My life was sooo different 24 hours ago. Today was crazy, and really feeling like I jumped into the deep end (~65 miles, ~3000 feet of climb) holy cow; but it feels nice to be back w/ the team and back on the roll
I still had a bit of residual Covid cough as we were leaving Middlegate, but it got steadily better. We hit the road fast in our first segment and made it to the first rest stop without too many problems and made it to the Cold Springs Station Resort — Aja and the others had some great chats with the locals (including an archaeologist?) and we ordered EGGS woooott that we ended up chowing down on the stop after.
I started feeling a little bit tired and tried to stuff myself with electrolyte drinks and snacks, but that was a mistake. I ended up feeling bloated for most of the ride :P and I think I keep slowing down progressively throughout the ride. My quads were burning, and I was trying not to push too hard in my post-covid recovery, but still needed a lot of small breaks along the way to keep up with the others. I’m super impressed with how much faster they’ve gotten since I got covid a week and a half ago — I was definitely holding them back a bit today, but glad that we all made it through.
I spent most of the ride trying to catch up to the others (and on the running jokes that I’d missed while on quarantine). Seems like Joel has become a big fan of reaching the tops of mountains! And I spent a solid 30 minutes thinking about compliments for Joel’s extremely strong biking…
Parth was running into a LOT of back wheel issues, which we attempted to fix temporarily on the road, but kept pestering him throughout most of the second half of the ride. We ended up taking lots of small breaks along the way (which were much needed, especially for me), but also because riding in the Nevada desert was deceptively difficult. The ride was really beautiful, since we were in a massive valley surrounded on all sides by mountains, and we entertained ourselves by laughing at the massive crickets, cicadas, and their strange attraction to Timothy…
The final climb up to Austin was an extremely steep hill that all of us needed to take multiple breaks on and walk. The storefronts were really interesting and had a nice rural vibe, but most of them were empty :-/ Joel and Sophia ran into trouble with the quarter exchange at the laundromat, and our wonderful meal planners Aja and Katherine had trouble finding fresh veggies at the markets in the town :o But our final destination was a pretty nice RV park, with toilets and SHOWERSS!!! At the RV park, I had my first real (warm) shower in a week and half, which was a great change from the ‘horse hose’ showers that I was having during my quarantine haha. Felt squeaky clean afterwards and was really glad to finally enjoy the rest of the night with the team :)
The biggest thing that I learned today is that a small incline extended over a large distance (e.g., miles) can turn out to be quite challenging. And vice versa on the downhills — we had a few major climbs, but also a few extremely cathartic downhill rides — wind blowing, face smiling, skin sweating, and I loved it all.
— Vincent out
