Day 52 – Eureka to Austin

Seven days to San Francisco. You wouldn’t know it given how little civilization there is out here. Today’s ride went from Eureka NV to Austin NV, about 67 miles. In between, there was nothing. Seriously, not a thing. Route 50 has huge stretches of nothing through this section of the country. Again, I’m super thankful for Heidi and the MCC. Not sure how people make this section of the country when they’re self supported.

I got an earlier jump on the day (7:30) and once again the weatherman was way off. It was supposed to be 51, but it was 61. And within a few miles out of town, it was nearly 70. Good thing I put my arm warmers and vest on 😐

About 12 miles in to the ride, I climbed through a small pass. The wind through the pass was just _hammering_… a crazy strong headwind. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased. Riding in to the wind is a bummer, and out here when the wind is really pushing you around and there’s NOTHING else to focus on, it’s just brutal. Fortunately, once I made it through the pass, the wind died right back down. Apparently as the rising sun warms up the air around here unevenly and causes huge drafts through the passes. I’ll keep that in mind for tomorrow and see what the early morning is like.

Route 50 through this stretch had its own quirks. The road has ~36″ shoulder, but the first foot closest to the white line is rumble strips. That means if I want to ride on the shoulder, I have about 2′ to work with. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I had a few close calls with drivers today (apparently checked out on this lonely highway) so I opted to ride the shoulder. It was like riding rollers for 50 miles. There’s a few inches to play with, but things get serious quick if you deviate from your line.

There was a major climb about 12 miles out from Austin (and apparently 122 miles from Fallon).

I opted out of the climb for a couple of reasons. First, 57 miles of flats is actually pretty tiring. There’s no rest at all. If you stop pedaling, you stop moving. So it’s just non-stop turning of the pedals. Nearly 4 hours of that today and I was ready for a break. The bigger reason, however, is that tomorrow we’ve decided to push to Fallon. Due to lodging issues, we’ve actually changed the end points for the next 4 days. And with those shifts, tomorrow has turned in to a 110 mile day. I haven’t put down a triple digit day this whole trip (tho I was close back east). I’m really optimistic that I can get all the way to Fallon… but I didn’t want to bust my butt up a 1,500′ climb in to Austin just before that. Soooo.. we’ll see if I make it to Fallon or if it ended up not mattering. Stay tuned tomorrow to find out.

Austin is probably the last real small town we’ll be staying in. In a few days, we’ll be staying on top of Carson’s Pass, but that’s pretty close to Tahoe, so I don’t think we’ll be nearly as remote as we are now. So this may be our last small town motel. The Cozy Mountain Motel is a fine place to finish out that trend. We’ve got a 2 bedroom room, tho the rooms are quite small. Dax is having a blast navigating the piles of bags and bike parts tho, so we’re all good.

Austin has potentially the coolest little kids playground in the country. It was a bit like climbing through a giant playmobile set.  We took Dax to it this afternoon and he had a blast. For anyone that knows Dax, he very audibly expressed his agreement. He was by far the loudest object in all of Austin this afternoon. I’m surprised they didn’t ask us to leave 😉

He’s becoming quite independent on playgrounds now, which is both good and bad. If you look closely at this pic, you’ll see me behind him waiting to stop his fall back to the ground. What you don’t see is when he actually climbed _inside_ this contraption and I had to basically suspend him in midair so he could play with it.

Tune in tomorrow to see if I actually got my century in or if I wimped out today for no reason.

Day 51 – Ely to Eureka

W00t! Back on the bike. After 4 days of rest, I was definitely looking forward to getting back in the saddle. JP had some work stuff come up and he’s currently out in Chicago for a few days. So it’s just Heidi, the kids, and I until Thursday.

Unfortunately, the drive from Vegas took over 4 hours. And once we got to the hotel in Ely, we needed to do laundry. Like, a lot of it. Vegas laundry. And for some reason everyone else in the hotel needed to do laundry. We eventually got it done, but we ended up getting to bed shortly after midnight. Not great for getting up early and beating the winds.

I ended up on the road around 8:30. The weatherman had once again lied. It was supposed to be near 50 in the morning but instead it was 75 by the time I was on the road.

The route today (and tomorrow, and the next day) is on US 50. Most of this part of Nevada has big flat sections with 1.5k’-ish climbs on each end. The climbs aren’t brutal, but they’re long… and a bit annoying. However, it’s nice to not be bashing the pedals up 15% grades like we saw out east.

The first pass was relatively uneventful. I hit the peak right about the time Heidi and the boys caught up with me in the MCC. BTW: we’re way back up in the air again.

Nevada has its own kind of beauty. It’s definitely not like the canyons of Utah, but it’s greener which is fine by me. In a lot of ways it’s like Kansas but with mountains. You can drive in a straight line for miles and miles… it’s easy to lose track of how far away things are.

Nevada is also windy. Today it got super windy. It was either a headwind (which is a bummer) or a cross wind (usually better). By noon-ish, the cross winds were getting crazy. Cross winds will make you a bit skittish on descents. Today, the winds were enough to make me nervous even on the flats. I got hit by gusts that seriously nearly pushed me on to the gravel shoulder when I was only doing 15 mph. I’m guessing that’s at least 30 mph winds.

