Day 16: August 26th, 2008 – Conifer Cities to Metropolitan Muir
8 Miles East of Fairplay --> Davis, CA
The hound had shaken me enough to cause my sleep to be fairly light, so even before the first beam of daylight I was back on my bike paying my penance for the 8.2 mile mishap the night before. I had gone off track many times before on this trip but never without purpose or at lease the knowledge of doing so. The feeling of junk mileage was eating at me so badly that I made the 8.2 mile 4000 foot climb in a flash. When I arrived at my missed turn I realized why I hadn’t seen the turnoff, it was unmarked and looked far more like a backwoods driveway than an essential key to the route across the West. So after a night spent miles off track dangling over a demented dog, I had returned to my road less traveled. It was just as pleasant as I had imagined in my dreams the night before. The rolling terrain through towering pines was pleasant enough to make me loath my decent into the arid lowlands surrounding Sacramento, something I had looked forward to for many days. Wineries flanked my ride for many miles on the decent. I had hoped to buy a bottle to celebrate the end of my ride but I was still very weight conscience at this point, so I decided just to take care of any celebratory measures in San Francisco.
Before I could even so much as say goodbye to the mountains my tires were already greeting the pavement of Urbania. The perfect ratio of luxury vehicles and dueled out imports made one thing unmistakable, I was in California. Amongst this foreign city I was approaching something familiar, Folsom Prison. Made infamous by Johnny Cash’s song by the same name, Folsom was a place imagined by millions as the epitome of terrible prison life, so accordingly I was expecting a poor little prison town. Instead I found another California community with an over inflated sense of the worth of their real estate and most likely themselves. Folsom Prison is now surrounded with multimillion dollar homes and its lake is filled to the brim with water skiing with Yuppies. The Man in Black would be shamed!
Right as I was entering the part of the directions that included more than one turn every hundred miles, I ran in to Bill. He was just cycling to his wife’s elementary school to say hello and his path just so happened to correspond exactly with mine. So Bill showed me the town while guiding me through the dozens of turns that I would have had to navigate on my own. He was a very intelligent middle aged contractor who was also very interested in my journey. He repeated several times that it was a pleasure to take me though one of my last days of riding. Bill was not unaccustomed to the long distance tour, he and his friends did a 3 or 4 day tour once a year, but I got the feeling he wasn’t sleeping in bulldozer pales.
When he asked me how people had treated me along the way, I realized than my journey was nearly over and I hadn’t had one negative interaction with anyone except a laundry attendant in Westcliffe on my second day, and even with her I felt that she was a nice woman having a bad morning which I caught the raw end of. He was stunned by my good fortune but I explained to him that often while riding my transparency and vulnerability allowed people to let down their guards and be themselves with me. The simplicity of my goals were clear to everyone I ran into, like my very actions displayed honesty and worth. I was riding, that was it.
I rode with Bill for about 2 hours until he left me near West Sacramento. He gave me directions out of town and sent me out on my own again. I rode along the Great American Bike Trail to what the locals affectionately call, Old Sac. The western most part of Sacramento, Old Sac is the remnants of the original pioneer town of Sacramento. I took a ride over the golden bridge out of Old Sac and into West Sacramento where I stopped at the ole golden arches for a hamburger.
I parked my bike along the glass windows and walked inside, all the while enduring the stares of two young men about my age. I understood that I might have looked a little out of the ordinary but these guys were really cutting through me with the stares. I few minutes later we ran into each other at the soda fountains, they need only say two words to bring us much closer to understanding each other “ Western Express?”. It turns out these two young chaps where riding the same route as me, except they were going cross country and it had taken them most of the summer. They had left from Virginia Beach about 2 months prior. These two Boston College students moved at a relative snails pace. The day I had left from Pueblo they were half way through Utah and somehow I had managed to double their pace and catch them before the sea. They had stopped for the night in order to watch some of the DNC on television, one of them kept jabbering on about making it back to the hotel in time to watch Hillary Clinton speak. That couldn’t have been further from my mind.
