Project VELAIA

Well I thought I’d write about this stretch of my tour just after passing through Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks, but I was wrong. Whenever I went to a library the time was either limited to an hour or two (but still free, that’s great) or all my time went to shopping for the new DSLR camera and the equipment and all the trouble I’ve had with not having a VISA card with me any more (and the limits on the new one).

So finally now, near Villa de Cura in Venezuela (and afterwards), I finally get the time, sitting in my old Hilleberg Nallo 2 GT, which my father kindly brought with him to Caracas. It’s nice to type on this 5 or 6 year old iBook which I’ve had for years and years, which I’ve taken everywhere: to school, to CCC meetings in Berlin, Linuxtage in Karlsruhe and even to school. I’ll only write in English to spend more time on cycle touring, photographing and so on … maybe I’ll translate to German later some time - the content of my offline hand-written diary is in written in German most of the time anyway.

It’s hard to upload photos from this machine or to stitch panoramas at it’

So, now I have to tell ‘ya what happened after Cedar City - I hope I can recall as much and as accurate as possible after such a long time:

I left Cedar City after spending 2 days with Iain’s nice and very kind family. Going south I first cycled along the old highway which goes beside the new freeway, and had to jump on the freeway from time to time.
Once, just before leaving the freeway to turn east to Zion National Park, I found an iPod nano 1GB with 200 Spanish songs on the street. I checked whether it worked and it did! So from now on I could even listen to music when the battery of my 80GB iPod classic was empty! Mui bien!

Just before arriving in Zion National Park, a few kilometers from Placerville (at least something with *ville) I saw a car turning right to the riverside onto a sandy trail and as I was on the search for a camping spot myself, I followed.
And I was rewarded wonderfully: A nice campsite directly next to the small river and a lot of friendly Americans. With a group of high-school graduates I went for a short “swim” in the river and got a US special food: marshmallows with chocolate and cookies - tastes like pure sugar, almost!

Getting up early next morning I missed the Montana students as they were still asleep but had a good start into Zion National Park. Usually you have to pay $12 but the ranger at the gate let me in for free when I told him about my adventurous tour.

Inside I met a cyclist on a single speed: Michael. He talked to me and told me that I should definitely follow the main valley by bike as the views are stunning and there are no cars! And he was so right!

You’re sharing the road only with buses which go very slow and you have a lot of time to enjoy nature and to get stunned by the views you have in this valley. On the side the walls go straight up for hundreds of meters. They are all red and you’ll find a lot of overhanging caves inside. And I was lucky that the sky was covered in clouds so I could get a lot of details in the panoramas I photographed.
If you ever happen to go on a cycling trip through the US, make sure Zion National Park is on your list and also bring a few days more than I did!

Because I had to leave after only a few hours, cycling up a small side valley. From the bottom of the valley I couldn’t figure out where the street goes, but it’s winding up the mountain in quite some serpentines and the view is getting better the higher you climb. The tourist filled cars are going really slow so even you as a cyclist get the chance to enjoy the ride.

Then there is the tunnel where the rangers won’t let you through. They told me to go 2 turns back and ask a pick-up driver to pick me up. And that’s what i did. The second driver had enough space and took me for a short drive through the tunnel - thanks a lot!

And the countryside is so different when you’re at the top! Now there are a lot of red “waves” with wave patterns all through but as you’ve climbed up a few hundred altimeters there are no big walls any more. All red (sand)stone. But the peak heat of the noon and early afternoon stopped me from exploring more so I just continued cycling on and on.

Between Zion National Park and the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park I didn’t get to see a lot. The countryside was rather uninteresting after what I’d seen in the NP and so I just tried to get through pretty fast, learning Spanish while I was riding and listening to the recordings of my favorite internet radio station Soma-FM.

The climb up to the North Rim of Grand Canyon was tough! “Vejetariano i no como carne” were some of the new Spanish words I learned with the Coffee Break Spanish podcast while climbing up the mountain.

