Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Sacramento, CA -> Benicia, CA
72.3 miles, 1,054 feet elevation (give or take)
Before I begin my gimmick, here is a brief prelude of our penultimate ride from lovely Sacramento to just-as-lovely Benicia.
What Actually Happened This Day (It was a pretty interesting day I just don't want to write a full blog on it)
Varsha and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Driving Day
A lot of our equipment has been on its last legs (or tires, in the case of our minivan Chrissy). Our beloved 5-gallon water bladder, Bessie, broke and spilled water in the car. We had to toss our rooftop storage bag (posthumously christened Daisy) since all of its straps were ripping. Chrissy smells bad, has a slow leak in one tire, and is so sandy she resembles the beaches of Ibiza. (Cleo's sister Agathe: "You have got to stop naming your equipment.") And on this day, our bike rack succumbed to the forces of a speed bump.
Varsha (clearly hexed by a witch due to her streak of crazy driving days) and Amulya (concussed rest day taker) were cruising along in the 'burbs of Sacramento, la da dee, when they went over a speed bump. What was so not so la da dee was the grinding noise that they began to hear immediately after. Upon pulling over, they discovered that the bike rack had fallen off and dragged their and Cleo's bikes on the asphalt for a few hundred feet.
The thing about bike racks that have fallen off is that they won't really want to stay on the car. But it's not like Chrissy had the space for the bikes within (with Daisy the rooftop bag's death, she was stuffed with camping gear as well as our usual nonsense). So our brave heroes bargained and pleaded with the bike rack for an hour until they were able to strap it back on the car. They took it to a local bike shop, where they learned that the type of bike rack we have, which isn't attached by a hitch because our minivan doesn't have a hitch, probably wasn't the best for our cross-country trip. The bike mechanics replaced Varsha's wheel, repaired Amulya's derailleur, and diagnosed Cleo's shredded tire and sanded rims as broken but sadly didn't have time to fix them.
Bikepacking but Not Actually
With Chrissy in Sacramento, the rest of us were support vehicle-less and truly roughing it. If roughing it means getting some scrumptious Vietnamese food instead of our 74th van lunch. Our lives are filled with adversity.
It did mean that we had to rely on the wee hand pumps. As one of the hand pump carriers, I found myself scurrying to Hank and Sophia and submitting them to the fate that is trying to get enough air in your tire with the world's weakest pump. It's about as effective as using your mouth to blow up a tire (which JD tried to do once). Overall though, all flats were fixed with minimal delay, a testament to the amount of flats we've gotten these past few weeks.
Driver's ed did not teach me how to pass a bike on the freeway
Today had a decent amount of detours, including one where Hank got the police called on him for getting too near a secretive chemical plant. The most notable was this freeway detour some of our team took. Best summarized through these photos:
Note: I did not interstate bike but rather took a pretty cool up and down detour near a different freeway. It was less efficient but I was okay with that. I will not write my discoveries about freeway construction because this prelude is no longer brief.
Hopefully these tales seem like a worthy intro to the 28 Things of this blog's title. Without further ado:
28 Things You Have to Do Before We Both Die (Categorized by State)
Virginia
Staple a dollar to the wall of a nondescript bar outside of Tazewell. If you're lucky, the owner John might give you free soda.
Eat pizza in a vineyard. Optional: get a tick while rolling down the vineyard's hills.
Bike as fast as you can to get to your campsite in Shenandoah National Park before nightfall. On your second day of a long distance bike trip. On a road with 7,000+ feet of climbing. Shoutout to the team for being crazy enough to do this!
Kentucky
Develop a strategy for escaping frenzied dogs. Such strategies might include sprinting (Hank), getting off the bike and walking (me), or barking back (Sophia). You cannot, however, use the bear horns that were specifically purchased for this problem because why would you do that?
Explore the limestone tunnels of Mammoth Cave National Park. Or rather, be guided through them by a peppy but stern young tour guide. I won't forget the cool breeze gliding from the mouth of the cave.