They were nice guys and but you could tell that they were pretty fed up with eachother, and thus people in general. That was one of the great benefits of my ride, although I have no one to share the experience with (save those that read this blog of course), the interactions I had along the way were that much more intense. Think about it, if the whole day you have all these revolutionary ideas traipsing through your young exhausted mind and you don’t have anyone to spill them out upon, and then all of the sudden you have a short and seemingly meaningless conversation with a woman at a campsite, a man on a high mountain pass, or an old vagabond in a diner……you’re blow away, you’ll remember every word forever as if it were divine revelation. I’m not sure how to explain it but the best I can do is to say that most days I received all the love/human intimacy/social allowance (whatever you want to call it) I really needed out of a few very bizarre and brief interactions with total strangers.
These two did have some pretty good stories though. They had been on the road so long that they were inviting misfortune. Three days earlier on Carson Pass they were essentially attacked by Yogi Bear…. Turns out even if you don’t cook where you sleep you still smell just like the food you just ate. After finishing my two Big Macs, I bid those two jokers farewell and set off for the coast.
The terminus of the Great American Bike trail is in Davis. Davis, CA is a college town not at all unlike Athens, GA. I felt at home as I dined on Pita Pit and sat under the trees that lined the streets. Davis is also known as the biking capitol of the U.S. but apparently not as accommodating to vagabond bikers. It became apparent that I would have to be clever with my sleeping arrangements once again, so I picked a bridge out on the map a few miles out of town and decided to ride there when I felt tired. I strolled around town for a bit taking in the sights and sounds of college life while talking to friends and family back home. I had a particularly ridiculous conversation with miss Lauren Groblewski, whom is always good for a laugh or two.
Come to think of it I’d like to thank everyone who I talked to/ called / heard message from / whatever. You have no idea how much I enjoyed the ridiculous messages I received that reminded me of how little I had let anyone know what I was up to. I tried not to answer messages because I wanted to focus on the present but I did enjoy the games of telephone that were going on. ‘So and so told me you were biking to Colorado Springs, her sister told me that your riding you motorcycle to Canada, we heard your moving to San Francisco and your walking there.’ Or the messages of people that just sorta sounded afraid; “Hey man I’m not sure where you are or what you’re doing…… I’ve heard a lot of different stories… just hope your safe” or those few of you who knew exactly what I was up to and decided to boost my morale by telling me that your first week of classes were grueling.
Anyway, after finishing up a few victorious calls to folks that knew tomorrow would be my last day riding, I started out to the bridge I had picked out on the map. On my way out I passed an unending row of parallel fruit trees that divided a corn field in two. It was an irresistible sight to anyone on a bike, even in the dead of night. So as I rode between the trees I decided to forgo the bridge for the night and instead spend my evening as a child of the corn. I took a hard left between two rows of corn and never looked back. I was less than 70 miles from the coast.... tomorrow would be a good day!
Day: 124.79 mi
Total: 1643 mi
Elev. Climbed: 1600 ft
Elev. Difference: -3900 ft
Day 15: August 25th, 2008 – Sierra Shadow
Carson City --> 8 miles east of Fairplay
Very few days of my life have started with such simplicity but still held the promise of such raw challenge. My only goal for the day was to cross the Sierras.
The wind had not relented over night so I pushed through the foothills in the Sierra’s shadow to find a place I am sure I will always remember as a sign of the times,
I moved on from
I stopped to record the momentous occasion with a few photographs and some shouting at the lama. I thought about saddling up the hairy little beast and riding him into
When I made the pass summit I stopped to enjoy the scenery and talk to a middle aged hiker who recommended I take the Immigrant Trail, a small back road shortcutting my route in order to avoid some traffic later on. I had been fairly pleased with my route and saw no reason to shortcut so I began my downhill into the
Eventually I reached a service station so I took the opportunity to stop and find my bearings. After a few minutes of fussing with my maps and moments before the station closed for the night, I went in and asked directions. The cashier confirmed my suspicions…… I had traveled 8.2 miles off route, usually this would be no problem but these particular miles concealed something that couldn’t be found on the maps, 4000 feet of climbing! In a matter of 15 minutes I had rolled down what would become hours of work in the morning. I sat outside the service station for quite a while contemplating my situation. On my way in I had seen a construction
site on the other side of the road. It was the type that was deep off the road and very expansive. They had cleared many trees to make way for whatever they had intended to build but tonight they had simply made me a bed. I hauled my bike over the barricades and rolled it back toward some equipment in the back of the site.
