Team 1 Day 8 (Liz)

73 miles from Colville to Usk WA, our longest milage yet! It was actually pretty uneventful biking, so uneventful that we were even falling asleep on the bikes. To keep ourselves entertained, we practiced biking with no hands, we’ve come a long way with our biking abilities. 

It feels kind of crazy to bike from 8:30am to 7pm. I try to mostly focus on my surroundings and take in the landscapes were passing through but sometimes I just run out of things to keep my mind occupied. I thought a bit about what it is like to provide medical care in rural towns like these. Yesterday we talked to a family medicine doctor who works in Republic. He loves what he does and who he works with now, but he had a few rough years starting out. When he worked in the clinic, he felt like an absent father, always charting on days off. Now that he’s a hospitalist, he has better balance. He said obstetrics is the best thing he’s ever done and the best thing he ever stopped doing. He didn’t want to dissuade me of my rural medicine dream, but he wanted to share his reality. And ultimately he offered me a place to live with his family if I decide to try a rural medicine program in Washington. 

Back to today though. The last half of the ride was on an empty road along the river. We passed a handful of homes and then eventually the Kalispell Reservation. We stopped to appreciate a herd of buffalo on the flats beside the river. The road was incredibly peaceful except for when two dogs chased us down the road a ways. We set up camp at a quiet, free campsite and tried our best to eat our camp meals. Keelin and I failed to eat much of the “Spanish rice” packets, but I did have some of Kayla’s chocolates. Can’t wait for a shorter day tomorrow and hopefully a rest day soon!