Rest Day Synopsis
We had our first rest day in Ely, Nevada! The day was objectively wonderful and undramatic. We woke up and had Denny’s for breakfast. It was so great to have coffee that we did not microwave in a Tupperware container. Then, we explored the Ely’s railroad museum, Nevada Northern Railway Museum, where we got to wander empty train carts, talk to mechanics, and trace our way down railroad tracks. It was fun to look at the stained glass and pretend I was in an old western romantic train ride movie (full disclosure, I retained a minimal amount of the actual history on the placards explaining the buildings around the exhibits).
Team selfie on a train!
Romanticizing the train interior …
After the museum, we visited the local thrift shop, where I was delighted at the selection and alarmed to realize how much of a rip-off the thrift shops in the Bay Area are. Following the thrift shop, I tried my first root beer float (ever) at Economy Drug & Old Fashioned Fountain, which was magical. Whoever decided to combine soda and ice cream was a genius. We then ended the night with ramen in the hotel room and a group-wide decision to sleep early so that we would be able to wake up early enough to head out the next day.
The best root beer float of all time!
Cricket Reflections
Our rest day was great for both my muscles and my mind to do absolutely nothing. So, instead of fabricating explanations of the nonexistent thoughts I had that day, I’d like to make space to discuss something that has truly been occupying my mind a lot the past few days: mormon crickets — very loud and bouncy menaces about the size of two human thumbs pressed together. We first encountered them on our way out of Middlegate. They started speckling the side of the road. I thought they were pebbles until a teammate pointed out they were moving. When we pulled over shortly after to meet bikers at a rest stop, the swarms of them that started coming towards the parked car looked like a literal plague. When we stepped out of the car, they would jump up to mid-calve and knee level. They seemed to understand angry curse words, though, and bounce diagonally away at select phrases. Any time I had to travel through a cricket herd on foot, my mouth ran as fast as my feet. In the subsequent days, they would appear on various parts of the bike trail and highway. We would pedal past streaks of mormon cricket carcasses on the road. They often jumped angrily and loudly when we passed through their herds on bikes, sometimes ricocheting off our calves, sometimes crunching under our wheels.
If you zoom in on this photo, you will see that each spot on the ground is a mormon cricket! I took this photo from the van because I was far away — when I’m close enough to them to capture an actually clear photo I am far too busy running away to take that clear photo.
In all seriousness, though, from a few conversations with locals, it became clear that these numbers of crickets were unusual, environmentally destructive, and a consequence of Nevada having a warmer winter this past year (so not enough of them died off in the winter). In other words, these crickets were likely the product of climate change. As much as I despise these crickets, I also realize how privileged I am to be able to simply pedal away from the problem and hide away in an air-conditioned building in Ely. I passed by many trailer homes in the desert, unable to escape these crickets, shouldering the consequences of actions of people who may never see or interact with these crickets or these people. While I had known for a while in theory that climate change impacted communities disproportionally, I got to see this theory in practice two weeks into the trip.
Sincerely,
Helen