sideways distractions: The Loneliest Road in America

Oh Nevada, no thank you. This whole trip we were all waiting for Colorado. It was the promised land, it was going to be so beautiful after all the rows and rows of corn, and so many people on our trip had never been there. After Colorado we knew that Nevada would be hard, it would be chalk full of head winds, really hot and flat as far as the eye could see. How could we have ever been so wrong about that last part!? Did you know that Nevada holds the title for most mountains per square mile then any other state? Well, it does, and it most certainly does. Holy mountain climbing! At one stretch we did 13 passes in 4 days. Isn't that insane? In between the passes are these long stretching valleys, some of them go for ten miles or more before the next mountain. What a strange feeling to come over a mountain and see the next mountain right in front of you, but know that it will take hours to get there. Depth perception in Nevada is such a weird thing, you can see so far that it seems simultaneously as though you are right next to your destination and as though you have been biking in place for hours because it sure isn't getting any closer. It was so frustrating, and at times the wind nearly blew me over. Slogging through Nevada was such a hard thing to do, and so discouraging. We took Hwy 50 the whole way, and it sure is a lonely road. We went the whole day without passing through a town, just going and going in the middle of nowhere. We camped a few times, and didn't see much civilization anywhere. It was just plain tough, and we had ten straight ride days in a row. Nevada is also a state that doesn't have many bike shops, and my bike chose this time to rebel. I haven't had many big problems with my bike on the trip, but of course I did when we had no way to fix it. On maybe day one of the ten day stint, a cable snapped on my bike and I lost the ability to use any of my gears except my granny gears. I quickly learned that there are few things more annoying then having to pedal, pedal, pedal, coooooaaaast, pedal, pedal, pedal, coooooaaaast for days on end. Drew helped me get a few more gears, which came and went with no real pattern. Luckily (?) we basically climbed all day long, and that meant I was sitting in my low gears any way. We did it though, and though some of us are a little worse for the wear, we made it across the loneliest road in america.