The Weaving of the Worlds

We have two lives. Reality this year is getting on a bike and riding 65 miles to the next town. It's sleeping in a tent and swatting bugs away as we eat. It's giving presentations to 292 excitable students. It's raising over $21,000 for our charities so far. Our imaginary life is being at home with friends and family. It's living in a house and sharing meals in a kitchen. Lately, we've experienced an interesting weaving of the worlds.

Weave In
Spooner Pass was a beast! But after we crested that summit, riding into Lake Tahoe with the sun setting across the lake was serene. We watched a beautiful sunset, then continued down around the lake looking for a campsite. This is when it sunk in that, as beautiful as the sunset was, it was a sunset. The sun was gone and the dark was creeping in. We turned on our lights and pushed through.

Weave Out
Turns out, there's no camp sites along the North East side of Tahoe, so we tried our luck in Incline Village. No such luck. The light of day was completely gone and just when we were about to give up and turn down a dark road towards a $150 room, Larry and Candy pulled over to tell us not to bike that road in the dark and invited us to their home instead.

Weave In
We spent the next few days riding to our destination of Chico. Two nights in the Sierra Nevadas, sweating in the heat of the day, bathing in the chilly river at night. Our first night's dinner was ruined by the uninvited bees swarming as we cooked some meat. Our second night, another uninvited guest came along and took Adam's bike shorts, hanging to dry in the tree. We told the kids in Chico that if they see a bear wearing a pair of bike shorts to let us know.

Weave Out
Chico weaved the beginning of our trip with the end. We met Rich on January 15th, day 6 of our journey, in Blythe, CA at the Blue Grass Festival. We gave him our card, he looked us up, followed our journey, sent some yummy Turkey Jerky along the way, and invited us to meet him, his brother and sister-in-law Gil and Jo, in Chico. Instead of sharing our dinners with uninvited guests, we got to share our meals with a family in a home filled with laughter.

Weave In
Even as we took a couple days rest, we were still working hard and had two presentations: our first, to almost 300 students at Shasta Elementary School. They were an excitable crowd and we ran out of time before we could answer all of their questions. As we ended our presentation, the principal took the microphone and challenged his students to each bring in .50 cents and they could raise enough money to buy a bicycle. A bicycle for World Bicycle Relief is $134. We just found out these kids raised even more than that! The 4th, 5th, and 6th graders raised a total of $160: inching closer and closer to our goal of $25,000!

Weave Out
When in Chico, a must-do, besides seeing the World's Largest Working Wooden Yo-Yo, is visiting the Sierra Nevada Brewery. Loved our yummy meal followed by a brewery tour!

Weave In
After our time in Chico, feeling mighty spoiled, our next destination was Eureka, CA where we were going to meet my Mom and Scott. In order to get there, though, we had one of the craziest, steepest, skinniest, most beautiful, scariest roads of our trip. Route 36 started off a treat. The first day, traveling up and up and up over the final mountain range to the coast, the Coastal Range, was a beautiful, hot, carless day. But this quickly changed. After camping alone in the dark, except for the four pairs of eyes that glowed in the reflection of our headlamps as we ate, we started our second day in good spirits and climbed the last big summit in the first ten miles of the day. It was all downhill from there... Literally.

As we continued on, the road got skinnier and skinnier but the traffic only increased. We soon found ourselves immersed in a Redwood forest, unable to enjoy it's beauty to it's fullest because of the constant logging trucks flying by. Logging trucks, I believe, are Cyclist Enemy #1. They slow down for no one, knowing the paycheck depends upon the amount of trips they make.

Weave Out
One more night, a short 20 mile day, and we were in Eureka awaiting the arrival of Mama and Scott. As soon as we saw them, it was like we were swept away from California, from the bikes, from our tour, and taken back to Madison, CT. We spent an incredible few nights at The Carter House Inn, courtesy of Mark Carter, himself. The bed and breakfast was a Diamond in the.... well, it wasn't in the Rough, but it was a Diamond, that's for sure.











We found some Redwood forests, the beautiful Pacific Coast, walked the town, and even enjoyed a home cooked meal by Scott.

