Project VELAIA

Highway 50 is known as “The loneliest highway in the country” - so I was prepared for long and rather unexciting days. Definitely not what I’ve had the last 1.5 weeks.

The trip from Dayton to Fallon was still quite populated and a big shopping centre just outside of Dayton invited me in. The food in my bags was almost gone so I had to buy food; an additional 2l bottle would also make sense as the distances between services and markets should get longer and longer. Later on I stopped again at the Lahontan Reservoir in Silver Springs, went to the toilet and refilled the water.

Quite some showers came down from the sky by the time I had reached Fallon, so I locked the bicycle in front of the huge Wal-Mart supermarket and went in to buy good food - but somehow that didn’t work: I came out with way too many sweets, but also bought some salad and fresh French bread.

 

With nice tailwinds I flew away from Fallon, cycled around Grimes Point on HW50 and stopped near a great sand dune. A lot of small dark spots were sprinkle over it and only with the 12x optical zoom of my camera could I make out quad bikers and 4WDs racing up and down over the massive loads of sand. And at the bottom of the dune a big village consisting of dozens and dozens of white RVs formed as a kind of base camp for the adrenaline junkies on their quads

 

In the early noon I arrived in Middle Gate the coming day after passing through a U.S. Naval Reservation. I got 4l of water from the lady in the restaurant and bought 2 cans of vegetables for the coming day. Then I cycled on, took the alternate route on road 722 through East Gate and up to Carroll Summit. But not so fast! First I got totally drenched by a heavy shower, decided to pitch the tent in the early afternoon and about 1.5 hours later took it down again and cycled for 1 or 2 more hours just to pitch the tent again to escape some more showers.

 

I ran out of food that evening and didn’t know about the bad weather waiting for me the following day: It rained continuously till 5pm in the afternoon. What did I do during this time? I read in my 3 books:

1. Digital Photography, Vol.2 by Scott Kelby
2. Worldchanging - A user’s guide to the 21st century, by Alex Steffen and many more
3. Lonely Planet South America

And finally the sun came out, dried my tent within a few minutes and gave me a chance to at least move my legs a bit today.

 

 

It turned out that  I managed to do a lot of kilometers this evening, cycling till 9pm. I went over Carroll Summit with 7452ft, over the Railroad Pass (6431) and through the vast and flooded Reese Valley to Austin where I arrived at 9pm in the evening - a strong hunger and hope for warm food kept me going this evening and I was extremely disappointed that the local bar had stopped serving warm food by that time already. Additionally everything was totally wet again.

But I got rewarded plentiful for my efforts:

So I decided to go to the mini mart in the petrol station while it was still open and bought Pringles, a box of muesli and a Snickers bar. Then Scott, who had seen me in the bar, came to the fuel station and invited me to stay in the second, empty bed in his motel room - thanks a lot Scott!

In the morning after a warm and comfortable night we woke up at 6am - Scott’s schedule for the day: 700 miles riding his motorbike, all the way home to Colorado. Wow! I stopped only a few hundred feet after leaving the motel in a cafe and had a sweet but energy rich breakfast extended by the invitation of two French Canadians, a teacher and her husband, who shared their French toasts with me and afterwards put me 20$ in the hand! Thank you!

From Austin to Eureka was a long long ride. The weather had turned to what I had expected it to be in a desert - at least after a first short shower. I spent half an hour under the street in a tunnel similar to the ones I’ve been a regular to in China and Tibet.

 

Devils Gate, just before Eureka seemed to be the most impressive thing this day as I didn’t get many more pictures - all flat, long and empty roads. During the ride I was listening to several shows of M.O.B.E. (Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained), quite a strange podcast telling bicycle stories about how he cycled the through the paleolithic and “A Brief Encounter with the Surly Shakespearean Insult-Quoting Bicycle” as well as Coffeebike, talking about a cyclists addiction to various kinds of coffee.

Anyway, finally I arrived in Eureka, where a big sign in front of the village said “the most friendly village in Nevada” or something alike. I visited the shop and invested the 20$ I had gotten this morning to buy a lot of salad, dressing, tasty bread and 500ml of tasty cheese-cake ice cream! Yum!

Of course I got a little sick in the evening because I ate all the ice cream at once and continued cycling right after I’d eaten it and cleaned the chain with a piece of cloth I’d collected from the side of the road. But it was worth it, definitely!

Going downhill after the Pinto Summit (7351 ft) I met another touring cyclist, Nickel, from the US. Actually the first in days! He’s riding on a Schwinn bike and has a funny plush toy attached to the front rack, crossing the US East to West.