Anyhoo, I made it about 53 miles before the lack of sleep, mid-90’s heat and the wind got the better of me. I called it a day with about 20 miles left and we cruised in to Eureka in the MCC.

Eureka is a small town, but it definitely has its charm. It seems to be a gold rush era town that actually lived to see modern times (versus many boom towns that disappeared in to the sands). It also has really good burgers. We had a late lunch at a local cafe/bar and then basically snacked for dinner.

A little Wii U and some showers and we’re all ready for tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get an earlier jump and avoid these crazy winds.

Days 46-50: Vegas, Baby

Honestly – we didn’t take a lot of photos in Vegas…oops. The drive in to Vegas was uneventful… cept for a stop at In-n-Out Burger. 🙂 Heidi’s been talking about In-n-Out since we left Virginia. We even managed to find one that wasn’t in downtown Las Vegas. Also, the route down I-15 to Vegas from Utah goes through a chunk of Arizona. This trip has been a huge lesson in geography for the whole family. Tho things are a little easier out west where the states are bigger and squarier. Here’s the obligatory “next state” photo.

DefCon was at the Rio again this year. The Rio isn’t on the strip, but it’s close. The boys got a pretty good idea of what Vegas is like on this trip, even tho we were on the other side of I-15. The Rio is an all suites hotel so we had a lot of room to spread out. We also had a lot of time in town, so the first night we were there I bought a Wii U for the boys. They may remember that more than the con or the casino, actually. They really took to the Wii. Our room had a great view of the taxi line. Heidi managed to catch a glimpse of the hacker cab (the security folks in the audience will get the joke. The rest of you won’t 😉

Friday morning a bunch of hackers got up early to go on the 3rd annual Cycle OverRide bike ride. Friday morning was also the start of  R00tz Asylum aka DefCon kids, which Bobby and Terran wanted to go to. So Heidi and I split duties… she took the boys to DefCon kids. I went to the ride. But rather than riding, I drove the MCC to SAG the riders. JP carried the Cycle OverRide torch on friday morning. We ended up with 15 folks for the ride. Even with lining up for the group shot, the riders were still on the road right around 7am. Not too bad for a DefCon event.

The route was the same as previous years… ride out to Red Rock Canyon, do the loop up the canyon rim if you want, then back to the bike shop. This is a SUPER popular route with Vegas riders. For a weekday morning, there were a lot of riders on the rode. The MCC got a bunch of strange looks.

The ride is amusing. You start at ~2k’ in elevation, then gain about 1,500′ on the way to the entrance to the loop. Then the loop gains another 1k’ or so. Then it’s _all_ downhill back to the bike shop. It’s a bit of slog to get to the top, then the ride is over before you know it because of the downhill.

We had an amazing morning, weather wise. It was 74 degrees when the ride got underway, which is an amazingly cool temp for a Vegas morning in August. Even by the time everything wrapped up around 10:30, we were only in the high 80’s. I hope all the rides at DefCon are like that.

The boys had a great time in Vegas. Bobby hung out with an old friend and met a new one. He even got to play the kids version of Hacker Jeopardy. And even tho his team didn’t win, they still enjoyed themselves.  A big shout out to Robin and Joe for sharing the kid watching duties.

The rest of DefCon was filled with normal con fun.  Our time was spent talking with old friends, checking in at the Hack Fortress booth (where Dax amused the spectators by participating in the last minute kids round), and in general trying to not get to worn out by the con experience.  On top of that, JP and I gave a skytalk about the ride and teamed up for Hacker Jeopardy Pyramid.  (Edit – sorry. The brain got confused looking at the picture of Bobby.  JP and I participated in Hacker Pyramid not Jeopardy.)  Anyway Fun times.

Before we knew it, DefCon was over and we were back on our way to the route. The ride picked back up in Ely, which is about due north of Vegas. What’s also about due north is Area 51. On the way to Ely we took the Extra Terrestrial Highway. One of the locals gave up some rough directions to where Area 51 is but I didn’t listen very well, so we never figured out where the gate was. That said, here’s a shot in that general direction.

Next up, back on the bikes.

Day 45 – One last day in Milford

We’re back! DefCon is over and we’re back on the trail. Time to play a little catch up on our continuing saga.

When you last heard from us, we were getting ready to leave Milford UT and head to Baker NV. It was going to be a big day… 3 big climbs and riding in to Nevada.

Welp, about 2 am, plans changed. The hotel we were in only had single bed rooms, so Bobby and Terran were sleeping in a room next to us. Terran called our room to let us know he was sick… and not the “little bit of a fever” sick. Nope, “proper vomiting” sick.

As the sun came up, he was still in rough shape. So instead of pushing on to Baker, JP and I went on a ride in the local area and finished back at the hotel. Even by mid-afternoon, Terran was still under the weather. Dax felt bad and tried to help him out.

Milford UT is a small town. It’s a hub for Union Pacific which seems to be the major local industry. But even with that hub, there’s not much going on. After spending 2 days in town, I think we had eaten at every restaurant at least once… and the diner in front of the hotel twice (plus a shake for Terran). Our final dinner in town was at a local Mexican place. We apparently saved the best for last as the food was great, especially the pork tacos. Heidi may get a job with Union Pacific just to get back to Milford and those tacos.

We spent the night at the same hotel and let T sleep it off. The next day.. Vegas!