  

Weaving it all together!
We shared some amazing meals together in Eureka, dining in places we'd usually never dream of walking into, but even though we were living the high life, we were all taken back to the outdoors when Adam found an inch worm squirming around on his plate(we're not going to tell you the restaurant name). Ahhh... I guess Mother Nature wanted my mom to experience a little of our reality.

All too quickly our time with Mama and Scott ended. We had mixed emotions as we climbed back onto our trusty steeds, Jenny and Ontwa, and rode away from Eureka and towards the end of our tour.

The emotions will be running high these next few weeks as we finish the bike-only portion of our Give a Bike: 50 State Tour. 

Check out the awesome news story on NBC Eureka!!!

Loneliest Road in America

Route 50: The Loneliest Road in America

So what might you expect from the Loneliest Road in America? Not much. I guess the only thing you would expect from the road was that it'd be pretty lonely. Well, without sounding too disappointed, we were disappointed with this so-called "Loneliness." There were so many cars on the road, we could barely even ride side-by-side to chat away the distances between towns.





Loneliest Road in America? We think not. How about, "Busiest Road in America?"

Well, I guess it's not I-95 in New Haven, CT over the Q Bridge on a Monday morning at 8:30, but it has it's fair share of traffic. At least I understand the traffic on 95 everyone is going to work. But where are these people going? Work probably isn't in the next town 75 miles away with only 300 people living in it. So where are they driving to? When we find out the answer to that, we'll let you know.





Loneliest Road? More like, "Thirstiest Road in America"

Our first test on this road was a span of 85 miles from Milford, UT to Baker, NV. The 85 miles included three big passes to climb up and over without a single town in between and took us over 11 hours from start to finish. Half way through the day, after we had sadly found out the water we were told was supposed to be there was not, we were thirsty. Our first savior was a man with a dirt bike in the back of his truck. He reached in the bed of his truck for his cooler and pulled out a Capri Sun and two mini-cans of soda. Pssshhhh....Gulp...gulp...gulp...ahhhhhh.

Savior #2 was actually three guys in 4 x 4's. They stopped on the side of the road and offered us a choice of ice cold water, soda, or beer. We all took the water.





And savior #3 was Doug, the father of another touring cyclist we met the day before. He rode 30 miles from Baker to find us and give us each a cold water, a Gatorade, and a cookie. We were good to go and made it to Baker with liquid to spare!

Loneliest Road? How about, "Hilliest Road in America"

On Monday, we climbed our 12th summit on Route 50. After 300 miles on this road, here's what we discovered. It goes up for 20 miles, then back down. You never really know when it flattens out except that you get frustrated because it's slow going 20 miles into the wind only to go up for 20 more miles, then back down all too quickly.





Loneliest? Let's try "Hottest, Driest, Sunniest Road in America."

Thankfully, we timed our tip through Nevada right, and instead of 115 degree days, we only felt it in 90's, with one small temperature drop into the 50's during the thunderstorm of the century! It did happen to be on a day where there really was an open cafe half way to the next town. We walked in, the waitress snagged our wet clothes to throw them in the dryer and we enjoyed hot cocoa and Hot Pockets with two other touring cyclists while warming up next to the wood stove.













We added Jesse and Royal to our riding group to finish the ride into Ely where we made it right before the second storm came rubbing through.



"Most McDonalds Deprived Road in America"

Definitely not complaining about this one.  There were, however, too many stores like this.

"Most Unforgiving Road in America"

Just when we thought we were done with Route 50, we were discouraged to find that it was our path to Lake Tahoe. Ok. 10 more miles. How bad could that really be? You might think that after 465 miles on this road we would have known it better. Known it to never cease. Know that each time it gave us a small reprieve from climbing, it was only to rest our legs enough to battle the next hill. Known that it would be unforgiving as always.



The last 10 miles of Route 50 may have been the toughest yet. Having said our goodbyes to Mike in Carson City, we fought our last battle with Route 50 up and up and up and up Spooner Pass. It may only have been 10 miles, but it was a harsh 2,300 feet of elevation gain and brought us up over 7,000ft once again. We reached the top with red faces, cramped hands, and shaky legs.... But we were victorious.

As the hill descended into Lake Tahoe, Route 50 went south and we didn't even give it a passing glance as we turned north.



So I guess we don't really know what to call this road. When in Fallon, a waitress at the coffee shop called it, "The Deadliest Highway in America." At least that wasn't it.