To see 'just how far we can go'

The expanse between Coeur d’Alene and Seattle is a challenging landscape. More than 300 miles fraught with scorched desert and hilly vistas at the mercy of high winds. Along the last leg awaits Stevens Pass, with a long, gradual climb.

In a car, a tedious drive.

On a road bike ... Well, who would be that crazy?

As it turns out, three Kootenai County teenagers.

With the aid of willpower and sheer naiveté, three local boys biked the entire strenuous stretch earlier this month, over what they describe as seven very, very long days.

“Before if I’d known what we would have gone through, I wouldn’t have done it,” admitted Jared Pierson, 19, who pedaled the distance with his two long-time biking companions, brothers Stephen Sturges, 16, and Scott Sturges, 18. “But we learned just how far we can go.”

Loading their road bikes with 20-plus pounds of dehydrated food, a GPS device, water pump and air tubes for flats, the boys lit out on Aug. 11 in the manner of Kerouac and McCandless and so many restless Americans wanting to explore the nature of their country.

Their Google Maps route — starting from the Sturges’ Hayden Lake backyard, then following the Centennial Trail and Highway 2 to Seattle — was flexible enough, calling for roughly 70 miles of riding a day and a few rest stops.

What they would find along the way, they couldn’t guess.

Why do it?

Because they could.

“We needed something to do, and we wanted to do a trip,” said Pierson, a Coeur d’Alene resident. “Seattle sounded like a good destination.”

The road gods gave them obstacles from the start.

The supports for Scott’s pannier collapsed coasting down the hill to 4th Street, he said. Throw in a flat tire for Pierson near Airway Heights, Wash., on the first day, and then several hours of howling winds on the second, and things looked a little ugly.

“It turned into a wind storm that (second) night. A bunch of our stuff blew away at the campsite,” said Scott, a recent graduate of Coeur d’Alene High School.

Pedaling down the narrow shoulders on Highway 2, death seemed pretty possible, they agreed. Drivers refused to give them room, or gave discouraging gestures. Nearby semis couldn’t slow while passing and threatened to rub them out more than once.

“Some people were really supportive, they would wave and yelled to us,” Scott said. “But some just got angry.”

There was also the heat.

Wow, the heat.

Temperatures seared over 100 degrees on some days as they biked 6 to 8 hours at a time, the boys said. They would later discover they had chosen what had been predicted to be the hottest week of August.

“We found the heat was the hardest part, not the hills,” Scott said.

Tough, Pierson acknowledged, when their water pump broke and his head started pounding from dehydration — an instance where they had to cheat a little and hitchhike.

“My mom said, ‘If you need me to, I can come get you right now,’” Pierson remembered a phone conversation with a laugh. “Sometimes that opportunity looked so good.”

And yet they adapted to life on the road.

Faithful to their goal of adventure, they refused to stay in hotels. Instead, the three slept out under the stars in baseball fields, soccer fields, parking lots and free campsites.

Occasionally there were surprises, like sprinklers coming on at 4 a.m., or screaming cats that revived Pierson’s fear of rabies.

But they didn’t relent.

“You can go to so many hotels that are always the same,” Scott said. “But staying outside, you have a different experience every night.”

Perhaps it would have grown frustrating on their own. But in their temporary homeless state, they discovered a community of fellow itinerant travelers.

They crossed paths with a city’s worth of interesting strangers. Everywhere they stopped, their loaded panniers and dusty bikes enticed people’s curiosity, and led to exchanges of stories and dreams.

Folks at campsites offered them meals, Stephen said, and a sit by the fire to tell their tale.

“One person gave us a giant cake in Leavenworth (Wash.),” Stephen said.

Many they met were homeless, Pierson added.

“Being homeless, you tend to meet homeless people,” he said.

They mingled, swapped stories, discussed bikes. Some homeless folks told the boys their fortunes, or told them they looked like Lance Armstrong, the boys said.

“It really let us know what they were going through,” Scott said. “A lot of people assumed we were homeless, so we were able to identify with them more.”

Especially the night they tried to camp in a friend’s backyard.

“He gave us the wrong address. It was kind of a prank on us,” Stephen said.

So they ended up in a strange man’s backyard, he said.

“He was pretty angry,” Stephen said. “He threatened to shoot us.”

There were long stretches of boredom.

Sometimes facing hundreds of miles between signs of civilization, the boys relied on small chat and games to get them through.

“There were times you would sit and be riding for hours and hours and hours,” Pierson said.

“And you were sure you saw the same tree three or four times,” Stephen added.

Still, there were moments that nature gave them something back.

They watched awesome landscapes change around them, Pierson said. At one point the scrub brush and desert seemed endless, only to eventually melt into lush greenery and mountains.

“We rode along huge cliffs, and your neck goes straight up to look,” Pierson said of the area just before Leavenworth, Wash.

At times, the long stretch of distance ahead was empowering, he added.

“We saw the mountain range miles and miles away, and we knew we could ride our bikes there,” he said. “It’s crazy that manpower could go that distance.”

They did take a few breathers from the road.

The boys stopped off at many a hotel to take advantage of free breakfasts, restrooms, newspapers and, in one case, the pool.

“We did everything in the hotels but stay in them,” Stephen said.

They took off Sunday, Aug. 15 to rest and taste test fudge in Leavenworth.

And then it was time to tackle Stevens Pass.

“It’s about 40 miles uphill, then 14 or 20 downhill,” Scott estimated.

The ride was gradual, the boys said, but all that fudge came through and fueled them to the top.

They were grateful at the top to spot the sign announcing a downward slope for several miles, Scott said.

“It was like the home stretch to Seattle,” he said.

When they coasted into the waterfront city on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 17, they were soaring on a sense of victory, he said.

“We felt we had accomplished something pretty big,” he said.

Before the boys were picked up by Jan Sturges — Scott and Stephen’s mother — they visited the Space Needle and enjoyed some city cuisine.

“Anything was good compared to Ramen Noodles,” Scott said.

They stayed the night in a hotel. Then Jan and the boys drove back, speeding past the stretch they had suffered through.

“It was a little discouraging on the drive back to pass all the places we’d stayed,” Scott said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, we just did this in six hours, versus seven days.’”

They came out all right, the boys agreed. Only one flat and one broken hand, which happened when Stephen’s bike got caught in railroad tracks and sent him to the ground.

“We had thought it would be a lot worse,” Scott said.

Jan, who listened to the boys’ stories again at the Sturges home, wasn’t sure she agreed.

“If I had known the problems they would be facing, I would have handcuffed them here,” she said with a laugh. “I was actually really, really amazed at their courage and tenacity. I was so proud of them and so happy to see them at the waterfront at Seattle and see that they had done it.”

Stephen is now entering his junior year at Coeur d’Alene High School, and Scott just started classes this week at North Idaho College.

Pierson, who will be joining the Army in October, said he is convinced now that nothing is too hard to tackle.

“If I had one thing to say to the world, it’d just be don’t put a limit on what you do,” said Pierson, who attended Coeur d’Alene High School and graduated from Union High School in Vancouver, Wash., while staying with relatives.

Pierson hadn’t even trained before the trip, he added, but he still made it through traffic and wind and desert.

Boot camp should be a breeze.

“I think it’s mind over matter,” he said, smiling at his friends. “You can do anything. I truly believe that. I truly believe it.”