Last night before we left Cedar City I visited the public library to check their internet connection, web use policy, and hours. All turned out satisfactory to my blogging appetite; I would come back today to blog to my heart's content. (The canyon wildernesses of Utah had taken a toll on this malnourished journal and its orphaned half-brothers, the photo albums, so they all needed intensive care.)
Contrary to my "only forward" cycling mantra, this morning I said 'so long' to the boys in Enoch and rode the seven miles back to Cedar City. They would ride ahead, spend the night in Milford, and attend church services there tomorrow (Sunday) while I caught up.
First, I checked my bike into a bike shop for a tune-up and couldn't resist spending five bucks on a yellow water bottle that I didn't really need ...but Blue Pony looked really good (and a little gaudy) with two matching yellow bottles!
After a fruitful day of blogging and uploading my Utah photo album, I felt snug and content, as one normally feels after completing a big task. It was 5 pm, time to go pick up my bike from the shop and decide how to kill the rest of the day. Hmm, why not just head for the next town? Minersville lay only 40 miles away, so I decided to ride. If it got dark before I reached the town, so be it, I would just suck it up and pedal, no big deal.
The desert began right after the last houses in Enoch. As I rode alone through the serene evening, thoughts began to swarm in my head. It was so peaceful that I wanted really badly, almost painfully, to share this experience with my sister, Sasha. I was also overcome with remorse at not giving her a bicycle for her last birthday as I had promised. At the same time, what could I give her for her upcoming birthday, just two days after my scheduled arrival back in New York? A long-overdue bicycle? But finding the right bike is such a long and complex process... And then, eureka! I would go online and buy the same exact bike that Anna rode for the first five days of the trip, the Windsor "Tourist". First, it already proved itself as a high quality ride, nullifying all the complexities of research and selection. Second, I would get it delivered to Sasha's house but tell her that the box contained my own bike shipped from San Francisco. I would reveal the secret on her birthday, creating a perfect surprise gift. How I love a multi-faceted solution to a problem!
Full of bright plans for future cycling adventures with my sister, I joyfully pedaled and whistled and sang. The last sliver of sun hid behind the western horizon (photo). Just then I rolled over a low ridge to see the outlines of Minersville appear six miles ahead -- a timely validation of my decision to ride tonight!
It was dusk when I stopped at a convenience store in Minersville. The pregnant shop keeper was really nice; she offered her garden hose for my shower tonight and rang the sheriff about me sleeping over in the town park behind the store. He assured me that they wouldn't turn on the sprinklers tonight and that nobody would bother me.
The lady closed shop. Loud teens roared around in their pick-ups a block up Main Street. I drank a couple of beers and excitedly settled in for the night under the stars. Tomorrow promises to be quite a day: (1) after overtaking the boys in Milford, I plan to cover, alone, the longest and most desolate stretch of the entire trip, 84 miles of empty desert; and (2) I'll finally cross into the long-awaited Nevada and the Pacific time zone!
There's something else that's fueling my excited anticipation. In just two days my friend Masha joins us for the rest of the trip to San Francisco. When I reach Baker, NV tomorrow, I'll stay there to wait for the boys (catching up from Milford) and for Masha (driving with Devin's mom from Salt Lake City).
Finally, I'm curious about Kendall. He rode to Milford with Troy and Devin this morning, but not needing to attend church services tomorrow, what's he up to?
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Day 41 (8/3). Last day in the Rockies. Monster downhill. BYU Magazine photo shoot.
Today was our last day in the Rockies -- and another big day. We clambered to the top of Markagunt Plateau (elevation 10,350 ft), skirted its crowning jewel, Cedar Breaks National Monument, and plunged down the other side to Cedar City 4,500 feet below.
A wonderful surprise. After an arduous four-hour ascent to the edge of Cedar Breaks, I looked down into the amphitheater and couldn't hold a gasp. Utah had held one last surprise in store, despite the desensitization I described in my earlier journal entries. Cedar Breaks was the single most beautiful and spectacular sight I saw this summer (photo). Wow, wow, and wow! It looked almost identical to Bryce Canyon's main amphitheater, thus providing full consolation for my decision to skip Bryce the night before. (Bryce and Cedar Breaks look so much alike because they are the result of soil erosion in the same set of geologic layers).
The greatest downhill. The ride through Cedar Canyon down to Cedar City was the most adrenaline-pumping downhill race between New York and San Francisco: 12 miles of continuous 7% grade at sustained speeds of 35-40 miles per hour without applying the brakes! This photo shows the outlines of the deep Cedar Canyon in the upper-right-hand corner, with the Cedar Breaks amphitheater in the foreground. Because the road was winding and heavy with traffic, I had to stay under 40 mph for safety, but interestingly, was able to do so entirely by using my rain jacket as a parachute brake (there was some headwind). Normally tucked into a tight ball for speed, I would sit up and spread my elbows when I needed to slow down to negotiate a tight turn or avoid traffic. My jacket, zipped only at the bottom, would swell up with air and create a burst of strong drag.
We had put on our rain jackets because of a chilly drizzle at the top of the plateau. However, by the time we dropped to Cedar City in the valley below, we had lost so much altitude that the air temperature rose by a whopping 15-20 degrees F, making us exceedingly uncomfortable in our windbreakers.
Oh, and today's terrain made me feel bad for those attempting to pedal it in the opposite direction -- they have to climb up through Cedar Canyon, a tough, tough challenge.
BYU Magazine photo shoot. Devin had arranged for BYU Magazine to write an article about our trip. When we arrived in Cedar City in the late afternoon, BYU reporters Megan Olsen and Brad Slade were already waiting for us. Exhausted from the day's ride, we wanted to relax in celebration of our Rockies crossing, so we naturally expected the BYU engagement to take a few minutes -- a photo, a quick interview -- and be over. But Megan and Brad were really serious about their mission. They requested that we all go back a few miles into Cedar Canyon in search of a good location for the shot. Urgh! We couldn't say no. We felt obliged because these guys had made a big sacrifice of their time to meet us: they had driven for three hours from Provo, arrived early in the morning and waited for us all day in Cedar City, and were going to make the three-hour return trip that night.
What transpired next was a two-hour action-packed thriller slash drama slash comedy. Brad the photographer wanted a romantic action shot, so he insisted that the photo be of us on our bikes, lined up abreast across the width of the road, with our silhouettes contoured from behind by soft gold lining of the sunset. Route 14, a winding two-lane highway, was busy with heavy evening traffic in both directions. Therefore it took a combination of team brainstorming, impeccably timed choreography, 20-30 takes and re-takes, thick skin in the face of irritated drivers, some daring and audacity, and deft skill with the bicycle to complete the shot to Brad's satisfaction. Moreover, I think we could have been in trouble had a cop seen what we were doing to the traffic in the Canyon. Here's Brad's selected photo and Megan's short article.
Gold lining..? When I asked Brad why he insisted on taking the picture against the sun (which seemed counterintuitive), he gave the then-dubious-sounding explanation that it was for the gold-lining effect mentioned above. However, he later admitted that BYU Magazine editors had instructed him to use his photography skill to hide our facial hair as much as possible. Though BYU is known for its strict code of physical appearance (including a ban on facial hair), I was amused that they would demand this even from a picture of students on summer vacation.
Here's a photo of the guys during the shoot.
We spent the night in Enoch, seven miles north of Cedar City, at the house of Devin's buddy from their LDS mission in Norway. The house was full of his friends; we hung out together watching movies, eating water melon, and playing with pistols and rifles. At one point some of the guys went shooting in the desert and got stopped by a cop, but he was cool and let them go with no trouble.
And I almost forgot: no more rain for us for the remainder of the trip.
A wonderful surprise. After an arduous four-hour ascent to the edge of Cedar Breaks, I looked down into the amphitheater and couldn't hold a gasp. Utah had held one last surprise in store, despite the desensitization I described in my earlier journal entries. Cedar Breaks was the single most beautiful and spectacular sight I saw this summer (photo). Wow, wow, and wow! It looked almost identical to Bryce Canyon's main amphitheater, thus providing full consolation for my decision to skip Bryce the night before. (Bryce and Cedar Breaks look so much alike because they are the result of soil erosion in the same set of geologic layers).
The greatest downhill. The ride through Cedar Canyon down to Cedar City was the most adrenaline-pumping downhill race between New York and San Francisco: 12 miles of continuous 7% grade at sustained speeds of 35-40 miles per hour without applying the brakes! This photo shows the outlines of the deep Cedar Canyon in the upper-right-hand corner, with the Cedar Breaks amphitheater in the foreground. Because the road was winding and heavy with traffic, I had to stay under 40 mph for safety, but interestingly, was able to do so entirely by using my rain jacket as a parachute brake (there was some headwind). Normally tucked into a tight ball for speed, I would sit up and spread my elbows when I needed to slow down to negotiate a tight turn or avoid traffic. My jacket, zipped only at the bottom, would swell up with air and create a burst of strong drag.
We had put on our rain jackets because of a chilly drizzle at the top of the plateau. However, by the time we dropped to Cedar City in the valley below, we had lost so much altitude that the air temperature rose by a whopping 15-20 degrees F, making us exceedingly uncomfortable in our windbreakers.
Oh, and today's terrain made me feel bad for those attempting to pedal it in the opposite direction -- they have to climb up through Cedar Canyon, a tough, tough challenge.
BYU Magazine photo shoot. Devin had arranged for BYU Magazine to write an article about our trip. When we arrived in Cedar City in the late afternoon, BYU reporters Megan Olsen and Brad Slade were already waiting for us. Exhausted from the day's ride, we wanted to relax in celebration of our Rockies crossing, so we naturally expected the BYU engagement to take a few minutes -- a photo, a quick interview -- and be over. But Megan and Brad were really serious about their mission. They requested that we all go back a few miles into Cedar Canyon in search of a good location for the shot. Urgh! We couldn't say no. We felt obliged because these guys had made a big sacrifice of their time to meet us: they had driven for three hours from Provo, arrived early in the morning and waited for us all day in Cedar City, and were going to make the three-hour return trip that night.
What transpired next was a two-hour action-packed thriller slash drama slash comedy. Brad the photographer wanted a romantic action shot, so he insisted that the photo be of us on our bikes, lined up abreast across the width of the road, with our silhouettes contoured from behind by soft gold lining of the sunset. Route 14, a winding two-lane highway, was busy with heavy evening traffic in both directions. Therefore it took a combination of team brainstorming, impeccably timed choreography, 20-30 takes and re-takes, thick skin in the face of irritated drivers, some daring and audacity, and deft skill with the bicycle to complete the shot to Brad's satisfaction. Moreover, I think we could have been in trouble had a cop seen what we were doing to the traffic in the Canyon. Here's Brad's selected photo and Megan's short article.
Gold lining..? When I asked Brad why he insisted on taking the picture against the sun (which seemed counterintuitive), he gave the then-dubious-sounding explanation that it was for the gold-lining effect mentioned above. However, he later admitted that BYU Magazine editors had instructed him to use his photography skill to hide our facial hair as much as possible. Though BYU is known for its strict code of physical appearance (including a ban on facial hair), I was amused that they would demand this even from a picture of students on summer vacation.
Here's a photo of the guys during the shoot.
We spent the night in Enoch, seven miles north of Cedar City, at the house of Devin's buddy from their LDS mission in Norway. The house was full of his friends; we hung out together watching movies, eating water melon, and playing with pistols and rifles. At one point some of the guys went shooting in the desert and got stopped by a cop, but he was cool and let them go with no trouble.
And I almost forgot: no more rain for us for the remainder of the trip.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Day 40 (8/2). Bryce Canyon …not.
When I looked at the maps this morning, I learned that today we would be crossing Bryce Canyon National Park. Woo-hoo! Judging by postcards in every convenience store, the canyon is a symphony, an intricate frostwork of innumerable spires and towers; it strongly reminds me of the Milan Cathedral. But I soon realized that the overflowing wonderment that had carried me through the past several days in Utah had given way to a feeling of, "Ah, who cares, it's just another canyon." Desensitization, indeed. Nevertheless, one topographic feature on the way to Bryce did manage to stir up a burst of excitement. A tall butte right before Cannonville UT looked just like a fortress (photo); someone has even installed a flag on its "roof"!
After lunch in Cannonville I found good internet access and stayed for some blogging; the guys obviously went ahead; we wouldn't meet again until nightfall.
Land of RVs. Utah struck me with its incredible number of RVs. There were practically no vehicles on the roads other than RVs. Another place with such disproportionate representation by one type of vehicle had been West Virginia, the land of roaring Harley posses. Gangs of big, bearded, leather-clad bikers with big, leather-clad biker chicks on their backs roared by us scarily on West Virginia's winding forest roads every five minutes. They disappeared abruptly as soon as we crossed the state line into Ohio.
When I got to the national park, I realized that its main attraction -- the amphitheater that's on all the postcards -- lay a couple of miles out of the way. It was getting late in the day, so I quite easily decided to skip the amphitheater. No big deal. Red Canyon on the way down to Panguitch compensated a little for the miss (photo).
A loud, flashy storm right ahead was moving in the same direction as I was, so I periodically had to slow down on my way through Red Canyon to avoid riding into the rain. I finally got to the town of Panguitch to find my guys drying their rain gear at a gas station. They couldn't believe that I was completely dry.
Tonight was the first (and only) time that someone refused to let us camp on their property (the explanation had something to do with the owner's seven dogs). Even so, the lady helped us out by directing us to the town fairgrounds and hippodrome for the night. We found a beautiful pavilion there and, having learned our lesson from the wet night in Ridgway, barricaded ourselves from possible sprinklers with overturned picnic tables. The measure proved unnecessary, though; the sprinklers never came on and we slept soundly through the cool Utah night.
Phobias. Troy and I have independently developed the same phobia. We are afraid of riding by a piece of road kill at the moment that a car speeds by, lest it would ride over the animal and splatter pieces of the carcass over us. Therefore, every time we see a dead animal in the center of the lane (rather than in the shoulder), we hastily look back to check for approaching cars. Speaking about weird phobias, I have another one -- that during one of our sleepovers, one of the guys gets up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom and accidentally steps on my head, crushing it. Oh, my! ...ghastly.
A note on physical condition. By day forty, my physical condition has changed in several ways. (1) My legs now look like those of a racing purebred horse -- very toned and well-defined muscle with little bulk. I find the lack of bulk surprising after so much exercise. (2) Delayed onset of hunger. I can ride much longer than I used to before getting hungry. (3) Caffeine dependence and tolerance. (4) Dark, uneven suntan. I no longer use sun block anywhere except on my nose, which is so critically exposed to the sun. After 4pm I ride without a shirt to cool off and to get some badly lacking chest suntan.
After lunch in Cannonville I found good internet access and stayed for some blogging; the guys obviously went ahead; we wouldn't meet again until nightfall.
Land of RVs. Utah struck me with its incredible number of RVs. There were practically no vehicles on the roads other than RVs. Another place with such disproportionate representation by one type of vehicle had been West Virginia, the land of roaring Harley posses. Gangs of big, bearded, leather-clad bikers with big, leather-clad biker chicks on their backs roared by us scarily on West Virginia's winding forest roads every five minutes. They disappeared abruptly as soon as we crossed the state line into Ohio.
When I got to the national park, I realized that its main attraction -- the amphitheater that's on all the postcards -- lay a couple of miles out of the way. It was getting late in the day, so I quite easily decided to skip the amphitheater. No big deal. Red Canyon on the way down to Panguitch compensated a little for the miss (photo).
A loud, flashy storm right ahead was moving in the same direction as I was, so I periodically had to slow down on my way through Red Canyon to avoid riding into the rain. I finally got to the town of Panguitch to find my guys drying their rain gear at a gas station. They couldn't believe that I was completely dry.
Tonight was the first (and only) time that someone refused to let us camp on their property (the explanation had something to do with the owner's seven dogs). Even so, the lady helped us out by directing us to the town fairgrounds and hippodrome for the night. We found a beautiful pavilion there and, having learned our lesson from the wet night in Ridgway, barricaded ourselves from possible sprinklers with overturned picnic tables. The measure proved unnecessary, though; the sprinklers never came on and we slept soundly through the cool Utah night.
Phobias. Troy and I have independently developed the same phobia. We are afraid of riding by a piece of road kill at the moment that a car speeds by, lest it would ride over the animal and splatter pieces of the carcass over us. Therefore, every time we see a dead animal in the center of the lane (rather than in the shoulder), we hastily look back to check for approaching cars. Speaking about weird phobias, I have another one -- that during one of our sleepovers, one of the guys gets up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom and accidentally steps on my head, crushing it. Oh, my! ...ghastly.
A note on physical condition. By day forty, my physical condition has changed in several ways. (1) My legs now look like those of a racing purebred horse -- very toned and well-defined muscle with little bulk. I find the lack of bulk surprising after so much exercise. (2) Delayed onset of hunger. I can ride much longer than I used to before getting hungry. (3) Caffeine dependence and tolerance. (4) Dark, uneven suntan. I no longer use sun block anywhere except on my nose, which is so critically exposed to the sun. After 4pm I ride without a shirt to cool off and to get some badly lacking chest suntan.
Monday, October 22, 2007
I've published a fully interactive map of the trip
I've replaced the static map of route 50 on our website with a fully-interactive Google map that you can click, drag, zoom, and so on, to see where we spent our nights. The map's here: http://bikecoasttocoast.org/.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Day 39 (8/1). The roller coaster.
American patriotism. I got up before the guys to check on our bikes, which we'd left at the visitor center during our rushed decampment last night. As I sat there sipping Monster, a group of 10-15 boy scouts on bicycles stopped for a bathroom break on their way to Glen Canyon. They milled around in a loud din of youthful chitchatting and laughter when a ranger came out for his morning routine of raising the American flag. As if on a signal, all the kids fell silent, took off their helmets, and stood watching the flag until the ranger was done. This for me was a vivid first-hand demonstration of American children's admirable patriotism.
The hardest day. Today was our hardest day of riding. For the first half of the day we skirted the side of Aquarius Plateau (the highest plateau in North America), slowly laboring toward its top (photo), before dropping all the way back down again. Why was the road built along this profile, instead of just going around the mountain? I can't explain. Next came the roller-coaster terrain of the Grand Staircase (photo, photo, photo). Today's total elevation gain of about 5,000 feet would not be that hard in itself; what made the ride so excessively tough was the added psychological fatigue caused by inaccuracies in the elevation profile on our maps. The lesson? Next time don't worry about elevation profiles, just ride!
Utah is from another planet. I now firmly believe that Utah has been transplanted to Earth "as-is" from some other planet. Words can't describe today's main attraction, Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument, so take a look at a photo and another photo. Yet, despite my past three days' sustained sense of awe, I'm beginning to grow desensitized to these unearthly wonders -- it's been a sensory overload. I'm ready for something new, and Nevada's deserts and California's mountains hold the promise.
As soon as we started down from Boulder Mountain (part of Aquarius Plateau's edge), it began to pour hard and long -- my first and only instance during this trip of riding in sustained rain. The previous day's hail storm doesn't count, as it lasted only 10 minutes. I was surprised to find out that riding in the rain is not that unpleasant at all!
We are spending the night camping on the porch of a beautifully constructed log house of Escalante Outfitters (photo), built very similarly to log houses I'd seen in Siberia. We are relying again on local hospitality; the folks at Escalante charged us the camping fee for only one person.
The hardest day. Today was our hardest day of riding. For the first half of the day we skirted the side of Aquarius Plateau (the highest plateau in North America), slowly laboring toward its top (photo), before dropping all the way back down again. Why was the road built along this profile, instead of just going around the mountain? I can't explain. Next came the roller-coaster terrain of the Grand Staircase (photo, photo, photo). Today's total elevation gain of about 5,000 feet would not be that hard in itself; what made the ride so excessively tough was the added psychological fatigue caused by inaccuracies in the elevation profile on our maps. The lesson? Next time don't worry about elevation profiles, just ride!
Utah is from another planet. I now firmly believe that Utah has been transplanted to Earth "as-is" from some other planet. Words can't describe today's main attraction, Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument, so take a look at a photo and another photo. Yet, despite my past three days' sustained sense of awe, I'm beginning to grow desensitized to these unearthly wonders -- it's been a sensory overload. I'm ready for something new, and Nevada's deserts and California's mountains hold the promise.
As soon as we started down from Boulder Mountain (part of Aquarius Plateau's edge), it began to pour hard and long -- my first and only instance during this trip of riding in sustained rain. The previous day's hail storm doesn't count, as it lasted only 10 minutes. I was surprised to find out that riding in the rain is not that unpleasant at all!
We are spending the night camping on the porch of a beautifully constructed log house of Escalante Outfitters (photo), built very similarly to log houses I'd seen in Siberia. We are relying again on local hospitality; the folks at Escalante charged us the camping fee for only one person.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Day 38 (7/31). Homies, canyons, hippies, and blind hail.
After the night of fitful, gnat-infested slumber, we got up well before sunrise to try to beat the day's heat. I woke up with a rotten bouquet of negative emotions. First, I was irritated by the lack of sleep. Second, I felt nagging concern about our upcoming 50-mile desert trek to the first town, Hanksville. Though we were OK on water, we had little food left and the store in Hite would not open until 10 am; it had weird hours, 10 am - 2 pm. Moreover, most of today's ride was to be uphill. Where would our lack of food cause us to run out of energy? At what point would our lack of energy make the pedaling a torture? Third, right across the Colorado, smack in our face, we could see the road shooting straight up through the cliffs on the opposite side of Glen Canyon -- the very cliffs that had given us last night's diving pleasures. The climb taunted us, as if saying, "Going to Hanksville, huh? You'll have to come through me!" Finally, my neck, frozen off in Blanding, was getting really bothersome. I decided to conserve my share of food, while saving some shade time, by riding out right away, without breakfast. The guys would catch up.
To my pleasant surprise, the initial monster uphill turned out to be short; thereafter, the long road through North Wash, one of Glen Canyon's many side canyons, leveled out to a sustained but very slight uphill. The canyon's rugged vertical walls (photo) gradually grew smaller and gave way first to rows of moderate hills, then to a wide moonscape of flat desert (photo). The boys caught up in a few hours and we coasted the last several miles to Hanksville down a wonderful slope together.
Aliona. At Stan's Burgers in Hanksville, I met Aliona Nesterov, one of several foreign students working at the restaurant for the summer (photo). She's a law student from Chisinau, my very hometown in Moldova -- imagine bumping into a homie from half the world away in the middle of Uta's canyons! Later into the trip we would meet a few more students from Eastern Europe on summer jobs, but Aliona was the first one and she hit right in the spot.
After lunch the guys and I crashed right where we had eaten. Aliona later told me that she was a little weirded out by the sight of four dudes abruptly falling asleep with their heads on the dining tables right in the mess of empty paper plates and Coke glasses. Whether due to the lunch or the sleep or both, things decidedly looked up after Hanksville. Invigorated, I covered the 40 miles to Capitol Reef National Park quickly and easily, though not without a few fun adventures.
