed reporting some of the characters that he has met over the last several days in his postings, so you’ll need to ask him about them when he gets home.

Paul had a great day off, enjoying Pat & Dave Welch’s hospitality in Moscow. Dave is a former GTE employee, so they enjoyed swapping stories from “the old days”. It was quite a challenge getting more minutes for his Tracfone (long story) but with a successful conclusion after 3 conversations with customer service reps in India, we’ll hope that this episode is as difficult as it gets! Stay tuned. Ann