I looked for a smooth area to make camp but in finding little to work with I looked towards the sky. High in the air, a bulldozer scoop called to me. I climbed up one of the wheels and looked in. It was smooth and clean, far from animals, and in general seemed like the perfect place to set up camp, and on top of it all I was in a particularly playful mood. So I made some ramen, of which I ate little of, then climbed into my comfortable lofted scoop and went to bed.
........................( 3AM) I was roused to the horrifying sound of a rabid dog. Below the scoop was a dog barking so fiercely that each bark was stacked upon the next until it sounded like an angry mob of PETA protestors. These sounds were my only clues to what the animal was. It was so dark that I couldn’t see the animal ten feet away! Although I was horrified by these sounds I was far too tired to really care. I thanked myself for picking such an intelligent place to rest and went back to bed.
Day: 88.98 mi
Total: 1518.21 mi
Elev. Climbed: 4600ft
Elev. Difference: -800 ft
Day 14: August 24th, 2008 – Beam Me Up, Feed Me, and Drop Me in Frisco
In my mind Middlegate had become the edge of civilization but when I had arrived the night before I realized that it was yet another oasis. I still had quite a bit of riding before Fallon and even more to Carson City and into California. Looking back on my ride I realize now that Nevada was some of the most memorable and awesome riding, but at the time I was so ready to be rid of the state. I damned it every morning and every night. After the first few miles across the Utah/Neva border I felt that I had seen it all, but all the discomforts of the state continued to reappear; like that political ad that you’ve seen a million times after the first was too much to start with. Although, if it wasn’t for the difficulties of the trip I wouldn’t have anything to remember except for nice views and funny people, which I could have easily experienced in fifteen minutes at a coffee shop in the Springs rather than a 17 day interstate bike adventure. That being said, Nevada wasn’t planning on letting me leave without a fight.
After leaving Middlegate I rode through several military installations which made sense due to the amount of Naval Pilots that had frequented the bar I had slept outside the night before. I actually wasn’t too far from the infamous Area-51 either…. You better believe that the night before, sleeping beside a shed in nowhere Nevada, I kept my eyes on the sky and cheeks a little tighter than normal. In fact this area had so much air traffic, worldly or intergalactic, that the sandy embankments along the rode were covered in messages written in the small lava rocks that were scattered throughout the landscape. Mostly things like; “Hank loves Lauren” or “Rock and Betty forever” but occasionally you’d get a “take me with you” or “Beam me up”. It had become easy to understand how a person living in these conditions might feel inclined to say that an extraterrestrial plucked them up and probed places that even humans won’t go unless they have a M.D. Regardless, the writings continued for many miles and entertained me long enough to bring me much closer to Fallon.
There were other sights to see thought; Sand Mountain stood shining in the distance for miles. It was a solitary 600-700 foot hill of pure sugar like sand. It gleamed in the Nevada sun like a million mirrors, so much so that every few seconds I looked at it brought another drop of moisture to my eyes. I would have stopped to play upon its slopes but nearly a year before I had spent days exploring the Great Sand Dunes at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. So I pushed on towards Fallon only to be stopped by yet another natural wonder. The valley floor became increasingly white until the land around me looked to have been bleached. I slowed to examine the wonder and soon found myself with a handful of the strange earth contemplating consumption. My mind had a theory that my taste confirmed, I was riding through and enormous salt flat. Everyday table salt covered the ground like a soft winter snow. I had already partaken of this salt flat the day before but in a much more domestic environment, I had salted my fries at the Austin Diner with a shaker boasting their delicious desert resource outside Fallon.
