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Day 8 - June 15 - Winnemucca, NV to Battle Mountain, NV - 56 milesFather's Day. Last Father's Day, my daughter Kylie and I took our first balloon ride, at the Queechee (Vermont) Baloon Festival. This was a very short day, because there aren't many towns along the way, so not a lot of choice about where to stop. There was one stiff 600 foot climb in the middle, to Golconda Summit, but everyone still got to the hotel by lunchtime. Battle Mountain is a nice little town, but it's really in the middle of nowhere. "Gateway to the Outback", they call it. The train ran through town, right by the hotel, a couple of time while I was on the phone. I called Francie, Vicka, and my dad, because it was the thing to do. In the evening, Barb gave Dan a haircut, because he had a photo shoot in a few days. It eventually came out that her previous experience with barbering involved her schnauzers. This was the big event of the evening, with 13 spectators.
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Day 9 - June 16 - Battle Mountain, NV to Elko, NV - 75 milesThis was not one of our better days. We had climbing, headwinds, heat, rumble strips, and my first two flats. Mileage was a little longer than planned, because we rode a couple miles west to get to breakfast, the a couple miles back east to the beginning of the route. 75 miles isn't normally a long day, but we climbed about 1500 feet to Emigrant Pass. It was one of those climbs that went on forever, kept looking like it was just about to end, but didn't. I caught a wire somewhere on the climb, and ended up walking the last 100 feet or so to the rest area at the top of the pass, still running about 20 pounds of pressure. There was a bonus sag stop at the top of the pass, so I got to change the tire in style. Unfortunately, I failed to center the wheel when I put it back on, so the tire was rubbing against the frame for the next 10 miles. Oops. Not good for the tire, the paint job, or performance. The second sag stop was next to a Subway. It's sad when I really look forward to Subway. The ride used to go through the Carlin Tunnel, but the Deptartment of Transportation threatened to arrest people last year. So we went around the mountain, along a nice quiet flat coutnry road, which just happened to dead-end at the interstate. On the wrong side of the interstate. So we had to run across both lanes of the highway. Nice. On the other side, I picked up a piece of glass, also in the rear tire. I'd just changed to a "self-healing" tube. It hadn't lost much pressure, but it was still hissing and bubbling, and I didn't feel like waiting around to see if it would actually seal the puncture, so I patched it. Oveall, it was a long ride into town. I was really beat, but the first thing I did when I got in was laundry, even before showering. |
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Day 10 - June 17 - Elko, NV to West Wendover, NV - 108 miles
Today was just like yesterday, only 50% longer. There were long climbs, concrete rumble strips, and headwinds, often combined. This ride just about kicked my ass. Both sag stops were at the top of hills. This is actually the most sensible place to put a sag stop, because it's somewhere you're going to want to stop anyway, and you're probably running low on water and fuel. The second sag was actually moved up from the town of Oasis to the Pequop Summit. Kathy and Cindy have been making peanut butter sandwiches, which Neil and Emily are transporting to the sag. Wendover is a big town by local standards. West Wendover, on the Nevada side, is built up on gambling, mostly from a Utah clientele. East Wendover, on the Utah side, doesn't have much of anything going for it. Apparently, all of Wendover is on Mountain time, even though most of Nevada is on Pacific time. Confusingly, the clock in our hotel room is set to Pacific time. When we crested the final hill, we saw the stark division between the brown hills of Nevada, and the white salt flats of Utah. This is the most natural state line that isn't a river. I will never again mistake Nevada for someplace flat. |
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Day 11 - June 18 - West Wendover, NV to Salt Lake City, UT - 118 milesThis was just a long, long day. There was some climbing, but not a lot. Mostly, it was just long and flat and straight and hot. Breakfast was at 5:30 Mountain time, or 4:30 Pacific time. In any case, it was before sunrise. Luggage load was held back to 6:10, because that was sunrise. That's how early we were up. The state line was really disappointing. Dan said there was a sign, but we never saw it. Instead, there was just this line painted across the road. To our backs was West Wendover, Nevada, with casinos and hotels. To our front was Wendover, Utah, with parking lots for the casinos, cheap food, cheap motels, and pretty much nothing else. A few miles down the road are the Bonneville Salt Flats and the Bonneville Raceway, where things go fast, far, and in a straight line. The second picture is looking back at Wendover. A few miles further down the road is this god-awful piece of public art called "Metaphor - The Tree of Utah." Quoting from a postcard: "Located 26 miles east of Wendover, Utah on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats, standing 87 feet above the salty plain, is this creation by Karl Momen. Dedicated January 18, 1986 as 'A hymn to our universe who's [sic] glory and dimension is beyond all myth and imagination.'" As we used to say in college, it must be art - it can't be anything else. Western Utah isn't all salt flats. No, there are some hills and scrubby bushes and dry grass. And then the salt flats resume. I-80 is built on a causeway through the salt flats, to raise it about two feet above the seasonal lake bottom. At this time of year, parts were dry, but parts were wet. The lunch stop was at the Skull Valley Cafe, a diner in a double-wide trailer. At the time we were there, it was a one-woman operation, but she was everything you could want from a diner waitress/cook. The local NBC affiliate tracked us down there, because they wanted to do a piece on Dan and his bionic leg, the major parts of which were manufactured in Salt Lake City. While he was doing the stand-up interview, I found a half-grown kitten (with a bad case of ear mites, alas), and gave it a week's worth of loving. No pictures, unfortunately. The TV crew wanted footage of us eating lunch, footage of Dan filling his Camelbak, footage of us biking out, and footage of us on I-80. They ran the van down the road, jumped out, got some footage, jumped back in, ran a couple miles down the road, and repeated the whole process about 3 times. In all, it took over an hour to get lunch, and get back on the road. This was edited down to a one-minute piece on the 10:00 news. Shortly after the TV crew left, Dan sagged out. He fell back from Andy and me, and toodled along for about 8 miles before the sag van caught up with him. I felt really gassy and bloated, but I kept going. (I think Bruce is right about the french fries - not good road food.) Andy didn't mind, because it meant that I was fighting to keep up with him, not the other way around.
