Today started at 2 am with an alarm that I promptly turned off. I set it the night before to see the stars but sleep seemed more important. The evening before Devin, Erin, Maile, Bill and I decided to sleep outside our tents so we could have an uninterrupted view of the stars. We were worried that we wouldn’t wake up so I set an alarm for 2 am and I would wake everyone up.
That didn’t quite work out.
I crawlEd into a tent around 10:30 to escape the bugs and the snoring coming from another tent, so by the time 2am rolled around my priorities were a little different.
I ended up waking up at 3:30 am anyway. I crawled out of my tent to grab my flip flops, and flopped next to Erin on the tarp. She rolled over and looked at me. I asked if she still wanted to be woken up to see the stars. She kinda squinted at me and then rolled over.
I lay on my back and stared at the stars.
We were over a hundred miles from any major city- the closest town was Austin, which had a population of maybe 200- so the stars shone brightly in the clear night sky. I could even see the Milky Way. It was the most beautiful night sky I have ever seen. I didn’t know the sky could look so full.
Even though I could’ve looked at that sky for hours, my sleeping bag was calling my name. I crawled back into my tent and fell asleep.
Our wakeup time was supposed to be 5 am but someone told Evan it was 5:30 and no one gets up until Evan either drags them out of their sleeping bag or shakes their tent, so no one ended up getting up until 5:30 ish.
After eating breakfast and getting ready, Maile, Bill, Devin, and I started to bike. From our campsite just outside of Austin, NV to our next stop in Fallon, NV was about 117 miles, the longest milage of our trip.
It started with a steep uphill climb out of the campground to Austin Summit. We discovered that Devin’s derailleur was bent from Edgardo running into him the day before so he couldn’t use his lowest gear to get up hills all day. I don’t know how he did it but if anyone doesn’t need their lowest gear it would be Devin.
After we reached the summit, there was an amazing downhill that went right through Austin. The view as we sped down was incredible with the whole valley and a sunrise lit mountain range ahead of us.
Stanford Spokes described Nevada as a mountain pass, then ten miles of valley, then another mountain pass, repeated thirteen times. I think at this point I can definitively say that it is completely accurate. Unfortunately, this also means that at the top of the mountains you can roughly the next ten to twenty miles of your trip. It can be a little discouraging to look at such a distance and think, “Dang, I’m going to bike all of that.”
It was still early enough in the morning and the downhill was exhilarating enough that such negative thoughts didn’t really affect me too much at this point.
We kept biking and during the flat part and up and over another small mountain pass. During this stretch, I decided to start a game of bike tag since Bill said he was bored. Bike tag is exactly what it sounds like and it’s best played on empty roads in Kansas or Kentucky. You’d think the loneliest road in America would also be ideal, but it was not. After a couple of rounds, I was trying to escape from Devin and we were going all over the road, speeding up, slowing down and zig zagging everywhere. We didn’t notice a car come up behind us and they (rightfully so) weren’t very happy. I ended up getting tagged and then I banned road tag. So technically I’m still it.
We kept biking until Erin passed us in the car and we waved her down to get a water bottle for Bill. She told us that the group behind us fell behind quite a bit because Caralyn dropped her wallet on the big downhill and had to bike back to find it. Later I also found out that Caralyn ran over a bird with her bike going down that hill and definitely killed it. So between the frogs, the bird, and what I assume is many insects, Caralyn on her bike definitely is a cold blooded killer.
We biked on. We decided our first break (“brunch”) would be at 45 miles and then our second break (“linner”) would be at 90 miles. We reached our first break in high spirits to discover Erin had set up a fancy tent/tarp contraption to provide a little cover from the sun. It was a beautiful masterpiece of engineering.
After the break, we kept biking. And biking. And biking. Seriously, there was a lot of feet moving in circles.
There were also a few summits along the way.
We hit some headwind midway through to the second break and so that slowed us down. We tried to draft efficiently but there’s only so much you can do in a headwind/crosswind combo. It was also hot. Like really really hot. After the first break we noticed a significant uptick in temperature and I think the maximum temperature on the road that day definitely got up to 100 degrees. We tried to stay hydrated, but I found it hard to drink water that had the temperature of hot tea as I was sweltering in the sun.
Right before our last summit of the day, my right foot started burning really badly from my shoes being too tight. I knew we would take a break at the top, so I wanted to stick it out until then, but facing maybe two miles of climbing with one useless foot wasn’t going to work, so I pulled off and loosened my shoelaces.
Coming down from that last summit was a lot of fun, and it was made even better when we spotted the car pulled off in a parking lot for the second break. Caralyn, Evan, and Erin had set up another new tent/tarp cover for us, and it was really nice to get out of the sun for a bit. (Edgardo was biking with our new friend Jeremy.) Our second break was at the turnoff for a place called Sand Mountain and it’s was exactly what it sounds like. I’ve never seen a mountain of sand this large and there were people everywhere with dirt bikes and dune buggies. I don’t know how they withstood the heat out in the sand.
We spent about an hour and a half relaxing and eating some food before we headed out to finish the last 27 miles. Those last miles were through a section of flat sand and so the sun was absolutely merciless. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help but peeking at the mile markers to keep track of our progress which made each mile seem that much longer. We made it to a gas station outside of Fallon where we got some ice for our water bottles to last us the next seven miles.
Since the back group got stuck behind in the morning, we were going to arrive in Fallon before the van so we decided to head a bit further into town to get to a local ice cream place called Skeeters. When we arrived Skeeters, it felt like we were done with the day which was an amazing feeling.
After a long, long, long day of biking in the boiling sun, sitting in the cool AC with our ice cream was a nice change. We knew the car was heading back to town soon so we biked over to the fairgrounds where we would be camping for the next couple of nights. Finically at our destination, we stopped our Stravas. Final milage: 121 miles over the course of 8 hours (not including breaks).
We celebrated our accomplishment with a photo op of bike lifting.
Afterwards, we met Jessica from the library we would teach at the next day and she gave us some chocolate and fruit which was a nice little energy boost.
Everyone eventually trickled in from the day of biking and after we all showered and changed we headed over to a pho place for dinner. We joined Jeremy for a wonderful meal and I tried shrimp for the first time (texture was kind of weird and rubbery but other people said it wasn’t great shrimp so I shouldn’t judge it yet).
We went back to the campsite and Caralyn and I stretched, and others looked at the stars, which were still pretty bright even in Fallon.
We made plans to wake up early to go to a diner and then crashed in our tents.
So how does it feel to bike 120 miles? It feels pretty awesome even though that’s the average milage of most bicycle tourers. I prefer the route we chose which has more days and less milage so we have time in the afternoons to explore or relax (also so we aren’t absolutely dead every evening).
Still though, I’m glad we had at least one really long day just to say we’ve done it.
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