I then decided to even try to get as far as possible to the park entrance to either get an early start in the morning so I wouldn’t have to pay the $12 or to make it in the night. Well, the altimeters were too plentiful and the distance too far, so I just made it to the border of the park, turned left into a gravel trail that said “Arizona Trail” and continued off-road for another 6km until it got far too dark and cold.

The next morning after camping in the forest I found the Arizona Trail and continued over a lot of fallen trees and up and down many hills. I got frustrated as I wanted to be at the rim with the early sunlight to get nice pictures but the trail was so long and so difficult to ride - and it spit me out just a few meters inside the park where I could see the checkpoints 10m away! Lucky me!

But then it was another 20km ride to the rim and the temperatures in the valley even dropped down to below 0 Celsius! My hands were swollen from the cold allergy but I continued riding, sometimes freehanded to warm up the hands again.

Finally I made it and took a lot of pictures and panoramas at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. What and amazing natural wonder! From the rim to the bottom more than 1000m deep and at some places you can look straight down for hundreds and hundreds of meters - almost unbelievable how mother nature created this natural artwork through millions of years. Probably even the dinosaurs got to see a (much smaller) Grand Canyon during the millions of years they’ve been the emperors of planet earth … And the Grand Canyon survived. I guess it’ll also easily survive the uprise and short kingdom of homo sapiens on this planet. So instead of me just passing by for a few days, watching it, it’s kind of staying there watching kingdoms of different species and cultures just passing by like the highlights of my trip - a traveler through time it truly is!

Then I met a guy with a nice Nikon DSLR in his hand and I started talking with him. Jerry turned out to also know Janne Corax, who originally wanted to participate in Beijing to Paris, and who’s travelogues of trips through Tibet and over the Chang Tang high plateau in the north of Tibet have motivated me since years. I missed him by only 2 or 3 days in the “CYCLISTS’ INN” in Aksai Chin at the entrance of Tibet. Jerry has been to South America already seven times and has done a lot of rock climbing and climbing in the ice over here (where I am right now). We decided to spend the day together and went for a 4 or 5 hours walk along the North Rim to a not so touristy place where we climbed over a few trees and through some bushes to get directly to the rim with a wonderful view and this more adventurer like feeling

 

Later on Jerry and I went to his camper which he had parked just outside the park. We watched “Into the wild!” and had a small dinner and a lot of chocolate cookies. Jerry’s a really cool guy: Retired at 51 he’s making something of his life right now, seeking the adventure and spending a lot of time in nature. Except for the two SUVs he’s traveling with I could really enjoy such a style of life, too, one day. One of his big plans is to get to Tibet pretty soon and I wish him all the best - maybe we’ll meet there or even cycle together, that’d be cool.

Then in the noon Jerry went towards Zion and I started a fast and wild downhill of almost 1000 meters into the valley of the Colorado river. The turns were a lot of fun to ride through and in some parts the cars couldn’t even keep up with me. As the valley opened I rode into a massive valley which dimensions I sometimes couldn’t grasp. The heat down here got worse so I forcedly had to rest in the noon. But with heavy tailwinds I decided to continue on towards the Colorado river bridge.

 

The green river made its way through the valley in the valley. Down at least 100m from the bridge I could see some boats going down the river far below. Obviously they were part of an organized tour. In the movie I had seen the day before, this young fellow explorer and traveler went down the Colorado without a permit, even crossing into Mexico without.

Well, my direction changed almost 180 degrees and so did my luck as now after several hours downhill and heavy tailwind cycling I had to fight at 10 km/h or less against the wind and even to go uphill. I stopped in the shadow of a small tree with massive thorns and learned Spanish while waiting for the temperatures to drop. And in the evening I continued, stopping at a Navajo indian settlement (with houses and big American cars) to get some water. A family was sitting outside, wondering what this strange looking cyclist wanted, but even though they hardly spoke English I managed to get my water bottles filled and continued later on through a tiny valley.

