day22 127mi 7:32 16 mi N of cold spr. station

Woke up early in dayton and had a huge tailwind. I was flying. I had the wind at my back and ripped off 50 miles before 11:00. I saw frank on the side of the road and he was changing a flat. He said that shawne made it to fallon the day before. I don't know if I talked about these guys yet but frank is 60+ and shawne is 41. Shawne is doing the ride for the american lung association and is raising money because he has had one of his lungs spontaneously deflate. He is a baller.
I stopped and ate at roundtable pizza and ate pizza and breadsticks for lunch. I was kind of running out of water because there is nothing for 30 miles where I stopped for lunch. I saw a windmill with a cistern below it that a pipe was pouring water into and I pulled over took a picture and climbed up on top of it to fillup a couple of bottles. A little later on I stopped in middlegate and had a burger and fries that I couldn't finish and a beer. All the patrons in there were watching trivial pursuit on t.v. and I talked to some old guy who used to ride out by the grand canyon on a 15 speed a long time ago. Bought some more water there and then headed off for cold creek springs. I rooled up to cold spring station which according to the map had camping, showers and restrooms. I turned in and didn't see much. A jeep pulled up and the driver said the owner was his brother and to knock on his door. I rolled my bike over to a fence and leaned it against it and knocked on the door. A man answered and told me that the restaurant/showers/restrooms had burned down. I told him that was fine and I just needed someplace to camp. He said to find any grassy spot and refused to take any money for it. His brother , from the jeep, came over and talked to me about my trip for a couple minutes and then headed off to get some dinner or something.I hadn't eat dinner yet because I was still full from the food I had eaten earlier and wasn't very hungry. I was sitting down and just about to write in my journal when My stomach started rumbling. Iwalked back to the house and asked the guy if I could use his restroom very politely. He blew up, screamed no a bunch of times and told me to camp somewhere else. I stood there shocked for a second and then hurriedly packed up my stuff. I was kind of mad. I packed up and decided to just ride as far as the light would let me because it was cooler now and the next place to get anything was 45 miles away in austin. I Put my flashing red light in my pocket and turned around every so often to scan for traffic behind me. I rode with some water in my mouth and just breathed through my nose, so I wouldn't be taking sips all the time to relieve my dry throat. I rode hard and finally saw a chain installation pulloff at the side of the road as it was getting dark. I rode 16 miles in 55 minutes with that wonderful tailwind. What a long day in the saddle. I pulled off the blacktop about 20 yards and set up my tent. A semi pulled in as I was reading, i am the messenger which I finished, but didn't bother me at all.

day21 66 miles dayton,nv

Sorry about that last post I was hurrying to finish up before they kicked me off the computer. I should have elaborated on the thoughts I had while climbing. I also misspelled a lot of words at the end. I won't let time constraints sacrifice the quality of my writing in the future.