Well, between the flats and Fallon I ran into very little than interested me besides a serious greening of the landscape and quite a few non shoe covered trees. I stopped at the first enormous gas station I could find to refuel; Mountain Dew, corndogs, and of course a half gallon of milk. I made some victorious calls back home to proclaim that I had nearly conquered my third and most brutal adversary…I mean state. In this conversation ‘nearly’ was the word that I overlooked. I had tremendous luck as I crossed the state, I had managed to somehow avoid the terrible western winds that dominated forecasts but had been absent in recent days…. until now. From Fallon to Carson City I faced a head wind so strong that should I have a hesitation in effort my bike would slow to a point that threatened tipping, which I almost welcomed because it would end the constant struggle.
Through pure effort and constant attrition I managed to reach Carson City, The largest city in my travels thus far. It was early in the day but the wind had destroyed me, and so I found myself in the comforting glow of a Dairy Queen sign. I ate a selection of the menu while I tried to decide what to do with myself for the night. I had ridden deep into Carson City and I didn’t favor the idea of riding back out into the country to camp, so I sent myself up at a hotel right off the main drag in Carson City, a rather sleazy area of town full of casinos and unsavory looking women on street corners.
After I settled into my room I thought about trying my luck at the blackjack table, but instead decided to sit down and watch some Olympics so I wasn’t completely out of the loop when I arrived at the Training Center in a few days. Of the three nights I stayed in hotels along the way I can say only that I felt rather uncomfortable with the ease of my surroundings, I even slept in my bag. I did enjoy the showers though, but I cringed at having to cover my clean skin immediately with sunscreen in the wee hours of the morning. The amenities of the hotel were nice but the thought of entering the Golden State in the morning was enough to send me to bed with a smile.
Day: 116.69 mi
Total: 1427.33 mi
Elev. Climbed: 1400 ft
Elev. Difference: 100 ft
Day 13: August 23rd, 2008 – The Burning Man with a Badass Tan
SO I set off from
I continued to dominate basin and range over and over again until at the top of one of these summits I met Burning Man Dan the AU fan. I was standing half naked in the scorching midday heat of the top of a climb when Dan’s truck and trailer stopped. He greeted me with, “Hello Stranger, would you like a Coke”.
Now, the best part about my journey was that I was never in the position to refuse a favor. People offered and I accepted. So very often in my life I have rejected favors and gifts out of no other reason than pride, but my need taught me the beauty of my self inflicted dependence. In the middle of my solo self sufficient adventure I had found, then more than ever, I was relying upon generosity and pure kindness of strangers. It was a beautiful thing and has changed my paradigm forever. When all that we have is gifted to us what is our not to give back…..?absolutely nothing!
Well Dan’s apple and Coke did much for me, but it was his character that really got me going. Dan had driven all the way from
After making it over a few more summits I had arrived in
I rode into the desert hoping to make it to civilization by nightfall. The desert around
Maybe 25 miles out of Middlegate I ran upon a goat hunt in full swing. A man crossed the road with a rifle in his hand and the handlebars of a four wheeler in the other. He was firing at the goat as if he was Yosemite Sam. I had to slow down to stay behind the man and out of his ever-changing line of fire. He disappeared into the desert as quickly as he came right at the rubble that marked the last remaining remnants of an adobe Pony Express station changeover.
Pulling into Middlegate I saw one of the most ridiculous sights of the journey, a tree. This wasn’t just any tree though; it was the first tree along Highway 50 for 150 miles! It was large and beautiful and stood with a type of pride that echoed its situation of solitude, but none of these things made the tree what it was. They say you can tell the nature of a man by the type of shoes he wears, well what about a tree. This tree wore every type of shoe; sneakers, high tops, low tops, basketball shoes, track spikes, keds, flip flops, hiking boots, and even the occasional pair of black pumps. Hanging from its branches were thousands of pairs of shoes.