I pitched the tent just down the hill, even before reaching the bottom of the valley and had a wonderful salad which I prepared in a plastic bag in my helmet - lack makes creative! Even peanuts as a topping I had! What a luxury … I think I’ll be getting too fat if I continue like that.

Arriving at the Robinson Summit (7606 or 7588 ft high, depending on which source you trust more, street sign or map), I had a Bud Light beer and had a nice but headwindy downhill later on.

 

Then I arrived in Ely and the first thing I did was to buy a replacement charger for my batteries, as I had forgotten the last one in San Francisco in Station 40 and I think it’s the cheapest option to bridge till my father arrives with the recumbent and dynamo hub charger (Forumslader) in Caracas. Then I went on to the library, checked e-Mails and printed much needed handout cards informing interested individuals I meet about my website and how to get and stay in touch.

Here in the US people are using a lot more gadgets (iPods, Blackberries, laptops, …) than anywhere else I’ve been to so far (except some European countries maybe) and therefore it’s often possible for them to check the website on the spot or when they’re @home. Quite a difference compared to western countries like Australia and New Zealand. They also consider internet access to be a right for everyone and therefore the internet in the libraries is free, everywhere I’ve been to so far here in the US and I find it great!

Leaving Ely behind me I camped a few miles outside, just above the Comins Lake and took some nice pictures of the birds and the lake in the evening, just after sunset. And the motivation I get from the tips in the Digital Photography book make me get up earlier, so I can get the pictures in the nice and soft light of the morning … here are the results:

And the following morning:

 

 On the way up the first pass, the Little Antelope Summit (7438 ft) I encountered two police cars blocking my way and already thought it might have to do something with the Iran visa I have in my passport. But fortunately there turned out to be a OVERSIZE convoy coming up the other side of the pass - good food for my camera!

 

A few miles down the hill a ranger stopped me again with signal lights and I thought: But this time something must be wrong. But the only thing that was wrong, was me! He told me about another cyclist he’d seen in Carson City about a week ago and asked whether I had met him … huh, luck me!  And then it turned even more weird as a biker stopped me on the road: Randal fortunately also only wanted to talk and we had a nice little chat and I could take some pictures of his wonderfully sprayed Harley Davidson.

 I then didn’t cycle over Sacramento Pass but took a short cut on sometimes pretty rough gravel road over the historical mining town Osceola and descended down towards Baker in the noon. In the Great Basin National Park visitor information center I met 4 other cyclists: Phil, Boris, Ben and Colin, who were just having a resting day in Baker before going on the long, 84mile no services stage to Milford. They were staying in the backyard of a restaurant and told me that I could stay there, too if I would get my meals from the restaurant.

 

But my plans looked different: I wanted to just stock up my water and food and continue on to get a big bite away from these 84miles nothingness. And that’s what I did. In the evening I left town and cycled for another 50km (30 miles) reaching Halfway Peak eventually. There I set up my tent in front of a magnificent scenery of red rocks.

 

After having dried my sleeping bag in the morning I set out on the remaining 54km without services. But that turned out not to be true in the end: Just before the last pass of the day, a driver stopped and asked me whether I need any help, water or anything.

I negated but we stared an interesting discussion. Randy turned out to be on his way back home to Moab and had a big DSLR camera with him. He’s a environmental writer and makes stone sculptures - that’s why he had half a ton of stones in the back of his car!

 

 

And before he let me go he told me to visit him next time I come to the stated, and handed me over a pound of cashew nuts and 3 cool oranges! Thanks a lot, Randy!

I continued on to Milford, met three other touring cyclists going the opposite direction and ended up in the internet cafe in Milford by 2 o’clock in the afternoon. There I realized that the inbox of my e-mail account was full! Damn!

Before I left the place the four cyclists I had met in Baker arrived in town and I decided to stay for the night, visiting the supermarket together with ‘em and pitching the tents in the local park for the night.

 And as I was up early and the others took their time to get started, I set out to reach Cedar City by noon on my own. And I could have made it, definitely, if not for these really bad and heavy headwinds, that slowed me down tremendously!

I reached Cedar City by 1:30pm and made a long detour through the center of the city and up to the southern end of town till I realized that I was wrong and had to go back 6 miles to reach the home of Iain’s family. Iain, a fellow CouchSurfer and also on the touring cyclists WarmShowers list, agreed to host me for 2 days.

And I’ve really enjoyed the last two days here, to play with his little sister Adrianne, the conversations with his young sister and brother as well as with his mother and today’s photo shooting session with his father. I want to thank the Dalton’s a lot for letting me stay in their wonderful house and for helping me out a lot!

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