Yesterday was a long, hard day of biking, and so was today. A challenging, rewarding day, but a trying one nonetheless. After passing over the Sierras, I was under the misguided impression that the rest of the country would be flat, easy riding. As the last few days have shown, this is not the case. At roughly 8:30am, Sophia, Aja, Joel, Vincent, and I took off, and within three minutes of our departure we faced a winding, 1000-foot incline (Parth and Katherine were in the car today). After sweating our way up that massive hill, we sped down until we reached another, almost equally challenging climb. This was the rhythm of the first two legs of today’s ride. Up, down, up, down. No wonder that Joan and Greg, our hosts in Carson City, described this stretch of the state as the “washboard region.”
Highway 50. Look at those clouds!
Still, things are getting easier. At some point in the last week and a half, we became stronger. Vincent, who just returned after a week in COVID isolation, has remarked again and again how much faster we are now than we were before. At the top of each hill my legs were sore, but they almost didn’t hurt. Almost.
But it’s not just the constant elevation changes that make Nevada formidable. Each leg of the today’s ride brought new challenges. In the morning, it was the heat, the sun searing my neck and arms. (Once we picked up speed, we made our own breezes, and the heat became almost unnoticeable.) Later on, it was the wind. In the second and third legs of today’s ride, we rode straight into a brutal headwind. The wide-open, flat desert terrain left us exposed to sudden, powerful gusts of wind coming down from distant mountains, and on a few occasions we were nearly knocked off balance. And on two separate occasions today, we found ourselves caught in the middle of sudden desert squalls. The first storm arrived while we ate a brief picnic lunch at a rest stop (rest stops are few and far between on Highway 50). Just as I composed my second peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a powerful wind knocked away lids, plastic bags, and a slice of Kraft cheese. Rain began to pelt against asphalt. In twenty minutes, it had all but subsided. The second storm rolled in while we were at our third stop – the last of the day. This one was more dangerous, since it was a thunderstorm. Katherine had to shuttle us from our third checkpoint to Eureka.
Highway 50. Note the cricket stains on the road.
Perhaps the strangest feature of the highway is the Mormon Cricket. The Mormon cricket is a reddish-brown, oversized cricket, about the size of an exceptionally large thumb. The road is littered with these insects. In some stretches, it’s impossible to find a square-foot of road without either a living cricket or a mangled one. In the most extreme points, the road is permanently stained with rust-colored tire tracks.
From this accounting of challenges, it might sound like I’m not having fun, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a challenge, but it’s an exhilarating one. The little things – the feeling of coming to the top of a hill, joking around with the team at breaks, speeding down the side of the road straight into a valley, the vast, alien desert scenery – make up for any rough patches ten times over.
vincent, joel, and sophia after climbing a tough hill.
To end this post on a fun note, I’ve included a brief interview I did with the rest of the group. I thought it would be nice to give readers a little “under-the-hood” look at our day-to-day travels. I asked everyone a few questions and recorded their answers.
Till next time,
Timothy
What have you been listening to on your ride?
Aja: I’m listening to a playlist called Spokes with lots of dramatic music for climbing hills.
Joel: I’m listening to a RadioLab episode about professional wrestling.
Parth: Yesterday I listened to the news, a Daily episode about elite private schools, and Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!
Sophia: Yesterday I was listening to a podcast on Zhuangzi. Today I was listening to a bunch of random Chinese music.
Katherine: Absolutely nothing.
Vincent: Nothing. Just the wind.
What have you been thinking about on the road?
Joel: I’ve been thinking about where the smooth shoulder on the road comes from. It’s sometimes there and sometimes not. I wonder if someone wasn’t doing their job right.
Parth: It’s a kind of dark answer, but honestly since Roe v. Wade was overturned yesterday I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and what that means for our country, and the state of democracy. I was mentioning this earlier this morning, about being collectively traumatized, repeatedly, by six largely white, largely male people who are unelected. It’s this sort of voicelessness and fear, and I’ve been thinking of how to cope with that. (Joel: I feel shallow now…)
Sophia: I don’t want to follow that! My mind is blank.
Aja: I’ve been trying not to think about the big picture of this trip. I’m mostly just thinking about the few feet in front of me, because if I do think about the magnitude of the entire trip I think it’s very easy to get overwhelmed.
Katherine: Parth’s been making me super existential today. (Parth: Sorry.)
Vincent: Mostly just one pedal after the next.
What snack has been propelling you through the Nevada desert?
Aja: PB&J and canned tuna. And the gatorade.
Sophia: PB&J and Go-Go Squeeze applesauce pouches.
Joel: Peanut butter.
Parth: Fresh fruit and Cheez-Its.
Katherine: Hardboiled eggs.
Vincent: Bread.