The following day I had to climb up to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon this time. During the noon time I rested for 4-5 hours in a Navajo indian sales shed, prepared a sign with my web address for the tail of my bike, played soccer, read in the Worldchanging - User’s guide to the 21st century book and again listened to my Spanish podcast.

The heat of the noon and afternoon was gone and I started out into the climb. Two American touring cyclists were flying down the mountain with tailwinds and stopped for a short time (Laisha + friend). I continued and continued and continued even into the night - my idea was to enter the National Park during the night as others had told me the checkpoint was closed and you could pass with $12 more in your pocket. And so it was. I arrived after a cool downhill at a South Rim tourist spot with a nice view over the canyon at about midnight. The Canyon was gently illuminated by the moonlight so one could see the contours and guess the magnificent dimensions of this natural wonder. I then put my sleeping pad on the bank directly at the front and had a 5 hours nap till the first red photons of the sun hit me in a dreamlike smooth red color.

Cycling along the South Rim I realized that it was way more touristy here than at the counterpart to the north. A lot of cars, SUVs and majestic RVs passed on the way to the Grand Canyon Village. Over there I stopped, rested directly at the rim and wrote some cards to friends and family. There I saw some mavericks circling above the deep canyon and felt the immediate desire to fly with them, to join them in their travels without borders. I’d love to change my bike for a few wings and fly around the world, if I only could!

Anyway, I continued rolling south towards Phoenix. The next day contained quite some downhill cycling first, but also way to much headwinds. So after 30 or 40 km I rested, put my bike beside the street and jumped into a (wash) pipe under the street.
Half an hour later a car driver stopped and screamed, so I decided to get out of my hideout and tell him that I’m fine.
Two hours later another car stopped, but this time not a normal car driver but rather the highway patrol. Someone had called the police and informed them that a riderless bike lay beside the street. Oh my god! I just wanted to get some rest and they’re freaking out immediately - at least now I know that you’re really safe in the US as long as you stick to the main roads.
The officer asked me for my ID and some questions like eye color, size, weight et cetera; seems I’ve been missing somehow.

I cycled a short stretch of the historic Route 66 through a small town called Williams. The street divides in front of the village, so the traffic going south drives along the west side of the village where as the north going traffic drives east. All along the street there are small shops, a lot of it quite touristy and in the original look, like in the Hollywood movies.

I stopped in Prescott to do some internet research on the new DSLR camera I wanted to buy. I was not sure whether to order the legendary D400 (aka Rebel XTi) or the new D450 (Rebel XSi) that was just released and got a good review on DPReview.com. I read for 3 hours and checked prices and accessories and then postponed the decision.
In town I got notice that a few riders of the Race Across America had passed through the night before so I decided to ask again in a bike shop, but the riders and employees there didn’t have a clue! I continued on a narrow and winding road through rough terrain, what a pleasure to ride up and down! And the road also attracted a bunch of other cyclists for their workout ride in the early evening. And I continued and continued riding, crossed another valley and climbed up a several hundred altimeters pass. Just after the top I could see the big desert and plain with Wickenburg pretty close and Phoenix far behind … it was a majestic view and now I knew I had found the right place to pitch the tent, even though there was no way to get the tent pegs into the stony ground, so I had to get a few big rocks and put them on the pegs.

During the night I heard voices outside the tent, I thought there must be some drunken people celebrating nearby or so. And even before the first sunlight hit the dry and thirsty ground in the morning I was up and enjoyed the silence and freshness of the morning. And again I heard voices. I looked down onto the street below and spotted a road cyclist with team car … and you know about the rest already from a posting I did that same day in the afternoon. I was so excited and full of positive thoughts and the infectious disease of extreme endurance sports again got hold of me - I’m sure that I’ll be in that race one day!

