118 miles in 10hrs - (incl. an awful lot of water stops)
Total Distance - 1,919 miles
After the almost disrespectful way I sped through the desert yesterday, today, it was payback as it gave me a very humbling but strangely beautiful lesson as to just how harsh an environment this can be and that I should, perhaps, treat it with a bit more respect.
I awoke at 7.30 feeling refreshed despite yesterday's mammoth 150 mile day. It was just under 160 miles to Vegas but to stop me getting any ideas of trying to do it in one very long stint (ideas which I definitely had) I deliberately waited until 9.50 before setting out under a cloudless sky, wearing my maillot jaune for the first time. To be honest, I'm generally not to keen on wearing it as I think it's somewhat insulting to the famous jersey for it to be seen on someone of my lowly cycling prowess. Today, though, it was all about wearing it to be seen as I would be venturing onto the interstate for the first time and be on it for most of the day.
I joined it, then quickly left it as the signs sent me onto the side road through Yermo where I planned to stop for breakfast after 13 miles. But after a while I looked down the straight road a few miles and saw no sign of the town. I'd gone 15 miles and I then realised that the tiny collection of houses and one diner I'd passed by had been Yermo. A very smalltown!
So, I continued down the quiet sideroad for a further 10 miles during which the surface rapidly deteriorated into an unridable state so bad that I was grateful to rejoin the speeding trucks on the interstate. Here I rode along happily in the shoulder lane actually enjoying watching the distorted reflections of the vast landscape in the chromed beasts passing by.
One consequence of riding along in the shoulder lane meant there was a little 'game' I was required to play. I'm calling it 'Reptile or Rubber' and the rules are simple. Is the long thin thing ahead on the road just another one of the thousands of strips of tyre that littered the shoulder, or is it a snake sunning itself on the tarmac ready to strike out at a passing cyclist's legs? Thankfully no snakes today but there were a couple of recently dead ones yesterday to add to the two live ones I saw on the way down the coast (though it was only really one and a half live ones thanks to my rear wheel - oops).
This game kept me 'amused' all the way through the first 66 miles into the town of Baker. I got there a little over 4 hours since I'd set off and by then, the payback from yesterday had started. It. Was. Hot. The gigantic thermometer in the town was reading 91F and in the time it took me to finish off another Subway and fix a random puncture it was up to 94F. Disconcertingly, though, it had the potential to go up to 139F. Worrying.
While fixing the tyre a local county policeman wandered over. It turned out he was a cyclist himself and was intrigued and enthusiastic to hear about my the trip. He gave me some helpful advice about the route ahead and wished me well on the trip. While I wasn't at all surprised by his politeness almost everyone I spoke to today asked me if or how often I'd been stopped by the highway patrol for cycling on along the interstate. This is particularly worrying given I was definitely allowed to be on it at those parts (I have checked) but it suggested most folk weren't expecting bikes on the road.
The road out from Baker gave me my first real taste of the the legendary seemingly endless straights that you get in this part of the world. This one was actually only 12 miles, but it also went up some 2,300 feet so as I was only going at 7mph in the searing heat it made for a physically, but more so mentally tough hour and three quarters. The road then took a long sweeping 30 degree turn, and then went up another 900 feet over the next 6 miles. All told it had taken me almost three hours to climb those 18 miles. I was out of water and had been for the past half hour so. My maillot jaune now had a thick frosted coating of sweat salt on it and I had found myself briefly wondering what the moisture content of a passing butterfly was. I was thirsty so I was relieved to see a grand 'Mart on the Hill' sign above the turn-off at the summit. I turned off and climbed the ramp to see a deralict shell of a building. Fortunately, from the summit I could see the rest area (with water) I had already known was about six miles on. So I set off down the road which, for the next mile or
so, was crawling with probably hundreds of thousands of tiny
grasshoppers which made for a truely bizarre ride down a frantically hopping highway.
I reached the water point then quickly left 7kg heavier (five liters in various bottles and two in me). It was 6.20 by now and I was very aware that I only had about 1hr 40mins daylight to cover the 24 miles to the Nevada state border and the town of Primm, my planned destination for the night. The views along the next 9 miles and 1,000ft of climbing up to Mountain Pass were stunning but the ticking clock meant I only had time to take this quick shot. The summit of the pass (4,700ft) came at 7.20 by which time the sun was disappearing behind the peaks and I was beginning to feel a touch nervous about riding the next 15 miles in the fading light. Still, I knew it was a monster downhill off the peak so expected a very fast ride down.
Then, it all went a bit wrong. Actually very, very wrong. I'd anxiously taken notice of the roadworks sign on the climb up the pass and then I was faced with what I'd feared, it was a bright orange sign emblazoned with 'No Shoulder'. I was about to become a highly unwilling player in a new game. But this was one the truck drivers were going to play called 'Dodge the cyclist. The what? Ah, I didn't see him - oops'. To make it worse, even the road workers obviously don't expect cyclists on this part of the interstate as there wasn't a single sign warning for bikes and one thing I've learnt is the Americans will put up a road sign for almost anything (my personal favourite so far has been the 'Kayak Crossing' one in Monterey - yeah, go figure). I paused very briefly to switch on my lights and as the three lanes merged to two I felt the cold embrace of fear on me. This made the cliffs in northern Oregon feel like a minor inconvenience.
The first mile or so was the worst filled with repeated nervous glances over my shoulder to see what was trundling out of the sun. However, these glances sometimes resulted in me drifting a small, but significant amount further out into the lane. So, I calmly put my headphones back in and deceided I was only going to look forward. After all, what could I really do if I was to see 40 tons of steel and diesel on a collision course with me? The road was narrow so there was nowhere else to go. And did I really want my last thought to be knowing I was about to become part of the tarmac? If it was going to happen then, so be it. The fear was still very much there, but there was now a serenity about it. The one thing I could definitely do, though was pedal, hard. This would have the dual benefit of decreasing the traffic's closing speed on me, along with, obviously, meaning I'd spend less time in the 'kill zone'. I've never pedalled harder. In fact I'd be amazed if anyone has every made a more desparate rush for the state line as I was making as I tried to get as close to the 55mph speed limit as I could. The hill was mercifully steep meaning I spent long stints above 40mph feeling the ground rumble to the, thankfully, passing engines.
The shoulder lane finally reappeared some 12.5 miles and fractionally
over 20 mins later.
I was safe ...
...but it's 2.45am and I still can't sleep
