Tour of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons

Prelude: The Bike

     In June, 2000 we went on a tour with a company called TandemTours that included riding in Yellowstone National Park and around Jackson, Wyoming.  
     We bought our new Bilenky tandem specifically for this tour, since I wanted the ease of travelling with an S&S coupled bike.  Before we ever left on the vacation, I learned the first rule of dealing with Bilenky Cycle Works... don't depend on delivery by any promised delivery date.  The corollaries to this rule are:  e-mail may or not be answered, phone messages probably won't be returned, and lines will get crossed.
     As you can see, the paint job was custom and complicated.  We probably would have had the bike just a little after the promised April 1st delivery date if it hadn't been for the complications with the paint.  The design on the bike involved 6 separate PPG paints... pearl over white, grandeur blue metallic over pace car blue metallic, and romanesque crimson metallic over fine gold metallic.  The stars were done by first painting the whole area white, then pearl coating it, then masking the star shapes with tape, then painting the pace car blue, then painting the grandeur blue.  This was the easy part.  The joints between the blue, white, and red areas also had to be masked as each section was done to give a clean, straight line between them.  So after the painter had finished all of this, all that was left to do was clear coat the frame.  This is when it started getting messy!
     As best as I understand it, PPG (the paint company) had recently changed the way their paints were handled.  On the old system, a hardener was applied before clear coating.  On the new system, no hardener was needed.  Oh... unless you have taped joint, that is.  The painter didn't know this and didn't use a hardener.  As a result, all of those nice clean joints between the colors melted into each other when he clear coated the bike.  So he had to start from scratch after sandblasting the bike down to bare metal.  I'm glad I wasn't there to hear what he thought about having to do that.  The end result was that the bike was beautiful, but it took about 7 weeks extra to finish paining it.
    So finally, May 28th, we took delivery of the bike.  It was almost ready for prime time.  Despite the fact that we had ordered the bike at the end of December 1999, there were still parts missing for final assembly.  The box that was supposed to have a pair of brake levers only had one.  We ended up with the correct lever for the (more important) front brake, and a make-shift older lever for the rear brake.  As a result the rear brake was mushy and very weak.  We hadn't specified 'dummy levers' for the stoker's handlebars, an oversight on my part.  The captain's saddle (a late addition to the order) was not in yet.  The stoker's suspension seat post (ordered months earlier) was on back order from the manufacturer.  The one pair of pedals we ordered with the bike (also a late addition) were not in yet.  The kickstand also hadn't come in.
    In addition to the parts missing, the size of the bike didn't seem right.  As captain I had almost NO standover clearance on the bike.  While straddling the top tube I could lift the front wheel about 1/2" off the ground before the top tube hit me.  This wasn't nearly enough.  There wasn't anything we could do about that, and it was rideable as it was.
      Just as we had the bike boxed up and we were ready to leave for home, Dawn, who had been having stomach pains all day, told me it was getting unbearable.  So we ended up in a hospital in Philadelphia for the evening while they ran various tests to make sure she didn't have appendicitis.  While it all turned out ok, it was about 1 am before we were on the road headed home.
     After we got home, I found that we had left a critical part, the locking ring for the World Class tri-lock headset, at Bilenky's shop in our rush to get to the hospital.  So Dawn had to make an extra trip up and back the next day to pick up that one small part.  At this point, after all the delays and frustrations I'd encountered, I was wishing I had never learned to ride a bicycle.
     One our first ride on the bike the next day, we had a front wheel flat tire (only our second flat tire in 6 years of tandeming, and the other was on a worn out tire).  After patching the leak, I reinstalled the tire and pumped it back up.  The mini-pump seemed to have trouble getting past 90 psi, but I kept trying.  I later learned that my new Topeak pump had a defective gauge.  I have no idea what pressure I got up to, but just as we were getting ready to ride away, the front tire blew off the rim.  This knocked the wheel slightly out of true, shredded the tube, and damaged the bead of the tire.  I installed our one spare tube and pumped the tire up slowly while watching that the bead stayed seated.  Just as I had decided it was ok, bang!  One more shredded tube.  For the first time in 6 seasons of tandeming, we were unable to finish a ride due to mechanical failure.  The bead of the tire was damaged beyond use, and we scrambled to find a replacement in time for a ride that weekend.  Everything about this bike was turning into a disaster.
    As the June 19th departure date for our trip neared, I asked to have the dummy levers, right brake lever, and kickstand sent to us. This was arranged on Monday or Tuesday of the week before we left.  The parts, however, weren't shipped until Thurday evening.  They were sent UPS from Philadelphia to Maryland, which usually would mean next day delivery.  But of course, something had to go wrong. UPS lost the package.  So the parts spent the weekend in a UPS depot a few miles from my house where I coudn't get them until Monday.  Since we were leaving for the airport at 4am on Monday, we were out of luck.  When I called Bilenky after the parts didn't arrive Friday, they realized it might have been better to ship USPS, since they deliver on Saturday.  It was a little late at that point, so we had one more disappointment with the bike.
     Since we really wanted the dummy levers for the stoker's bars, we arranged to have the parts shipped out to Wyoming via USPS express mail, where we hoped to catch up to them at our second overnight stop.  We had my sister pick up the package once it was delivered and ship it out to us.

So we were finally ready to go on vacation.  Surely nothing else could go wrong! (ha!)

     First, a word about our plans.  We had originally planned to fly into Jackson, Wyoming on June 19th with the bike and our BOB trailer.  We were going to assemble the bike at the airport, put all our luggage on the trailer, and ride about 35 miles to our first overnight stop at Colter Bay Village.  We were then going to ride about 35 miles again on June 20th, to Grant Village in Yellowstone, where we would stay that night.  On June 21st the TandemTours group would be meeting at Grant Village and we'd be able to turn the luggage and trailer over to them for the rest of the ride.
     Well, all of the adventures with getting the bike built had shaken my confidence a little.  Since this plan didn't have a lot of margin for error and we hadn't ever cycled at mountain elevations before, we decided it would be safer and saner to rent a car for the duration of the trip.  A quick visit to the Priceline web site and we were all ready to go.