Woke up and I replaced my broken spoke. It was on the nondrive side. I had to take off amy cassette to get to it. I have no idea how tight its supposed to be. I just tightened it until it 'felt' about as tight as the other spokes on that side. The only thing I know is that drive side spokes are tighter than non drive side. Tht exhausts my knowledge of wheel trueing. We all rolled out at 9 am all bundled up and I was wearing my bandana for the descent. Still had about 500 feet of climbing before we hit the top of carson pass, 8500 ft. Shawne and I had dropped frank just after starting and stopped to wait for him. A little while after frank caught up with us a highway patrolman stopped and told us 'You can't sit here in the road, you will get hit by a car ' and drove off. Nice to see you too. We decided to get to the top all together and I wound up in front doing a nice slow tempo. I didn't want to drop anybody because this moment was to important for all of us. At this altitude its ahrd to get a full breathe. It feels llike you can't get a nnice deep breath. Its because there is less air pressure and you can't get as much oxygen into your lungs. We finally crested the last little bit and high fived as we saw the carson pass signpost. Melody had driven up behind us and we took a bunch of pictures. This is the highest I have ever been and I only used my legs to get me here. Amazing. Shawne had a camera that he mounted to his handlebar/stem and was going to tape the descent. The pavement was good and I led off down the mountain. Shawne said he hit 54m.p.h and I was pulling away from him. I was in a pretty good tuck and just tried to not let the wind push me around to much. The trick with descending is that you just turn your brain off. The last thing you think about is falling off. You go down at these speeds and they are going to scrape you off the pavement anyway, so don't think about it and be loose and relaxed. I probably hit the high fifties and might have flirted with 60m.p.h. The first 15 miles or so I pretty much soft pedalled except for that climb to the top of carson pass. The border into nevada was lame. It was just a signpost with nevada on one side and california on the other with a white stripe across the road. I stopped in Genoa to change and had a blueberry ice cream cone. Stopped in carson city to get some money and found a bike shop where I got an extra spoke, 2 water bottles, nuun and some clif blocks. The guy at the shop was nice enough to fiddle around with my bike computer and got it working again. Stopped in the library and updated my blog. Camped at dayton state park and met a guy who wrote a little article about highway 50 that was published about 12 years ago. He gave me some tips on some places to stop along the way. I won't be leaving 50 for a looong time. I broke another spoke today sometime and changed it out after dinner. I was looking at my maps and didn't realize tht Colorado is like 900 miles away. Had a strong tailwind for most of the day.

day20 57miles ? 11,000ft/climing kirkwood,ca

Ended up paying $28 DOLLARS for that crappy campsite last night. I should have just kept on riding down the road and slept somewhere else. Stopped at somerset and had a croissant and some chai tea. Talked to the waitress a bit about my trip and then rode off. Had dido running through my head for some reason as I was climbing all morning. I think its because that is always what I listen to before hiking and it reminded me of driving up for a hike. Had lunch about 1/4 mile before the junction to 88. Stopped at cooks station and had a twix and a sierra nevada. I just sat there zoned out and I kind of wanted to just curl up and go to sleep and not face the rest of the climbing I had to do today. I was climbing around 1000ft/hr according to the elevation markers 4000ft, 5000ft, 6000ft, I should get to my campsite real soon. man, this long. I'm so sick of climbing. Why did I bring so much stuff? 7000ft my hand s are getting really cold. I stopped and sat in a snowbank and drank 1 of the sodas I had saved from john. I put on some gloves and figured that I would climb and then descend into kirkwood and get a hotel because my feet were going numb and my fingers were getting really cold. The last 3 miles to kirkwood felt like 10. I finally get to kirkwood about 7ish. I don't know what time it is because my watch broke a while ago and my bike computer decided to stop working this morning. Finally got to kirkwood and turned into the all season resort and it was deserted. No cars and no lights, so I just kept going down that main road and an suv that had passed me a bunch of times earlier in the day started honking at me. They had a bike rack on the back so I knew they were good people. I roll up to the driver side window and they tell me to follow them. They got a room and nothing is open. The whole resort closes may 1. I follow them dump my bike in their room and then I take a shower while they make reservations for dinner 15 miles down the road. There was another guy named shawne that the couple, frank and melody, met at a bed and breakfast the night before. We ate at a place in woodfords and we demolished some huge plates of pasta. We even had dessert too. It started raining while we were eating and we were all so glad that we weren't huddled in our sleeping bags trying to stay out of the wind and rain. We drove through snow to get back to our room and me and shawne sat around and talked for a bit. He had called his girlfriend earlier and gotten the weather for tomorrow. gusts up to 50m.p.h. 36' in the morning and a coule of inches of snow! Linda called a number left on a door and reached a lady who was leaving for carson city in a couple of minutes. She eneded up giving us a room and they saw me rolling by as they were looking for someplace to eat. The timing of all of that was amazing. We have anice fire going right now and I broke a spoke today climbing somewhere. I will repalce it tomorrow. We only have about 500ft before the summit of carson pass. This is the highest I have ever been on my bike and I still have 500ft to go. My legs are stiffening up and they feel soo tired. My achilles felt o.k. today and I will get into Nevada tomorrow.

