Day Eighty: Ely, Ely, Ándale!
Distance: 64 mi.
Elevation: 4,154
Song of the Day: Thee Oh Sees — Web (That’s right, it’s back!)
5:30AM: Wake to peeping sunrise, unacclimated to Pacific Time zone; forecast looks mild so we dilly-dally at a picnic table, drink coffee and re-pack our food and tool bags.
Two fierce climbs to conquer today, Sacramento Pass and Connor’s Pass, the latter offering us Major’s Junction as a possible mid-day resting point.
The first pass is harder than expected due to nasty headwinds at the base of the mountain. The downfall on the other side is shorter than anticipated, only 4 miles or so before the wind whips us back to our slow churning pace.
An enormous fleet of mountains lurcs up ahead of us, offer form to our remaining pass; figuring prominently in the landscape, they deceives us: another twenty miles of biking through the valley remains til the upward climb. Equally impossible to judge the distance of oncoming trucks, dips in the road, or patches of cloud cover, some appearing a short pedal away take ten minutes to reach; others pass before we expect them, or in the case of cloud cover disappear entirely, disappointing us.
The climb begins before exiting the valley, promises an even more difficult sojourn once the mountainside is traversed; miles ahead and above, I finally creak into Major’s Station, weaving switchback across the road like an underpowered child and throwing myself across the shoulder as if to reduce the distance to my resting place.
Drive the bike across a strip of gravel into Major’s Junction with soaring hopes for heaping plates of food; devastated by a “Closed” sign on the single dwelling; sinking feeling, but not to worry, we have plenty of goods we can turn into food — only, we don’t have any more water. I scan the deck but don’t see a spigot; to the right, barbed wire fences enclose an RV and trailer; to the left, a garden contains a promising hose, but as I follow the looping rubber I see the cut-off end leading nowhere. I cut a wide loop round the back of the premise, startled by sight and sound of two dogs railing against their cage in my direction; keep moving into what is clearly an RV park — I see picnic tables, I see electricity, will there be water, YES!! — overjoyed, I turn over the spigot and plunge my head under the cool stream for a moment, then trot back to meet Lizzie and announce my discovery. But I don’t see Lizzie, she must not have caught up yet. I wait until we make eye contact and she turns off the road, I can’t think of a worse place to become separated.
Returning from my bottle fill, I cook lunch, spotting to my surprise another group of cyclists, climbing the same mountain pass, in the same direction as us! We exchange a few words, make sure one another are OK, no need to interrupt their momentum.
Twenty minutes later Lizzie and I return to the climb, successfully rising near to 8,000 feet for what must be the fifteenth time on our journey.
Once in town we pull into a gas station and meet Syd and Catherine, two of four mighty members of Bikes Across America 2017. Later, in the supermarket, I’ll run into Gabe and Beto as well. As Liz and I fill our bellies and panniers and head off to find somewhere to sleep, we’re hopeful to encounter this group again… Route 50 is not coined the Lonliest Road in America for nothing.