We got separated even before we left Hanksville -- I cycled ahead to use the post office at the town's edge, then waited a while for the guys, then realized that they probably had already passed by, and went on. I pedaled full of mellow, relaxed energy. Cheerful wonderment at the new yellow-gray type of canyons enveloped me and felt unshakable. The canyons looked pleasant and friendly to the eye. The changes in scenery compared with this morning's were drastic -- the road now wound along a luscious oasis that connects Hanksville with Capitol Reef along a set of gorges and valleys carved by the muddy Fremont river. I stopped at a roadside shack and discovered three hippie-looking farmers jamming on a mandolin, a guitar, and a conga. They sold me some amazing locally grown heirloom tomatoes and let me try a piece of their melon, the ripest mouth-watering thing I'd ever tasted.
Blind hail. I continued riding through the gradually narrowing and deepening canyons of the Fremont, happy as a dog when suddenly -- Boom! -- in the blink of an eye it began to hail out of nowhere. The sky was as blue as it ever gets, with just a few fluffy angelic clouds overhead that looked like women's delicate lace (photo). The blinding sun never ceased for a second throughout the storm (photo, photo)! Russians call rain in the midst of sunshine "blind rain". Since the phenomenon is relatively rare, it gets me excited like a kid every time. Therefore imagine my joy when I got hit by ...blind hail! I had never seen anything like it before in my life. In minutes, the Fremont swelled to three times its brown muddy narrow self. A ranger later told us that the canyon sometimes experiences flash floods and the river overflows and washes over the road. I saw streaks of silt on the road here and there, the signs of a previous flood. Thankfully, the storm was nothing like a normal storm -- it was bright and sunny, not scary; nothing could shake my infinite elation in this golden late afternoon. The storm ended quickly; a cheerful rainbow stood over the gorge (photo).
I reached the national park boundary at sunset. The lush peach gardens in the tiny historic village of Fruita, just before the visitor center, served as a fitting culmination to the perfect harmony of the evening (photo). And what an appropriate name for a village whose fruit gardens stand out so starkly to park visitors' eyes and eager hands! I found the boys resting at the visitor center -- they passed me earlier, indeed -- and fed them fresh peaches. Rumblings of a new thunderstorm could be heard just over the cliffs, but we were safe for the night on the center's veranda (photo).
Nancy Feldman. We had already begun to spread our things out in preparation for the night when a park ranger showed up on a bicycle. She was surely going to give us trouble for illegal camping. Instead, the fragile little lady seemed more interested in our adventures than in kicking us out. It started to rain and was almost dark, so she hurried home, but gave each of us an apple before she left. And guess what: Nancy's grandparents had come to the U.S. from somewhere between Chisinau and Odessa. I was born in Chisinau and spent many of my childhood summers on the Black Sea coast in Odessa. Another homie from half the world away on the same day!
The storm soon began in earnest, and what a storm it was! It would be the biggest, loudest, most vicious, and the last major storm of our trip. It came on and off throughout the night. During its first let-up, Nancy the ranger rushed back to the visitor center porch and grabbed us and pulled us into her frame cabin where we showered and slept in the comfort of her small living room while nature raged and blasted everything outside. Here's a photo of Nancy and me the next morning.
Canyons galore! We've ridden through at least five distinct types of canyons in just the past two days. White Canyon was a spacious two-color canyon in a canyon in a canyon. North Wash, Glen Canyon's arm that we followed out of Hite, had just one layer. Dominated by threatening dark-red ochres, the narrow and winding gorge towered over our heads with imposing verticality (photo). Its craggy walls and caves seemed comprised of layered limestone slabs (photo). It was one of the two most desolate places throughout the coast-to-coast trip, which, in combination with its menacing appearance, made me anxious to get out of there . (The other most deserted stretch would come later, between Milford and Garrison on our last day in Utah). Next, the canyons 10-20 miles around Hanksville were almost uniformly light-gray buttes composed of an infinity of thin horizontal slices and with distinctly sand-dune-like "skirts". They looked like sand castles or ancient ruins in the Sahara (photo). Next came the canyons of the lower Fremont River. These were a mix of gray and sulfur in color, very tall, but with disproportionately enormous, very intricate skirts capped by degenerate little buttes (photo). Finally, entering the Capitol Reef National Park, we gradually rode deeper and deeper into a beautiful pink-tan canyon with kind and welcoming appearance, which was due to the rounded sugar-loaf shapes of its tall cliffs and their warm colors (photo). Despite the inclement weather, this last canyon of the day made me feel safe and cozy, like a child in the company of adult family members. By the time we reached the Canyon Reef visitor center, though, the walls again had taken on a rocky red resemblance to those of Glen Canyon.
Pretty names continued:
Dark Canyon
Fruita (historic village in Capitol Reef National Park)
Box Death Hollow
Poison Creek
Dirty Devil (tributary of the Colorado)
To my pleasant surprise, the initial monster uphill turned out to be short; thereafter, the long road through North Wash, one of Glen Canyon's many side canyons, leveled out to a sustained but very slight uphill. The canyon's rugged vertical walls (photo) gradually grew smaller and gave way first to rows of moderate hills, then to a wide moonscape of flat desert (photo). The boys caught up in a few hours and we coasted the last several miles to Hanksville down a wonderful slope together.
Aliona. At Stan's Burgers in Hanksville, I met Aliona Nesterov, one of several foreign students working at the restaurant for the summer (photo). She's a law student from Chisinau, my very hometown in Moldova -- imagine bumping into a homie from half the world away in the middle of Uta's canyons! Later into the trip we would meet a few more students from Eastern Europe on summer jobs, but Aliona was the first one and she hit right in the spot.
After lunch the guys and I crashed right where we had eaten. Aliona later told me that she was a little weirded out by the sight of four dudes abruptly falling asleep with their heads on the dining tables right in the mess of empty paper plates and Coke glasses. Whether due to the lunch or the sleep or both, things decidedly looked up after Hanksville. Invigorated, I covered the 40 miles to Capitol Reef National Park quickly and easily, though not without a few fun adventures.
We got separated even before we left Hanksville -- I cycled ahead to use the post office at the town's edge, then waited a while for the guys, then realized that they probably had already passed by, and went on. I pedaled full of mellow, relaxed energy. Cheerful wonderment at the new yellow-gray type of canyons enveloped me and felt unshakable. The canyons looked pleasant and friendly to the eye. The changes in scenery compared with this morning's were drastic -- the road now wound along a luscious oasis that connects Hanksville with Capitol Reef along a set of gorges and valleys carved by the muddy Fremont river. I stopped at a roadside shack and discovered three hippie-looking farmers jamming on a mandolin, a guitar, and a conga. They sold me some amazing locally grown heirloom tomatoes and let me try a piece of their melon, the ripest mouth-watering thing I'd ever tasted.
Blind hail. I continued riding through the gradually narrowing and deepening canyons of the Fremont, happy as a dog when suddenly -- Boom! -- in the blink of an eye it began to hail out of nowhere. The sky was as blue as it ever gets, with just a few fluffy angelic clouds overhead that looked like women's delicate lace (photo). The blinding sun never ceased for a second throughout the storm (photo, photo)! Russians call rain in the midst of sunshine "blind rain". Since the phenomenon is relatively rare, it gets me excited like a kid every time. Therefore imagine my joy when I got hit by ...blind hail! I had never seen anything like it before in my life. In minutes, the Fremont swelled to three times its brown muddy narrow self. A ranger later told us that the canyon sometimes experiences flash floods and the river overflows and washes over the road. I saw streaks of silt on the road here and there, the signs of a previous flood. Thankfully, the storm was nothing like a normal storm -- it was bright and sunny, not scary; nothing could shake my infinite elation in this golden late afternoon. The storm ended quickly; a cheerful rainbow stood over the gorge (photo).
I reached the national park boundary at sunset. The lush peach gardens in the tiny historic village of Fruita, just before the visitor center, served as a fitting culmination to the perfect harmony of the evening (photo). And what an appropriate name for a village whose fruit gardens stand out so starkly to park visitors' eyes and eager hands! I found the boys resting at the visitor center -- they passed me earlier, indeed -- and fed them fresh peaches. Rumblings of a new thunderstorm could be heard just over the cliffs, but we were safe for the night on the center's veranda (photo).
Nancy Feldman. We had already begun to spread our things out in preparation for the night when a park ranger showed up on a bicycle. She was surely going to give us trouble for illegal camping. Instead, the fragile little lady seemed more interested in our adventures than in kicking us out. It started to rain and was almost dark, so she hurried home, but gave each of us an apple before she left. And guess what: Nancy's grandparents had come to the U.S. from somewhere between Chisinau and Odessa. I was born in Chisinau and spent many of my childhood summers on the Black Sea coast in Odessa. Another homie from half the world away on the same day!
The storm soon began in earnest, and what a storm it was! It would be the biggest, loudest, most vicious, and the last major storm of our trip. It came on and off throughout the night. During its first let-up, Nancy the ranger rushed back to the visitor center porch and grabbed us and pulled us into her frame cabin where we showered and slept in the comfort of her small living room while nature raged and blasted everything outside. Here's a photo of Nancy and me the next morning.
Canyons galore! We've ridden through at least five distinct types of canyons in just the past two days. White Canyon was a spacious two-color canyon in a canyon in a canyon. North Wash, Glen Canyon's arm that we followed out of Hite, had just one layer. Dominated by threatening dark-red ochres, the narrow and winding gorge towered over our heads with imposing verticality (photo). Its craggy walls and caves seemed comprised of layered limestone slabs (photo). It was one of the two most desolate places throughout the coast-to-coast trip, which, in combination with its menacing appearance, made me anxious to get out of there . (The other most deserted stretch would come later, between Milford and Garrison on our last day in Utah). Next, the canyons 10-20 miles around Hanksville were almost uniformly light-gray buttes composed of an infinity of thin horizontal slices and with distinctly sand-dune-like "skirts". They looked like sand castles or ancient ruins in the Sahara (photo). Next came the canyons of the lower Fremont River. These were a mix of gray and sulfur in color, very tall, but with disproportionately enormous, very intricate skirts capped by degenerate little buttes (photo). Finally, entering the Capitol Reef National Park, we gradually rode deeper and deeper into a beautiful pink-tan canyon with kind and welcoming appearance, which was due to the rounded sugar-loaf shapes of its tall cliffs and their warm colors (photo). Despite the inclement weather, this last canyon of the day made me feel safe and cozy, like a child in the company of adult family members. By the time we reached the Canyon Reef visitor center, though, the walls again had taken on a rocky red resemblance to those of Glen Canyon.
Pretty names continued:
Dark Canyon
Fruita (historic village in Capitol Reef National Park)
Box Death Hollow
Poison Creek
Dirty Devil (tributary of the Colorado)
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Videos uploaded
I've uploaded a couple of short videos from the trip. See them on the front page of our website: http://bikecoasttocoast.org/.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Day 37 (7/30). The crazy geology begins! We swim in the milk-warm Colorado.
It's with reluctant heart that I sit down to write today's entry. No matter how hard I try, my prose won't faithfully convey the experience of today's ride. It's like the familiar old frustration of trying to capture the full depth of a landscape with a point-and-shoot camera. But I must try, for today's was the most spectacular of all rides!
Due to my screw-up with the alarm clock, Kendall and I got up at 4:30 thinking it was 5:30 and wondering why it was still so dark. When I caught the mistake, it was already too late to go back to sleep; but instead of being annoyed, we were glad, because a long day lay ahead of us. As soon as we left Blanding and turned onto UT-95 just past the previous night's fateful liquor store, the country took on an unambiguously desertlike feel. We rode up and down across shallow ochre-colored ravines covered with patchy sagebrush. Soon I noticed the first roadside cactus (photo), which I thought was a proper harbinger of the 700-mile-wide almost continuous desert ahead. The air was getting drier, vegetation patchier, and landscape rockier and more arid. For the first time I felt that I was in a true desert. Though Disappointment Valley and the plains of eastern Colorado had been very remote, and though I think they are technically deserts too, their dry grasses had given them a feel of prairies. Kendall and I shared our excitement at being about to discover this new, forbidden land.
Eastbound cyclists we'd met most often described southern Utah as "gorgeous". And, objectively, Utah has one of the largest numbers of national parks and monuments in the U.S. Therefore I had been anticipating Utah with anxious excitement. As the road wound among low hills, a sharp serrated edge began to appear in the hills ahead of us. It looked like a series of sand dunes that drop off on the other side to meet a wide blue sea. For a while they teased my imagination as they ran almost parallel to the road, when suddenly the road turned right and thrust itself into a sharp, deep man-made cut in the "dunes" (photo). An immense valley opened up on the other side, with a great swoosh of the sheer volume of air it contained. It looked like the inside of a giant volcanic caldera. The "dune" turned out to be a magnificent wrinkle in the earth's surface (photo). It marked the beginning of the next five days' mind-boggling labirynth of otherworldly landscapes.
Our destination, the tiny village of Hite, sits on the bank of the dwindling Lake Powell in Glen Canyon, just below the confluence of the Colorado, the Dirty Devil, and the White rivers. We rolled the rest of the day along the second layer of the White Canyon toward this intricate intersection of waterways and rock. I pedaled in constant awe similar to one I had felt a few years back in the Grand Canyon. White Canyon is deep and expansive, with roughly three layers of white and red rock. Several miles wide at the top and just a few feet wide at the bottom, it's a canyon in a canyon in a canyon (photo). I couldn't help wracking my mind all day hopelessly searching for an explanation for the origins of such landscape. Why had the river, after having burrowed one canyon, stopped and begun to cut a new one on the bottom of the first?!
Many of the occasional passing motorists stopped to offer us water. Nevertheless, by late afternoon the brutal heat of the endless canyon had exhausted us; Kendall and I dragged ourselves the last few miles to Glen Canyon like rusty old robots. Surprisingly, by the time we reached Hite, the usually superfast Devin and Troy still had not caught up with us. To our alarm -- we had no food left -- the store had already closed, even though it was only 4 pm! Luckily we got hold of the store keeper and convinced him to sell us $20 worth of Gatorade and snacks (with exact cash, for he couldn't open the register). Devin and Troy soon arrived; we gulped down the Gatorade, devoured the snacks, and walked a mile down to what remained of Lake Powell.
The reservoir's water level had dropped over 40 meters in the past several years due to drought and decreased rainfall. A huge concrete boat ramp, which looked like a runway for Boeing 747s -- it's about 50 meters wide and 300 meters long -- lay completely exposed half a kilometer away from the lake. Moreover, the Lake had receded so much that one could no longer tell whether the water was the lake or the Colorado river, which feeds the lake (photo). We took a delicious swim and discovered a strong current, concluding that this was the Colorado, after all.
Troy and I swam across to the 100-meter-tall blood-red wall that drops vertically into the river. We spent the next four hours diving off rock-fall piles, playing in the knee-deep, semen-like, finest silt alongside a giant sand bar, and generally frolicking in the water like little kids until the night began to descend amid the fireworks and wind gusts of an approaching storm. Devin had been shouting to us in the dark to come back. Apparently the wind had scattered our clothes, which we had left up by the visitor center.
We slept on the concrete floor outside the Hite visitor center; mosquitoes gnawed on us all night long. The storm never reached Hite, but the drama in the skies played out over the nearby cliffs throughout the hot windy night. The long day had been so filled with fantastic adventures and awesome natural beauty that, as we lay down to sleep, I was nearly exploding with life and exhilaration that I hadn't felt in a long, long time!
How to combat point-and-shoot photography's frustrating loss of depth. I've invented a way to restore some of the depth of a landscape lost due to point-and-shoot photography, as a viewer looking at a photo. Bring your eyes really close to the photo, stare at it intently, and focus your mind's eye so that it takes you inside the picture, a few steps past the lens. Become the photographer who took the picture and imagine the true magnitude of the subject landscape. I've tried it with some shallow-looking postcards depicting Bryce Canyon, and it works! :-)
Due to my screw-up with the alarm clock, Kendall and I got up at 4:30 thinking it was 5:30 and wondering why it was still so dark. When I caught the mistake, it was already too late to go back to sleep; but instead of being annoyed, we were glad, because a long day lay ahead of us. As soon as we left Blanding and turned onto UT-95 just past the previous night's fateful liquor store, the country took on an unambiguously desertlike feel. We rode up and down across shallow ochre-colored ravines covered with patchy sagebrush. Soon I noticed the first roadside cactus (photo), which I thought was a proper harbinger of the 700-mile-wide almost continuous desert ahead. The air was getting drier, vegetation patchier, and landscape rockier and more arid. For the first time I felt that I was in a true desert. Though Disappointment Valley and the plains of eastern Colorado had been very remote, and though I think they are technically deserts too, their dry grasses had given them a feel of prairies. Kendall and I shared our excitement at being about to discover this new, forbidden land.
Eastbound cyclists we'd met most often described southern Utah as "gorgeous". And, objectively, Utah has one of the largest numbers of national parks and monuments in the U.S. Therefore I had been anticipating Utah with anxious excitement. As the road wound among low hills, a sharp serrated edge began to appear in the hills ahead of us. It looked like a series of sand dunes that drop off on the other side to meet a wide blue sea. For a while they teased my imagination as they ran almost parallel to the road, when suddenly the road turned right and thrust itself into a sharp, deep man-made cut in the "dunes" (photo). An immense valley opened up on the other side, with a great swoosh of the sheer volume of air it contained. It looked like the inside of a giant volcanic caldera. The "dune" turned out to be a magnificent wrinkle in the earth's surface (photo). It marked the beginning of the next five days' mind-boggling labirynth of otherworldly landscapes.
Our destination, the tiny village of Hite, sits on the bank of the dwindling Lake Powell in Glen Canyon, just below the confluence of the Colorado, the Dirty Devil, and the White rivers. We rolled the rest of the day along the second layer of the White Canyon toward this intricate intersection of waterways and rock. I pedaled in constant awe similar to one I had felt a few years back in the Grand Canyon. White Canyon is deep and expansive, with roughly three layers of white and red rock. Several miles wide at the top and just a few feet wide at the bottom, it's a canyon in a canyon in a canyon (photo). I couldn't help wracking my mind all day hopelessly searching for an explanation for the origins of such landscape. Why had the river, after having burrowed one canyon, stopped and begun to cut a new one on the bottom of the first?!
Many of the occasional passing motorists stopped to offer us water. Nevertheless, by late afternoon the brutal heat of the endless canyon had exhausted us; Kendall and I dragged ourselves the last few miles to Glen Canyon like rusty old robots. Surprisingly, by the time we reached Hite, the usually superfast Devin and Troy still had not caught up with us. To our alarm -- we had no food left -- the store had already closed, even though it was only 4 pm! Luckily we got hold of the store keeper and convinced him to sell us $20 worth of Gatorade and snacks (with exact cash, for he couldn't open the register). Devin and Troy soon arrived; we gulped down the Gatorade, devoured the snacks, and walked a mile down to what remained of Lake Powell.
The reservoir's water level had dropped over 40 meters in the past several years due to drought and decreased rainfall. A huge concrete boat ramp, which looked like a runway for Boeing 747s -- it's about 50 meters wide and 300 meters long -- lay completely exposed half a kilometer away from the lake. Moreover, the Lake had receded so much that one could no longer tell whether the water was the lake or the Colorado river, which feeds the lake (photo). We took a delicious swim and discovered a strong current, concluding that this was the Colorado, after all.
Troy and I swam across to the 100-meter-tall blood-red wall that drops vertically into the river. We spent the next four hours diving off rock-fall piles, playing in the knee-deep, semen-like, finest silt alongside a giant sand bar, and generally frolicking in the water like little kids until the night began to descend amid the fireworks and wind gusts of an approaching storm. Devin had been shouting to us in the dark to come back. Apparently the wind had scattered our clothes, which we had left up by the visitor center.
We slept on the concrete floor outside the Hite visitor center; mosquitoes gnawed on us all night long. The storm never reached Hite, but the drama in the skies played out over the nearby cliffs throughout the hot windy night. The long day had been so filled with fantastic adventures and awesome natural beauty that, as we lay down to sleep, I was nearly exploding with life and exhilaration that I hadn't felt in a long, long time!
How to combat point-and-shoot photography's frustrating loss of depth. I've invented a way to restore some of the depth of a landscape lost due to point-and-shoot photography, as a viewer looking at a photo. Bring your eyes really close to the photo, stare at it intently, and focus your mind's eye so that it takes you inside the picture, a few steps past the lens. Become the photographer who took the picture and imagine the true magnitude of the subject landscape. I've tried it with some shallow-looking postcards depicting Bryce Canyon, and it works! :-)
Monday, August 20, 2007
Day 36 (7/29)
Today is Sunday, church day. Kendall and I chilled all morning at a gas station, digging the beautiful Utah girls. The day dragged on very slowly and we became impatient. When we met up with Troy and Devin after their church services, they said they were going to attend a dating workshop at the church. In other words, the afternoon did not promise much in terms of internet access at a nice Mormon family's home for me (I was already falling hopelessly behind on the blogging and stressed about it every day).
Kendall and I decided to ride on. We would camp 22 miles ahead, in Blanding, our gateway to the true Utah (photo). We'd start our treacherous 74-mile trek to Glen Canyon early next morning, and our Monticello boys would catch up.
Just outside Monticello I remembered my intention to keep track of all significant round-number milestones. "Isn't it time for one about now?" I thought, checking my odometer and doing the mile-to-kilometer math in my head. Indeed! I was 4,000 kilometers from New York City (2488 miles). I stopped on the shoulder and gazed intently east, contemplating the vast continent that lay sprawled between me and the Atlantic. I marveled at my new and deep intimacy to this land. I had unlocked its secrets, and it was now rightfully mine. As if to mark and protect the significance of the moment, Mount Abajo (photo) hulked like a tired sentinel behind me, at this point where our route crosses into Utah and turns sharply south into the wonderland of the West .
I also couldn't help wondering what my Mormons must have felt now that they had repeated the perilous east-to-west journey of their forefathers.
The Mormon challenge. Devin had been offering me his "Mormon challenge" -- no coffee, beer, or sex for five days. The last item was easy (in fact, effortless, because we weren't getting any), the middle one harder but doable, while the first one impossible, so I kept declining ...and got punished for it! Kendall and I made it to Blanding quickly and found a cozy park behind the visitor center very suitable for the night. The whole evening was ours to kill. But the movie theater was closed, the library too, and the town had no bars or liquor stores (a gas station owner explained that the town had outlawed alcohol sales because the local Indians used to get drunk and cause trouble). Therefore, Kendall retired to the park with his Dumas; I decided to do laundry and ride three miles south of town to the liquor store. On the way back to town Blue Pony got his very first flat tire. I'd ridden the bike 3,500 miles without any flats and was secretly hoping to sustain the admirable record all the way through San Francisco, but alas! It was already dark and cold and I was wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of boxers -- all my clothes were in the washer -- so in addition to getting the flat, I also froze my neck and it bothered me for the next three days. Finally, I got stung in the chest by a bee, right in the middle of riding. The pain was exquisite and reminded me of long-forgotten bee stings of my childhood (I hadn't had any in years); fortunately I carry hydrocortisone cream; it really helped with the sting.
