The Mobius Trip

weren't able to pick up fresh meat for dinner, we were treated to an exquisite dish of glorp cooked up by Chef Questor:



It was glorp flavored, and delish! Thanks, Q! :dg I have no photos of the finished dish, so please, fill in the blanks.

One of our biggest mile days,



Terrain:



and elevations:

Man I love that place, beautiful part of Idaho! I was worried there for a second you were going to miss it. Here is Morning Glory from a climbing trip in '02:



I have sure enjoyed reading about your trips...

Well said!

Doc, it kind of looks like one, but I've never seen one that big. They don't share terrain very well so that'd be a ginormous web for a single black widow. They don't really like open areas and bright light so that may point to something else. I've found them in places like firewood piles, slash piles, under the house in the subfloor (very few basements in Bend because of the 500' thick layer of basalt a few inches under the ground), or inside sprinkler valves/water shutoff valves/electrical control panels/etc. I guess they were famous for setting up shop under the seat in outhouses because it was warm, dark, and there were lots of flies. They bit anything that was "hanging" around....that wasn't just a line from the Milagro Beanfield War novel/movie.

One of the ways to tell a black widow web from others is to look for funnel web somewhere near the center of the web. That's where the spider will wait for dinner to show up.

That was a beautiful tribute to your friend Eddie. You summed up living life first perfectly. A long, long time ago I was traveling and I shared a train compartment with a couple from Venice while making our way south from Lake Como. I was fretting over schedules and marking things off on a list of places that I wanted to see while in Europe. They were laughing and finally said "Why do Americans live to work instead of working to live?" That simple statement had a more profound impact on my life than they ever could have realized. Ride on Eddie and RIP!

Loving the ride report so far!

This is outstanding! You had a great team there, which is so important. Questor is really a good riding partner.

If I had to guess, it was maybe 30ft by 60ft, blanketing the ground, but also engulfing small shrubs and downfall branches. I didn't see any active spiders, but then again, I didn't go poking around 'cause it was pretty creepy. A quick google search reveals that these giant webs are made by some species of communal spiders most of which reside in the tropics. When these giant webs are seen in other latitudes, it's generally when conditions are favorable and food is plentiful. Then the webs are made by a mix of species which are usually solitary and competitive under normal circumstances. There was a 200yd long web that covered trees and everything in Texas in 2007, here's a link to an article that describes the entomologists' conclusions. There have been other giant webs reported in Pakistan, and in Australia. Pretty cool stuff available on the interwebs. (Pun intended).

Apparently these giant webs are not all that common. I'm not sure that the one I saw would have qualified as a truly giant web, but it was bigger than any I'd ever seen, and definitely unusual. I wish I'd taken more photos. I have only one other:

Totally and terrifyingly true.

That's why I never pee.

That's friggin creepy factor 10+. Giant hordes of communal spiders...

Never have seen anything like it before.

Better let us have another installment to calm us down.

Q playing chicken with all the traffic in Oakley

<iframe src="https://api.smugmug.com/services/embed/1901498243_Zqk7Tg7?width=640&height=360&nohome" frameborder="0" height="360" scrolling="no" width="640"></iframe>

in a Mobius trip,

There are mandatory pre-ride briefings, and post ride de-briefs. Post ride meetings include snacks and Bourbon if available.



It's actually a great way to refresh the multitude of roads and trails encountered through out the day. And discuss all the flat tires (nobody wants to guess how many?)

Already guessed and WON! (absolutely nothing)

+1

Questor went around the snow??? Hmmm. Must have been a Quest-or impost-or.

It was freezing cold at night, and it was a bit of a challenge getting everyone out of their toasty warm sleeping bags:





I boiled water for oatmeal, and made coffee to try to temp them out of their cocoons, but it was only when the sun cleared the trees and it warmed up that they agreed to emerge.

Before leaving, we held an honorary Mobius induction ceremony for Questor,



and we taught him the secret handshake:

with the best of intentions... we were going to clear Monument Pass, and then carry on the T2 route, until we hit a paved road, and then Q would split off.

The mountains had another idea altogether of how we'd spend our morning.

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="640" height="360" src="https://api.smugmug.com/services/embed/1876512849_86QWwrK?width=640&height=360"></iframe>

So far so good,



backtracking past the obstacles from yesterday afternoon,

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="640" height="360" src="https://api.smugmug.com/services/embed/1876512869_CPcRGs5?width=640&height=360"></iframe>

Thankfully we didn't have to go all the way back to the snowdrift we'd already cleared. And for a while, it looked like we might make it up and over:





Yes?



Yes! Until...

And blocked good. Prolly needs another week or so at least. So close.



OK, hit the GPS's, start scrolling, and break out the maps. OK, here's a possibility... Let's take this trail... maybe it'll go around the snowdrift at a lower elevation. Seems promising for awhile, but then... we have to turn around when we get to this:



OK... try again... back to the campground, and then turn left instead of right. This would be re-backtracking. Grrr.

Well, the next go-around attempt is a big one. We basically descend out of the mountains on the eastern side, head north for about 30 miles to clear Niles gulch & Rock Creek canyon, and then scoot over west 5-10 miles and head back south about 25 miles back to the T2 trail where we'd pick it up on the other side of the range.

A little disappointing... this was going to add 40-50 miles to our route...



Once underway, though, we couldn't keep the smiles from our faces...



You couldn't ask for better dual sport riding than this.

of dry creek road... we were on this for a solid hour:

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="640" height="360" src="https://api.smugmug.com/services/embed/1876513333_wjjDm54?width=640&height=360"></iframe>

We stopped for a little break to defleece,



And paused to smell the flowers,



and for a word from our sponsor:

<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="640" height="360" src="https://api.smugmug.com/services/embed/1876513127_GK6hLJg?width=640&height=360"></iframe>