3445 feet of elevation gain
1000+ miles of riding
Yesterday must have been much harder than it felt, because today I was moving slow. We essentially did 33 miles of uphill today, although the first bit wasn’t that steep, and I could feel it with every pedal. Today was hard. We did ride through a couple cute towns, Nevada City and Virginia City, which are definitely tourist locations as they are set up just like an old western town. Virginia City has a great candy shop with excellent fudge. The last 4 miles were especially gruesome because it was HOT. We were just dripping sweat but we were panting too hard to drink much. Needed to maintain the steady oxygen flow to get us over that last leg.
After the 33 mile climb we had a great 6 mile descent during which we went down about 2000 feet. There’d been a reasonable amount of traffic, but when we were going down we didn’t have to deal with any vehicles passing us at high speeds. What luck. When we got down to the flats we encountered an antelope who decided to race us. Dad was going like 25 mph and really started pushing it since the antelope was practically right next to us, but it still pulled ahead and beat us to the field. Those animals can move seriously flat. That was about the high point of the day. We started out tired, even Dad said his legs felt like molasses, and it just got worse.
The last 30 miles we had the worst head/side wind I’ve ever ridden against. We were going to stop in Cameron, which was 15 miles in, but the entire town, which is essentially the campground, had been shut down, so we had no option but to keep going. It took us 1.5 hours to do the last 15 miles. We were going between 7-11 mph, and only hit 11/12 mph on a downhill. It was unbelievable. What do you do when you’re pedaling as hard as possible and only going 8 mph? We not only had to fight the wind, but we had to keep our bikes on the shoulder and keep from being blown into the traffic. It was so much to the side that I couldn’t really draft. I rode with a bit of my front wheel directly to the left of Dad’s back wheel, but I had to be really careful when a big gust hit and keep out of his way. I’ve never been this tired after a ride before in my life. My body is just exhausted. Today was definitely the hardest day of the trip.
So the wind just kept getting worse as the night progressed. We had 60+ mph gusts which just rocked the RV and blew down several tents around us. It was pretty intense. Luckily we weren’t in danger of getting blown over because Dad found The Rock. He thought this rock was just beautiful and decided he must have it, so he dug it out of the ground. It turned out to be a bit bigger than expected, only a sliver was above ground, and weighs about 40 pounds. It was our ballast.
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