Kendall and I decided to ride on. We would camp 22 miles ahead, in Blanding, our gateway to the true Utah (photo). We'd start our treacherous 74-mile trek to Glen Canyon early next morning, and our Monticello boys would catch up.
Just outside Monticello I remembered my intention to keep track of all significant round-number milestones. "Isn't it time for one about now?" I thought, checking my odometer and doing the mile-to-kilometer math in my head. Indeed! I was 4,000 kilometers from New York City (2488 miles). I stopped on the shoulder and gazed intently east, contemplating the vast continent that lay sprawled between me and the Atlantic. I marveled at my new and deep intimacy to this land. I had unlocked its secrets, and it was now rightfully mine. As if to mark and protect the significance of the moment, Mount Abajo (photo) hulked like a tired sentinel behind me, at this point where our route crosses into Utah and turns sharply south into the wonderland of the West .
I also couldn't help wondering what my Mormons must have felt now that they had repeated the perilous east-to-west journey of their forefathers.
The Mormon challenge. Devin had been offering me his "Mormon challenge" -- no coffee, beer, or sex for five days. The last item was easy (in fact, effortless, because we weren't getting any), the middle one harder but doable, while the first one impossible, so I kept declining ...and got punished for it! Kendall and I made it to Blanding quickly and found a cozy park behind the visitor center very suitable for the night. The whole evening was ours to kill. But the movie theater was closed, the library too, and the town had no bars or liquor stores (a gas station owner explained that the town had outlawed alcohol sales because the local Indians used to get drunk and cause trouble). Therefore, Kendall retired to the park with his Dumas; I decided to do laundry and ride three miles south of town to the liquor store. On the way back to town Blue Pony got his very first flat tire. I'd ridden the bike 3,500 miles without any flats and was secretly hoping to sustain the admirable record all the way through San Francisco, but alas! It was already dark and cold and I was wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of boxers -- all my clothes were in the washer -- so in addition to getting the flat, I also froze my neck and it bothered me for the next three days. Finally, I got stung in the chest by a bee, right in the middle of riding. The pain was exquisite and reminded me of long-forgotten bee stings of my childhood (I hadn't had any in years); fortunately I carry hydrocortisone cream; it really helped with the sting.
Day 35 (7/28)
A short day, a day of reunification -- Utah day!
I took it slow and easy in Dove Creek, since Devin and Kendall were far behind. Rode in a leisurely fashion across the Colorado-Utah border to Monticello, Utah. For Devin, on the other hand, this was a 115-mile day; he had to pedal all the way from Telluride.
Tonight our Mormons gather in Monticello; tomorrow is church day.
The Devil's Highway. Today's route lay on the former U.S. Highway 666, also known as The Devil's Highway. Recently the road has been renamed the boring US-491 (photo). Reason? Frequent road sign theft.
In town I got in touch with Troy, who'd gotten there the night before. I hadn't seen him or John for five days since Pueblo. John left a few hours before to go on a family trip to Hawaii (his brother picked him up in a car). John had been rushing so much because he wanted to make it at least to Utah, since it quickly became apparent after we left New York that he wouldn't have enough time to pedal all the way across the country.
The four of us (Troy, Devin, Kendall, and I) sleep at a motel tonight.
I took it slow and easy in Dove Creek, since Devin and Kendall were far behind. Rode in a leisurely fashion across the Colorado-Utah border to Monticello, Utah. For Devin, on the other hand, this was a 115-mile day; he had to pedal all the way from Telluride.
Tonight our Mormons gather in Monticello; tomorrow is church day.
The Devil's Highway. Today's route lay on the former U.S. Highway 666, also known as The Devil's Highway. Recently the road has been renamed the boring US-491 (photo). Reason? Frequent road sign theft.
In town I got in touch with Troy, who'd gotten there the night before. I hadn't seen him or John for five days since Pueblo. John left a few hours before to go on a family trip to Hawaii (his brother picked him up in a car). John had been rushing so much because he wanted to make it at least to Utah, since it quickly became apparent after we left New York that he wouldn't have enough time to pedal all the way across the country.
The four of us (Troy, Devin, Kendall, and I) sleep at a motel tonight.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Day 34 (7/27)
Whew! What a long day (123 miles)!
Today was another example of our flexible approach to route selection. The Adventure Cycling Association's Western Express maps prescribed a mountainous route through Lizard Head Pass in the heart of the San Juans to the town of Dolores CO. Throughout our cross-country ride I have also carried regular road maps for larger context. I noticed that there was an alternate route to the west around today's mountains. We asked some locals and found out that it was a desert with a 70-mile no-services stretch (a couple of towns are on the map, but are really ghost towns). The two routes are very different, but equally challenging. The "official" route is relatively short and winds through populated ski resort areas, including Telluride, but involves a continuous half-day climb up to the elevation of 10,222 feet at the high pass. My alternative is a flatter but longer and more desolate route requiring careful planning of water and food.
We decided to split. Devin and Kendall would take the prescribed route through the mountains. I was curious about the desert and eager for a logistical challenge, so I decided to take the alternate route, as a practice run in preparation for Nevada. My longer path would take me to Dove Creek, a half day's ride farther up Western Express than Dolores, so that I could rest all morning tomorrow while the boys caught up.
(Update: Now in San Francisco, looking back on the whole trip from NYC, this day's route was one of the two most desolate, lonely, and god forsaken days -- and that's what makes them stand out in my mind as the most special and memorable days of the trip. The other was between Milford and Garrison in Utah.)
We got up at 5:30 in the morning and, after a thorough breakfast, rode together up to the Dallas Divide pass. Then I turned northwest and the guys southeast on Colorado highway 145.
The next thirty or so miles for me were a beautiful, easy ride downhill and downwind through the narrow and picturesque San Miguel River Gorge (photo). That is, easy until I eventually had to climb out of the gorge for three muscle-burning miles (photo)!
After a few more miles and a lunch in a semi-deserted, dwindling village with a beautiful name Naturita, I was ready for the day's main attraction, the 70-mile desert crossing. It was 3:30 pm, about five hours to full darkness, just enough time to make the crossing if nothing held me up en route. Theoretically, I was prepared to camp in the desert if needed, but practically I wasn't, because I had to phone my mom that night no matter what (for an unrelated family business), and there surely would be no cell phone reception here. Here I go, I thought to myself, and pedaled boldly forth.
Before an hour passed, the everyday afternoon thunderheads, so predictable in Colorado and so slow once they get going -- darn them! -- began to gather overhead and on all sides. They spurted lightning flashes and thunder in an endless, slow rumble. Ironically, they produced only a few drops of rain where I was, but nevertheless delayed me by an hour and a half, because I was decidedly the tallest object around and risked getting hit if I continued riding. I leaned my bike on a road post, put on my rain jacket, walked 30-40 meters away from the bike, and sat in the roadside ditch on my rolled-up sleeping bag like an idiot, in the drizzle literally in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what the few passing motorists must have thought at this sight! The wait was excruciating, as precious time ticked away palpably while the storm was just not moving anywhere. Eventually the bulk of the lightning activity shifted a bit southeast toward the mountains and I finally ventured into the plains again, with a mix of fear and eagerness.
Luckily I caught a marvelous strong, sustained tailwind and was able to zoom ahead at 20 miles per hour on the desert flats. I crossed Gypsum Valley and a range of low hills into the next flat expanse -- Disappointment Valley (what a beautiful misnomer for the beautiful desert!). In the east, behind me, the storm raged in the mountains and I wondered whether Kendall and Devin had been able to avoid it. The western sky had begun to clear and the evening light painted the desert, on the boundary between the storm and the clear skies, in dramatic orange-gray palette (photo). I stopped to admire the view. The desert around me lay naked, wide-open, forever sunk into magnificent silence.
Soon the road started twisting and winding, quickly dropping into an unexpectedly deep ravine, the Dolores River Canyon. The canyon was like nothing I had seen before! House-size boulders lay scattered around like a child's toys in random chaos (photo). Squeezed between the narrowing walls, at the very bottom, protruded rusty shaft elevator hulks of the mining ghost town of Slick Rock. Once again I admired our decision to ride east to west: the country got more and more gorgeous by the day! I looked forward to Utah.
Despite the evening's beauty and awesomeness, one more unpleasant surprise awaited me. I had expected to climb out of the valley over the bordering low mountain ridge quickly, not anticipating the added depth of the canyon. The combined canyon and valley wall turned out to be a painful seven-mile-long, 7%-grade climb that added an hour to my ride. Talk about a flat alternative to a mountainous route! I got to the top in complete darkness, exhausted by the innumerable switchbacks, but with a picture in my camera of the valley and the canyon together: photo.
Meanwhile, high in the mountains, Kendall and Devin, separated from each other earlier, were having their own share of adventures. Kendall pedaled straight through the hail storm and was in quite some distress on the way down when a passing pick-up truck gave him a lift to town (Dolores? Rico?); the guy then hosted Kendall at his house, fed him dinner, and generally took care of Kendall with the warm hospitality that we had grown accustomed to by that point in the trip. Devin was able to avoid the storm; he spent the night with the wife of Moots CEO. Moots is a high-end bicycle manufacturer -- how fitting!
That night I eventually made it down to Dove Creek, rented a room at a motel, and made the important phone call that I had to make.
Today was another example of our flexible approach to route selection. The Adventure Cycling Association's Western Express maps prescribed a mountainous route through Lizard Head Pass in the heart of the San Juans to the town of Dolores CO. Throughout our cross-country ride I have also carried regular road maps for larger context. I noticed that there was an alternate route to the west around today's mountains. We asked some locals and found out that it was a desert with a 70-mile no-services stretch (a couple of towns are on the map, but are really ghost towns). The two routes are very different, but equally challenging. The "official" route is relatively short and winds through populated ski resort areas, including Telluride, but involves a continuous half-day climb up to the elevation of 10,222 feet at the high pass. My alternative is a flatter but longer and more desolate route requiring careful planning of water and food.
We decided to split. Devin and Kendall would take the prescribed route through the mountains. I was curious about the desert and eager for a logistical challenge, so I decided to take the alternate route, as a practice run in preparation for Nevada. My longer path would take me to Dove Creek, a half day's ride farther up Western Express than Dolores, so that I could rest all morning tomorrow while the boys caught up.
(Update: Now in San Francisco, looking back on the whole trip from NYC, this day's route was one of the two most desolate, lonely, and god forsaken days -- and that's what makes them stand out in my mind as the most special and memorable days of the trip. The other was between Milford and Garrison in Utah.)
We got up at 5:30 in the morning and, after a thorough breakfast, rode together up to the Dallas Divide pass. Then I turned northwest and the guys southeast on Colorado highway 145.
The next thirty or so miles for me were a beautiful, easy ride downhill and downwind through the narrow and picturesque San Miguel River Gorge (photo). That is, easy until I eventually had to climb out of the gorge for three muscle-burning miles (photo)!
After a few more miles and a lunch in a semi-deserted, dwindling village with a beautiful name Naturita, I was ready for the day's main attraction, the 70-mile desert crossing. It was 3:30 pm, about five hours to full darkness, just enough time to make the crossing if nothing held me up en route. Theoretically, I was prepared to camp in the desert if needed, but practically I wasn't, because I had to phone my mom that night no matter what (for an unrelated family business), and there surely would be no cell phone reception here. Here I go, I thought to myself, and pedaled boldly forth.
Before an hour passed, the everyday afternoon thunderheads, so predictable in Colorado and so slow once they get going -- darn them! -- began to gather overhead and on all sides. They spurted lightning flashes and thunder in an endless, slow rumble. Ironically, they produced only a few drops of rain where I was, but nevertheless delayed me by an hour and a half, because I was decidedly the tallest object around and risked getting hit if I continued riding. I leaned my bike on a road post, put on my rain jacket, walked 30-40 meters away from the bike, and sat in the roadside ditch on my rolled-up sleeping bag like an idiot, in the drizzle literally in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what the few passing motorists must have thought at this sight! The wait was excruciating, as precious time ticked away palpably while the storm was just not moving anywhere. Eventually the bulk of the lightning activity shifted a bit southeast toward the mountains and I finally ventured into the plains again, with a mix of fear and eagerness.
Luckily I caught a marvelous strong, sustained tailwind and was able to zoom ahead at 20 miles per hour on the desert flats. I crossed Gypsum Valley and a range of low hills into the next flat expanse -- Disappointment Valley (what a beautiful misnomer for the beautiful desert!). In the east, behind me, the storm raged in the mountains and I wondered whether Kendall and Devin had been able to avoid it. The western sky had begun to clear and the evening light painted the desert, on the boundary between the storm and the clear skies, in dramatic orange-gray palette (photo). I stopped to admire the view. The desert around me lay naked, wide-open, forever sunk into magnificent silence.
Soon the road started twisting and winding, quickly dropping into an unexpectedly deep ravine, the Dolores River Canyon. The canyon was like nothing I had seen before! House-size boulders lay scattered around like a child's toys in random chaos (photo). Squeezed between the narrowing walls, at the very bottom, protruded rusty shaft elevator hulks of the mining ghost town of Slick Rock. Once again I admired our decision to ride east to west: the country got more and more gorgeous by the day! I looked forward to Utah.
Despite the evening's beauty and awesomeness, one more unpleasant surprise awaited me. I had expected to climb out of the valley over the bordering low mountain ridge quickly, not anticipating the added depth of the canyon. The combined canyon and valley wall turned out to be a painful seven-mile-long, 7%-grade climb that added an hour to my ride. Talk about a flat alternative to a mountainous route! I got to the top in complete darkness, exhausted by the innumerable switchbacks, but with a picture in my camera of the valley and the canyon together: photo.
Meanwhile, high in the mountains, Kendall and Devin, separated from each other earlier, were having their own share of adventures. Kendall pedaled straight through the hail storm and was in quite some distress on the way down when a passing pick-up truck gave him a lift to town (Dolores? Rico?); the guy then hosted Kendall at his house, fed him dinner, and generally took care of Kendall with the warm hospitality that we had grown accustomed to by that point in the trip. Devin was able to avoid the storm; he spent the night with the wife of Moots CEO. Moots is a high-end bicycle manufacturer -- how fitting!
That night I eventually made it down to Dove Creek, rented a room at a motel, and made the important phone call that I had to make.
Day 33 (7/26)
This morning between Sapinero and Cimarron I established a new personal speed record on a bicycle: 45 mph! ...and then beat it almost immediately down the next hill (between Cimarron and Montrose): 47 miles/hour (76 km/hr) ! Wow, I thought I was going to fly away. If not for the wind that acted as a parachute brake, I'd hit even higher speeds.
About twenty miles past Sapinero, slowly climbing out of the breathtaking gorges (photo, photo) that surround the Blue Mesa reservoir, I rode by a weird (for those places) igloo-like structure with a big semi-circular opening for the door. I glanced inside as I went past and saw that it was a road-maintenance storage shack with salt, plows, and other such implements. Later when I met up with Devin in Montrose, he told me he'd hid in that igloo with the first drops of last night's storm and spent the night there, hungry but dry.
In Montrose Devin had his second lunch at the same restaurant to keep me company. It was a Nepalese all-you-can-eat buffet with wall-size panoramic photos of the Mountain Region. The avid mountaineer that he is, Devin gave me a tour of the range, with Everest, Lhotse, and other peaks -- I couldn't take my eyes off the views.
John and Troy had spent the night in Montrose and left an hour before Devin got there (and two hours before me). Tactfully and with his usual subdued unwillingness to focus on the negative Devin carefully voiced exasperation at the guys' refusal to wait for us.
After a long while in Montrose -- I blogged at the library, Devin shopped at a Wal*Mart -- we finally got on the road and turned south toward the San Juan Mountains. A guy I'd met in the library cautioned us about a "crazy storm" forecast for that evening in the San Juans, and we saw the menacing dark front gathering ahead of us as we rode south. Luckily, the storm never materialized, subjecting us to two hours of strong headwind instead.
By sunset we rolled over a low pass into a beautiful mountain valley (photo) and the cute little town of Ridgway, Colorado where after dinner of beer and burgers we bumped into another westbound cyclist. First we saw his mountain bike with a loaded trailer, which I recognized from a few days back in Salida. Then he himself came out of the gas station shop, tall, tanned, and surprisingly thin for a cyclist, almost to the point of looking sickly (sorry, man, that was my first impression ;-) His name was Kendall Yoder; he had just finished college in Denver and was headed west to SF and then north along the Pacific coast to visit his brother in Seattle. We were glad for another soul on the tough road to come. Meanwhile, we decided to spend the night at a pretty gazebo in the park that Kendall had scouted out earlier.
A night of watery sleeplessness. The Ridgway town park is very well-groomed, with luscious trees, manicured lawns, and a beautiful octagonal gazebo. We brought our bikes in, claimed sleeping spots on the wooden floor, unpacked everything in preparation for the night, and shared triumphant satisfaction at having found such a wonderful (even romantic) place to sleep. Suddenly, sprinklers came on and began impudently sprinkling our home. Dang! Because everything had been unpacked, we frantically ran back and forth several times, carrying stuff out and dumping it in one big wet pile onto a nearby concrete path outside the sprinklers' reach. We were fuming at such inhospitability toward weary travelers, but our indignation was short lived, as our clothes and sleeping bags in fact hadn't gotten too wet and because we quickly found an even better place to sleep nearby -- a picnic pavilion.
It was right next to a restroom, was large (had six picnic tables inside), and had a two-foot-tall concrete barrier around the perimeter. Worried about more sprinklers, we carefully chose sleeping spots protected by the barrier and picnic tables. Kendall's also had the luxury of the bathroom wall on one side.
In the middle of the night I awoke from the tell-tale sound, "shhhhhhh-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk, shhhhhhh-tsk-tsk-tsk", immediately followed by the dry "pah-pah-pah" of water drops on the surface of my sleeping bag. Oh no, not again! This time more methodically -- as we had cautiously left our gear minimally unpacked -- I got up, made sure that the guys were out of the water's reach, found a new dry spot for myself, and moved there. This repeated four times throughout the night! Inexplicably and annoyingly, the sprinklers didn't go off all at once, but in a sequence, with the earlier sprinklers staying on as new ones came on one by one. By morning, Devin ended up moving once or twice. Kendall remained dry and sound asleep in his corner all night long -- the lucky (and smart) bastard! At 5:30, our wake-up time, all sprinklers shut down; the pavilion looked like a battlefield almost perfectly covered by coordinated crossfire of five overlapping machine gun sectors.
Unlike back in Kansas, early mornings in the mountainous Colorado are excruciatingly cold! Brrr...
Another couple of pretty names:
About twenty miles past Sapinero, slowly climbing out of the breathtaking gorges (photo, photo) that surround the Blue Mesa reservoir, I rode by a weird (for those places) igloo-like structure with a big semi-circular opening for the door. I glanced inside as I went past and saw that it was a road-maintenance storage shack with salt, plows, and other such implements. Later when I met up with Devin in Montrose, he told me he'd hid in that igloo with the first drops of last night's storm and spent the night there, hungry but dry.
In Montrose Devin had his second lunch at the same restaurant to keep me company. It was a Nepalese all-you-can-eat buffet with wall-size panoramic photos of the Mountain Region. The avid mountaineer that he is, Devin gave me a tour of the range, with Everest, Lhotse, and other peaks -- I couldn't take my eyes off the views.
John and Troy had spent the night in Montrose and left an hour before Devin got there (and two hours before me). Tactfully and with his usual subdued unwillingness to focus on the negative Devin carefully voiced exasperation at the guys' refusal to wait for us.
After a long while in Montrose -- I blogged at the library, Devin shopped at a Wal*Mart -- we finally got on the road and turned south toward the San Juan Mountains. A guy I'd met in the library cautioned us about a "crazy storm" forecast for that evening in the San Juans, and we saw the menacing dark front gathering ahead of us as we rode south. Luckily, the storm never materialized, subjecting us to two hours of strong headwind instead.
By sunset we rolled over a low pass into a beautiful mountain valley (photo) and the cute little town of Ridgway, Colorado where after dinner of beer and burgers we bumped into another westbound cyclist. First we saw his mountain bike with a loaded trailer, which I recognized from a few days back in Salida. Then he himself came out of the gas station shop, tall, tanned, and surprisingly thin for a cyclist, almost to the point of looking sickly (sorry, man, that was my first impression ;-) His name was Kendall Yoder; he had just finished college in Denver and was headed west to SF and then north along the Pacific coast to visit his brother in Seattle. We were glad for another soul on the tough road to come. Meanwhile, we decided to spend the night at a pretty gazebo in the park that Kendall had scouted out earlier.
A night of watery sleeplessness. The Ridgway town park is very well-groomed, with luscious trees, manicured lawns, and a beautiful octagonal gazebo. We brought our bikes in, claimed sleeping spots on the wooden floor, unpacked everything in preparation for the night, and shared triumphant satisfaction at having found such a wonderful (even romantic) place to sleep. Suddenly, sprinklers came on and began impudently sprinkling our home. Dang! Because everything had been unpacked, we frantically ran back and forth several times, carrying stuff out and dumping it in one big wet pile onto a nearby concrete path outside the sprinklers' reach. We were fuming at such inhospitability toward weary travelers, but our indignation was short lived, as our clothes and sleeping bags in fact hadn't gotten too wet and because we quickly found an even better place to sleep nearby -- a picnic pavilion.
It was right next to a restroom, was large (had six picnic tables inside), and had a two-foot-tall concrete barrier around the perimeter. Worried about more sprinklers, we carefully chose sleeping spots protected by the barrier and picnic tables. Kendall's also had the luxury of the bathroom wall on one side.
In the middle of the night I awoke from the tell-tale sound, "shhhhhhh-tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk, shhhhhhh-tsk-tsk-tsk", immediately followed by the dry "pah-pah-pah" of water drops on the surface of my sleeping bag. Oh no, not again! This time more methodically -- as we had cautiously left our gear minimally unpacked -- I got up, made sure that the guys were out of the water's reach, found a new dry spot for myself, and moved there. This repeated four times throughout the night! Inexplicably and annoyingly, the sprinklers didn't go off all at once, but in a sequence, with the earlier sprinklers staying on as new ones came on one by one. By morning, Devin ended up moving once or twice. Kendall remained dry and sound asleep in his corner all night long -- the lucky (and smart) bastard! At 5:30, our wake-up time, all sprinklers shut down; the pavilion looked like a battlefield almost perfectly covered by coordinated crossfire of five overlapping machine gun sectors.
Unlike back in Kansas, early mornings in the mountainous Colorado are excruciatingly cold! Brrr...
Another couple of pretty names:
- Uncompahgre (river in Colorado) -- is a Ute Indian word for "muddy river".
- Sangre de Cristo (mountain range in Colorado).