The temperatures were very hot during the noon and afternoon and I adjusted my daily schedule: Cycling early in the morning, resting during the day and cycling again in the evening. So I also always had to find a shady place to spend the noon, either a library or a tree or a culvert. And I had to pack a lot of water, the juice of life that tastes like the best wine when you’re thirsty in a 40+ °C environment. The tap water often tasted pretty ugly in this area and the sunlight heated the bottled water up to over 50 degrees centigrade - more like an ugly medicine that you’re forced to take and you believe that it helps than the cool juice of life

Then one hot day as I had just cycled down a 200 altimeter stretch of the Interstate into Quartzsite and as I was looking for the library I recognized a book shop on my right just at the beginning of town. As I’m always looking for good books (I’m an addict) I turned around and stopped. I didn’t know that I’d stay almost half a day there, drink cool drinks, read a lot and talk to the legendary owner, naturalist and nudist Paul. I bought a book named “Der Schamane aus dem Allgäu” and the “Hyperion” by Friedrich Hölderlin and an English-Spanish and vice versa dictionary to be prepared for the time in South America. And what a bizzare feeling to read from a poetry writer, Hölderlin, who has been living in my area, born in Lauffen am Neckar, sitting in a kind of open air bookstore (without a/c) in 107°F (about 41,7°C) temperature. As a result my system weight (bicycle + rider + luggage) shot up more than one kilogram or about 1%!

In the evening at about 6 pm I started again and cycled a bit further where I pitched my small tent in the stone desert - what a mistake as I found out during the night: The stones had stored the heat of the day and slowly radiated it back into the atmosphere or better into my tent during the night. So I removed the outer tent and slept almost naked but was still wet from sweat all the time and of course I couldn’t get a lot of sleep.

Short after Ehrenberg - sounds pretty German, right - in Blythe, I went to the supermarket, read for a while in the new (old second-hand) books till the library opened and rushed in to get a slot on one of the computers with internet. There I almost died, as I got a message from amazon.com that something’s wrong with the payment information for the camera I had ordered. I was lucky to have ordered the stuff more than 10 days before leaving the US, so I could easily reorder and check the credit card information. And far too early in the afternoon I left the town and cycled south towards the Mexican border.

The next day was no better! I passed the last village before a 80 km desert ride much too early and couldn’t get any food or water. And today the temperatures climbed so fast I almost couldn’t believe it - at 9 am they were in their 30s and I decided to rest an check whether the night might be better. I ended up in another culvert 3 or 4 meters under the road surface and there I read, slept and before all else sweat! The temperatures reached the 113°F (45°C) in the shade and far more outside my cool heat refuge. I could have stayed in my pipe until darkness but my bike wanted to hit the road again and I agreed.

I had to find a way to get water and found a RV park just half a mile away from the road. But the water tasted ugly and even uglier when it got hot! My rear tire punctured just a few minutes before darkness and I found the hole on the inside of the tube again - something must be wrong with the rims and rim tape, but because of the darkness I couldn’t figure out what! So I replaced the tube quickly, put on my headlight with the 3 red blinking LEDs pointing to the back and set out into the night.

I’m used to cool nights and many people will tell you that nights in the desert get really cold, sometimes below freezing point. Not in this case, I tell you! 35°C was the coolest temperature of the whole night, 35°C! And the already horrible tasting water tasted even worse then. I stopped at a border patrol checkpoint in at about midnight after I had gone up several hundred altimeters and gone through extremely hilly terrain with steep climbs and descends, and was lucky to get cool and fresh tasting water from their water machine.

 

I passed a big military area to my left and right and sometimes it sounded like big jets were taking off, but I couldn’t spot them on the night sky. I stopped at a place that was shown as a market running only through the winter months and of course it was closed, BUT! Yeah, there’s a PEPSI machine running outside. What a pleasure to get a Dr Pepper and Pepsi tin cooled down to just above freezing from this heaven sent machine at 2 am. The tins fell down in the sand filled tin box at the bottom of the machine and they made me go again.

But far I didn’t come because the scenery was so marvelous! Cycling through moon lit colossal sand dunes I just couldn’t concentrate on the road any longer. I stopped several times to take pictures and opened the lens for 30 seconds; then I started playing with my LED headlights in front of the camera and decided to get one or two hours of sleep before setting out towards El Centro in the morning.