Legend has it that the first pair of shoes was thrown up by a pair of feuding newlyweds who returned upon the birth of their first child to throw another pair up in a gesture of good luck for their new family. I like that story but figure it just as likely that the tree is just as easily a marker for a large crack house nearby. Either way you tell it, the Shoe Tree, as it is so creatively named, is something to behold and the next time you are driving through Middlegate, NV (probably never) you should stop and take it in.
A few hundred yards from the notorious tree is the town of
The bar keep let me use his family computer in the back to check my email. I cannot describe how odd being in front of a computer feels after being on the road as long as I had been. After I finished up inside I headed out to the back to set up tent and get some sleep. It was a very interesting day and going to bed that night I had a feeling that I would never have another like it.
Day: 135.8 mi
Total: 1310.64 mi
Elev. Climbed: 3900 ft
Elev. Difference: -2300 ft
Day 12: August 22nd, 2008 – Spaniard Effect to Eureka Historical Site #22
I woke to the sight of a middle aged lady with dirty blonde hair standing over me. I thought all my nights of squatting had caught up with me and that she was there to get me off her property, but then I remembered that I had stayed in Kelly’s camping ground. Then she spoke up and asked if I wanted to share breakfast with her and her husband Rober (a very mellow and philosophical Frenchman that would make for an awesome traveling companion), when I smelled her coffee brewing nearby I knew I couldn’t refuse such and offer. Catherine and Rober were traveling cross country in their Prius from New Hampshire to just south of Yosemite.
Catherine handed me a tin cup of steaming coffee, and proceeded to tell me about her son who a just ridden the Northern Tier (a route spanning America which travels through Maine, Michigan, the Dakotas, Montana, Oregon and such). We talked about my difficulties and also some of her son’s. He was a Vegan and managed to stay true throughout the whole trip, a far cry from Dave, the Chef Boyardee eating Transamerica traveler I had met a few days before. Catherine said he made it through almost primarily on peanut butter which, trust me on this, does not taste good when cotton mouth is the standard. While explaining my adventure to Rober and Catherine, their poodle named Alfred was roping my legs up with his leash. This eventually caused me to slightly stumble spilling hot coffee all over Alfred’s white fur….. After continued yelping from Alfred, we all recovered from the incident and continued to shoot the breeze for the remaining minutes of daybreak. After a sweet ham and cheese omelet sandwich from their camp stove, I bid Catherine and Rober goodbye and headed out the notorious Highway 50 for some on the bike me time.
On H-50 I rolled steadily up a gentile incline for about 40 miles and gained a surprising amount of elevation till it all dropped off into a basin. I peaked over 50 mph again and was amazed to see motorcyclists and cars passing me at only a few miles an hour more than my own pace. I had enough time to look into their cars and make funny faces at kids or give a challenging looks to the drivers. But eventually I hit the basin bottom and became thirsty due to the heat in the lowlands and the challenging riding.
I stopped at Majors Junction Bar in the middle of the next ridge climb. It was the only business in about 30 more miles and I needed re-supply ASAP, but their prices were inflated 3 times the normal rate because they knew they were the only service for miles. So I shelled out nearly fifteen dollars for two iced teas and a beer. The walls were coated with thousands of dollar bills that people had written their names and motto’s on and pinned to the walls. I sat next to some bikers that had passed me earlier and who after several minutes of gawking at me approached to as how fast I had gone on my bike when they saw me earlier. I let them know that I had hit 55 mph that morning; they couldn’t believe it, one even questioned if a wheel so skimpy could hold under the force I was suggesting. After a while I told them if they were so impressed they could buy me another beer but if not I had to hit the road…. I was back on the pavement moments later.
I pulled into Ely (pronounced E-lee) around 4:00 and stopped for some Subway, Mountain Dew, and also I made some calls back to Pueblo, Nashville, and Athens. After I finished screwing around it was already 5:30 and I had less than two hours of light left. Ely was a sweet town but at this point in the venture I had become able and rather ambitious, so I left town at 5:00 with more than 80 miles of emptiness in front of me as well a four large climbs….Eureka was a day away but I wanted it that night!