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Photo album 6, Nevada & California
Check out the final photo album of our trip. It covers the Nevada and California legs. Don't forget to read the photos' titles and captions. Enjoy!
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-6/
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-6/
Friday, August 17, 2007
Progress, route, riding conditions
I've factored out the objective info (daily progress, route, riding conditions) and placed it in the spreadsheet below:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=ppUu0uGJ6RPILcYMH_REkaw
(Updated: 8/17, 8/11, 8/4, 8/2, 7/28, 7/23, 7/19, 7/17, 7/16)
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=ppUu0uGJ6RPILcYMH_REkaw
(Updated: 8/17, 8/11, 8/4, 8/2, 7/28, 7/23, 7/19, 7/17, 7/16)
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Day 32 (7/25)
Beautiful weather. Devin and I got up early, rode to the cute, trendy town of Gunnison, and had lunch there. Then he rode ahead hoping to catch John and Troy in Montrose (about 60 miles west), whereas I took my time as usual ("tack up your horse slowly to ride swiftly"). I knew I'd catch them anyway.
As I pedaled alongside the narrow, 30-mile-long Blue Mesa Reservoir, storm clouds started gathering slowly behind me and to the south. It looked like the storm was moving east, so I was not worried. The scenery began to look like my impression (from movies and photos) of the "typical" West -- here's a photo -- and I looked forward to more of this land-carved-by-erosion-in-intricate-ways types of landscape.
Soon the sky got darker, the wind picked up, and waves wrinkled the lake's surface in seemingly wrong direction: opposite of where the clouds were moving. Then thunderheads appeared to my left, then in front. Relying on my experience that thunderstorms are always short-lived, I stopped at a roadside primitive rest area to wait this one out.
A lady, who pulled over to use the bathroom, told me that she drove across the Monarch Pass this morning and the pass was all snowed in. It must have snowed there in the night after we crossed over to this side. Phew!
The weather was already raging to the south and to the east and I observed the skies intently to figure out when I could hit the road again. But what I saw defied my expectations. First, the storm was not moving anywhere. Second, instead of being confined to a small, well-defined area, it began to gather all around the mountains that frame the lake, with a strange calm over the lake itself. I was trapped in a pocket! Two hours of excruciating inaction passed; I was wasting precious time. I decided to press on, but as soon as I rode across the bridge to the south shore of the reservoir, the storm began to close in; it wanted to smother me. I pedaled hard for about two miles and reached an abandoned store front (photo) with the first wave of heavy rain drops. This was the "town" of Sapinero CO (see this map). The whole town is comprised of the deserted store / gas station, the owner's house, and a few trailers huddled together on a steep muddy hill at a bend in the lake's shore.
The storm finally closed in for good and poured and poured amid frequent lightning flashes and thunderclaps. The store's porch roof, made of overlapping slanted planks, leaked water, but I found a relatively dry spot and settled in with my Hemingway. An hour or more passed; the dramatic storm subsided and turned into a long slow rain. It was no use tyring to make the remaining 40 miles to Montrose tonight, especially since it was already 7:30 and would be dark in an hour. I resigned to the fact that I was now hopelessly behind the guys, pitched my tent right there on the porch, put on my rain gear, and went up the slippery hill to investigate. The house on the hill turned out to belong to the lady who owns the store below. She said it was ok for me to camp there and even let me use the shower at her campground. The muddy dark campground on the hill next to the house was empty of visitors and looked sad and deserted, just like the town itself. Unexpectedly, the clean, warm, well-kept shower cabin proved a welcoming respite in the sea of grey wetness around. I spent the night warm, dry, and clean to wake up to a crisp blue morning and a sight to match (photo)!
As I pedaled alongside the narrow, 30-mile-long Blue Mesa Reservoir, storm clouds started gathering slowly behind me and to the south. It looked like the storm was moving east, so I was not worried. The scenery began to look like my impression (from movies and photos) of the "typical" West -- here's a photo -- and I looked forward to more of this land-carved-by-erosion-in-intricate-ways types of landscape.
Soon the sky got darker, the wind picked up, and waves wrinkled the lake's surface in seemingly wrong direction: opposite of where the clouds were moving. Then thunderheads appeared to my left, then in front. Relying on my experience that thunderstorms are always short-lived, I stopped at a roadside primitive rest area to wait this one out.
A lady, who pulled over to use the bathroom, told me that she drove across the Monarch Pass this morning and the pass was all snowed in. It must have snowed there in the night after we crossed over to this side. Phew!
The weather was already raging to the south and to the east and I observed the skies intently to figure out when I could hit the road again. But what I saw defied my expectations. First, the storm was not moving anywhere. Second, instead of being confined to a small, well-defined area, it began to gather all around the mountains that frame the lake, with a strange calm over the lake itself. I was trapped in a pocket! Two hours of excruciating inaction passed; I was wasting precious time. I decided to press on, but as soon as I rode across the bridge to the south shore of the reservoir, the storm began to close in; it wanted to smother me. I pedaled hard for about two miles and reached an abandoned store front (photo) with the first wave of heavy rain drops. This was the "town" of Sapinero CO (see this map). The whole town is comprised of the deserted store / gas station, the owner's house, and a few trailers huddled together on a steep muddy hill at a bend in the lake's shore.
The storm finally closed in for good and poured and poured amid frequent lightning flashes and thunderclaps. The store's porch roof, made of overlapping slanted planks, leaked water, but I found a relatively dry spot and settled in with my Hemingway. An hour or more passed; the dramatic storm subsided and turned into a long slow rain. It was no use tyring to make the remaining 40 miles to Montrose tonight, especially since it was already 7:30 and would be dark in an hour. I resigned to the fact that I was now hopelessly behind the guys, pitched my tent right there on the porch, put on my rain gear, and went up the slippery hill to investigate. The house on the hill turned out to belong to the lady who owns the store below. She said it was ok for me to camp there and even let me use the shower at her campground. The muddy dark campground on the hill next to the house was empty of visitors and looked sad and deserted, just like the town itself. Unexpectedly, the clean, warm, well-kept shower cabin proved a welcoming respite in the sea of grey wetness around. I spent the night warm, dry, and clean to wake up to a crisp blue morning and a sight to match (photo)!
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Photo album 5: Utah
Here are our Utah photos:
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-5/
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-5/
Day 31 (7/24)
The first half of the day (all the way to Salida CO) was surprisingly flat for a mountain road (but that was not indicative of things to come!) The road, squeezed together with the Arkansas River and a single-track railroad, lay in a picturesque, winding, steep-walled, cliffy gorge (photos). Here I discovered, for the first time with an eye-opening clarity, the frustration of taking pictures in the Rockies: one awesome view replaced the other at every turn of the road and I had to stop and pull out the camera just seconds after the previous stop. Moreover, the pictures don't do justice to the scenery, the camera makes everything look small and flat -- one has to be there to fully appreciate the awesome beauty.
The heavy, musky spice of sun-baked pine filled the air all day. It's one of my favorite smells; it reminds me of mountains and far-away adventures.
Later in the day -- the first full day in the Rockies -- we reached Monarch Pass (photo, photo). It is the highest point of our whole trip (11,312 ft). I had been blogging in the Salida library and started out for the pass relatively late in the day. As I was coming up the steep road, I saw a storm brewing at the top. Later I found out that Devin reached the pass 1.5 hours before me and got drenched and hailed on. John and Troy crossed another two hours earlier.
I am pleasantly surprised that I did not feel any ill effects of high altitude, even during the strenuous climb. I've heard that people normally start feeling the altitude at about 10,000 ft.
I finally got to the top to catch the last rays of the setting sun painting the mountain tops red (photo). It was getting dark -- and very cold -- quickly, and I faced a dilemma: spend precious time getting out my fleeces, risking riding down in the dark, or start riding immediately, risking freezing my butt off. I chose the former and took off down the treacherous, dark serpentine road in the thickening night. A half hour later I reached the first and only light in the valley (a roadside campground at Sargents CO) in complete darkness to find Devin there drying his clothes in the laundry room. He had rented a cabin and we spent the night cozy and happy that we'd put our trip's highest point behind.
By the way, outside the Salida library earlier that day I saw a bicycle with a distinctive loaded touring trailer. We met its owner, Kendall Yoder, a few days later and he joined our group, kind of replacing John. More about Kendall later.
The heavy, musky spice of sun-baked pine filled the air all day. It's one of my favorite smells; it reminds me of mountains and far-away adventures.
Later in the day -- the first full day in the Rockies -- we reached Monarch Pass (photo, photo). It is the highest point of our whole trip (11,312 ft). I had been blogging in the Salida library and started out for the pass relatively late in the day. As I was coming up the steep road, I saw a storm brewing at the top. Later I found out that Devin reached the pass 1.5 hours before me and got drenched and hailed on. John and Troy crossed another two hours earlier.
I am pleasantly surprised that I did not feel any ill effects of high altitude, even during the strenuous climb. I've heard that people normally start feeling the altitude at about 10,000 ft.
I finally got to the top to catch the last rays of the setting sun painting the mountain tops red (photo). It was getting dark -- and very cold -- quickly, and I faced a dilemma: spend precious time getting out my fleeces, risking riding down in the dark, or start riding immediately, risking freezing my butt off. I chose the former and took off down the treacherous, dark serpentine road in the thickening night. A half hour later I reached the first and only light in the valley (a roadside campground at Sargents CO) in complete darkness to find Devin there drying his clothes in the laundry room. He had rented a cabin and we spent the night cozy and happy that we'd put our trip's highest point behind.
By the way, outside the Salida library earlier that day I saw a bicycle with a distinctive loaded touring trailer. We met its owner, Kendall Yoder, a few days later and he joined our group, kind of replacing John. More about Kendall later.
Photo album 4
Here are my photos taken between Leoti KS and Dove Creek CO:
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-4/
(note: each photo has a description)
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-4/
(note: each photo has a description)
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Day 30 (7/23)
Early in the morning brother Sedoy -- that's how Mormons address Church members -- drove us back to the church, where we had left our bikes. After he left, we napped for a couple more hours right outside the church (the bike shop didn't open until 10 am). Then I took Devin about five miles south to Vance's to get Baby Blue checked out for the mountains. Troy and John had had their bikes examined recently and decided not to see Vance.
Bicycle names. We spontaneously and independently, or at least I think it was spontaneous and independent, named our bikes. Mine, as you already know, is Blue Pony (after Alla Schwartz's dad's old car, Blue Horse). John's is Pepe Bleu, Devin's -- Baby Blue, and Troy's -- Brisa. I should ask Anna for her bike's name. Update: she has decided to name her stallion Bobik VII (yes, she had six other Bobiks, all of whom got stolen).
On the way back to Highway 50, where we'd resume our trip west, Devin and I bumped into Troy and John going the opposite way. Turns out they were looking for the state route 96. They decided to follow it, as opposed to US-50, because it is formally part of the Western Express route. Devin and I wanted to deviate from Western Express in eastern Colorado by taking US-50 because it is flatter and a little shorter than CO-96, though probably slightly less scenic. Thus began our several-day separation into two groups; in fact, I never saw John after today.
En route to Canon City, a storm cloud appeared to be crossing the highway ahead, north to south. From it hung a slender veil of rain (photo). I thought it was just the moment for a Wal*Mart break; Devin rode on. When we met in town later, he told me that he'd ridden straight into the storm and gotten soaked. (Same thing happened again the next day over the Monarch Pass; history repeated itself in a few days near Panguitch UT after our descent from Bryce Canyon National Park :-))
The Rockies in eastern Colorado start rapidly, without any noticeable foothills. Devin and I rode on an unexpectedly flat terrain for the 40-50 miles between Pueblo and Canon City. Then, suddenly, the road took to the mountains and over our first pass in the Rockies. We then dropped into the beautiful, craggy, steep Arkansas River canyon as it was getting dark and found a place to camp with a bunch of party animal whitewater rafting guides at American Adventure Expeditions ("Adventure is our middle name" is the outfitter's slogan). They fed us, gave me beer, and let us use their shower and sleep in a picnic pavilion on the bank of the lively Arkansas. According to them, this canyon is the number one commercial whitewater rafting spot in the U.S.
Bicycle names. We spontaneously and independently, or at least I think it was spontaneous and independent, named our bikes. Mine, as you already know, is Blue Pony (after Alla Schwartz's dad's old car, Blue Horse). John's is Pepe Bleu, Devin's -- Baby Blue, and Troy's -- Brisa. I should ask Anna for her bike's name. Update: she has decided to name her stallion Bobik VII (yes, she had six other Bobiks, all of whom got stolen).
On the way back to Highway 50, where we'd resume our trip west, Devin and I bumped into Troy and John going the opposite way. Turns out they were looking for the state route 96. They decided to follow it, as opposed to US-50, because it is formally part of the Western Express route. Devin and I wanted to deviate from Western Express in eastern Colorado by taking US-50 because it is flatter and a little shorter than CO-96, though probably slightly less scenic. Thus began our several-day separation into two groups; in fact, I never saw John after today.
En route to Canon City, a storm cloud appeared to be crossing the highway ahead, north to south. From it hung a slender veil of rain (photo). I thought it was just the moment for a Wal*Mart break; Devin rode on. When we met in town later, he told me that he'd ridden straight into the storm and gotten soaked. (Same thing happened again the next day over the Monarch Pass; history repeated itself in a few days near Panguitch UT after our descent from Bryce Canyon National Park :-))
The Rockies in eastern Colorado start rapidly, without any noticeable foothills. Devin and I rode on an unexpectedly flat terrain for the 40-50 miles between Pueblo and Canon City. Then, suddenly, the road took to the mountains and over our first pass in the Rockies. We then dropped into the beautiful, craggy, steep Arkansas River canyon as it was getting dark and found a place to camp with a bunch of party animal whitewater rafting guides at American Adventure Expeditions ("Adventure is our middle name" is the outfitter's slogan). They fed us, gave me beer, and let us use their shower and sleep in a picnic pavilion on the bank of the lively Arkansas. According to them, this canyon is the number one commercial whitewater rafting spot in the U.S.
Day 29 (7/22)
Spending the night with the Sedoy family, whom John, Troy, and Devin met in church. While the guys were in church, I hung out at a Starbucks reading Farewell to Arms, and then did some light travel shopping at a Wal*Mart. The internet connection at the Sedoy house turned out to have gotten blown during severe storms a few days ago; I could barely handle a day's worth of total inaction.
Day 28 (7/21)
Today was a short, simple, and uneventful day because we covered most of the two-day distance to Pueblo (the "sunday church town") yesterday. Spending the night in a hotel.
I went to Vance's Bicycle World bike shop to get Blue Pony ready for the Rockies. Vance, the shop owner and 1982 bunny-hopping world champion, preventively replaced my worn-out chain, cassette, and rear tire, and trued my wheels. He and his wife, Judy, waited for my arrival because I had given them a call from the road. They even stayed 1.5 hours past the closing time making sure my bike was in shape for the difficult road ahead. I'll bring my guys here on Monday.
I went to Vance's Bicycle World bike shop to get Blue Pony ready for the Rockies. Vance, the shop owner and 1982 bunny-hopping world champion, preventively replaced my worn-out chain, cassette, and rear tire, and trued my wheels. He and his wife, Judy, waited for my arrival because I had given them a call from the road. They even stayed 1.5 hours past the closing time making sure my bike was in shape for the difficult road ahead. I'll bring my guys here on Monday.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Day 27 (7/20) -- a day of achievements
Today was a a day of many achievements.
Bam! We reach the 3,000-km mark (near Selkirk KS).
Bam! We cross into the Mountain time zone (in Kansas's Greeley County).
Bam! New personal distance record, 143 miles in one day.
Bam! We hit the 2,000-mile mark (in Ordway CO).
Today we also got a glimpse of the Rockies for the first time. It happened at the very end of the day, about 80 miles into Colorado, and the mountains were just an unimpressive silhouette on the western horizon.
When we crossed into Colorado, the terrain stayed surprisingly flat for what I have always thought of as a mountainous state. But a few sudden changes did occur. First, right at the state border, the road became very bad (the state must have conserved some cash by laying very coarse asphalt; it was like riding on gravel; plus the road has gone into disrepair, with bumps and seams at regular, 10-meter intervals). Second, the terrain started to look less like farmland and more like a desert: dry yellow grass, sage-green patchy shrubs, and cactus-like plants with thick leaves; all creeks are just river beds -- no water; ghost towns.
Ghost towns. Many towns are marked on the map but are really ghost towns or villages with just a few people and no shops or gas stations. This means we must be more careful with our water and food planning, as the situation on the ground is less welcoming than maps lead us to believe. Whereas distances between services in Kansas were about 30 miles, they are more like 60 miles here in Colorado. We now have to supplement our map information by asking the locals about the availability of services ahead.
The sky in the West. I've noticed that the sky in the West is much more dramatic than back East. In addition to the fiery sunsets, the clouds here are almost always gigantic cumuli that tower like mountains (photo). Floating above the flat plains and a thin pillow of air, they often occupy two thirds of one's view. Sometimes they are black thunderheads and you see them scatter sparks of lightning in the distance.
Gillian Hoggard. A group of east-bound cyclists told us about an eccentric lady in Ordway CO who keeps her house open to passing cyclists. They had given us her address, and we decided to check it out. When we arrived, nobody was home, but (as the cyclists had told us) we entered the house and found a note on the table (photo) to the effect of "welcome; feel at home; towels are here; linens are there; and I'll be home at 22:15." The host, Gillian Hoggard, arrived later and welcomed us in her home like old friends. She turned out to be a fascinating person with a multi-faceted life story. She's from New Zealand, is a school teacher by training, has two sons in the U.S. armed forces, works as a prison guard, and used to yacht around the world for many years. She now lives in Ordway and keeps lots of animals on her property -- horses, sheep, turkeys, dogs, and so on -- not for meat or whatever, but purely because she enjoys caring for them and interacting with them. She likes to host cyclists because she enjoys their company and their stories. She started doing this a few years ago. On the way to work one morning she saw a cyclist on a heavily loaded bicycle. She stopped to ask him about his travels and learned that he didn't have a place to spend the night, so she welcomed him to her home. Before he left next morning, she told him to tell other bikers to come sleep over. So began her story of giving home to people like us. We were her 85th group of cyclists this summer (including Warren and Jason, the guys I had met in Rush Center KS, photo). Thanks, Gillian, you're wonderful!
Bam! We reach the 3,000-km mark (near Selkirk KS).
Bam! We cross into the Mountain time zone (in Kansas's Greeley County).
Bam! New personal distance record, 143 miles in one day.
Bam! We hit the 2,000-mile mark (in Ordway CO).
Today we also got a glimpse of the Rockies for the first time. It happened at the very end of the day, about 80 miles into Colorado, and the mountains were just an unimpressive silhouette on the western horizon.
When we crossed into Colorado, the terrain stayed surprisingly flat for what I have always thought of as a mountainous state. But a few sudden changes did occur. First, right at the state border, the road became very bad (the state must have conserved some cash by laying very coarse asphalt; it was like riding on gravel; plus the road has gone into disrepair, with bumps and seams at regular, 10-meter intervals). Second, the terrain started to look less like farmland and more like a desert: dry yellow grass, sage-green patchy shrubs, and cactus-like plants with thick leaves; all creeks are just river beds -- no water; ghost towns.
Ghost towns. Many towns are marked on the map but are really ghost towns or villages with just a few people and no shops or gas stations. This means we must be more careful with our water and food planning, as the situation on the ground is less welcoming than maps lead us to believe. Whereas distances between services in Kansas were about 30 miles, they are more like 60 miles here in Colorado. We now have to supplement our map information by asking the locals about the availability of services ahead.
The sky in the West. I've noticed that the sky in the West is much more dramatic than back East. In addition to the fiery sunsets, the clouds here are almost always gigantic cumuli that tower like mountains (photo). Floating above the flat plains and a thin pillow of air, they often occupy two thirds of one's view. Sometimes they are black thunderheads and you see them scatter sparks of lightning in the distance.
Gillian Hoggard. A group of east-bound cyclists told us about an eccentric lady in Ordway CO who keeps her house open to passing cyclists. They had given us her address, and we decided to check it out. When we arrived, nobody was home, but (as the cyclists had told us) we entered the house and found a note on the table (photo) to the effect of "welcome; feel at home; towels are here; linens are there; and I'll be home at 22:15." The host, Gillian Hoggard, arrived later and welcomed us in her home like old friends. She turned out to be a fascinating person with a multi-faceted life story. She's from New Zealand, is a school teacher by training, has two sons in the U.S. armed forces, works as a prison guard, and used to yacht around the world for many years. She now lives in Ordway and keeps lots of animals on her property -- horses, sheep, turkeys, dogs, and so on -- not for meat or whatever, but purely because she enjoys caring for them and interacting with them. She likes to host cyclists because she enjoys their company and their stories. She started doing this a few years ago. On the way to work one morning she saw a cyclist on a heavily loaded bicycle. She stopped to ask him about his travels and learned that he didn't have a place to spend the night, so she welcomed him to her home. Before he left next morning, she told him to tell other bikers to come sleep over. So began her story of giving home to people like us. We were her 85th group of cyclists this summer (including Warren and Jason, the guys I had met in Rush Center KS, photo). Thanks, Gillian, you're wonderful!
Day 26 (7/19)
Kansas imposes structure on travelers. Towns here are spaced at about 30 miles apart with no services of any kind between them. Therefore your daily riding distances are all multiples of 30 miles. Also, unlike in the East, where you could count on finding a gas station any time you run out of water (kind of like an oasis in the desert), here you must be prepared for at least thirty miles. This will increase going west. Colorado, Utah, and Nevada all have some 70-mile no-service stretches. Therefore, Kansas is also gradually training us for what's to come later.
Camping tonight in the Leoti city park.
The moment of sudden pleasure. I was uploading photos at the library in Scott City KS and the guys went ahead to Leoti (20 miles to the west). When I finally headed for Leoti, it was already 8:15 pm and about to get dark.
Feeling anxiety about the impending darkness, I hurry forward. Soon the sun sets. The eastern sky is already dark. The plains lie flat and motionless, with nothing in sight but the road, telegraph poles, and fields. I push hard and frequently check the map and speedometer to see where I am. Then, suddenly, a thin line of lights appears on the horizon straight ahead. Leoti! A wave of intense calm overcomes me. All of a sudden, I become aware of how peaceful this night ride is; I want to prolong it and postpone entering the town as long as possible; I slow down to a crawl. The empty road, flat and smooth as a mirror, is all mine. The moon is up high and shining brightly. The first stars have come out; they flicker about in a friendly way. The day's wind has died down for the night and given way to a gentle breeze, still warm with the remnants of the sun's rays. The breeze caresses my shirtless torso, as if saying, "You're ok now; I'm with you."
Evening riding in general. Independently of the calm that overcomes you when you're in sight of your day's target, late afternoons and evenings have proved the most pleasant time for riding. I first discovered this during my Tour de New England rides. The guys agree. We think this is due to a combination of factors: 1. by evening, winds usually die down; 2. the air is cooler; 3. there's less traffic; and 4. your body has gotten accustomed to riding (second wind of sorts).