I'm starting to get a really uneven tan. Since we're primarily heading due east, and the sun is primarily to the south, especially at the most intense part of the day, I'm getting noticably more color on the right side than the left. I'm going to have to turn around, and go back Nevada, just to even things out. |
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Day 12 - June 19 - Salt Lake City, UT - Rest Day
In the morning, we went on a tour of Otto Bock's Salt Lake City manufacturing facility. At this site, they make prosthetic feet (including Dan's), and wheelchair cushions and positioning aids. Dan got to meet with some of the engineers, and got a replacement foot. It was actually really interesting to see the research and work that goes into things that most people (thankfully) never have to think about. Quick trip to a bike store, then we went to a barbequeue at John's friends Tim and Tina's house in suburban SLC. Brats, burgers, dog, and baby - what could be finer? |
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Day 13 - June 20 - Salt Lake City, UT to Provo, UT - 64 milesThe day started with 30 miles of endless suburbs, one town merging seamlessly into the next. The primary vernacular style seems to be one-story brick houses dating from the post-war period, but there are starting to be more McMansions. No pictures - you know what suburbs look like. In some of the more outlying towns like South Jordan, there were mini-farms - a few horses or cows on a few acres - mixed in with the residential development. But it wasn't until we were well out of the city that we got to real open land. Granted, it was a military reservation, but it was the beginning of the countryside. Provo is the home of Brigham Young University. The route took us right through the campus, including a spot where the road was closed because they were putting up a new building. Anyway, no pictures - you know what a college campus looks like. There were terrible headwinds today, especially in the morning. The 28 miles to the first sag were a total slog - nature's stationary bike. But we weren't in the desert, we weren't on I-80, and we weren't on rumble strips. Not a bad day in all.
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Day 14 - June 21 - Provo, UT to Price, UT - 75 milesBreakfast was "continental" - pastries, cold cereal, juice, and coffee. These were the carbs we didn't get last night, but, in combination with last night's non-dinner, it didn't bode well for a long day on a bike, especially with only one sag, at mile 38. However, it wasn't a bad day at all. A little suggestion of a sprinkle first thing in the morning, and again around noon. The 3000-foot climb that looked so daunting on the profile was long, but not steep. The landscape at the eastern end is kind of weird and alien, with abrupt cliff faces and balancing rocks and such. |
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In the excitement, I forgot to get a roll-away bed. (With three of us
in a double room, we take turns on the roll-away.) The hotel was out,
and I didn't want to wake Neil and Emily to get one of the ones that
America By Bike owns out of the luggage van, so I slept on the floor.
I've done worse, and I wasn't noticably less rested the next day.
People were dropping like flies today. A couple people sagged all the
way through, a few people sagged from the beginning to one of the sag
stops, and a lot of people had to be picked up off the road. Jay was
taken to the hospital with dehydration, and Michael was taken to the
hospital with heat stroke. The desert is not your friend. We got in
at 5pm, having started a bit before 7am, and Sandy, Linda, and Kevin
limped in after us.
Finally got off I-80. We were well into the nasty fast bits of the
approaches to the city, and I would have liked to get off about 5
miles earlier. On the other hand, once we got off, we were on a long,
dreary frontage road for 10 miles. Bruce warned us it would be
longest 10 miles of our lives.
Vacation from my vacation. Slept in until 9:00 - ahhh.
Dinner, on the other hand, was a disaster. We ate at the Sizzler, a
chain we've been at twice before. Previously, we ordered off the
senior menu - small steak or chicken or shrimp. This time, the
contract stated that we just got the salad bar and a drink. It's not
bad, as salad bars go, but there was very little in the way of protein
or carbohydrates - chicken wings, cold pizza, and greasy tacos. Sad
to say, Arby's would have been a better choice.