day19 112km ? somerset,ca

Woke up and it was raining on and off.ls jersey, raincoat, booties, knickers, no gloves. Started to rain kind of hard when I rode through sac st. to the american river bike trail. It was wierd because I ran in the american river half-marathon a year ago and I remember water stops and certain points along the course. They must have had it on saturday because there were still some barriers and a bunch of porta-potties by the start/finish line. Saw a lot of cyclists and runners. It was raining on and off, but it wasn't cold. It felt like june to me. The trail is nice, but there were some big puddles that covered the whole trail. It took you all the way into fulsom and was probably 25-30 miles long. I passed some type of collegiate crew competition they were having on a lake or something. I climbed about 1000ft total to get to placerville and then sort of stair-stepped after that. My right rear pannier bolt came out agian and I had tostop and replace it. Chucked my rear fender. They have been nothing but problems. My front fender I threw in the trash in san fransisco. A policeman stopped his suv and asked if I was o.k. while I was replacing the bolt. Decided to camp at sly campground which was 6 miles out of the way and I regret it. 6 miles of climbing!!! I was climbing for 50 minutes. I finally get to the campsite and there are pit toilets and no showers. A guy, john, and his dog were there and when he went to start up his truck it wouldn't start. He used my phone and made a couple of phone calls to try and get a jump. A van was passing by a while later which he flagged down and got a jump from. A couple was driving the vand and the husband, ed, had done some touring along the coast of oregon last year. He was great and offered to help me out If I ran into trouble over carson pass. John was awesome too. He gave me 2 sodas and some leftover chow mein he wasn't going to eat. A truck stopped by sometime after dark and drove around before asking me where the guy was who needed the jump. I told him that he had gotten a jump earlier and he left.

day18 0 km sacramento,ca

Woke up to rain today and I really, really didn't feel like getting on the bike. I know, I know. I'm losing my hardman, i'll ride in anything status. But it gives me another day to rest and ice my achilles and hang out withthe wonderful funny family that is the thorne's. Tara, Miles and I wnet to IKEA around noon and then stopped by his new condo that he bought. Rode to the bike shop and bought a rear light for carson pass. It was Art's birthday today and we had some good food and great wine to celebrate. I have definitely got my fill of antioxidants while staying here. I bought some optygen at r.e.i. so will see how that goes. Art used to ride a long time ago before everything started getting developed and we talked about riding for a bit.

day17 0 km sacramento,ca

Tara had an interview this morning. Miles and I went to r.e.i. to pick up some stuff and then swung back and picked up Tara after she was done. The bike shop called and said my bike was done, so I had Miles drop me off at the shop. I had broken a driveside spoke and they replaced it. They also gave me some extras and showed me how to replace them. Rode it back to the house and started reading 'the rider' which I picked up at r.e.i and iced my achilles.

day16 85km 4:14

got an early start today (7:30) and it turns out I was 12 miles away from the campsite. No way I would have made it with the light I had left. There was a bike path going into davis,ca and I got turned around and rode through the campus. There were bikes everywhere. I mean everywhere. Everyone was riding. Stopped and ate at crepeville, it was yummy. Got back on the bike and took some flat farm roads and then the yolo causeway, which paralells 50 going into sacramento. I was tryiing to find the biekt rail again after crossing over the river in sac and a policeman on a bike told me 'you have to walk it through the tunnel.' I said I was from out of town and just trying to find a friends house and he gave me some good directions to miles parents place. I showed up to their house at about noon and rang the doorbell, nothing. So I called thier phone and just after his mom, debbie, picked up my phone died. I tried the doorbell again to no answer and was rolling my bike out to ride off to a pay phone when she called out from thier side gate area. I quickly went over and explained who I was so she wouldn't be alarmed. She told me of a bike shop down the street and I rode down to get my bike a new chain put on. I walked back to the house and took a nice hot shower. She left to pick up miles and tara from the airport and I iced my achilles for a while and read. We had an awesome pasta salad for dinner that was suprisingly simple but delicious. Slept on a futon and not in my sleeping bag:)