In El Centro I navigated straight to the library, just to realize, that my website’s been down again. Quickly I e-mailed my friend and webmaster Felix in Offenau and only a few hours later he had fixed the problem - a service worth gold! I also realized that the amazon payment for my camera still hadn’t been accepted … slowly I started feeling uncomfortable as the time was running out and you don’t want to buy a new camera in South America, especially not in Venezuela as I realized now. I wrote an e-mail or two to CouchSurfers in El Centro and within a few minutes I got a reply from Diana in El Centro … she arranged a meeting only an hour later for lunch and managed to get me a super comfortable bed with her grandmother. I spent the next day with her friend Corey playing World of Warcraft, finally successfully ordering the camera and watching YouTube videos - really put my feet up that day and enjoyed it, especially knowing about the temperatures in their 40s (centigrade) outside.

But the day came when I had to say my goodbyes to the friendly family, to super friendly and communicative grandmother Margaret and her grandchildren. I then had to climb the mountain range from the depression in El Centro. Half way through the 900m (or so) ascend I ran out of water even though they supplied water for the overheating radiators of the cars every few hundred meters. But I managed to get to the top somehow - had it been really serious I could have stopped a car for sure as the US drivers have been super friendly and helpful to me so far.

After passing a village located only a few meters from the Mexican border (with half the traffic on the road being Border Patrol vehicles) I stopped in a small Mexican restaurant for an early lunch break. Reading in the Hyperion and chilling out in the cool shadow of a few nice trees with a nice enlivening breeze I made out two touring cyclists passing on the street by their reflections in a restaurant window. I already knew about them as Diana told me there were two touring cycling girls coming to stay only a day or two after me. So I packed all my stuff in a hurry and caught them within a few km (all downhill). We chatted for a while and I hope I could give them some worthy tips for the time to come in the desert and on the way up to Zion National park - check out their website www.GirlsGoneWildlife.org (or .com).

Cycling back I passed the restaurant and stopped only 200m later at a side of the road supermarket to buy a Tetra Pak of chocolate milk. And again I didn’t advance but I rolled back and turned right into a 3 km detour as Christian, a German immigrant (when he was 9, from Berlin), invited me to a Yoga meeting place at a farm nearby. At this nice farm with meditation building, several pools, sauna, fitness rooms and a lot of other fun stuff I found a few recumbent bicycles (one even a recumbent tandem) hanging at the ceiling, slowly degenerating as the years passed by. I asked to check the bikes and got a few things done with the gearing system and steering systems. But the tires were hopeless - years too old and as we inflated, they blew up immediately. Damn!

In the evening the first guests and participants of the meditation week arrived and brought loads and loads of food to feed about 30 to 40 participants for a week. I met a nice and friendly girl, Lykke from Denmark, there, who arrived together with her boyfriend Brian from San Francisco. Together we had a wonderful time in the moonlit pool and sauna in the night.

But again I had to leave way too early. I didn’t even have the time to put the new 20″ tires they wanted to buy the following morning onto the recumbent bikes, but I’m sure that one of the participants could do so after my reviving start of the bikes.

Day dreaming about the last night I cycled up a small hill snail-like as I spotted two touring cyclists approaching from behind. Dan and his friend from San Diego caught up with me and together we cycled for another 3 or 4 hours, up and down a few times till they arrived at their final shelter - Dan had cycled across the whole US for 2 or 3 months and was now on final. A big party was planed for the next day’s arrival in his home city. We had lunch together and I said good bye as I had told my CouchSurfing host Tom in San Diego I’d arrive in the evening.

The way down to the Pacific coast was not worth mentioning, except that I punctured another time. Again the hole was on the inside of the tube and I almost got crazy because I couldn’t find out the reason. I arrived at Tom and Omar’s place in the evening, after a long and hot trip and was very happy to have a home away from home in such a big and car filled city. And in one of the previous postings I already told you about the nice time I’ve had in San Diego with Tom, his girlfriend Lynna and her family, Omar and a lot of others.

 

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