Hallucinate the tree-lined, shaded streets of Boston in suburban Lexington. There comes a certain point in a cross country biker's life where any town with a population above 4,000 feels like a utopian metropolis. This for me occurred on the three lane stroad into Lexington, which I had been convincing everyone for a week would be comparable to the Garden of Eden.
Illinois
Try Sherry's homemade kombucha. Blueberry ginger, strawberry mint, cherry limeade.... delicious even when you're not ravenously hungry after a day of biking.
Swim in the warm water of Rend Lake. We had no idea our campsite was nestled next to a beautiful lake, but this was one of our best camping stays.
Almost develop heat exhaustion in the nothingness of rural Illinois. Key word is almost.
Missouri
Gab for 65 miles while biking on the Katy Trail. Despite being excluded from the blog post about this (booo Amulya), I was there for 30 miles and can attest that it makes the miles go faster, even if you might be going slower.
Enjoy root beer floats while listening to incredible live music in Jefferson City. Amulya's redemption for forgetting me in her old blog is that she reintroduced me to the joy of a root beer float. Hearing our WarmShowers host Sarah sing Jolene was one of the most peaceful moments of the summer.
Explore St. Louis at 6am while your bum teammates dawdle until 11. Bonus points if you're able to find a genuinely good French bakery (please tell Cleo if you do!)
Kansas
Seek refuge from a Kansas rainstorm. If you need inspiration, try a cafe that serves you $3 Swiss Miss or a farm with a friendly cat. If the storm gets really bad, a grassy ditch on the side of the road will do just fine.
Develop mental fortitude against 20mph headwinds. Biking east to west was the correct decision. Right?
Hang out with Tiger the cat and Enzo the dog. I.e., the funniest animals we met on the trip. Tiger was fluffy, enormous, and loquacious. Enzo had eyeliner on and was the perfect shape for hugging. Enzo, I miss you so much!!!!
Colorado
Eat dinner in a community college dorm parking lot. This might be one of your most fun nights, if you have awesome, hilarious, interesting friends. For extra fun, somehow eat half a tub of butter chicken before realizing it is not, in fact, the paneer you ordered. I would be a better vegetarian if I were not stupid.
Visit Gunnison National Forest. Here I found my favorite views of the trip. Wildflower meadows and the Taylor River dappled with sunlight will always stay with me. I never wanted the ride down from the Continental Divide on CR 742 to end.
Reckon with Mortality. On any kind of trip across the US, this should happen at least once. Might as well have it happen in one of the most beautiful places. Enjoy a Palisade Peach as you ponder about the risks you take each day.
Utah
Utah State Road 128. This road to Moab just outside of Arches National Park follows the Colorado River and features the most stunning views of Utah's towering rocks. Cleo cried when she biked it.
See the world's most beautiful sight, the Hickman Land Bridge. If you go to Utah and don't see this (maybe because you went the wrong way on a hike), you have wasted your time. Never forget that you squandered a wonderful opportunity :)
Spend too much time at Kiva Koffeehouse. Get a raspberry lemonade, indulge in a lemon cheesecake muffin, talk about climate change and whether you want kids, anything to spend more time in this cafe overlooking the red valleys of Utah's Scenic Byway 12.
Nevada
Accept that you will never experience the shade of a tree ever again in your life. You will soon forget that greenery taller than a shrub exists. Shadows may only be found by crouching next to your minivan during a lunch on a road's shoulder.
Break up the monotony with a stay in Baker. Get an ice cream sandwich from the delightful restaurant in town, or listen to a band at the night festival as the mountains of Great Basin National Park loom over you. Try to spot the "Museum to the Future" in town.
Have a melted ice cream sundae bar in a motel room. You might have to engage your second stomach, but goodness it will be worth it to have hot fudge for the first time all summer.
California
Bike the Sierra Nevadas in one day. I've been trying to not put too many biking related items, but I still think this was insane.
Have an eating competition at a buffet. Put that appetite you've built up while biking to good use. You better be rolled out of there.
Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe! Enough said. She is extraordinary.
And finally:
Cross the Golden Gate Bridge. But that's still on our To Do list for tomorrow!
-Rebecca :)
Take me back to these moments plzzzzzzzzzzzz!