It’s a regular breakfast for me today – no heuvos rancheros, or burritos, just pancakes, bacon and two eggs. We are getting organized better and better. Leo is driving first and we just leave him to pack and get groceries and water, etc. Mike leads, but my knee acts up and fall behind, so Mike asks John to lead.
After 23 miles or so, its time to get off the interstate. Finally, some quieter roads for a change we all hope. We are on highway 95 that also goes to Las Vegas and as soon as we see that, know that it will not be that quiet a road. We are making good time and then Mike leads. He pours on the juice and at one point, we were cruising at slightly over 40 kms an hour. Its so fast that we are pedaling very fast on our highest gear. We ended up doing our first 40 miles in just over 2 hours.
Its less windy this morning and relatively flat, so the riding was very good. I followed Leo for about 25 miles into a small town where we rested. Then he takes off and I lost him after repositioning the sensor on the bike computer. There is a nice bicycle path through town and I find John at the edge of town where I take over the driving. Leo has done great grocery shopping and has gotten me some mustard, but has hidden it somewhere. I am really tired and was looking forward to some fluids and food when Leo calls. I can’t hear what he is saying and hang up. Then he calls me on the phone in the car to say that be sure to take the turn to the right a few kms up the road. All this distraction means that I now should get to Mike to get him water, so I made a wrap (Leo had purchased tortilla shells) and get going. The turnoff is well marked. I see Leo and honk and he waves back. The road isn’t that great, with a very narrow shoulder that has a rumble strip all the way across. I keep driving looking for John, but no sign of him. Now I am getting worried. When I get to Mike, we know that John is not on the road to Carson City. John has turned off his mobile telephone and we can’t reach him, so as this was near the exchange location, I go riding and Mike turns around to look for John. A few miles down, John calls saying that he is on the correct highway to Carson City and wondering what the fuss was about. He describes the route out of town before the turn and it involved round-abouts and other stuff that I don’t remember. But he wants a pickup as he doesn’t want to ride the highway with the rumble strip all the way across the shoulder. I told him to get a hold of Mike and he asks for Mike’s number. All of this is kind of difficult as the wind is blowing and truck are going by and its difficult to hear anything. So I put him on hold, get Mikes number from the telephone and relay it to John. Its hopeless as John is not repeating the number back to me correctly and all the numbers going back and forth is causing my really bad short term memory of Mike’s number to truly get corrupted. So I told him that I would call Mike to call him. By the time I get a hold of Mike, he is already talking to John.
So I press on. The riding isn’t the greatest as the winds had picked up and my knee is starting to hurt. I do OK until I get to the outskirts of Dayton where my energy level drops to zero. I should have taken a rest, but push on riding very slowly. For the first time, I see other cyclists with full panniers riding on the other side. We wave and I shouted that I am going to San Fran. They said good luck and then I didn’t catch where they were going. Leo and Mike did talk to them and they are going cross country and are from Denmark.
Between Dayton and Carson City, it is one big suburb. There is lots of traffic and one large hill. I slowly climb it, looking forward to a descent on the other side, but its more of climbing a plateau. I feel cheated out of my descent.
Mike gets to me in Carson City. The last 10 kms are in city traffic and I am tired and my knees hurt and I am not impressed. Also the smoke from the forest fires in California have drifted into the area and there is an advisory on exercising outside. This is and the freeway riding is making me cough a bit. Today was the day that I almost gave up on completing my distance.
Carson City is really spread out from what I remembered 20 years ago. But the downtown part and the old part of town is still relatively the same. Its nice to see lots of shady trees lining the streets.
Anyways, I was going to drive Mike out to where he stopped so that he can do the entire ride when Leo pulls up. Leo is only 20 minutes behind me, making up a 10 mile lead that I had which goes to show how slow I was for this section. Mike heads out to ride 10 miles out and then 10 miles back to get his fill of riding for the day. Leo and I find a Best Western hotel which as you can guess is a Casino. We call John to let him know where we are and he tells us that he is in a bicycle shop getting his pedal which had fallen off, fixed. He is having an eventful riding day.
I am thinking that we will have a rest day tomorrow and head to the bar with Leo after checking out a western wear store with Leo. He is looking for boots for his kids. It’s the first time on this trip that I have made it to a bar with Leo and Mike. I need some muscle relaxant and drink a couple of large beers. The first two go down easily, but I had to waste the third one during dinner.
Dinner was good, in a barbeque place. We decided to do the whole ride of going over the Sierra Nevadas tomorrow. So I decided to crash early. John was supposed to borrow my computer to blog, but he never called, so I just went to bed. Because it’s a short distance, but a long climb, we will sleep in to get some rest. We are going to leave the van at the base and everyone will climb to the summit. Then one person will descend down the same way to get the van and take it to the second peak where the descend is over a km high to below the elevation of where we started. I volunteer to drive the van down from the summit. Did I mention that I was scared of heights and excessive speed? Besides, I will get a taste of the descent inbetween the two peaks tomorrow. It there is time, maybe I can get someone to drive me part way up to see how fast we can go.