Austin, NV to Fallon, NV — 111.9 mi, 2531 ft
Mt. Airy, NV to Fallon, NV — ~95 mi, 2000 ft
Contrary to Freytag’s Pyramid (pictured below), which shows a story’s typical narrative structure, this blog starts at the climax of the ride: biking on Highway 50, at night, at 12:00 am. The previous blog explains the reason for our current predicament, but in case you missed it, I’ll give a quick summary. To avoid the heat, wind, and cars that we would experience biking in the daytime, our goal was to finish most of the century as soon as possible.
Our adrenaline was high, and we had just finished our first rest stop when the clock struck 12. At the rest stop, I downed half of my Starbucks Frappucino for an extra energy boost and decided to put on my jacket in case it got colder the next leg. To preserve visibility since our jackets were dark and non-reflective, Aarushi and I tied our white jerseys around our necks to create a white cape, feeling like superheroes riding into the darkness. We pulled out the speaker for the 2nd leg of our ride, blasting music to keep the good vibes going and to keep ourselves awake. We queued some absolute bangers such as Pompeii by Bastille and E.T. by Katy Perry.
Out in the desert in the absence of light pollution, the only source of light were our bike lights and the occasional flashes of a late night trucker approaching in the distance. When we did see a car approaching, we ran a tight ship in ensuring there was no chance of being run over. We would yell “CAR,” switch off the road, and wait for the car to pass before getting back on. I’m sure these truckers were extremely confused by the sight of us at such strange hours in the middle of nowhere. The red lights of our van could also be seen pretty prominently from miles out, and often became my motivator to keep going as the night (or morning?) dragged on. Towards the end of this leg, the tiredness was setting in, but we tried to keep our spirits high.
I think something I’ve realized on this trip is that I am a relative optimist about most things, which I wouldn’t have necessarily believed if you told me that before. Hence the lyric from Pompeii that is the title of this blog! I truly approach situations with the idea that’ll it work out, even if I’m not extremely vocal about this belief. This helped a lot during moments like this where it might be easy to complain and wallow in the difficulty of the situation, but my outlook kept me excited and energetic enough to get through the night. I think I was riding some weird giddy “isn’t it crazy that we’re doing this” energy the entire time (or at least up until 2:00 am).
It was so dark that looking in an area without our bike lights felt like I was closing my eyes, which was also extremely surreal. Like, your eyes are wide open but it’s just pitch black. Kind of crazy. We also started getting extremely cold at some points as we passed through warm and frigid pockets of air, but it kept us awake at least.
After a bit, we agreed to stop at 60 miles into the ride to leave another 50 or so for the actual morning. Tatiana scouted ahead of a spot alongside the highway where we could safely park the car and cowboy camp — although “camp” is a strong word, since we were only really planning to sleep for a grand total of 1 hour. Finally, at around 4 am, we slept nice and cozy on our tarp and prepared to wake up at 5:30 am at first light.
The wakeup was, as expected, extremely difficult, but we begrudgingly got on our bikes to tough out the final stretch. I had some leftover pizza for breakfast and the rest of the frappuccino.
It was immediately so much warmer with the sun out and windier than it was at night, so I was glad that we had gotten so much out the way with our night session. Although it was straight and flat for most of it, that honestly made it worse since there was so little stimulation for a mind that was running on little sleep. Thankfully, there were some interesting fighter jets that showed up towards the last section of the ride, performing cool tricks and flying extremely loudly. Apparently they were from a nearby naval air station, and they were flying so fast that whenever you turned to look where the sound was coming from, they were already quite a distance away from the origin since they were moving close to the speed of sound. At least, that was my understanding, but Drew could probably tell you more. Drew’s interest in planes also kept me awake as my eyes kept threatening to close, sharing his immense knowledge of the planes above us and exactly their functions.
We rounded out the ride at a diner in town, getting free biscuits and gravy from the lovely workers there who saw how exhausted and hungry we were… we scarfed those down, and I was personally ready for a heavy nap. However, Aarushi, Carmen, and Nunu wanted to make the ride officially 200 miles (since we were at 190 miles), so they went back out in the 100+ degree heat, which I commend but knew was not important to me. I had been sick this entire ride (as a lingering virus was making the rounds, in the order of Aarushi → Drew → Me and Tatiana) and could feel it really starting to hit. We went to the Fallon Youth Club, our learning festival and hosts for the next two nights), and promptly fell asleep in various arrangements in the room.
After a long nap, I woke up to find everyone back and sleeping. I walked around the facility a bit, and met one of the directors of the club who told us that they had arranged meals for us over the next couple of days, which was very kind! Slowly, everyone started waking up, and we got dinner in Fallon — including a yummy poke bowl that I didn’t take a picture of until I devoured it.
For the rest of the evening, we relaxed and slowly recovered, finally doing our laundry from the past couple of days and mentally preparing for our last learning festival! It’s kind of crazy that we’re on our last one, but we were looking forward to it, knowing we’d be much more well-rested and in such an amazing facility.
Tune in into the next blog for how it went, and our preparations for crossing into California!
See you one more time,
Caroline
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