12/25/11-
Both beautiful, both deadly. Yeap, I liked Las Vegas, mainly due to the fact that it's surrounded by mountains on all sides, has incredibly well designed bike lanes & nicely paved streets, and the fact that I got to ride like a maniac on the strip at night just like back on Broadway in NYC. I knew the energy consumption, alcohol, & partying would make me miserable so I decided to block them out before I even got into Las Vegas and it seemed to work. Coming from NYC Vegas felt like a "small" big city, since as soon as you go two blocks off the strip the lights fade and the residential areas begin. Nevertheless it's a place I'm glad I saw.
I stayed with Mike from warmshowers who plans to bike to South America while fixing bikes along the way. His trailer is four times the size of mine & he is bringing all of his Park tools... He made me some awesome cliff bars & altered chex mix and was a very generous host. I will be hitching back to Vegas in a few weeks to help him with some carpentry.
Death Valley was torture on my knees. By the time I'm 50 I won't be able to walk & I presume I'll have to get those artificial robotic knee replacements. (Im doing this whole trip on a 2x10 drivetrain, 34/50 front & 12-32 back, mainly because my racing ego won't let me get anything grannier) After Pahrump you climb up to 3k only to descend to -200' into death valley. The little towns there are way overpriced & so I decided to see how many days I can go without my wallet. I slept at -200' that night beside the road and got a nice view of the Milky Way. The next day the fun part of getting out started- it's a 20 mile 5k climb that mentally took me all day to barely conquer. After that you descend (shocker). Since my front tire has 6500 miles (Continetal Gatorskin, 25mm) I tend to take it easy now since having it blow out at 40mph would not be very good for my bones. The constant breaking caused my rims to over heat to the point of melting the rubber where the valve stem and tube meet. Luckily I wasn't going too fast and it happened to my rear. The rest of the way down I had to stop every few minutes & let my rims cool off (I even sprayed them with water).
Once you finish the descend (and stop at the gas station to buy gas for 5.67$/ gallon... Or not.) you get to climb again. Some 3k on a really curvy road.
When I got to the first flat road after my 4 days in death valley I couldn't control my enjoyment. I could actually pedal normally... And the bike moved at a speed that agreed with my expectations. Incredible.
The temperature that week ranged from the lower teens to the upper 70's, glad it wasn't any colder nor hotter. On Christmas Eve I was walking around in shorts and a tank top, so it sort of killed any holiday spirit that I had. I made pancakes and fell asleep by 7. In the morning I was disappointed when I didn't see any presents by my tent. It's one thing to be told Santa doesn't exist but still get presents and another thing to actually not get anything; not that I minded, I'm not much of a holiday person anyway and believe the holidays are way too commercialized.
Getting out of DV the next day I realized something. In order to live in CA, you have to own one of the following cars, anything else will make you an outsider:
-Ford Mustang. Black or Red.
-Any SUV, higher-end preferred. HAS to have a roof rack with either:
A) a snowboard attached. (No skis)
B) a huge Thule black storage case.
-A pickup that you either have a camper attachment for or a cab to make it look like a giant oversized SUV.
8 out of 10 cars that I saw fit into this description. Maybe I haven't been paying attention to cars in other states but seeing all these gas guzzlers made me sad ): Car free for life!
Currently headed for the coast!
Happy New Year (:
-W
Happy New Year! -Norm
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