Camping tonight in the Leoti city park.
The moment of sudden pleasure. I was uploading photos at the library in Scott City KS and the guys went ahead to Leoti (20 miles to the west). When I finally headed for Leoti, it was already 8:15 pm and about to get dark.
Feeling anxiety about the impending darkness, I hurry forward. Soon the sun sets. The eastern sky is already dark. The plains lie flat and motionless, with nothing in sight but the road, telegraph poles, and fields. I push hard and frequently check the map and speedometer to see where I am. Then, suddenly, a thin line of lights appears on the horizon straight ahead. Leoti! A wave of intense calm overcomes me. All of a sudden, I become aware of how peaceful this night ride is; I want to prolong it and postpone entering the town as long as possible; I slow down to a crawl. The empty road, flat and smooth as a mirror, is all mine. The moon is up high and shining brightly. The first stars have come out; they flicker about in a friendly way. The day's wind has died down for the night and given way to a gentle breeze, still warm with the remnants of the sun's rays. The breeze caresses my shirtless torso, as if saying, "You're ok now; I'm with you."
Evening riding in general. Independently of the calm that overcomes you when you're in sight of your day's target, late afternoons and evenings have proved the most pleasant time for riding. I first discovered this during my Tour de New England rides. The guys agree. We think this is due to a combination of factors: 1. by evening, winds usually die down; 2. the air is cooler; 3. there's less traffic; and 4. your body has gotten accustomed to riding (second wind of sorts).
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The "Hump Day" (day 25, 7/18)
Our early-wake-up experiment continues: Devin and I got up at 5:20, rode out before sunrise; the sun rose at 6:25. Knowing that you have a full day ahead and you've already put in 20-30 miles feels great.
Monster cross-winds continue for the second day; please, please be over!
Today's was the first really flat terrain in KS despite the common thinking that Kansas is all flat as a pancake. We saw similar flatness only twice, in eastern Indiana and around Olney IL.
The "Hump Day". My boys called the middle day of their two-year church missions the "hump day". Today we rolled over the hump of our trip: we hit the 1,750-mile mark near Alexander KS.
People say Kansas is boring. I disagree! I drink Kansas in gulps and feel sad that it'll soon be over. It's been the nicest state so far, in many respects: very friendly people (I see four fingers raised in salute over every passing car's steering wheel), easy-to-ride flat landscape, the best maintained roads, gorgeous sunsets, very peaceful scenery (you ride in tranquility and enriching solitude for miles), and so on.
Another good omen. Exactly at the 1,750th mile, Kansas gave me a personal gift -- I came across a KS license plate on the shoulder (photo -- the mile marker shows that we are 134 miles east of the Colorado border, on Kansas state route 96; it's our trip's 1,750th mile).
This is also Blue Pony's ~3,000-mile "birthday", and he hasn't had a flat tire yet! (Knocking on wood...)
Other cyclists. We met four groups of coast-to-coast cyclists today. 1. Peter Spuij (photo) is riding the Adventure Cycling Association's "TransAmerica Trail" route from Yorktown VA to Portland OR. 2. Rob and Jean of www.cylf.org (photo) traveling east on TransAm. 3. Tien-Hui Cheng Causby and Gordon Causby on TransAm going east. 4. Jason Strutz and Warren Jenkins also doing TransAm east. I had lunch with these two latter groups in Rush Center KS (photo). Update: the next day we met another group of coast-to-coast cyclists; the day after that we met five more groups! Why so many cyclists all of a sudden? It turns out that for the 300 miles between Lyons KS and Pueblo CO our improvised route coincides with the TransAm.
These guys described to me the mechanics of obtaining permission to camp in city parks and swim in public pools. It's simple: check in with the town's sheriff and you are set. We will try it.
Different riding styles (continued). Talking about different riding styles: Peter told us he rides 70 miles each day before noon and then rests for the remainder of the day! That's a bit extreme for our taste (too much front loading), but hey, to each his own.
Crude oil. It turns out there's a lot of crude oil exploration in Kansas. We pass numerous small oil pumps smack in the middle of fields (photo, photo). I thought it was strange that a farmer would drill for oil, but someone explained that big oil companies rent out patches of farms from private land owners, extract oil, and pay the landlords royalties on oil revenues.
As we pass these oil rigs they give off whiffs of oil -- a creamy, heavy, pleasantly rich smell. Yummy!
We are spending the night at a motel appropriately named "Derrick Inn".
Monster cross-winds continue for the second day; please, please be over!
Today's was the first really flat terrain in KS despite the common thinking that Kansas is all flat as a pancake. We saw similar flatness only twice, in eastern Indiana and around Olney IL.
The "Hump Day". My boys called the middle day of their two-year church missions the "hump day". Today we rolled over the hump of our trip: we hit the 1,750-mile mark near Alexander KS.
People say Kansas is boring. I disagree! I drink Kansas in gulps and feel sad that it'll soon be over. It's been the nicest state so far, in many respects: very friendly people (I see four fingers raised in salute over every passing car's steering wheel), easy-to-ride flat landscape, the best maintained roads, gorgeous sunsets, very peaceful scenery (you ride in tranquility and enriching solitude for miles), and so on.
Another good omen. Exactly at the 1,750th mile, Kansas gave me a personal gift -- I came across a KS license plate on the shoulder (photo -- the mile marker shows that we are 134 miles east of the Colorado border, on Kansas state route 96; it's our trip's 1,750th mile).
This is also Blue Pony's ~3,000-mile "birthday", and he hasn't had a flat tire yet! (Knocking on wood...)
Other cyclists. We met four groups of coast-to-coast cyclists today. 1. Peter Spuij (photo) is riding the Adventure Cycling Association's "TransAmerica Trail" route from Yorktown VA to Portland OR. 2. Rob and Jean of www.cylf.org (photo) traveling east on TransAm. 3. Tien-Hui Cheng Causby and Gordon Causby on TransAm going east. 4. Jason Strutz and Warren Jenkins also doing TransAm east. I had lunch with these two latter groups in Rush Center KS (photo). Update: the next day we met another group of coast-to-coast cyclists; the day after that we met five more groups! Why so many cyclists all of a sudden? It turns out that for the 300 miles between Lyons KS and Pueblo CO our improvised route coincides with the TransAm.
These guys described to me the mechanics of obtaining permission to camp in city parks and swim in public pools. It's simple: check in with the town's sheriff and you are set. We will try it.
Different riding styles (continued). Talking about different riding styles: Peter told us he rides 70 miles each day before noon and then rests for the remainder of the day! That's a bit extreme for our taste (too much front loading), but hey, to each his own.
Crude oil. It turns out there's a lot of crude oil exploration in Kansas. We pass numerous small oil pumps smack in the middle of fields (photo, photo). I thought it was strange that a farmer would drill for oil, but someone explained that big oil companies rent out patches of farms from private land owners, extract oil, and pay the landlords royalties on oil revenues.
As we pass these oil rigs they give off whiffs of oil -- a creamy, heavy, pleasantly rich smell. Yummy!
We are spending the night at a motel appropriately named "Derrick Inn".
Q & A
1. Why did you guys do a 143-mile day? Because the nearest Mormon church was in Pueblo CO, and we were 200 miles away, with two days left until Sunday. Therefore we decided to do about 100 miles each of the two days. However, when we crossed into Colorado, it turned out to be a desert, with huge distances between towns. We hit Eads CO (80 miles) and there was nothing for the next 60 miles until Ordway CO. To avoid having to ride over a hundred miles the next day, we decided to push on, since we had a few hours of daylight left.
2. Did Heather call? No.
3. Why do you guys not ride in a single group? It's pretty much impossible, given everyone's different riding styles. Plus, I need to update the blog and photos and feel bad asking the boys to wait for me. It takes about an hour to post a day's blog entry and much longer to put up a photo album.
4. It would be interesting to get a sense of morale/spirit in your group during the ride. Hm, I don't really know whether a group spirit/morale description really applies here, since our trip doesn't seem like a big challenge anymore. We all ride, enjoy the scenery, then find a place to spend the night; then the cycle repeats. When we meet for meals and for the night, we talk, share our stories, look at pictures, etc. By now the technicalities/logistics have become simple and routine. But the scenery and people we meet every day continue to fascinate.
5. You guys are carrying spare tires, tools, etc. Have you had to use them? Yes, the guys wore all of their tires into the ground by the time we reached Missouri (they all bought these new cheap tires before the trip, and the tires turned out to be poor quality). I found a couple of gashes on my rear tire in Pueblo CO and had to replace it with the spare; the tire had lasted 3,000 miles. As to other repairs, we've all had some wear-n'-tear. For example, Devin and I had our wheels trued and new chains and rear cassettes installed in Pueblo in anticipation of going up into the Rockies.
2. Did Heather call? No.
3. Why do you guys not ride in a single group? It's pretty much impossible, given everyone's different riding styles. Plus, I need to update the blog and photos and feel bad asking the boys to wait for me. It takes about an hour to post a day's blog entry and much longer to put up a photo album.
4. It would be interesting to get a sense of morale/spirit in your group during the ride. Hm, I don't really know whether a group spirit/morale description really applies here, since our trip doesn't seem like a big challenge anymore. We all ride, enjoy the scenery, then find a place to spend the night; then the cycle repeats. When we meet for meals and for the night, we talk, share our stories, look at pictures, etc. By now the technicalities/logistics have become simple and routine. But the scenery and people we meet every day continue to fascinate.
5. You guys are carrying spare tires, tools, etc. Have you had to use them? Yes, the guys wore all of their tires into the ground by the time we reached Missouri (they all bought these new cheap tires before the trip, and the tires turned out to be poor quality). I found a couple of gashes on my rear tire in Pueblo CO and had to replace it with the spare; the tire had lasted 3,000 miles. As to other repairs, we've all had some wear-n'-tear. For example, Devin and I had our wheels trued and new chains and rear cassettes installed in Pueblo in anticipation of going up into the Rockies.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Any questions?
Whoever is following our journey and reading this blog: please e-mail me if you have any questions about our ride and I'll post a Q&A here.
Ciao,
-mk
Ciao,
-mk
Day 24 (7/17)
I'm experimenting with various wake-up times (Devin's idea). Woke up at 5:45 today, the sun showed at 6, and I left camp at 6:15. The boys were just waking up. It feels great to ride early in the morning before it gets hot. Made 30 miles before breakfast -- this feels super!
After I started riding, I realized that the boys didn't have a map and might miss the turn-off onto KS-150. So I phoned them to make sure they knew about the turn. Little did I know that by that point I myself had already missed it. As I rode south-west on US-50 in my elated morning mood, I glanced at the map and felt a mood-altering cold sting of doubt. The sensation soon grew into a solid realization that I had foolishly forgotten to read the road. At that point it was already too late to turn back, so I used US-77 a few miles ahead to return to the correct road. Overall, I took two catheti of a right triangle (US-50 and US-77), whereas the boys cut across along the hypotenuse (KS-150).
We had fierce gusty cross-wind from the south-west all day long. The wind was so strong that it made the bikes very wobbly and hard to keep straight. It also made my front fender vibrate violently -- I constantly heard it touch the tire.
Truck surfing: an elaboration. Earlier this year, cycling from Boston to NYC, I discovered truck surfing. When an 18-wheeler speeds past you in the same direction, it gives you a soft push forward on a wind wave. Today's strong cross-winds gave the concept of truck surfing a new coloring. First, when the truck's cabin and you are abreast, an air wave pushes you to the right. Then it sucks you in (this is a little scary, as it momentarily seems that you are going to collide with the truck). Then the wave gently pulls you forward (this is the good part). Finally, it slams you into a wall of stationary air that the truck had sliced earlier, but which has since closed.
Later that day I extended the concept to trucks traveling in the opposite direction. They simply slap you head on with a wall of air. The wall hit so hard that my helmet slid to the back of my head; had it not been strapped, it would have gotten blown off.
Tonight we are camping on a free public campground in Lyons KS. The campground is very nice: we have the luxury of hot showers, electric outlets, and a shed with a roof, benches, and picnic tables.
After I started riding, I realized that the boys didn't have a map and might miss the turn-off onto KS-150. So I phoned them to make sure they knew about the turn. Little did I know that by that point I myself had already missed it. As I rode south-west on US-50 in my elated morning mood, I glanced at the map and felt a mood-altering cold sting of doubt. The sensation soon grew into a solid realization that I had foolishly forgotten to read the road. At that point it was already too late to turn back, so I used US-77 a few miles ahead to return to the correct road. Overall, I took two catheti of a right triangle (US-50 and US-77), whereas the boys cut across along the hypotenuse (KS-150).
We had fierce gusty cross-wind from the south-west all day long. The wind was so strong that it made the bikes very wobbly and hard to keep straight. It also made my front fender vibrate violently -- I constantly heard it touch the tire.
Truck surfing: an elaboration. Earlier this year, cycling from Boston to NYC, I discovered truck surfing. When an 18-wheeler speeds past you in the same direction, it gives you a soft push forward on a wind wave. Today's strong cross-winds gave the concept of truck surfing a new coloring. First, when the truck's cabin and you are abreast, an air wave pushes you to the right. Then it sucks you in (this is a little scary, as it momentarily seems that you are going to collide with the truck). Then the wave gently pulls you forward (this is the good part). Finally, it slams you into a wall of stationary air that the truck had sliced earlier, but which has since closed.
Later that day I extended the concept to trucks traveling in the opposite direction. They simply slap you head on with a wall of air. The wall hit so hard that my helmet slid to the back of my head; had it not been strapped, it would have gotten blown off.
Tonight we are camping on a free public campground in Lyons KS. The campground is very nice: we have the luxury of hot showers, electric outlets, and a shed with a roof, benches, and picnic tables.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Day 23 (7/16)
I was online in Emporia as my friends were riding from Ottawa. Later it turned out that they went to Council Grove instead of Emporia. I'm still not sure why they did that, since we'd agreed to meet in Emporia. We got in touch over the phone and agreed on a new rendezvous point, Elmdale. I got there two hours before them and found us a beautiful front yard on a hill. The place belongs to Dana and Charles Pretzer. Thanks, Charles and Dana!
Tonight is the first night that we have mosquitoes, and they are bad! It's also the darkest and starriest of all nights. I pitch my tent without the fly and lie there enjoying the cool and splendid Milky Way.
Where's the corn? People repeatedly told me that riding through Kansas would be like riding through a boring, endless canyon of corn. It's nothing like that! We've seen only a few corn fields here and there, plus some soy and wheat. Most of Kansas is a sea of emerald and gold tall grasses (photo, another one).
"Elsewhere is bad." We talk with people everywhere we go. Consistently, they tell us that elsewhere is bad, dangerous, etc.: "You are heading to X?! Be real careful, it's very dangerous there, people there hate cyclists -- and the weather sucks!". We go to X, talk to folks there, they find out that we just came through Y and they cry out in concerned amazement, "You just came from Y?! That was not a good idea, you should have gone around it. Y is a real ghetto!" The funny thing is that most people in Missouri dissed Kansas, saying that it is a big boring hole full of hicks; little did they know that Missouri has been the suckiest state and Kansas -- the nicest so far in our journey!
Curious cows. Cows silently follow you with their big sad eyes as you ride past a pasture. Knowing their curiosity about cyclists, you can get off the bike and have a little fun with them, like this: see photo.
Tonight is the first night that we have mosquitoes, and they are bad! It's also the darkest and starriest of all nights. I pitch my tent without the fly and lie there enjoying the cool and splendid Milky Way.
Where's the corn? People repeatedly told me that riding through Kansas would be like riding through a boring, endless canyon of corn. It's nothing like that! We've seen only a few corn fields here and there, plus some soy and wheat. Most of Kansas is a sea of emerald and gold tall grasses (photo, another one).
"Elsewhere is bad." We talk with people everywhere we go. Consistently, they tell us that elsewhere is bad, dangerous, etc.: "You are heading to X?! Be real careful, it's very dangerous there, people there hate cyclists -- and the weather sucks!". We go to X, talk to folks there, they find out that we just came through Y and they cry out in concerned amazement, "You just came from Y?! That was not a good idea, you should have gone around it. Y is a real ghetto!" The funny thing is that most people in Missouri dissed Kansas, saying that it is a big boring hole full of hicks; little did they know that Missouri has been the suckiest state and Kansas -- the nicest so far in our journey!
Curious cows. Cows silently follow you with their big sad eyes as you ride past a pasture. Knowing their curiosity about cyclists, you can get off the bike and have a little fun with them, like this: see photo.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Photo album 3
Here are my photos taken between Kansas City MO and Scott City KS:
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-3/
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-3/
Monday, July 16, 2007
Day 22 (7/15)
I hit the 1,500-mile mark near Williamsburg KS! About ~2,000 more miles to go. I use "I", not "we", because my friends are taking a rest day today back in Ottawa KS to go to church. Meanwhile, I'm riding ahead to Emporia so that I can go to the library and use the Internet tomorrow (Monday), while the guys catch up.
The road between Ottawa KS and Emporia KS (Old Hwy 50) is very desolate (just 4-5 cars per hour). For 55 miles, there are no services. That's a stark contrast with all the other roads we've traveled, generously sprinkled with the oases that are gas stations and convenience shops. (Not anticipating such remoteness, I even ran out of water three times and had to knock on doors to get my bottles refilled.) I think this is a good approximation of what we'll see in Nevada on the "loneliest road in America", except Kansas is not as hot.
A good omen. Precisely at the 1,500th mile, I find a wallet on the road! It contains $115, a woman's driver's license, IDs, medical insurance cards, and kids' pictures. If I didn't notice it, I doubt anyone would find the wallet for a long time, since nobody walks there and you could hardly notice the little thing from a passing car. Later on, I find the lady's number through a phone book, but she doesn't pick up, so I end up returning the wallet by giving it to the local sheriff and asking him to drive to her house and give it to her.
Pretty names cont'd: Council Grove (town in Kansas). This name makes me think of a group of bearded World War II partisans conferring deep in a Belarus forest, planning a sabotage attack on a German supply train.
The road between Ottawa KS and Emporia KS (Old Hwy 50) is very desolate (just 4-5 cars per hour). For 55 miles, there are no services. That's a stark contrast with all the other roads we've traveled, generously sprinkled with the oases that are gas stations and convenience shops. (Not anticipating such remoteness, I even ran out of water three times and had to knock on doors to get my bottles refilled.) I think this is a good approximation of what we'll see in Nevada on the "loneliest road in America", except Kansas is not as hot.
A good omen. Precisely at the 1,500th mile, I find a wallet on the road! It contains $115, a woman's driver's license, IDs, medical insurance cards, and kids' pictures. If I didn't notice it, I doubt anyone would find the wallet for a long time, since nobody walks there and you could hardly notice the little thing from a passing car. Later on, I find the lady's number through a phone book, but she doesn't pick up, so I end up returning the wallet by giving it to the local sheriff and asking him to drive to her house and give it to her.
Pretty names cont'd: Council Grove (town in Kansas). This name makes me think of a group of bearded World War II partisans conferring deep in a Belarus forest, planning a sabotage attack on a German supply train.
Day 21 (7/14)
Today we finally rolled into Kansas! (Kansas has long fascinated me for its central geographic location in the US, for its role in literature -- "Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore" -- and for its allure as the quintessential place in the American heartland).
Route 50 between Kansas City and Emporia is an interstate highway (runs together with I-35), so we can't ride on it. If you remember the map of Kansas, it looks like a grid of vertical and horizontal roads (with few diagonals like Route 50). Therefore, instead of going straight from point A to point B, we had to zigzag: west, south, west, south, and so on. As a result, we underestimated the amount of time it would take us to get to Emporia and only made it to Ottawa.
Altogether this was a rather uneventful day, except for one rare occurrence: I made it to Ottawa a whole hour before my boys! (took a different route) ...which brings me to the differences in our riding styles.
Different riding styles. Pretty consistently now, our group has been riding in this formation: John in the lead, I about ten miles behind him, and Troy and Devin somewhere in the middle. Equally consistently, we all end up in the same place every night. I have developed a philosophy that to reach the ideal combination of enjoyment and distance coverage, one should take it easy and ride leisurely. I take a 30-minute or longer break every ten miles and never exert more force than it takes to walk, shifting into lower gears and riding slowly if going uphill or against the wind. The mountain guides on Kilimanjaro call it "pole pole" ("slow, slow"). Others call it "hakuna matata" ("relax, don't worry"). The fact that my boys are always ahead of me makes me think that they are either much stronger than I am, or that they rush. Most likely it's a combination of the two. In any case, every time I catch up to them, I find them taking a nap :-) Oh, and I almost forgot: I take care of all the photos and write this journal.
The guys go to sleep soon after making camp and placing their phone calls to parents and honeys. I chill out long past they've gone to bed: walk around, gaze at the stars, party with the locals, and so on.
Route 50 between Kansas City and Emporia is an interstate highway (runs together with I-35), so we can't ride on it. If you remember the map of Kansas, it looks like a grid of vertical and horizontal roads (with few diagonals like Route 50). Therefore, instead of going straight from point A to point B, we had to zigzag: west, south, west, south, and so on. As a result, we underestimated the amount of time it would take us to get to Emporia and only made it to Ottawa.
Altogether this was a rather uneventful day, except for one rare occurrence: I made it to Ottawa a whole hour before my boys! (took a different route) ...which brings me to the differences in our riding styles.
Different riding styles. Pretty consistently now, our group has been riding in this formation: John in the lead, I about ten miles behind him, and Troy and Devin somewhere in the middle. Equally consistently, we all end up in the same place every night. I have developed a philosophy that to reach the ideal combination of enjoyment and distance coverage, one should take it easy and ride leisurely. I take a 30-minute or longer break every ten miles and never exert more force than it takes to walk, shifting into lower gears and riding slowly if going uphill or against the wind. The mountain guides on Kilimanjaro call it "pole pole" ("slow, slow"). Others call it "hakuna matata" ("relax, don't worry"). The fact that my boys are always ahead of me makes me think that they are either much stronger than I am, or that they rush. Most likely it's a combination of the two. In any case, every time I catch up to them, I find them taking a nap :-) Oh, and I almost forgot: I take care of all the photos and write this journal.
The guys go to sleep soon after making camp and placing their phone calls to parents and honeys. I chill out long past they've gone to bed: walk around, gaze at the stars, party with the locals, and so on.
Day 20 (7/13)
Riding conditions have fully improved. For the first time in six days we a flying on the magical wings of tailwind. Beautiful weather, beautiful surroundings (rolling grassy hills). US-50 here veers north into downtown Kansas City, but we don't want to go there, because in Kansas, the road will turn back south. Instead, we use local roads to cut through Kansas City's southern boroughs (Lee's Summit and Olathe).
