Knitting Club Tackles Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes

October 30, 2012

This week's tale of bike-overnighting adventure is by Adventure Cycling's own Julie Huck, who started working at Bikecentennial in 1985 as the receptionist for the organization. Over the years, she moved to director of the Membership Department. In the hours away from the office, Julie is one of the driving forces of cycling in Adventure Cycling's hometown of Missoula, Montana. She founded Montana Dirt Girls, a women's mountain bike and hiking group, and she is an officer of Missoulians on Bicycles. "My goal is to inspire more people to ride, even if I have to do it one person at a time," Julie says.

In her story, "Knitting Club Tackles Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes," Julie inspires more than one person at a time, that's for sure.

"One snowy winter evening, while my friends and I were sitting around sipping cups of hot tea during our weekly craft night, I broached the subject of doing a bike trip together. Suspicious eyes peered over cheater glasses, giving me cold looks. Knitting needles ceased to click and the needlepoint was put aside. 'How will I carry all my stuff?' I have extra panniers and I’ll haul some of your gear in my trailer. 'I don’t like to camp!' They have a nice little lodge there. 'I can’t ride as far as the rest of you.' You can do shorter mileage. 'My ass is going to kill me!' Well … I couldn’t fix everything.

"But I had them. One and all. Now it was time to get to work. With a little Internet research and some phone calls, I secured quaint lodging, made sure there were good places to eat, and downloaded a map of the trail.

"Our Thursday evening craft group was going to try a bike overnight trip on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes!"

And that they did. Then they did it again, and again. In fact, Julie is now in the process of planning her group's fifth-annual Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes event in the Idaho panhandle. "Looking forward to the possibility of sighting bald eagles, turtles, moose, and black bear, we can’t wait to spend two days immersing ourselves in the outdoors by bicycle, and getting to know each other better."

I don't know. It looks to us like they might not be having enough fun over there in Idaho. And they might be a little too shy to truly get to know each other better.

Read the rest of Julie's entertaining tale, which first appeared (in slightly different form) in Bicycle Times magazine, at BikeOvernights.org. While you're at the site, take a look through our treasure trove of past stories and Photos of the Week. This week's image, shown below, comes from the story Seattle to Port Townsend, by Martina Brimmer. It posted on May 3, 2011.

BikeOvernights.org Photo of the Week, 10.19.12.

Top 3 photos by Julie Huck; bottom photo by Martina Brimmer.

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MICHAEL McCOY compiles the organization's twice-monthly e-newsletter Bike Bits and organizes the Bike Overnights program. Previously, from March 2009 through January 2012, Mac posted weekly at Biking Without Borders.