This situation creates a certain amount of excitement. Imagine the movie Gladiator, when he finds out that his family is doomed to be murdered he works beyond his potential to make it home before they are killed, racing the sun as if his life depended upon it. Well this sounds a little intense but that’s about the closest thing to how I felt riding into 80 miles of nothing with little supplies at almost 6:00 PM. I absolutely hauled as fast as I could, not touching the ground once in 50 miles. I sped over several 2000 foot climbs and rode even faster into the basins that followed them.
Darkness fell halfway through the third climb so I clipped on my light and rode in cadence to the strobe of the headlight. Every once in a while it would flash to reveal a buck in the road, a large desert rodent, or one of many snakes that populate the roads at night to collect the warmth of the day’s heat deposited into the asphalt, one of many reasons I wasn’t keen on sleeping on the side of the road that night. I hadn’t seen a car in hours and I was glad of it because in this sort of territory you could make someone disappear if you wished. I was hell-bent to reach Eureka just over Pinto Summit at 7,351 ft. My cadence only quickened and by the time I reached the summit of Pinto I was absolutely spent. I rolled the additional few miles into Eureka (pop 650) and wasn’t surprised to see the classic old west town closed for the night. I found a historical landmark building about a block off of Main Street that was abandoned due to a fire in the upstairs. It was being renovated and had some insulation for me to sleep on so I made the second floor of Eureka Historical Site #22 my home for the night.
Day: 153.55 mi
Total: 1174.84 mi
Elev. Climbed: 7300 ft
Elev. Difference: 1600 ft
Day 11: August 21st, 2008 – Basin and Range, Basin and Range, Biking with Rage
Each night I slept in a hotel I always lingered far too long in the morning, and this morning was no different. I got out of
Dave had just dropped out of college in San Hose and was undertaking a cross country tour from
In talking to Dave I finally concluded that I was actually very well prepared for my undertaking. I had planned well and I was thoroughly equipped and traveled very lightly, but more than anything else I realized that I had an incredibly good disposition for such a venture. Although I struggled greatly at some moments, I never once questioned my goals, motives, or resolve. In our short conversation on the side of the road Dave revealed to me serious doubts and weaknesses multiple times. I appreciated his honesty, but I was concerned that his own acceptance of his shortcomings was setting him up for failure both on the bike and in his life. I only offer this insight into Dave because in a 10 minute conversation with the kid I had heard his life story and all of his hearts woes. Then again I have to give the kid credit for challenging himself like he did. My guess is that he is still riding even now in October…… hopefully he has dropped the canned goods for some lightweight ramen!
I stopped in Minersville for a corn dog and planned to leave quickly but the double lane highway 129 that lead me out of town spontaneously turned to gravel and dirt about 20 miles out. The construction and road closure was mentioned on a scrap of paper I later found in the envelope my maps had been mailed to me in…. (In my car in
On the way out of the next town, heading into a 90 mile stretch of nothing at 3pm, I ran into another bike tourist.
Basin and Range is a geographic feature found throughout most of
I entered one particular valley between two ranges and saw a ranch, but considering I was in Utah it could also be called a compound, on the other side on the valley floor. As I rode through the heat on the incredibly straight highway that connected the two ranges, I prayed that when I reached the ranch a hoard of polygamist wives would be sent out by their husband to welcome me and bring me a motor for my bike, painkillers, and food! Rather than gifts from Mormon radicals, all I received from that valley was a worn out old soccer T-shirt I found on the side of the road which I am wearing as I write this entry. When I finally reached the ranch I realized that it was actually closer to the side of the valley I had originally started on. Perceptions are very warped when you can see 30 miles of road laid out in a straight line ahead of you.
As I rode the waves of western
When Amir and I were about 13 and 16 our parents took us up to
After about of hour of riding in the dark in a land that inspired multiple episodes of The Twilight Zone, I finally crossed the border into
Day: 146.05 mi
Total: 1031.29 mi
Elev. Climbed: 4900 ft
Elev. Difference: -300 ft