The Plummers. Imagine yourself reclining lazily on an inflatable mattress floating in a swimming pool under the stars, like a Roman patrician, with a thick slice of watermelon in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, sweet juice dripping down your forearms onto your chest... That's what we are doing this evening, hosted by Mike & Michelle Plummer and their four girls. Earlier this evening we knocked on their door and asked our now usual question: whether we could camp out on their property for the night. "Sure! Come on in!" was Mike's response. He and his wive put us up in their daughters' beautiful toy house (photo), let us frolic in the swimming pool, and even did our laundry and fed us breakfast in the morning. A beautiful day culminated in meeting a beautiful family. Thank you very much, guys! (Mike and Michelle run a construction company.)
Beer in Midwest. I love beer and pay close attention to its availability as we ride. Midwest is causing me mixed emotions. On one hand, unlike in New England (except NYC), beer is sold everywhere and with few restrictions. Even gas stations sell it. On the other, it's mostly the watery Miller, Busch, and Bud. Moreover, they only sell it in six-packs or larger packages and you can't mix and match bottles for variety or buy just a bottle or two. Kansas update: last night in Emporia I wanted to drink some beer. So I walk to the nearest gas station, joyfully thankful that the Midwest states do not impose nonsense restrictions like those in, say, Massachusetts ("no beer on Thanksgiving" and "no beer to people with out-of-state driver licenses"). And what do I bump into? A sign on the beer fridge says, "No beer on Sundays - state law"! Urghh! :-)
The Plummers. Imagine yourself reclining lazily on an inflatable mattress floating in a swimming pool under the stars, like a Roman patrician, with a thick slice of watermelon in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, sweet juice dripping down your forearms onto your chest... That's what we are doing this evening, hosted by Mike & Michelle Plummer and their four girls. Earlier this evening we knocked on their door and asked our now usual question: whether we could camp out on their property for the night. "Sure! Come on in!" was Mike's response. He and his wive put us up in their daughters' beautiful toy house (photo), let us frolic in the swimming pool, and even did our laundry and fed us breakfast in the morning. A beautiful day culminated in meeting a beautiful family. Thank you very much, guys! (Mike and Michelle run a construction company.)
Beer in Midwest. I love beer and pay close attention to its availability as we ride. Midwest is causing me mixed emotions. On one hand, unlike in New England (except NYC), beer is sold everywhere and with few restrictions. Even gas stations sell it. On the other, it's mostly the watery Miller, Busch, and Bud. Moreover, they only sell it in six-packs or larger packages and you can't mix and match bottles for variety or buy just a bottle or two. Kansas update: last night in Emporia I wanted to drink some beer. So I walk to the nearest gas station, joyfully thankful that the Midwest states do not impose nonsense restrictions like those in, say, Massachusetts ("no beer on Thanksgiving" and "no beer to people with out-of-state driver licenses"). And what do I bump into? A sign on the beer fridge says, "No beer on Sundays - state law"! Urghh! :-)
Friday, July 13, 2007
Day 19 (7/12)
Conditions have gradually improved all day today. With them, the redneckdom of the previous day has begun to subside. Route 50 has begun to improve, in the following order: decrepit, narrow two-lane road without shoulder --> crappy patched-up road with a 10-inch worn-out shoulder --> nice, smooth road with a beat-up 2-foot shoulder --> state-of-the-art concrete road with a not-very-even, but wide, asphalt shoulder --> finally, smooth asphalt road with a huge shoulder made of the same material and of same quality as the vehicle lanes.
Though we ride into headwind for the fifth straight day, the weather is downright gorgeous (dry heat, beautiful sunny sky)! After 5 pm I take off my shirt to even out the farmer-Joe tan. I feel like I'm on Zanzibar again.
By 7 pm we hit Sedalia, rest at a gas station, and call the movie theater in town to find out about the "Die Hard". It's playing indeed (been trying to watch it since NYC), so we are staying here.
Heather. I have an intensely sensual experience today at the Sedalia gas station. As I stand outside lazily eating a sandwich -- by the way, according to Devin the proper pronunciation is "samich" -- a car drives up and out comes a pretty woman of about 30-35 years. She's wearing a grey summer dress that favorably accentuates her fit figure. As she enters the convenience store, she carries herself with confidence that shows her obvious awareness of her good looks. When she comes back out, I can't resist the temptation to openly measure her up (I guess, this is what's called "undressing with one's eyes") -- yep, this is a bit slimy, but hey, I've been on the road with three guys for weeks! "What are you doing?" she asks. I reply, "Looking at you. You are an attractive woman." "Too bad that I don't live here; I'd invite you to spend the night," she says, to which I respond, "Yes, that's too bad ...for both of us!" Then we exchange silent, knowing smiles and she drives off. For the next fifteen minutes I just stand there shocked by what just happened. I'd never had such a candid sexual conversation with a stranger.
But wait, that's not all. She comes back in a few minutes, tells me that she can't get me off her mind, and asks for my phone number. We introduce each other, talk a while, and she drives away, this time for good. Before she left, Heather told us that she lives in Warrensburg (town between Sedalia and Kansas City) and would try to find a place for us to stay the night tomorrow or further down the road in Kansas.
Mysterious clanks in the night. Tonight we are camping out on a little backyard in a small trailer village on the outskirts of Sedalia. In the night, a strange sound behind a nearby tree grove keeps attracting my curiosity. It sounds like a chain being folded and packed into a metal bucket. At first, the sound is irregular, but soon I start to discern a long, repeating pattern. We hose down, brush our teeth, read books by the light of flashlights, and go to sleep -- but the sound never stops for a second. I'll investigate in the morning... Update: on the way out in the morning, I asked a passer-by about the noise (which never stopped throughout the night) -- it turns out there's an automobile wheel factory that supplies the Detroit automakers.
Showering in the "field". We've spent most nights camping on people's yards. Usually there's a garden hose that we use for a quck wash, but we typically don't use soap and shampoo (conditions are generally not very conducive to full-blown bathing, e.g. it's cold, not very private, and so on). Tonight is our fourth or fifth night in such conditions and naturally we are sweaty and sticky beyond description. As I can't sleep when I feel dirty, I finally decide to take a real shower despite inconvenient accommodations. Tonight's hose is not really a hose, but a short faucet sticking out of the trailer wall a meter above the ground -- it'll have to do! I get naked (it's like skinny-dipping), squat down, cling to the trailer wall, and wash my hair and full body with shampoo. Though showering in such awkward pose is extremely challenging -- man, is it refreshing, life-affirming, and even liberating! Yey! As I stand there in the cool night air, drying out, I'm filled with joy and a sense of good-natured cozy superiority over my friends who are sweating it out, dirty and sticky in their sleeping bags on the grass nearby.
Riding west. A couple of days ago I was riding late in the day, catching the last dying sliver of light above the western horizon ahead. I turned around, looked back, and saw that the sky in the east had sunk into complete darkness. To appreciate the difference in the level of light, I even looked backward and forward a few times in quick succession. At that moment I realized what a joy it is to ride into the sunset, as opposed to riding east into the gathering darkness each night. Plus, sunsets here are very dramatic and awesome most nights (photo).
Though we ride into headwind for the fifth straight day, the weather is downright gorgeous (dry heat, beautiful sunny sky)! After 5 pm I take off my shirt to even out the farmer-Joe tan. I feel like I'm on Zanzibar again.
By 7 pm we hit Sedalia, rest at a gas station, and call the movie theater in town to find out about the "Die Hard". It's playing indeed (been trying to watch it since NYC), so we are staying here.
Heather. I have an intensely sensual experience today at the Sedalia gas station. As I stand outside lazily eating a sandwich -- by the way, according to Devin the proper pronunciation is "samich" -- a car drives up and out comes a pretty woman of about 30-35 years. She's wearing a grey summer dress that favorably accentuates her fit figure. As she enters the convenience store, she carries herself with confidence that shows her obvious awareness of her good looks. When she comes back out, I can't resist the temptation to openly measure her up (I guess, this is what's called "undressing with one's eyes") -- yep, this is a bit slimy, but hey, I've been on the road with three guys for weeks! "What are you doing?" she asks. I reply, "Looking at you. You are an attractive woman." "Too bad that I don't live here; I'd invite you to spend the night," she says, to which I respond, "Yes, that's too bad ...for both of us!" Then we exchange silent, knowing smiles and she drives off. For the next fifteen minutes I just stand there shocked by what just happened. I'd never had such a candid sexual conversation with a stranger.
But wait, that's not all. She comes back in a few minutes, tells me that she can't get me off her mind, and asks for my phone number. We introduce each other, talk a while, and she drives away, this time for good. Before she left, Heather told us that she lives in Warrensburg (town between Sedalia and Kansas City) and would try to find a place for us to stay the night tomorrow or further down the road in Kansas.
Mysterious clanks in the night. Tonight we are camping out on a little backyard in a small trailer village on the outskirts of Sedalia. In the night, a strange sound behind a nearby tree grove keeps attracting my curiosity. It sounds like a chain being folded and packed into a metal bucket. At first, the sound is irregular, but soon I start to discern a long, repeating pattern. We hose down, brush our teeth, read books by the light of flashlights, and go to sleep -- but the sound never stops for a second. I'll investigate in the morning... Update: on the way out in the morning, I asked a passer-by about the noise (which never stopped throughout the night) -- it turns out there's an automobile wheel factory that supplies the Detroit automakers.
Showering in the "field". We've spent most nights camping on people's yards. Usually there's a garden hose that we use for a quck wash, but we typically don't use soap and shampoo (conditions are generally not very conducive to full-blown bathing, e.g. it's cold, not very private, and so on). Tonight is our fourth or fifth night in such conditions and naturally we are sweaty and sticky beyond description. As I can't sleep when I feel dirty, I finally decide to take a real shower despite inconvenient accommodations. Tonight's hose is not really a hose, but a short faucet sticking out of the trailer wall a meter above the ground -- it'll have to do! I get naked (it's like skinny-dipping), squat down, cling to the trailer wall, and wash my hair and full body with shampoo. Though showering in such awkward pose is extremely challenging -- man, is it refreshing, life-affirming, and even liberating! Yey! As I stand there in the cool night air, drying out, I'm filled with joy and a sense of good-natured cozy superiority over my friends who are sweating it out, dirty and sticky in their sleeping bags on the grass nearby.
Riding west. A couple of days ago I was riding late in the day, catching the last dying sliver of light above the western horizon ahead. I turned around, looked back, and saw that the sky in the east had sunk into complete darkness. To appreciate the difference in the level of light, I even looked backward and forward a few times in quick succession. At that moment I realized what a joy it is to ride into the sunset, as opposed to riding east into the gathering darkness each night. Plus, sunsets here are very dramatic and awesome most nights (photo).
Day 18 (7/11)
Hurray! 2,000 km (1,244 mi) down, a lot more to go. We reached this milestone near Mount Sterling MO.
Today was the worst day of riding so far, due to a combination of factors: (1) headwind; (2) lots of hills (hey, wasn't Missouri supposed to be flat? Nope, you're in the Ozarks, dude.); (3) terrible road (two narrow, beat up lanes, heavy truck traffic, no shoulder, road surface peppered with pot holes, deep seams in the asphalt every ten meters); and, most notably, (4) rednecks galore! (They get a special mention below.) I rode all day wound-up tight, irritated, ready to explode. Even my usual ability to chill and relax couldn't help. The beautiful sunny day and very pretty forests tried to help, but couldn't.
Redneck center of the universe. I have my own definition of the word redneck -- a self-centered, inconsiderate, and impatient person who shows no regard for other people (быдло is the most comparable Russian word) -- and it's the worst insult in my lexicon. Today I have come into contact with quite a few of them on the road, but a couple of incidents shook me especially hard. Early in the day, a pick-up passed me and unceremoniously turned into me at an intersection. Luckily I was coasting slowly and had just enough time to brake. Later on, we were going though a 24-mile-long (!) section of road repairs full of dump trucks. These guys drive at 70 mph. They don't like to slow down for a cyclist when there's traffic in the incoming lane and no way to give you room by moving there. So they simply run you off the road by roaring past you, angry horns blaring, and leave you in the bushes in a plume of dust and smoke. I'm sure these guys are the nicest people when they're at home sipping a beer, but man, are they scary on the road! Worst of all, you can't do anything about this -- they can't even see your middle finger in all that dust from under their wheels.
Happy end. As usual, my guys were somewhere ahead of me all day. Shortly before nightfall we got in touch and decided to meet up in Jefferson City. Still 20 miles away, I really pressed the pedal to the metal to make it there before total darkness. When I finally reached the town, however, I got a phone message that the boys had stopped for the night a few miles back, in Osage City. Darn! ...but hey, I need more practice finding places to stay on my own, don't I? So I went into the first roadside establishment that I saw open -- Pizza-Kwik -- and struck up a conversation with the counter boys. Soon the owner showed up, overheard our conversation, and offered me the use of the pizzeria's back yard for the night. Bob Huber, the owner, is a large and loud man, and he turned out to be as kind and generous as he's loud (he reminded me of doctor Livsey from Treasure Island). Bob is a serial entrepreneur, has owned lots of restaurants and other businesses, and says that he "knows how to hustle". He's known locally as "Greasy Bob" :-) He, his assistant Brad, and I drank beers together and talked about life past midnight. I also met Bob's wife, Judy, a beautiful little lady. Guys, thanks a lot for your hospitality!
Today was the worst day of riding so far, due to a combination of factors: (1) headwind; (2) lots of hills (hey, wasn't Missouri supposed to be flat? Nope, you're in the Ozarks, dude.); (3) terrible road (two narrow, beat up lanes, heavy truck traffic, no shoulder, road surface peppered with pot holes, deep seams in the asphalt every ten meters); and, most notably, (4) rednecks galore! (They get a special mention below.) I rode all day wound-up tight, irritated, ready to explode. Even my usual ability to chill and relax couldn't help. The beautiful sunny day and very pretty forests tried to help, but couldn't.
Redneck center of the universe. I have my own definition of the word redneck -- a self-centered, inconsiderate, and impatient person who shows no regard for other people (быдло is the most comparable Russian word) -- and it's the worst insult in my lexicon. Today I have come into contact with quite a few of them on the road, but a couple of incidents shook me especially hard. Early in the day, a pick-up passed me and unceremoniously turned into me at an intersection. Luckily I was coasting slowly and had just enough time to brake. Later on, we were going though a 24-mile-long (!) section of road repairs full of dump trucks. These guys drive at 70 mph. They don't like to slow down for a cyclist when there's traffic in the incoming lane and no way to give you room by moving there. So they simply run you off the road by roaring past you, angry horns blaring, and leave you in the bushes in a plume of dust and smoke. I'm sure these guys are the nicest people when they're at home sipping a beer, but man, are they scary on the road! Worst of all, you can't do anything about this -- they can't even see your middle finger in all that dust from under their wheels.
Happy end. As usual, my guys were somewhere ahead of me all day. Shortly before nightfall we got in touch and decided to meet up in Jefferson City. Still 20 miles away, I really pressed the pedal to the metal to make it there before total darkness. When I finally reached the town, however, I got a phone message that the boys had stopped for the night a few miles back, in Osage City. Darn! ...but hey, I need more practice finding places to stay on my own, don't I? So I went into the first roadside establishment that I saw open -- Pizza-Kwik -- and struck up a conversation with the counter boys. Soon the owner showed up, overheard our conversation, and offered me the use of the pizzeria's back yard for the night. Bob Huber, the owner, is a large and loud man, and he turned out to be as kind and generous as he's loud (he reminded me of doctor Livsey from Treasure Island). Bob is a serial entrepreneur, has owned lots of restaurants and other businesses, and says that he "knows how to hustle". He's known locally as "Greasy Bob" :-) He, his assistant Brad, and I drank beers together and talked about life past midnight. I also met Bob's wife, Judy, a beautiful little lady. Guys, thanks a lot for your hospitality!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Photo album 2
Here are my photos taken between Loogootee IN and California MO:
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-2/
http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/coast-to-coast-album-2/
Friday, July 6, 2007
Photo album 1
Check out our trip photos taken so far: http://public.fotki.com/vokinhsalak/bike-coast-to-coast-2007/cycling-coast-to-coast/
Also, for those of you who've come here not via our website, check the website out: http://bikecoasttocoast.org/
Finally, support our cause by donating to Lance Armstrong Foundation:
http://bikecoasttocoast.org/getinvolved.html#donate
Also, for those of you who've come here not via our website, check the website out: http://bikecoasttocoast.org/
Finally, support our cause by donating to Lance Armstrong Foundation:
http://bikecoasttocoast.org/getinvolved.html#donate
Day 11 (7/4)
Today's route: Chillicothe OH - Cincinnati OH - Newport KY via Rte. 50 and local bridges across the Ohio (86 miles, 777 cumulative). Route 50 between Chillicothe and Cincinnati is a rural two-lane road; somewhat hilly, but nothing compared with Saddle Mountain in West Virginia.
Conditions: hazy and muggy, with nasty headwinds. After a couple of close thunderstorm calls, one storm finally hit but ran itself out quickly. After the storm, conditions improved suddenly and dramatically: we flew on wings into a gorgeous Cincinnati sunset.
Today we sleep in a motel on the Kentucky side, right across from Cincinnati's beautiful downtown on the hill. The riverfront is the prettiest I've ever seen! Several beautiful bridges span the Ohio here. One of them looks strikingly like the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC.
Joe "The Pig Farmer" called as promised, checking up on our progress.
17th state. Yep, today we've officially added another state to our NYC-SF route. With the addition of Kentucky, our route now spans 17 states: NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, VA, WV, OH, KY, IN, IL, MO, KS, CO, UT, NV, CA. We've ridden though nine of them already.
Beard-off. Before our cross-country trip, the four of us decided to have a "beard-off". We all shaved cleanly on our last night in NYC and will not shave for the rest of the journey. So far, Troy is in the lead, with me, Devin, and John behind him, in the order of decreasingly bushy beards ...but we are all pretty hairless guys, so our beards all look pathetic.
Conditions: hazy and muggy, with nasty headwinds. After a couple of close thunderstorm calls, one storm finally hit but ran itself out quickly. After the storm, conditions improved suddenly and dramatically: we flew on wings into a gorgeous Cincinnati sunset.
Today we sleep in a motel on the Kentucky side, right across from Cincinnati's beautiful downtown on the hill. The riverfront is the prettiest I've ever seen! Several beautiful bridges span the Ohio here. One of them looks strikingly like the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC.
Joe "The Pig Farmer" called as promised, checking up on our progress.
17th state. Yep, today we've officially added another state to our NYC-SF route. With the addition of Kentucky, our route now spans 17 states: NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, VA, WV, OH, KY, IN, IL, MO, KS, CO, UT, NV, CA. We've ridden though nine of them already.
Beard-off. Before our cross-country trip, the four of us decided to have a "beard-off". We all shaved cleanly on our last night in NYC and will not shave for the rest of the journey. So far, Troy is in the lead, with me, Devin, and John behind him, in the order of decreasingly bushy beards ...but we are all pretty hairless guys, so our beards all look pathetic.
Day 10 (7/3)
Yey! 1,000 km down (622 mi), near Athens OH.
Today's route: Parkersburg WV - Chillicothe OH via Rte. 50 (108 mi, 693 cumulative). Good shoulder; few hills. Route 50 becomes a freeway for 1.5 miles around Athens -- see below about cycling on freeways.
Conditions: gorgeous again, mostly tailwinds.
New personal record: I beat my previous distance record today -- 108 miles in one day! My previous one was 103 miles from tip to tip of Long Island NY this past May.
Caught up with the guys in McArthur OH. Finally saw with my eyes the magic of finding a place to crash for the night. Troy is 'da main man. He comes up to a house and simply asks the people whether we could camp on their property. Simple, reliable -- genius! :-) Nobody ever says no. Would you?
Joe "The Pig Farmer" Litter. A beautiful family near Chillicothe OH hosted us for the night. Joe Litter, his wife Kim and two daughters, Maggie and Riley, plus two neighbors, Jay and Martin, and a couple of their kids, were giving their pigs their nightly exercise and weighing when we came up (each child is in charge of raising a pig for the cattle fair/competition in August).
The incredible hospitality just keeps on coming. They let us use their lake (and the diving board) -- aah, refreshing! -- and their beautiful lawn to camp overnight. In the morning, Joe fed us a hearty breakfast in the house and repeatedly invited us to stay for his big Independence Day party over the weekend (with a band and fireworks!). Moreover, he offered to truck us to Indiana or Illinois after the weekend so that we wouldn't fall behind our riding schedule. We declined, lest we would have to circle ten times around San Francisco to make up the missed mileage. But we do have a standing invitation for the next year's party. Thank you, guys!
Joe is not really a pig farmer. He's a partner in a bridge and road construction company.
Update: Joe's so caring -- like a father -- he keeps checking in on us every night to make sure we are ok! This is really touching. Thanks, Joe, we truly appreciate your hospitality and care!
Pretty names continued:
Little Hocking (town in OH)
Little Kanawha (river in WV; you Russian speakers will appreciate the added poetry of this name in Russian...)
Cycling on freeways. Route 50 often turns into a freeway for a short while around larger towns/cities. Technically, bicycles are prohibited on freeways, but we nevertheless have been riding straight through them -- first, there is usually no "pedestrians and bicycles prohibited" sign when a freeway portion begins; second, it's hard to find an alternate route, especially with our state-level maps; finally, cops routinely drive by and say nothing.
Today's route: Parkersburg WV - Chillicothe OH via Rte. 50 (108 mi, 693 cumulative). Good shoulder; few hills. Route 50 becomes a freeway for 1.5 miles around Athens -- see below about cycling on freeways.
Conditions: gorgeous again, mostly tailwinds.
New personal record: I beat my previous distance record today -- 108 miles in one day! My previous one was 103 miles from tip to tip of Long Island NY this past May.
Caught up with the guys in McArthur OH. Finally saw with my eyes the magic of finding a place to crash for the night. Troy is 'da main man. He comes up to a house and simply asks the people whether we could camp on their property. Simple, reliable -- genius! :-) Nobody ever says no. Would you?
Joe "The Pig Farmer" Litter. A beautiful family near Chillicothe OH hosted us for the night. Joe Litter, his wife Kim and two daughters, Maggie and Riley, plus two neighbors, Jay and Martin, and a couple of their kids, were giving their pigs their nightly exercise and weighing when we came up (each child is in charge of raising a pig for the cattle fair/competition in August).
The incredible hospitality just keeps on coming. They let us use their lake (and the diving board) -- aah, refreshing! -- and their beautiful lawn to camp overnight. In the morning, Joe fed us a hearty breakfast in the house and repeatedly invited us to stay for his big Independence Day party over the weekend (with a band and fireworks!). Moreover, he offered to truck us to Indiana or Illinois after the weekend so that we wouldn't fall behind our riding schedule. We declined, lest we would have to circle ten times around San Francisco to make up the missed mileage. But we do have a standing invitation for the next year's party. Thank you, guys!
Joe is not really a pig farmer. He's a partner in a bridge and road construction company.
Update: Joe's so caring -- like a father -- he keeps checking in on us every night to make sure we are ok! This is really touching. Thanks, Joe, we truly appreciate your hospitality and care!
