Day 1: I woke up around 5AM to ride out to Nick's dad's house (one of the four riders' dad's place, who was also our driver/ SAG camper). Got there, drank coffee and woke up a bit more, while waiting for everyone to show up. Shortly after we all got our shit together, we hit the road. It was all going smoothly until we took a short bathroom/snack break in Melba. Actually, nothing really happened except for Jeff putting on an impressive clipless-failure clinic, falling over several times in the span of about five minutes. After that, we rode all the way to Grand View without incident. When we got there we ate the fuck out of some burgers, which was crazy satisfying. As we left the diner we heard what sounded like an air-raid siren going off from the center of town, which obviously piqued our interest. When we asked around, we found out that a camper had gone up in flames just outside of town, in the direction we needed to go. Of course we had to go see it. When we got there, there was a huge fire/smoke plume which was made that much more epic to hear bullets sailing past overhead from the ammo box(es) that had been in the camper. Bullets don't scare nobody. Towards the end of the day, Justin and I pissed off a rattle snake, priming it to freak the fuck out of Nick and Jeff when they rode past it a couple minutes later. It's what friends are for, you know? I barely made it to the stopping point for the day before the sun completely set, which I'm grateful for cause it started to get cold really fast after that.
Day 2: The day seemed to be going fine, until an hour or three into the ride where me and Justin narrowly avoided a snake making its way into the road. Jeff and Nick weren't so lucky. There was a mean crosswind and Jeff and Nick were overlapping wheels. Nick swerved hard to avoid the snake, and ended up shearing through a substantial portion of Jeff's front wheel spokes. Miraculously, Jeff rode it out and didn't crash. Better bike handling skills than me. Me and Justin went ahead at a fast pace to send our support camper back to give Jeff a new wheel as soon as possible (we don't take rides from nobody!). Our halfway point for the day was Wild Horse, which would have been fine except the restaurant/motel that comprised the "town" of Wild Horse had shut down, and our support driver decided to pace us on his motorcycle on the climb up to Wild Horse instead of going back when we said he should so he could meet us there with water etc. Couple no food, empty water bottles, and nowhere to refill them with 30-40 minutes of sitting in the burning sun, and you're asking for trouble. This pushed me over the edge, and I threw up the food I tried to eat when the support finally caught up. I was able to keep some water down, and right at the end I was able to take and keep down a slimfast (the recovery drink of champions apparently) which saved my ass, for a while anyway. About 30 miles from Elko, I bonked. Luckily everyone helped out and let me draft, and/or gave me a push (literally) for as long as they could. Which was fine for the flats, but coming into Elko you have to climb a peak. Luckily, you don't have to really have energy to be able to mash out a climb. Jeff and Nick had switched to road bikes by now, and me (bonked) and Justin climbed the hill/pass faster than they did, HY. The scary bit was descending the other side though. The sun had completely set by the time we finished climbing, so we had to descend an unfamiliar mountain, fixed, at night. Shit was nuts; my legs were screaming by the time we got into town from all that goddamn spinning. The night wasn't really over yet, we went to a casino/whatever, fuck everything is a casino in Nevada, to eat, and I immediately had to go throw up some more. Day two messed my shit up, like whoa.
Day 3: First thing I did today was switch out my tires to a pair of fresh gatorskins, since everyone was complaining about how many flats I was getting (it was a bit much). Well, we had to ride the freeway fro a few miles on the way out of Elko, luckily no cops saw us. I was a bit concerned when I saw a tunnel coming up, with no apparent shoulder room, but luckily we had our shit down and the turn off (a closed road, at least from the side we came from) was like 100 yards before the tunnel. It was a really beautiful little canyon/valley, very starkly contrasting with the freeway riding we had just finished. I really can't recommend freeways as nice riding spots. Later on in the day we had some horses run with us for as long as they could (fence) which was really cool. Justin kept breaking nipples on his rear wheel after around the halfway point. I don't know how he fucked up the wheel build so badly... actually I do, don't re-use nipples from old wheels, kids. Jeff gave him the rear wheel from his fixed bike since he had switched out the day before, and everything went smoothly from there on. Justin and I both felt good today, and we caught Jeff and Nick on the flats and climbs, then would get dropped on the descents (who could guess).
Day 4: We started the day off getting an awesome breakfast at a local diner, and then suited up for the day which was officially the climbing day (though in retrospect, was not the day with the absolute most climbing on the trip), with three passes over 7000ft, and one more over 6000ft. By the end of the day me and Justin were completely fed up with spinning our asses off down 1000ft descents, and instead took the equally uncomfortable option of unclipping and taking it out on our crotches instead. Crosswinds on highspeed descents with spoke cards and no foot->bike connection is pretty fucking scary, just saying. Yea, shoulda taken out the cards, but I didn't really feel like it. We only rode for 4 hours this day, and it felt like we were cheating.
Day 5: There was only one real pass at ~7300ft, then it was pretty much all downhill after that. We covered over 140 miles, and it hardly felt like anything. I wanted to keep riding, until I realized we'd gone that far, and had been riding for over seven hours, I didn't even notice it was so easy and smooth. At the end of the day I tried to race both Jeff and Nick at the same time, but they worked together and also used their gears. I almost got the better of them though. Almost. Fuck. It was lucky we stopped when we did, otherwise we never would have found out about these cool little hot springs at Ash Springs, which wasn't our originally planned stopping point. But it was by far a better choice, relaxing the evening away in some hot springs, then getting a trucker breakfast at the gas station less than a football field away. It really was about as perfect an end to the day as we could hope for. The food was pretty damn good too. Or maybe we were all just insanely hungry.
Day 6: The last day was almost completely unremarkable, except that we averaged over 20mph fixed. Oh, and about 50 miles outside of Vegas, nearly all the drivers instantly because bigger assholes, like flipping a switch. Yea, finally seeing the city off in the distance was kind of surreal, like, "Well, we're done... now what are we supposed to do all day?" Luckily we had some people expecting us, and weren't out on our asses doing dumb shit like going to the seas of white hair and leathery old skin that are casinos.
The time we spent in Vegas was actually really fun, we timed our trip so we would arrive when Interbike was starting/going on, so there was tons of bike-related shenanigans to get up to, like the 3 part MASH race, Interbike itself, a critical mass (which ended up being more of a chill ride into the middle of nowhere), and riding around Vegas getting trashed for a week. Not to mention a house party complete with band(s) and god only knows what else I'm forgetting. Sadly we did not have time to ride back from Vegas, work for everyone else, and a trip to Japan for me, kept our time limit short. We drove back to Boise on Sunday the 27th, and I had to catch a plane to Japan on the 30th, I had that shit planned perfectly, if I do say so myself. But that story is going to have to wait until later, cause this is too much typing already. Shit, this only gets me up to the end of September...
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