Day 55 – Carson City to Kirkwood

Welp, we’re in California. And yep, the kids are constantly singing the theme from The OC… or at least the “California…. CALIFORNIAAAA” part.

This morning the boys got their final stamp in the “Route 50 – Loneliest Road” Passport. Terran was clearly overjoyed.

Today involved a big climb up and over Carson Pass. It’s a 3,500′ pass up that runs just south of Lake Tahoe. JP really wanted to get up this thing from start to finish. Since this is his first day back on the trail, he SAG’d up to the base of the climb right at the CA/NV border to give himself the best chance possible. I rode out of Carson City directly and was hopeful to at least get most of the climb in.

The route took a very back route in to California. There was no giant “Welcome to California” sign or anything. Just this little green sign, a stripe in the road (?!?!) and some tool in the background sticking out his tongue.

The first part of the climb was definitely serious. It was ~800′ of climbing at 8%. I met up with a small group of bikers on that stretch and at least one of them gave up after the first 1/2 mile. Not a reassuring start to the climb.

Once I got on CA 88, the climb continued. Within a few miles, I caught up to JP and Art. JP had put in 7 solid miles up this climb, but unfortunately was feeling under the weather. He put the bike up, ate a bunch of Advil, and called it a day. It’s a real bummer because I know he was looking forward to this climb, even if it took him all day to do. Maybe next time.

I pushed about halfway up the climb… but unfortunately my knees and hips are pretty messed up still from the ride 2 days ago. Today didn’t do them any favors. In fact, as I sit here writing this my left knee and right hip are a special breed of uncomfortable. I’m really glad there’s only 2 days left in this adventure because I’m not sure my body could get past the weekend.

We’re spending the night in Kirkwood. We hadn’t done a lot of research on this place before we stopped, but knew it was a ski town so we figured there’d be a lot going on. Bzzzzt. Try again. There’s one restaurant and a general store that closes early. Luckily the restaurant is good. 🙂

The ski area here is the Kirkwood Mountain Resort (owned by the same company that owns Vail). The trails look pretty impressive, especially some double diamond runs up at the top fed by a long, conventional (ie: not high speed) quad. This is some hard core skiing. The hat approves.

Tomorrow is our last chance at a century. We’ve got 80 miles of downhill on the route tomorrow on our way to Sacramento. Yes, 80 miles, 8k’ of vertical to lose. That’s an average of 2% grade downhill. Should be interesting. Plus it’ll be in the 40’s at the start. Wow. Fun next to last day.

And then Sunday. We’ll be arriving in SF and finishing this adventure Sunday afternoon. Our plan (presently) is to be on the ferry from Vallejo to SF that arrives shortly before 3pm. We’ll then ride from the ferry terminal to the Golden Gate Bridge gift shop (the end point). We should be arriving around 3:45, give or take. Bobby is probably going to ride that last 6 miles with us in SF.  He’s very excited.

To our San Francisco area friends – we’d love to see you at the finish if you can make it.

As always, more details tomorrow.  🙂