Pretty names continued:
Little Hocking (town in OH)
Little Kanawha (river in WV; you Russian speakers will appreciate the added poetry of this name in Russian...)
Cycling on freeways. Route 50 often turns into a freeway for a short while around larger towns/cities. Technically, bicycles are prohibited on freeways, but we nevertheless have been riding straight through them -- first, there is usually no "pedestrians and bicycles prohibited" sign when a freeway portion begins; second, it's hard to find an alternate route, especially with our state-level maps; finally, cops routinely drive by and say nothing.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Day 9 (7/2)
Chillin' in Parkersburg WV, a border town between WV and OH. John, Troy, and Devin are on the way from Clarksburg WV. Last night I was tired from 8 days of riding and didn't feel like looking for a place to camp, so I got a room at a Red Roof Inn motel. Planned to wake up early, but overslept and got up at 2 pm, risking getting charged for a second night :-) Luckily, the front desk guy was kind to me and only charged me for one night.
Update: when the library closed (I spent the whole day there), I realized that my phone had been off all day. I checked the messages and it turned out that my guys had made it to Parkersburg really early, by 1 pm. Not being able to reach me, they went ahead and stopped for the night 30 miles away from the border, in Athens OH. I have some serious catching up to do in the morning. Meanwhile, I need to find a place to sleep and feel that I should finally learn how to do it without shelling out 50-70 bucks for a motel. Thus begins tonight's story...
April, Laura, and Julie. April and Laura are counter girls at "The Pizza Place" in Parkersburg. Hungry after a day of interneting, I bought some pizza (mmm, it was really good!) and asked them about a campground or some other place to camp (perhaps, the city park?). The response was not reassuring (i.e. state forest too far, city park closes at dusk, etc.). Vacillating between getting a motel again and just crashing on the Parkersburg High School lawn, I finally overcame my shyness and asked the girls directly whether they knew someone on whose lawn I could crash. To my delight, they immediately said yes -- their friend Julie lives around the corner.
When she met me, Julie ushered me into her living room and called her friends Shelby, Mary, Dawn, and other old hippies (like Julie herself) who'd used to go on Dead tours and do other flower-child stuff like that. At midnight, Laura and April came with a huge pizza that had every topping on it except anchovies. We kicked back together into the wee hours, watching movies, talking, singing, and so on. Needless to say, Julie wouldn't have any of my "sleeping on the lawn" nonsense that night!
I sincerely regret not having poetic talents, because I don't have enough command of the language to give adequate credit to these people and their kind hospitality. Julie, at 42, works two jobs, one at The Pizza Place and the other at a McD's. She lives in a poor neighborhood, among not-so-well-to-do people, many with history of drug abuse, rehab, etc. (for example, a guy named Robby, just out of prison, came near midnight asking Julie for some help). And yet, she's one of the happiest, kindest, and most optimistic people I've met. And her friends are just great, too! Thanks a lot, guys! Keep in touch and come visit me in NYC.
I just realized: Julie reminds me of Galchonok Moshinsky in NYC! They are both magnets for cool people :-)
Brain freeze. Anna and I shared a thought that had occurred to each of us independently when riding. We had planned to pass our daily cycling tedium in useful thought about our careers, projects, and so on. But long-distance cycling now seems less conducive to such contemplation than we had anticipated. Instead, your brain focuses on the present and the short-term future, such as "wow, this is one picturesque pasture!" or "what will I put in today's blog entry?" or "man, it's getting dark, I hope we make it to X on time". We called this state "brain freeze".
Roadside memorials. We've seen a lot of roadside memorials, I guess, to people killed in car accidents.
Today's route: nothing really, just rode around Parkersburg (about 7 miles).
Update: when the library closed (I spent the whole day there), I realized that my phone had been off all day. I checked the messages and it turned out that my guys had made it to Parkersburg really early, by 1 pm. Not being able to reach me, they went ahead and stopped for the night 30 miles away from the border, in Athens OH. I have some serious catching up to do in the morning. Meanwhile, I need to find a place to sleep and feel that I should finally learn how to do it without shelling out 50-70 bucks for a motel. Thus begins tonight's story...
April, Laura, and Julie. April and Laura are counter girls at "The Pizza Place" in Parkersburg. Hungry after a day of interneting, I bought some pizza (mmm, it was really good!) and asked them about a campground or some other place to camp (perhaps, the city park?). The response was not reassuring (i.e. state forest too far, city park closes at dusk, etc.). Vacillating between getting a motel again and just crashing on the Parkersburg High School lawn, I finally overcame my shyness and asked the girls directly whether they knew someone on whose lawn I could crash. To my delight, they immediately said yes -- their friend Julie lives around the corner.When she met me, Julie ushered me into her living room and called her friends Shelby, Mary, Dawn, and other old hippies (like Julie herself) who'd used to go on Dead tours and do other flower-child stuff like that. At midnight, Laura and April came with a huge pizza that had every topping on it except anchovies. We kicked back together into the wee hours, watching movies, talking, singing, and so on. Needless to say, Julie wouldn't have any of my "sleeping on the lawn" nonsense that night!
I sincerely regret not having poetic talents, because I don't have enough command of the language to give adequate credit to these people and their kind hospitality. Julie, at 42, works two jobs, one at The Pizza Place and the other at a McD's. She lives in a poor neighborhood, among not-so-well-to-do people, many with history of drug abuse, rehab, etc. (for example, a guy named Robby, just out of prison, came near midnight asking Julie for some help). And yet, she's one of the happiest, kindest, and most optimistic people I've met. And her friends are just great, too! Thanks a lot, guys! Keep in touch and come visit me in NYC.
I just realized: Julie reminds me of Galchonok Moshinsky in NYC! They are both magnets for cool people :-)
Brain freeze. Anna and I shared a thought that had occurred to each of us independently when riding. We had planned to pass our daily cycling tedium in useful thought about our careers, projects, and so on. But long-distance cycling now seems less conducive to such contemplation than we had anticipated. Instead, your brain focuses on the present and the short-term future, such as "wow, this is one picturesque pasture!" or "what will I put in today's blog entry?" or "man, it's getting dark, I hope we make it to X on time". We called this state "brain freeze".
Roadside memorials. We've seen a lot of roadside memorials, I guess, to people killed in car accidents.Today's route: nothing really, just rode around Parkersburg (about 7 miles).
Day 8 (7/1)
I've realized that libraries (and hence, internet access) are closed on Sunday, so decided to ride to Parkersburg WV ahead of the guys while they take Sunday off to go to church. I'll take a day off tomorrow (Monday) in Parkersburg while the guys catch up. Parkersburg is on the Ohio river. We'll cross it into Ohio on Tuesday morning.
Today's route: Clarksburg WV - Parkersburg WV on US-50 (78 miles, 578 cumulative). Route 50 here is a marvel of engineering, perhaps the best road so far into the trip. It cuts like a knife through the wildest, most erratic maze of sharpest hills I've seen and winds gently as if the hills all around didn't exist. Builders blasted through the tops of hills to cradle the road and used the resulting rock and soil to fill in the valleys. As a result, the road never exceeds about 7% grade. The shoulder is wider than a vehicle lane, so you feel safe and cozy on it. Finally, the scenery (heavily wooded hills) lets the eye and mind rest while you pedal in a leisurly manner.
Some joker with a refreshing sense of humor has painted cute comments for cyclists (or runners?) on the shoulder:
and
and
Conditions: a beautiful dry sunny day with fluffy cottonball clouds. Some headwind, but what's a little headwind after two days on West Virginia's old Route 50!
While having lunch at a gas station, I spoke with some bikers (whole posses of them rumble through West Virginia endlessly in both directions) and told them about our trip. A lady biker later approached me and offered four dollars so I could buy myself a meal or something. I tried to decline, but she insisted and I took it. People are very friendly, and we have lots of such touching moments. Some folks have given us free food, water, shelter, and so on. Others tell us that they'll pray for our safety.
Pretty names. Decided to keep track of beautiful names of things we pass. For example, today I passed a Tarkiln Road. I also love the names Susquehanna and Shenandoah (rivers).
How dead animals help us. We see a lot of roadkill. Turns out these dead animals help us to determine wind direction while riding. If you start to smell the animal before you reach it, you've got headwind; if you smell it after you pass it, you have tailwind; and so on ...you get the point.
While on the subject of dead animals, today I saw the first snake, the first turtle, and a black bear cub.
But I do get to see many live animals, too ;-) While riding next to a rocky, wooded cliff today, I spooked a deer and it ran next to me for 20 meters until it could get past the cliff and into the woods. The deer was so close I was afraid it would hit me.
Today's route: Clarksburg WV - Parkersburg WV on US-50 (78 miles, 578 cumulative). Route 50 here is a marvel of engineering, perhaps the best road so far into the trip. It cuts like a knife through the wildest, most erratic maze of sharpest hills I've seen and winds gently as if the hills all around didn't exist. Builders blasted through the tops of hills to cradle the road and used the resulting rock and soil to fill in the valleys. As a result, the road never exceeds about 7% grade. The shoulder is wider than a vehicle lane, so you feel safe and cozy on it. Finally, the scenery (heavily wooded hills) lets the eye and mind rest while you pedal in a leisurly manner.
Some joker with a refreshing sense of humor has painted cute comments for cyclists (or runners?) on the shoulder:
and
and
Conditions: a beautiful dry sunny day with fluffy cottonball clouds. Some headwind, but what's a little headwind after two days on West Virginia's old Route 50!
While having lunch at a gas station, I spoke with some bikers (whole posses of them rumble through West Virginia endlessly in both directions) and told them about our trip. A lady biker later approached me and offered four dollars so I could buy myself a meal or something. I tried to decline, but she insisted and I took it. People are very friendly, and we have lots of such touching moments. Some folks have given us free food, water, shelter, and so on. Others tell us that they'll pray for our safety.
Pretty names. Decided to keep track of beautiful names of things we pass. For example, today I passed a Tarkiln Road. I also love the names Susquehanna and Shenandoah (rivers).
How dead animals help us. We see a lot of roadkill. Turns out these dead animals help us to determine wind direction while riding. If you start to smell the animal before you reach it, you've got headwind; if you smell it after you pass it, you have tailwind; and so on ...you get the point.
While on the subject of dead animals, today I saw the first snake, the first turtle, and a black bear cub.
But I do get to see many live animals, too ;-) While riding next to a rocky, wooded cliff today, I spooked a deer and it ran next to me for 20 meters until it could get past the cliff and into the woods. The deer was so close I was afraid it would hit me.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Day 7 (6/30)
Hurray! 500 miles down, 3000 more to go.
Today's route: Mount Storm WV - Clarksburg WV via Route 50 (75 miles, 500 cumulative). The most brutal portion of our route in the Appalachians -- sharp, 9%-grade hills, up and down, up and down... A few stretches of multiple "kiss your own ass" (technical term) switchbacks. In a couple places, the downhills were so sharp and long that my hands hurt from squeezing the brakes.
The road is narrow, winding, and picturesque. I want to say it's as country as it gets, but I still think that the north-eastern corner of Connecticut is slightly more remote and isolated. The shoulder is either narrow or non-existent, but because the traffic was extremely light, the lack of shoulder was not discomforting.
Conditions: gorgeous! Sunny, dry, about 75 F. If you took away the hills, today's would be the perfect riding conditions. A better combination of sun/clouds, temperature, road, scenery, and people simply does not exist!
Personal speed record. Just after getting out of Mt. Storm this morning, I've established my personal downhill cycling speed record: 42 miles/hr. Zooming down that hill was both exhilarating and scary; it seemed that either my bike would take off like a plane, or something would get unscrewed and the resulting scene just wouldn't be pretty.
American hospitality on steroids. The guys made some phone calls to find a Mormon church in Clarksburg in which we could crash for the night. But when we arrived, the church was already closed, with nobody in sight. John and Troy rode to the nearest houses to ask around and returned with an invitation from a family to spend the night in their barn. Super, we thought! But that was just the beginning. The family (Kurt and Patricia Skasik and their son, Kurt) not only let us use the shower (a god-send after our day of mountain hell!), but also ordered us pizza, gave us (hm ...me) beer, hosted us in their spacious guest room, and let us use the Internet. Thanks a lot, guys! We hope to be able to return the favor in Utah and New York.
Today's route: Mount Storm WV - Clarksburg WV via Route 50 (75 miles, 500 cumulative). The most brutal portion of our route in the Appalachians -- sharp, 9%-grade hills, up and down, up and down... A few stretches of multiple "kiss your own ass" (technical term) switchbacks. In a couple places, the downhills were so sharp and long that my hands hurt from squeezing the brakes.
The road is narrow, winding, and picturesque. I want to say it's as country as it gets, but I still think that the north-eastern corner of Connecticut is slightly more remote and isolated. The shoulder is either narrow or non-existent, but because the traffic was extremely light, the lack of shoulder was not discomforting.
Conditions: gorgeous! Sunny, dry, about 75 F. If you took away the hills, today's would be the perfect riding conditions. A better combination of sun/clouds, temperature, road, scenery, and people simply does not exist!
Personal speed record. Just after getting out of Mt. Storm this morning, I've established my personal downhill cycling speed record: 42 miles/hr. Zooming down that hill was both exhilarating and scary; it seemed that either my bike would take off like a plane, or something would get unscrewed and the resulting scene just wouldn't be pretty.
American hospitality on steroids. The guys made some phone calls to find a Mormon church in Clarksburg in which we could crash for the night. But when we arrived, the church was already closed, with nobody in sight. John and Troy rode to the nearest houses to ask around and returned with an invitation from a family to spend the night in their barn. Super, we thought! But that was just the beginning. The family (Kurt and Patricia Skasik and their son, Kurt) not only let us use the shower (a god-send after our day of mountain hell!), but also ordered us pizza, gave us (hm ...me) beer, hosted us in their spacious guest room, and let us use the Internet. Thanks a lot, guys! We hope to be able to return the favor in Utah and New York.
Day 6 (6/29)
Today's mileage: 63 (425 cumulative).
Spending the night in Mt. Storm, WV.
Indeed, West Virginia is quite hilly, to say the least. The worst was the monster Saddle Mountain via a brutal 5-mile-long, unrelenting 9%-grade series of hairpin switchbacks. Please no more!
:-) but it's all good, we are growing stronger every day. I feel like I can climb any mountain, now that a third of West Virginia is behind us.
Cornflowers ...not. As soon as we enter West Virginia, bright blue flowers appear everywhere on the sides of the road (Update: I've seen them now in every state through Kansas. Update 2: we haven't seen them past KS.) I think they are cornflowers and immediately think of Debra Schifrin (hey, babe!) and my website's top banner's background, whose color is HTML's "cornflowerblue". I later look up cornflowers on Wikipedia and, unfortunately, the flowers I've been seeing turn out to be something other than cornflowers :-( Here's a photo.
A tune is on my tongue all day long:
La-la-laaaa, West Virginia,
Mountain momma,
Tay-aake me ho-ome,
Country road...
Spending the night in Mt. Storm, WV.
Indeed, West Virginia is quite hilly, to say the least. The worst was the monster Saddle Mountain via a brutal 5-mile-long, unrelenting 9%-grade series of hairpin switchbacks. Please no more!:-) but it's all good, we are growing stronger every day. I feel like I can climb any mountain, now that a third of West Virginia is behind us.
Cornflowers ...not. As soon as we enter West Virginia, bright blue flowers appear everywhere on the sides of the road (Update: I've seen them now in every state through Kansas. Update 2: we haven't seen them past KS.) I think they are cornflowers and immediately think of Debra Schifrin (hey, babe!) and my website's top banner's background, whose color is HTML's "cornflowerblue". I later look up cornflowers on Wikipedia and, unfortunately, the flowers I've been seeing turn out to be something other than cornflowers :-( Here's a photo.
A tune is on my tongue all day long:
La-la-laaaa, West Virginia,
Mountain momma,
Tay-aake me ho-ome,
Country road...
Day 5 (6/28)
Today's route: Lucketts VA - Gore VA via routes 15 and 50 (74 miles, 362 cumulative). Route 50 here has almost no shoulder, which I'm still not used to and therefore a bit uncomfortable (especially with all the honking from motorists, see below). Neat grassy fields with horses and some cattle; patches of shady oak forests -- very bucolic and picturesque scenery all day.
We cross the Shenandoah River. From the bridge, we can see down to the bottom through its clear, quick waters. Later we hit our first monster hill, a preview of what we'll ride in West Virginia for at least two days.
Conditions: sunny and a bit muggy, hinting at the approaching storm ahead. As the day changes to evening, storm clouds gather and grow menacing in their blackness. Anna and I get in touch with Devin, Troy, and John ahead. They stopped in Gore trying to figure out where to camp. In the gathering darkness, we rush out of Winchester VA, but the storm hits and we have just enough time to seek cover at a gas station.
Slammer and Buddy. Gore is a little (~800 people) border village between VA and WV. After the storm, Anna and I ride down into the valley in complete darkness and John meets us at the intersection to take us to Troy and Devin. They had met a couple of hick-like characters who might be able to help with a place to camp. John tells us that they looked dangerous (i.e. were drunk and invited our guys to smoke weed with them) and so we won't stay with them under any circumstances. But when we get to their small car repair garage, the rain picks up again. The two locals -- Buddy and Slammer -- offer us the garage for the night and we reluctantly stay. Later we settle in, wash ourselves using a garden hose, and Anna and I drink some beers with Buddy and Slammer and sit with them into the early morning hours, talking about life, as John, Troy, and Devin sleep peacefully in the dark recesses of the garage. Buddy and Slammer turned out to be the kindest, most caring people, the kind who would give you the shirt off their backs. They reminded me of the beautiful, simple, kind people I'd met on my travels in Siberia. Thank you for your warmth and hospitality, guys! If you come to NYC, give me a call and I hope to return the favor you did us in the cold, rainy Gore night. The photo shows (left to right): Buddy, Slammer, myself, Troy.
We hit West Virginia tomorrow morning -- it's going to be a killer (crossing the Appalachians "across the wrinkles"). Tomorrow is also the day that Anna is leaving to hitchhike back to NYC; I'm worried about how she's going to make it, since her trip will involve several legs: Gore VA - Winchester VA - maybe Martinsburg VA - Washington DC - NYC. (Update: she has safely made it to NYC, but not without some adventures; her blog is http://artsyanka.livejournal.com/, maybe she'll post something about it there...)
Honking and the middle finger. Motorists often honk or shout as they pass you on the road. It spooks you almost to the point of falling off the bike. In addition to being scary, it's annoying, as you tend to assume that the honks are malicious in nature (i.e. "use the sidewalk, you slow-moving, road-blocking cyclist"). In response, you want to kick their car (but can't, since it's far away by the time you think this), or flick them off, or "teach them" in some other way. Today I embarrassed myself. Anna and I were standing on the shoulder when a passing car gave us a really long honk. My annoyance had built up to the brim, so I flicked them off. As I stand there with my middle finger extended in the air, I see a bunch of smiling, hand-waiving teenagers in the car. Oops... They were expressing encouragement, not malice?! Since that incident, I've resolved to treat all honking and shouting as signs of encouragement. Maybe this'll make them less scary; definitely less annoying :-)
We cross the Shenandoah River. From the bridge, we can see down to the bottom through its clear, quick waters. Later we hit our first monster hill, a preview of what we'll ride in West Virginia for at least two days.
Conditions: sunny and a bit muggy, hinting at the approaching storm ahead. As the day changes to evening, storm clouds gather and grow menacing in their blackness. Anna and I get in touch with Devin, Troy, and John ahead. They stopped in Gore trying to figure out where to camp. In the gathering darkness, we rush out of Winchester VA, but the storm hits and we have just enough time to seek cover at a gas station.
Slammer and Buddy. Gore is a little (~800 people) border village between VA and WV. After the storm, Anna and I ride down into the valley in complete darkness and John meets us at the intersection to take us to Troy and Devin. They had met a couple of hick-like characters who might be able to help with a place to camp. John tells us that they looked dangerous (i.e. were drunk and invited our guys to smoke weed with them) and so we won't stay with them under any circumstances. But when we get to their small car repair garage, the rain picks up again. The two locals -- Buddy and Slammer -- offer us the garage for the night and we reluctantly stay. Later we settle in, wash ourselves using a garden hose, and Anna and I drink some beers with Buddy and Slammer and sit with them into the early morning hours, talking about life, as John, Troy, and Devin sleep peacefully in the dark recesses of the garage. Buddy and Slammer turned out to be the kindest, most caring people, the kind who would give you the shirt off their backs. They reminded me of the beautiful, simple, kind people I'd met on my travels in Siberia. Thank you for your warmth and hospitality, guys! If you come to NYC, give me a call and I hope to return the favor you did us in the cold, rainy Gore night. The photo shows (left to right): Buddy, Slammer, myself, Troy.We hit West Virginia tomorrow morning -- it's going to be a killer (crossing the Appalachians "across the wrinkles"). Tomorrow is also the day that Anna is leaving to hitchhike back to NYC; I'm worried about how she's going to make it, since her trip will involve several legs: Gore VA - Winchester VA - maybe Martinsburg VA - Washington DC - NYC. (Update: she has safely made it to NYC, but not without some adventures; her blog is http://artsyanka.livejournal.com/, maybe she'll post something about it there...)
Honking and the middle finger. Motorists often honk or shout as they pass you on the road. It spooks you almost to the point of falling off the bike. In addition to being scary, it's annoying, as you tend to assume that the honks are malicious in nature (i.e. "use the sidewalk, you slow-moving, road-blocking cyclist"). In response, you want to kick their car (but can't, since it's far away by the time you think this), or flick them off, or "teach them" in some other way. Today I embarrassed myself. Anna and I were standing on the shoulder when a passing car gave us a really long honk. My annoyance had built up to the brim, so I flicked them off. As I stand there with my middle finger extended in the air, I see a bunch of smiling, hand-waiving teenagers in the car. Oops... They were expressing encouragement, not malice?! Since that incident, I've resolved to treat all honking and shouting as signs of encouragement. Maybe this'll make them less scary; definitely less annoying :-)
Day 4 (6/27)
Today's route: Baltimore MD - Washington DC - Lucketts VA via routes 1, 29, 50 (80 miles, 288 cumulative). The route was nice everywhere except when getting out of Washington. As soon as we crossed the Arlington Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, Route 50 turned into a freeway -- not suitable for bicycles -- so we had to find an alternative route (Rt. 29) to bypass it. When we finally got onto Rt. 50 later, it had very fast traffic and no shoulder -- a bit unnerving, but we made it. Plus, we enjoyed a marvelous preview of the many beautiful sunsets we should see now that we are finally on 50 West.
Shortly before the nightfall, Troy's friend Shawnie picked us up in her Suburban and took us to her house in Lucketts for the night -- thanks for your hospitality, Shawnie & family! You're a beautiful family!
Conditions: very hot and humid; almost unbearable stickiness all over; yuck!
