Ride on, Highway Cat !!: Tiskit Tasket, I'm in Tonasket

DAY 5, Friday, July 20, 2018
Pearrygin State Pk. Winthrop ➜ Red Apple Motel, Tonasket WA.

Stats:
Cat Eye: Dist, 117km, Avg. 18.4km/hr, Max. 61.5km/hr, Time, 6:20
Polar: Time, 6:11, Cal, 3179, Avg Hr, 117, Total Time W/ Breaks 7hrs

Last night was windy as hell. Despite the frequent sleep interruptions, I was up at 5:30 am. The rest day may have helped. I Rode back into town for some travelling calories, fluids and overpriced sunscreen.
I finally rolled out at 7:15am. I was expecting today's ride to be easy with some gentle hills. The #20 through Twisp was good, but had some shitty sections not to mention annoying traffic. WTF?!. Luckily, I only had to tolerate this traffic for about 45 minutes as I turned left at the 97 junction for a northern direction. That annoying traffic was heading south.
It was great to have this road more or less to myself. I was really enjoying the ride but I noticed that I had begun to climb and was confused as to why the climbing seemed to continue longer than I expected. Anyway, the road was nice and twisty with a decent shoulder, but the scenery was nasty. I guess this forest was the victim of a recent fire. It was strange to be able to see far into the woods as there were few limbs and no leaves/needles.
Maybe 2 hours from the 97 junction and I'm still friggin climbing! I was getting pissed off. Just then, I woman cyclist was heading down in the opposite direction. "You're almost at the top!" she belched. "Thank F*&king Kryst!" I replied. Fifteen minutes later I saw the sign. "Loup Loup ski hill", 4020 ft. With every suffering, there is a reward. This one is an awesome downhill, although, the shoulder had broken blacktop and as usual in the Okanagan Valley, strong crosswinds added to the scare factor. I'm fine with climbing hills but I hate the unexpected ones. Next time I'll try to be better informed. Maybe a GPS for Xmas?!
Once down to 50 metres or whatever level, I could really feel the heat! The desert heat and landscape was familiar to me from my Ironman days in Penticton BC.
Finally rolling into Tonasket WA, I got a cheap room at "Red Apple Motel" I was so bloody hot and ready for a cool shower.
When I got to the office, there was no human behind the locked door to help me, however, there was a piece of paper with a phone #. GRRROWLL!!.. The owner was out doing better things a guess. I called the #. He took less than 10 minutes to arrive. A rough character that enjoyed screaming into the phone while getting my info. He has a renovation company or something like that and was yelling at his Mexican workers. (He made the point that they were Mexicans) He was yelling so loud that I believe that he thought his sound waves would reach the employees before the digital transmision, ha ha Uggghh.
Then he directed his overbearing persona to me. "How ya doin?!" he asked. "Hot!" I replied. "Your doin hot?" he replied sarcastically. As if "How ya doin" made any grammatical sense. Then He poked fun at me for cycling this route instead of driving, ha ha, damn old school American. (Interestingly enough, he wasn't keen on Trump) I though that he would be pro Red Hat. As he was trying to process my payment, he mocked my credit card. "This isn't working, what kind of card is this anyway? CIBC, is that even a real bank?" When the painful transaction finally cleared he said the room was $50.00 and asked if I could handle that. What a character.
Crappy room was perfect with A/C, cool shower, beer and pizza!