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.  🙂

 

Day 54 – Fallon to Carson City

We’re in the home stretch. We can actually see California tonight. In three more days we’ll be at the Golden Gate Bridge. Crazy. I think we’re all ready to wrap up this ride and maybe do some mountain biking for a while.

Anyhoo, it was a beautiful morning in Fallon. read: the wind wasn’t blowing like a hurricane. It was supposed to be a relatively short day to Carson City (61 miles) so I had Terran suit up and join me for the first part.

Riding out of town on 50 was nice… a slight breeze but sunny and cool. We were making good time until we had to make the turn to Carson City around 10 miles in to the ride. Then our fancy road with a nice wide shoulder turned to a 65mph road with zero shoulder and a fair bit of traffic. Those kind of roads make _me_ nervous, and I could tell Terran was dreading heading down this stretch of highway.

So I called Heidi and managed to get her before she left the hotel. Terran and I looped back and got 20 miles total before we got to the hotel. The boys needed haircuts and I needed new bike gloves, so we decided to just drive to Carson City and I’d ride more in the afternoon.

I’ll spare you the drama… I never got the afternoon ride in but we did get a lot of pre-California errands taken care of… plus we had In-n-Out again so we had a nice post-lunch food coma. 😉

In the afternoon, we scouted tomorrow’s ride. We head south of town ~30 miles, then turn to head up and over Carson’s Pass. It’s a 21 mile climb… Should be interesting.

Along the way, we went through Genoa. Genoa is apparently the first real settlement in Nevada (they claim to have the oldest house in Nevada and the oldest saloon. Why someone would have waited until they got this far west before putting up a house is beyond me, but maybe they couldn’t afford the real estate prices of Tahoe so they settled down in the valley).

Genoa is filled with interesting history. Like this “hanging tree”. I thought it was called that because of its shape or something. Upon reading this plaque, turns out it got the name for a different reason. Yikes.

Tonight we picked up some food at the grocery store so we could have lunch in the MCC tomorrow. In the parking lot we saw what the MCC would have looked like had we made this trip back in the 70’s. Don’t they look cute together?

BTW, JP and Art are back with us. JP is back from his event and Art is back from a few days vacation up in the mountains. As much as the Potters like Colorado, Art may be hooked on Tahoe.

Tomorrow, California! I’m excited for the state line, not so excited for the 21 mile climb that lay just past it. Wish us luck.  Also we’ll provide the details of our arrival in tomorrow’s post for those in the area who are curious.

 

Day 53 – Austin to Fallon

So, I got a century in today… sorta. A metric century. The imperial century remains elusive on this trip (I think the closest I got was back in VA on Day 5). Read on to see how the day went.

Yesterday, I alluded to how boring/desolate/lonely US 50 is through this area. In fact, it’s called the Loneliest Highway in America. There are signs on the road that proclaim as much. You can buy t-shirts in the small towns that dot the landscape that say things like “I Survived the Loneliest Highway”, etc. After 3 days riding this road in Nevada, I can say it’s very aptly named… tho there are roads in Alaska that are more desolate, but the folks around here don’t want to hear that.

The Pony Express went through this part of the country. I had no idea (or at least I don’t remember enough grade school history) that the Pony Express only lasted 18 months. I was thinking of starting a cycle-express to deliver messages across the country, but I don’t think 57 days is an acceptable delivery timeframe.

So, about the ride. I left Austin shortly after 7 and had a good ride the first few hours. I climbed through the pass at Mt Airy (not the Mt Airy in MD… I was about a mile higher than Mt Airy, MD) without much hassle. It was a long (hour-ish) climb but really not too steep. It was a great way to start the day.

After that pass, I descended down to the basin below… and that’s when all hell broke loose. Or rather, the winds from hell. I’m not an exceptionally seasoned rider, but I have never in my life ridden in wind like I had today. Within about a mile, the air went from basically calm to approaching gale force. No, I’m not joking. The grasses were bent over, tumbleweeds were tumbling, and small pebbles and pieces of sand were blowing down the road. From my kite flying days, blowing sand means the wind was going at least 25 mph… the closest weather station I could find on Weather Bug verified sustained winds of 25 with gusts up to 40.

You know that gust of wind you get when a tractor trailer goes past you in the other direction? It sort of knocks you around and slows you down? It was like that, non-stop. My wonderful pace of 18mph dropped to 13.. then 11.. then 10.. then _9_. There were stretches where it was a battle to keep my speed at 9mph. Totally flat, sunny day… in the middle of nowhere… working my butt off for 9mph. Yeah. That was awesome.

After several hours of battling that mess, I gave up. Partially because I was tired, but mostly because my hip was really hurting me. I think that all the buffeting of the wind was forcing me to constantly correct my position and riding mechanics just to hold a straight line. I felt it in my knees first, then my left hip just went bonkers. I pushed through it for a while, but after 65 miles, that was all I could take. I’ve pounded a bunch of advil, and it feels a bit better. It doesn’t hurt when I walk, but I can feel it when I’m on the bike. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Anyhoo, I finished up at Middlegate Station. This place is sorta like the bar from top gun. It’s about 20 miles from the nearby Naval Air base, there’s pilot memorabilia all over the walls, and about $1,000 in 1 dollar bills stapled to the ceiling with messages all over them. Oh, and late 80’s beer pinup girl posters in the men’s bathroom. Of course, the food was awesome 🙂

On the way in to Fallon, we passed this…

Yep, it’s a mountain of sand. Why? No clue. But it is huge, and made entirely of sand. Nevada is an interesting place.

Tomorrow we ride to Carson City. Terran will ride out with me in the morning to keep me company. And then tomorrow night JP joins back up with us. After that, it’s only 3 days till San Francisco. And THEN we start the drive back home. Heidi and I started looking at routes and timing for that trip and realized we need to really scoot to make it back in time for school. This trip is far from over 😉

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.