Day 64, Two Babes Off Bikes and Into the Pacific Ocean!

WE DID IT! WE MADE IT! Love to everyone who supported us through our 4,040 mile journey from Crane Beach, MA to Dillon Beach, CA.

Day 63, Martinis to lick your wounds

In an effort not to dwell on the past, may we only say that today's effort was mightily rewarded with hard liquor at the end that will power us tomorrow to the Pacific! But if you really want the story, California was evidently trying to test our endurance, since we went 92 miles today (accidentally) in strong headwinds, some rain thrown in there, several miles of gravel roads, and choices between certain death and less certain death. That was, in fact, a choice we had today: death by Route 12, with no shoulder and trucks whizzing by our cute little heads, or endless miles of gravel roads, which on 25/28 mm tires with headwinds and tired bodies and minds spells somewhat certain death also. We hedged our bets and chose gravel. Since we write tonight, we evidently beat the house.

By the end, it was solely the knowledge of the proximity of the ocean and our welcoming crew that kept us going until well after dusk. Beer was just not going to cut it tonight; strong martinis (on the house) did! Vive tomorrow! Tomorrow, tomorrow, we love you, tomorrow, you're only a day (and 61 miles) awaaaaaaaay.

Day 62, Is that salty air I smell?

A vertical mile of climbing today, over 30ish miles up Carson Pass in the Sierra Nevadas that varied from fairy benign to horrifically steep. While the views from the mountains were scenic, suffice to say that we are decidedly over climbing mountains, and do not find it necessary to climb any more anytime soon.



This one's for you, Scotto:

Our reward for our 30-mile uphill effort was 50 miles of descending 7,000 vertical feet, which unluckily for us at first did not always mean downhill. Some cruel road engineer decided that it would be fun to have several miles of downhills intermittently punctuated by terrible, demoralizing uphills. However, the last 20 miles of our 76 mile day were indeed all downhill and a very, very appreciated rest on our legs.

We are so close to sea level! A mere 1,200 feet above, we are the lowest we've been in a long, long, long time. We are so excited to only have two more days of biking, and cannot wait to see our huge welcome crew next to the PACIFIC OCEAN. We've started making wave noises to each other. It's quite soothing although our imitations will not sound so sweet as the real deal. Pssshhhhhhh. Psssshhhhhhhh. Ahhhhh we can hear it already!

Day 61, California, Here We Are

Our last state line was crossed today, a very momentous occasion, which as the following pictures demonstrate was a solemn moment for us both:

We are now in the Sierra Nevadas and are ready to tackle our last mountain pass of the trip tomorrow! We are a little non-plussed at least by the foothills of the Sierras, as they seem to look exactly like the 100 other mountain ranges we just crossed in Nevada. We are now finished with our brief encounter with civilization where these squarish things called "houses" and these tall, alive things called "other people" exist and are headed instead to comingle with bears. But as soon as we have descended from the mountains we'll be back into it all and closer to the Pacific than ever.

Days 59 and 60, Cruisin the Carson City Strip

In this post-Carrie era, we have now developed a new "camping" routine, which involves staying in hotels and not cooking our own food. We must say that it is rather luxurious, especially when the hotels involved have hot tubs. After 70 miles yesterday cycling with David (including 7 extra miles since our route had a TURN on it for the first time in 450 miles. Not being used to this "turning" phenomenon, we missed the one turn of the day) and some gambling last night at our hotel casino, we decided to take our rest day today here in Carson City.

Carson City is probably everything you'd ever expect from the Nevada state capital, which is not much. But it has Starbucks, a movie theater in which we drank in the entertaining "Burn After Reading", and a nice pub where we had a drink with Molly's friend Justin aka Woz who was passing through!

Justin's talk of owning a plane to get around made us think twice about our current mode of transportation. However, the mere 300 miles we have left are supremely undaunting! FOUR MORE DAYS OF CYCLING. Bring it.

Sunset Riding into Carson City

Day 58, We're almost done with this state...

We rode 111 miles back to civilization today! We are really excited to have been able to double up a day, which will make our Sierra Nevada mountain pass in a couple of days easier to break up and then it's all downhill to the ocean! We write from Fallon, NV, and are extremely happy to have made it here, almost all the way out of this forsaken state.

We rode today with David, another x-c biker, and having three of us really made quite the peloton on the road. We must have had enough people to attract a tailwind for once, and by lunchtime, we had already gone 80 miles. With Carrie motorpacing us for the third day in a row (so pro, so pro) we finished out the long day with smiles on our faces and appetites enough for double chocolate milkshakes.

We are happy to report that we have now seen the world's largest shoe tree, which looking at the picture with all of the dangling shoes becomes rather self-explanatory:

Sleeping in tomorrow and then to Carson City to perhaps try our luck before Cali? Back to reality now that Carrie-Mom will be leaving us, although we have made the strategic decision to send all of our camping gear home and motel it up for the rest of the way. Less weight for us, the faster we get to the ocean.

Day 57, Groundhog Day

Mountain. Basin. Repeat. Mountain. Basin. Repeat. Every day, Nevada stretches on endlessly, with the same rhythm of 4 mountain passes and 4 headwind-filled basins. We empathize with Bill Murray.

Quite the exciting apres-bike adventure, however. We found ourselves in the middle of the desert at a quasi-nudist colony with hot springs. The hot springs were lovely; the sight-seeing was not so much. But the "jacuzzi" in the middle of a giant basin was a good end to our day.

Our accomodations are so "rustic" this evening that we are afraid to use the beds and have instead decided to camp out on the floor. Carrie is with us an extra day in order to get us back to civilization!!!

Day 56, How many mountain ranges can you cross in one day?

The traveling convenience store/deli strikes again, and again, and again! We have given food and cold drinks now to Dai, a Japanese guy biking from Alaska to Chile, to Josh and Judy who are walking across the US (!), and to Chris and Paul, an Englishman and a Welshman biking xc who almost thought we were mirages in this desert.

Besides the beautiful Great Pyrenees who guarded his sheep ferociously and the four mountains we ascended today, nothing much of interest to report from Eureka, NV. But we are alive and well and a week from tomorrow we will see the magnificent Pacific Ocean!!

Day 55, Motorpace Mama

Trees are inspiring. Especially living trees that were around before Jesus Christ ever walked the earth. The bristlecone pine tree can live up to 5,000 years, and the closer it is to the tree-line, the more it thrives on its harsh conditions. There are many reasons for its survival: it sections off its trunk, meaning that even if most of the tree has died, the sectioned off parts can continue living. Its bark, instead of rotting like most trees, instead is enormously resistant and erodes slowly. The three of us hiked up to 10,000 feet early this morning (after mule deer joined us for breakfast) and saw these magnificent trees.

So if those trees can survive that long and through so much, surely we can survive a little over a week in getting ourselves to San Francisco!

Molly showed some serious awesomeness today and totally saved an x-c biker named Dave, who found himself at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, with a completely broken chain and no idea how to fix it. She swooped in, got her mechanic's hands all greasy and voila, he should be good to get to Cali now!

We had lots of fun pretending to be pros as we motor-paced behind the van today. Carrie was an excellent motor-pacer, especially since there was 35-mph headwinds. We couldn't wipe the permagrins off of our faces as we cruised behind at 20 mph when previously without the van, we had been going a ferocious 6 mph, downhill.

It's now time for some R&R as we head out to the middle of nowhere again. Our days in Nevada have the following rhythm: uphill, downhill, flat/headwind. Uphill, downhill, flat/headwind. Repeat after me: uphill, downhill, flat/headwind. Uphill, downhill, flat/headwind...