Anna had big hopes for Washington, even considered cutting her trip short there to go exploring, but decided that she hates the place. She says it's because of Washington's overly grandiose and monumental architecture, but I think it might be due to the effect of heat :-)
We spent about four hours in Washington and visited all the necessary attractions: the White House, the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, the Vietnam War Memorial, and so on. John and Troy even ran through an art exhibit while Devin was taking a nap in a cafe tent and Anna and I were catching some Zs in the shade of Washington Memorial's giant obelisk.
Devin teaches me Ebonics. "Foo', gimme one 'dem cookies!"
Items lost so far: a pair of bike gloves; tooth brush.
Shortly before the nightfall, Troy's friend Shawnie picked us up in her Suburban and took us to her house in Lucketts for the night -- thanks for your hospitality, Shawnie & family! You're a beautiful family!
Conditions: very hot and humid; almost unbearable stickiness all over; yuck!
Anna had big hopes for Washington, even considered cutting her trip short there to go exploring, but decided that she hates the place. She says it's because of Washington's overly grandiose and monumental architecture, but I think it might be due to the effect of heat :-)
We spent about four hours in Washington and visited all the necessary attractions: the White House, the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, the Vietnam War Memorial, and so on. John and Troy even ran through an art exhibit while Devin was taking a nap in a cafe tent and Anna and I were catching some Zs in the shade of Washington Memorial's giant obelisk.
Devin teaches me Ebonics. "Foo', gimme one 'dem cookies!"
Items lost so far: a pair of bike gloves; tooth brush.
Day 3 (6/26)
Today's route: Tinicum PA - Baltimore MD via highways 291, 13, and 40 (88 miles, 208 cumulative). The area around Tinicum is a mix of run-down, poor neighborhoods and some extreme industrial landscape (oil refineries). Then the dusty industrial flats of south-eastern PA gradually give way to rolling hills of Maryland, where Route 40 carries you straight into Baltimore.
Spending the night in Baltimore at Devin's friend Brian's place. Thanks for your hospitality, Brian & gang.
Conditions. Today was an excruciatingly hot, sunny, humid day (95 F, 80% humidity), but we battled the adversity via obscene amounts of sunblock and creative usage of water (see below), and managed to cover a lot of ground: 88 miles!
A curiosity of civil engineering. Rt. 40 is very bicycle-friendly. The shoulder is very wide and even has an official bike route designation (a bicycle painted on the shoulder every now and then). Yet, when you reach the bridge across the Susquehanna, you realize that bicycles and pedestrians are prohibited on it :-( You can ride around, but that's a 25-mile detour! Luckily, we were able to hitch rides across the bridge: Devin, John, and Troy on a service vehicle from the toll booths, and Anna and I on a pick-up truck from the corner gas station (thanks, Kevin-the-cement-contractor!).
Air conditioned bicycle? Yes! You soak your shirt in water and put it on, dripping wet. This is wonderful -- it cools you off really well for a half hour until the shirt dries up. Then you repeat the procedure and ride on.
Spending the night in Baltimore at Devin's friend Brian's place. Thanks for your hospitality, Brian & gang.
Conditions. Today was an excruciatingly hot, sunny, humid day (95 F, 80% humidity), but we battled the adversity via obscene amounts of sunblock and creative usage of water (see below), and managed to cover a lot of ground: 88 miles!
A curiosity of civil engineering. Rt. 40 is very bicycle-friendly. The shoulder is very wide and even has an official bike route designation (a bicycle painted on the shoulder every now and then). Yet, when you reach the bridge across the Susquehanna, you realize that bicycles and pedestrians are prohibited on it :-( You can ride around, but that's a 25-mile detour! Luckily, we were able to hitch rides across the bridge: Devin, John, and Troy on a service vehicle from the toll booths, and Anna and I on a pick-up truck from the corner gas station (thanks, Kevin-the-cement-contractor!).
Air conditioned bicycle? Yes! You soak your shirt in water and put it on, dripping wet. This is wonderful -- it cools you off really well for a half hour until the shirt dries up. Then you repeat the procedure and ride on.
Day 2 (6/25)
Serge left after we had lunch at the famous "Jim's" in Philadelphia. Anna, John, Troy, Devin, and I rode on and are spending the night at the beautiful Tinicum Township Public Pool (camping by the poolside after some heart-stopping 3-meter dives :-) Carter, thanks a ton for letting us camp on the pool grounds!
Today's mileage: 69 miles (120 cumulative)
Lucky wrong directions. On the way out of Philadelphia we asked a man for directions to US Highway 1 and he sent us in an utterly wrong direction, which we realized only when it was too far to turn back (huge detour). Luckily, when we later looked at a map to find an alternative route, we discovered two things: (1) US-1 south of Philly is a freeway for many miles, with few or no suitable alternatives; and (2) there's a much straighter and bicycle-friendly route, US-40, which we ended up taking to Baltimore the next day.
Today's mileage: 69 miles (120 cumulative)
Lucky wrong directions. On the way out of Philadelphia we asked a man for directions to US Highway 1 and he sent us in an utterly wrong direction, which we realized only when it was too far to turn back (huge detour). Luckily, when we later looked at a map to find an alternative route, we discovered two things: (1) US-1 south of Philly is a freeway for many miles, with few or no suitable alternatives; and (2) there's a much straighter and bicycle-friendly route, US-40, which we ended up taking to Baltimore the next day.
Day 1 (6/24)
Today's route: Brighton Beach, Brooklyn NY - Manhattan - Newark NJ - Princeton NJ via local streets, Brooklyn Bridge, Path train, and Route 27 (51 miles total).
We are: Devin Mattson, Troy Richey, John Lattin, and I (the coast-to-coast crew), Anna Rozenblat (coming with us for the first five days), Serge Maryanchik (coming by car for the first two days to make a film), and Ilia Malkovitch and Maxim Adelman (riding with us for the first day).
Tons of adventures on Day 1, read on!
Dipping of the wheels in the Atlantic. We started the trip with a ceremonial dipping of our rear wheels in the Atlantic. When we get to San Francisco, we'll dip our front wheels in the Pacific to signify the completion of our journey across the continent -- but that's too far to even imagine now! As a good omen for the trip, on the beach we bumped into a guy who had done the cross-country trip years ago. He wished us luck and gave a few last-minute pointers on gear and roads.
Mormon church. Apparently, there's a Mormon church right next to my home in Brooklyn. The guys insisted that we take a couple of hours off on Sunday to go to church, and so they found the church through the LDS website and we went (four miles down, 3496 more to go -- yeah!).
The fountain. We decided to stop for the night in Princeton, home of the beautiful Princeton University campus. After a day of riding, the first thought on everyone's mind was -- no, not food -- shower! Luckily, there was a nice modern fountain on campus and we all took a delightful dip.
The fountain sits in front of a university building (some kind of International Relations Department or something of that nature) -- with well-appointed halls, faculty portraits on the walls, leather couches, rugs, and so on. After bathing in the fountain, we went into the building to use the bathroom. As I come out into the sumptuous vestibule wearing nothing but wet shorts, with wet underwear in my hand, I see a well-dressed couple ascending the front steps. They looked like the parents of a prospective Princeton student, coming to check out the campus where their child is about to spend his formative four years. And what do they see in the luxurious hall? -- several semi-naked guys leaving wet footprints on the marble floors. Shock was written on the wide-eyed faces of mom and pop :-)
Niki. I accidentally bumped into my HBS section mate Niki Vaswani on the Princeton campus. How weird is that, and on the very first day of our cross-country adventure! Niki is a girl I sat next to the whole second semester of my first year at school.
Two zombies. We made camp on the shore of a lake, a spot recommended by a super dorky yet cool Russian "academician" we met at a pizza/beer cafe earlier that night. Our Mormons went to sleep, but Serge, Anna, and I thought it was still early and decided to take a dip. When a University cop kicked us out of the nearby boat ramp, we crossed a remote bridge to the other side of the lake and did some refreshing skinny dipping. It was already past 1 am, the moonless night was dark, and the bridge was remote and trafficless. On the way back across, Anna and I played a game: whenever a lonely car approached, we rolled our eyes, clutched our arms, and walked in a robot-zombie-type gait, dragging our feet, in the headlights. It was hard to resist laughing. A fun, fun game!
We are: Devin Mattson, Troy Richey, John Lattin, and I (the coast-to-coast crew), Anna Rozenblat (coming with us for the first five days), Serge Maryanchik (coming by car for the first two days to make a film), and Ilia Malkovitch and Maxim Adelman (riding with us for the first day).
Tons of adventures on Day 1, read on!
Dipping of the wheels in the Atlantic. We started the trip with a ceremonial dipping of our rear wheels in the Atlantic. When we get to San Francisco, we'll dip our front wheels in the Pacific to signify the completion of our journey across the continent -- but that's too far to even imagine now! As a good omen for the trip, on the beach we bumped into a guy who had done the cross-country trip years ago. He wished us luck and gave a few last-minute pointers on gear and roads.
Mormon church. Apparently, there's a Mormon church right next to my home in Brooklyn. The guys insisted that we take a couple of hours off on Sunday to go to church, and so they found the church through the LDS website and we went (four miles down, 3496 more to go -- yeah!).
The fountain. We decided to stop for the night in Princeton, home of the beautiful Princeton University campus. After a day of riding, the first thought on everyone's mind was -- no, not food -- shower! Luckily, there was a nice modern fountain on campus and we all took a delightful dip.
The fountain sits in front of a university building (some kind of International Relations Department or something of that nature) -- with well-appointed halls, faculty portraits on the walls, leather couches, rugs, and so on. After bathing in the fountain, we went into the building to use the bathroom. As I come out into the sumptuous vestibule wearing nothing but wet shorts, with wet underwear in my hand, I see a well-dressed couple ascending the front steps. They looked like the parents of a prospective Princeton student, coming to check out the campus where their child is about to spend his formative four years. And what do they see in the luxurious hall? -- several semi-naked guys leaving wet footprints on the marble floors. Shock was written on the wide-eyed faces of mom and pop :-)
Niki. I accidentally bumped into my HBS section mate Niki Vaswani on the Princeton campus. How weird is that, and on the very first day of our cross-country adventure! Niki is a girl I sat next to the whole second semester of my first year at school.
Two zombies. We made camp on the shore of a lake, a spot recommended by a super dorky yet cool Russian "academician" we met at a pizza/beer cafe earlier that night. Our Mormons went to sleep, but Serge, Anna, and I thought it was still early and decided to take a dip. When a University cop kicked us out of the nearby boat ramp, we crossed a remote bridge to the other side of the lake and did some refreshing skinny dipping. It was already past 1 am, the moonless night was dark, and the bridge was remote and trafficless. On the way back across, Anna and I played a game: whenever a lonely car approached, we rolled our eyes, clutched our arms, and walked in a robot-zombie-type gait, dragging our feet, in the headlights. It was hard to resist laughing. A fun, fun game!
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Gear list is now online
I've published a long-distance bicycling gear list. See the Gear section of our website.
-mk
-mk
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
A draft of the "Guide" published on the website
I've published a draft of the "First-Timer's Guide to Event-Based Nonprofit Fundraising" on our website.
-mk
-mk
Friday, May 11, 2007
Just finished the 4th semiannual "Tour de New England"
Boston - New York, 229 miles, 2.5 days, using an MA-RI-CT-Long Island route. Longest stretch: 103 miles in one day from Point Orient, NY to Brooklyn, NY via NY Route 25; took 13 hours, including ~9 hours of pure riding time.
Pictures are here.
-mk
Pictures are here.
-mk
Monday, May 7, 2007
An article about the ride published in The Harbus
"The Harbus" (the HBS student newspaper) has published an article about our bike ride.
-mk
-mk
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Today we launched our website!
We've launched our ride's website: http://bikecoasttocoast.org/ — check it out and get involved; it's for a worthy cause!
-mk
-mk
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
First post about our Route 50 coast-to-coast bicycle ride
Welcome to my "Pedal Against Cancer - Bike Coast to Coast on US-50" blog. I'll post my travel journal here. For other riders' blogs, see our website.
-mk
-mk
Monday, January 29, 2007
Who is Laur Balaur?
Laur Balaur (stress the second-to-last syllable in each word) is an evil, dragon-like thing in Romanian fairy tales. He always looks for ways to abuse Ileana Cosânzeana and Făt-Frumos. More about them later, maybe.
Thursday, September 1, 2005
First semiannual "Tour de New England" ride (NYC-Boston)
On 2005/08/15-17, I did a three-day solo bicycle ride from New York to Boston, and here's my report for your enjoyment and possible future practical use.Here are a few pictures I took during the ride.
Let me get a couple of things out of the way. Due to my careful planning and thorough preparation, the ride went off without a hitch and was therefore relatively uneventful -- is that good or bad..? -- but a few curious things did happen.
On my second night, I stopped at a supermarket near Storrs, CT, as it was getting dark and I had to get water and figure out my sleeping arrangements. I asked around about a place where I could camp overnight. Some man overheard and offered me to sleep over on his couch; I declined (though I had heard about random people offering their premises to cyclists). That night, I camped on a brightly moonlit field in the woods, under the magical starry sky, munching on beef jerky and sipping Blue Moon. Mmmm!
By the way, that UConn campus (Storrs) seems to be a party place, full of cute girls. They were hauling cases upon cases of beer from the supermarket -- and that on a Tuesday night during summer recess. Allka confirms: she used to party there all the time as a high-schooler in the old days.
Before my trip, my mom had heard about the increased incidence of bear encounters in Connecticut and made many hearted attempts to discourage me from taking the trip, let alone solo, especially if I had to camp in the wild. Though I dismissed her worries, they caught up with me. No, I did not encounter a bear. But I spent that whole moonlit night beeing chased by black bears in my nightmarish dreams :(
By the way, tss... my mom still thinks I spent that night at Allka's parents' house in West Hartford.
I had been estimating my biking speed through distance and time, when on my third day I actually got clocked by a roadside radar! 15 mph. Wow, I thought, it clocks ciclysts, too? Then I tried running toward the radar on foot, but it did not show any numbers. How does it know what objects to clock?
Also, a special thanks goes to Malkovitch (and cell phone service and Google satellite maps), who was my eyes in the skies when I got lost or needed some fine-tuned course correction.
Now, the nitty-gritty, together with my observations.
1. The route
Day 1: The Bronx to New Haven, CT, via US route 1 north-east. I started in the Bronx (went there by subway) to minimize the distance on the first day.
Day 2: New Haven to West Hartford via state route 10 north; West Hartford to Easton via US route 44 east.
Day 3: Easton to Webster, MA, via state routes 198, 171, and 197, north-east; Webster to Cambridge via state route 16 east.
On the first, second, and third days I did 6, 8, and 8 hours of riding, respectively (with 1.5, 3.5, and 3 hours of rest time, respectively).
Calculating the per-day distances is a pain in the butt, but the total distance, as stated on the Boston-New York AIDS awareness bike tour's web site (using about the same route as mine), is 276 miles, or 444 km.
Cyclists (as well as pedestrians, snowmobilers, etc.) are not allowed on freeways ("controlled-access highways", such as I-95, I-91, I-84, and I-90), therefore one must use US, state, or local roads. The best maps to use are automobile maps of states (I carried CT and MA), because maps of the entire Northeast or other such large regions are not detailed enough.
A note on Stamford's architecture. When you drive on I-95 past Stamford, CT, you see a couple of strange buildings (inverted glass pyramids, etc.), but, man, do you see tons of craziness when you get into the town! It seems architects there tried to outcompete one another in creativiy. I recommend making a stop there next time you are on I-95.
2. Logistics
Food, water, toilets: I used fast-food establishments plentiful along the route.
Sleeping accomodations: I slept in the "Three Judges" motel in New Haven on the first night and camped in a field near Storrs, CT, on the second.
Expenses: my total expenses were $72 for food/drink (including the delicacies: beer and beef jerky :) and $56 for the motel.
A note on bike security. Outside metropolitan areas, it seems safe to leave the bike (even unlocked) outside. Still, I tried always to bring the bike inside (just do it, don't ask them for permission) and even locked it to itself using a cheap, lightweight cable lock from Kryptonite (I had left my super heavy 'New York Chain' lock at home).
BTW, Kryptonite gives you a free one-year anti-theft insurance (up to $3,000) with the purchase of their 'New York Chain'.
A note on camping. You can camp pretty much anywhere (side of the road, forest, field, even on private property in some cases -- for more info, see Ken Kifer's web site, http://www.kenkifer.com/). This feels awesome, because most people don't realize this and therefore think that they must use a motel or an official campground -- poor souls.
3. Traffic
The less automobile traffic, the more pleasant the ride. US routes (1, 44) had, on average, much heavier traffic than the state routes (10, 189, 171, 179, etc.). Same with urban vs. rural areas. Therefore, during my trip, the most pleasant riding in terms of traffic was on the country roads of north-eastern Connecticut, whereas the most unpleasant -- between New York and New Haven.
A note on lane sharing. Riding between NY and New Haven, the question that preoccupied my mind the most was whether or not, and when, to share a lane with motorists. Sharing a lane is dangerous because it leaves you no room to maneuver around sudden potholes and because motorists disregard your presence and open their car doors, make sudden turns into you, etc. By law, cyclists have a right to their own lane on the road, but it is not always practical because bicycles are slower than cars, and occupying your own lane tends to infuriate drivers. Therefore, in the trade-off between safety and decency to others, I used the following rules of thumb:
On four-lane roads, pretty much always use your own lane, unless there is a sufficient shoulder, clear of glass, stones, potholes, and other obstructions. On smaller roads, occupy your own lane only when the traffic is light or when going at high speeds (say, 50 mph downhill, when hitting a pothole could be fatal -- because shoulders and sides of lane usually contain more obstructions than the middle of the lane). On country roads, sharing a lane is usually ok, because motorists (especially truckers :) always give you enough room by going around you in the incoming lane.
I have to admit, I am starting to succumb to the "women can't drive" stereotype. In each of the few times during this tour that my safety was endangered by drivers, a woman was behind the wheel. In all of those cases, the driver's problem was impatience or inattentiveness to the surroundings (and me in them :).
Lastly, the "advanced" traffic signals used in Connecticut are very annoying. Even on regular cross-shaped intersections, they regulate traffic in complicated, multi-directional fashion, which makes it harder to ride through red lights. (Stopping and starting on red lights waists a cyclist's precious time and is tiresome because it makes you lose momentum.)
In general, most motorists were considerate and patient. I got shouted or honked at only three or four times and had to flip the finger only once.
4. Landscape
About half of my route was hilly. Man, do hills take a toll on muscle strength! Though it seems that expending energy and losing speed when going uphill would be compensated for by going downhill right afterward, it is not true. I have found hilly terrain more tiresome than flat one. One way to minimize the effect of hills is to have a good, fast bike with lots of gears (see my section on equipment below); for instance, I found that my touring bike handles uphills much easier (even loaded) than my mountain bike did.
About two thirds of the route were rural and very pleasant. I think that the north-eastern corner of CT was as country as it gets: picturesque forests, pastures, farms; sweet and familiar smell of cow manure (yummy!); three-house villages; and so on. Very idyllic!5. Weather
I was blessed with good weather throughout the trip (sunny but not very hot, overcast but not raining, windy but not in my face, etc.).
Headwind (wind in your face) deserves a special note. I experienced it a couple of times and speak from experience: it is the WORST! It is much worse than hilly terrain. When riding up a hill, you know that the uphill will eventually end; more importantly, you know precisely the cause of your temporary slowdown. Headwind, however, is invisible but slows you down very much, and tends to be very discouraging psychologically. This quickly saps your physical stamina. Realistically, had I met lots of headwind, I would not have made it to Boston in three days.
6. Equipment
This pleasantly surprises me, but on my first long-distance bike tour, I almost hit the bull's eye in terms of equipment. I ended up using every item that I carried (except for emergency repair stuff) and did not lack anything (almost), at the same time minimizing the weight. But the most important piece of hardware I had was the bike -- of course.
I am now officially in love with my ugly-duckling bicycle. (Why do I call it an ugly duckling? You should have heard the heart-breaking story of how I bought it.) It is a Jamis Coda Sport steel frame with a completely custom-assembled componentry: Shimano '105' line of components; special touring drivetrain (27 speeds, 11-32-cog freewheel, 30-52-cog crankset); strong 700-mm wheels; fat but smooth tires with kevlar lining; drop (ram's horn) handlebar; rack; fenders; lights/blinkers; water bottles; pump; etc. The bike itself cost $750, and the various add-ons cost about $400 (including the hundred-buck 'New York Chain' :)Objectively, what made it so suitable for the long ride were its speediness and its toughness. The tires are smooth, the wheels have large diameter, and the drivetrain's range is wide (compare this with a mountain bike), making it easy to climb any hill and to reach 50-mph speeds downhill (I am estimating, relative to cars nearby). The terrain was so varied that I ended up using all of the 27 gear combinations. Thanks to the kevlar lining, I did not worry much about flat tires (but was prepared to patch a flat if needed).
I think a non-touring bike (such as mountain or city) would have done, too, but would have made riding more difficult and slower.
A note about the handlebars. I strongly recommend drop handlebars, because they allow three or four different hand and body positions (low posture to minimize wind resistance, high posture for more comfort and enjoyment of scenery, etc.).
I was also carrying a bunch of toiletries (sunblock, hand sanitizer, oil-based cream for chafing, toothpaste, etc.); a small first-aid kit with good things like opiates and iodine; water-purification tablets; minimal amount of clothing; tent and sleeping bag; state maps (see 'the route' section above).
The only thing I lacked were gloves. By the end of the trip, I was on the brink of developing blisters on my palms and was getting worried that they would prevent me from getting to Boston on time.
7. My observations
Riding alone vs. with partners. It is a trade-off. When you ride alone, you don't depend on anyone. When you have someone, you have more fun while stopped for rest or at night. Overall, I think it is best to ride either alone or with one more person. Having one partner is a good balance between communication and mutual dependencies.
A very pleasant and surprising observation I made was that the more you relax, the farther you get! On the first day, I was trying to cover a lot of mileage and was speeding as fast as I could, constantly checking the map to see how far I have gotten, only getting frustrated at the slow progress. Then on the second day I decided to just relax and enjoy the surroundings, applying no more effort than it takes to walk. I unexpectedly rolled into Hartford when I thought I was still just about half the way there!
Also, I noticed that my mental assessment of the day's performance greatly affected my ability to relax and enjoy the ride. But duh, that's too obvious to describe. One way to boost that performance assessment is to start the ride early in the morning. That way you have many hours of riding available before darkness, and can avoid the need to hurry.
Second wind. At some point, if you go with steady effort and no stops, the second wind kicks in and you feel as if you could ride forever without rest. Eventually, though, you just get hungry :) A wonderful combination overall!
Ok, guys, what did I gain from this ride? Increased confidence, a decreased beer belly, a nice (though uneven) suntan, a wonderful bike that has proved itself. Next time, we should do this together!
Ciao and see 'ya soon!
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