Today we biked from Ely to Eureka on Highway 50, also known as the loneliest road in America, and began to realize just how empty Nevada is. In fact, the scenery was so desolate that our camera role for the ride didn’t contain a single photo. Not one person at any point during the 89-mile ride saw anything that they thought deserved to be remembered in a picture, and we’ve taken some pretty unremarkable pictures before. Here’s a photo Evan snapped of … a road a few days ago.
This isn’t to say Nevada doesn’t have a certain charm to it -- I remember watching the sunset while driving back from Elko and marveling at the shades of pink and orange reflecting off the mountains. It’s just that it can get a little repetitive while biking. Most of our rides in Nevada tend to go like this: we climb up a small mountain pass, we ride down the gentle downhill that isn’t quite steep enough to get any real speed, we pedal into the wind blowing through a flat 10-mile-wide valley, and then we repeat this a half dozen or so times before we call it a day.
Despite the uninteresting landscape, there were still many things that made today memorable. First, we ran into Jeremy, another cross-country cyclist on the same route as us. Leah, Edgardo, Evan, and Caralyn got the chance to talk to him, and they found out that he had heard about us already because he had been staying at a lot of the same warm showers as us where the hosts told stories about our group. It was cool to meet someone else doing the same thing as us, and we had to wonder what stories the warm showers hosts were telling about us. Stay tuned for more adventures with Jeremy in future blog posts!
For the last few workshops, Maile and Bill had been missing a bucket for their DNA extraction activity, so when I saw a yellow five-gallon bucket sitting on the side of the road, I thought I could help solve their problem. I picked up the bucket, put it on one of my handlebars, and biked the remaining ten miles to Eureka, almost crashing a few times because the bucket and my left knee took up the same space. Unfortunately, all the hard work was for nothing because we ended up forgetting the bucket in a parking lot almost immediately.
Next, we needed a place to shower, so we headed to the indoor swimming pool. The lady working at the pool said we would usually be welcome to shower, but at the moment there was lightning 20 miles away, so it wouldn’t be safe to shower or swim. Keep in mind this was an indoor pool and there wasn't a cloud in sight. We were all a little confused, so I did some research to see if we just didn’t understand how lightning worked. According to Tom Griffiths, the President and Founder of the Aquatic Safety Research Group, there are “no documented reports of injuries due to lightning strikes at indoor swimming pools,” and evacuating the pool actually puts people at greater risk by forcing them to go outside. Oh well. It was probably better that we didn’t become the first. Thankfully, the fire department was super helpful and let us use their showers for free.
That night, we got to sleep at the police station. Usually, spending the night in the police station isn’t something to be proud of, but we actually had a lot of fun there, and the officers were all very welcoming and helpful. They even let us sleep on inflatable air mats that we later realized were designed for inmates. The air mats were way more comfortable than our camping pads, so if you ever end up in the Eureka County Jail, I can promise you that you’ll sleep well. Even though Nevada might not be the most scenic state in the country, we’ve met a lot of great people who have made each town on the loneliest road in America feel a little less lonely.
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