Why I am grounded in Elko, Nevada

For the very few of you (I know of at least one, while most everyone I talk to fully understands my dilemma) who think I am a pansy for not powering on, I offer this insight. I was 60 miles away from Utah when I chose to retreat back here to Elko, 120 miles from the border because of the weather. Which I will talk about now.

I have no problem riding in wet weather. In fact, as a car free cyclist, I ride year round and never let rain stop me from getting somewhere. Granted, I try not to go out in storms, I just wait until the heavy stuff lightens up and then I go out. What's more is that if you ride a bike and are afraid of rain you will ride far less than those with slightly thicker skins. Which brings me to one of the points of this discussion.

This is not regular precip I am facing. This is thunder and lightning charged rain fall I am up against. (see why it is especially unsafe to ride a Hiwheel in the desert when there is lightning) with no where to run for cover.and with the two towns that break this up spread 60 and 120 miles apart. Did I say there is nothing in between?

As well, everything has to be right for me to make the 120 miles to Salt Lake City. Since I will be on I-80 through the Bonneville Salt Flats and then past the Great Salt Lake itself, I can't be out there with 75 mph traffic in rain or other stormy conditions. Motorists need to have a good line of sight for me out there. This not to mention the fact that side wind gusts of 30 and 40 mph are notorious out there. And getting blown into the "slow" lane with not enough time for cars or trucks to react is a real game-ender.

Nor would Hwy 50 have been a whole lot better. They've got the same weather mess down there. So instead of Elko, I would be stuck in Ely. And once the front does pass, I'd be up against 240 miles of mostly wilderness for which I am not prepared for to get to Salt Lake City, instead of the I-80 I face now...........

And even then, I would be getting into a Salt Lake City and all the cities beyond and all the way into and through the Rockies into Boulder and Denver that are also being punished by these thunderstorms. And in so doing, am I not making cycling look like a hardship instead of the joy that we as cyclists know it to be?

And so, in sum, that is why I have chosen to regroup in Elko where there are services that can give this effort the longer term staying power it needs. It also gives me a chance to work with Paul Guttenberg, over in Davis, CA, in fleshing out the bicycle sculpture auction he has initiated..

THX for all of U, especially those of you who have needed this explanation from me!! Onward soon!!

Lightning Kills - Myths about it & Why I am grouunded

TOP-10 MYTHS OF LIGHTNING SAFETY Source
1. MYTH: Lightning Never Strikes The Same Place Twice
TRUTH: Lightning often strikes the same place repeatedly, especially if it’s a tall pointy isolated object. The Empire State Building used to be used as a lightning laboratory, since it is hit nearly 25 times a year. Places prone to lightning are places to avoid when thunderstorms are nearby!

2. MYTH: If It’s Not Raining, Or If Clouds Aren’t Overhead, I’m Safe From Lightning
TRUTH: Lightning often strikes more than three miles from the thunderstorm, far outside the rain or even thunderstorm cloud. ‘Bolts From The Blue’, though infrequent, can strike 10-15 Miles from the thunderstorm. Anvil lightning can strike the ground over 50 Miles from the thunderstorm, under extreme conditions. Lightning in clouds has traveled over 100 miles from the thunderstorm.

3. MYTH: Rubber Tires Protect You From Lightning In A Car By Insulating You From The Ground
TRUTH: Lightning laughs at two inches of rubber! Most cars are reasonably safe from lightning. But it’s the metal roof and metal sides that protect you, not the rubber tires. Thus convertibles, motorcycles, bicycles, open shelled outdoor recreational vehicles, and cars with plastic or fiberglass shells offer no lightning protection. ikewise, farm and construction vehicles with open cockpits offer no lightning protection. But closed cockpits with metal roof and sides are safer than going outside. And don’t even ask about sneakers! ☺

5. MYTH: If Outside In A Thunderstorm, Go Under A Tree To Stay Dry
TRUTH: Being underneath trees is the second leading activity for lightning casualties – enough said?!

7. MYTH: When Playing Sports And Thunderstorms Threaten, It’s Okay To Finish The Game Before Seeking Shelter
TRUTH: Sports is the activity with the fastest rising rate of lightning casualties. No game is worth death or life-long severe injury. All people associated with sports should have a lightning safety plan and stick to it strictly. Seek proper shelter immediately when lightning threatens. Adults are responsible for the safety of children!

8. MYTH: Structures With Metal, Or Metal On The Body (Jewelry, Watches, Glasses, Backpacks, Etc.), Attract Lightning
TRUTH: Height, pointy shape, and isolation are the dominant factors controlling where a lightning bolt will strike (Read HiWheel). The presence of metal makes virtually no difference on where lightning strikes. Mountains are made of stone, but receive many strikes each year. When lightning threatens, take proper protective action immediately. Don’t aste time shedding metal off your body, or seeking shelter under inadequate structures. But while metal doesn’t attract lightning, touching or being near long metal objects (fences, railings, bleachers, vehicles, etc.) is still unsafe when thunderstorms are nearby. If lightning does happen to hit it, the metal can conduct the
electricity a long distance (even over 100 yards) and still electrocute you.

9. MYTH: If Trapped Outside And Lightning Is About To Strike, Lie Flat On The Ground
TRUTH: This advice is decades out of date. Better advice is to use the ‘Lightning Crouch’: put your feet together, squat low, tuck your head, and cover your ears. Lightning induces electric currents along the top of the ground that can be deadly over 100 Feet away. While lying flat on the ground gets you as low as possible, which is good, it increases your chance of being hit by a ground current, which is bad. The best combination of being low and touching the ground as little as possible is the ‘Lightning Crouch’. But the ‘Lightning Crouch’ should be used only as a last resort. Much better would be to plan outdoor activities around the weather to avoid thunderstorm exposure and to have proper shelter available.

Where's Martin by Ron Bishop

Where's Martin?
Martin Krieg Bikes Across America Promoting a National Bicycle Greenway Network

Martin Krieg is riding his 1891 Eagle HiWheel bicycle across America, promoting a “National Bicycle Greenway Network” on the “Seventh Annual Mayors Ride” and collecting proclamations from mayors to build support. The trip started in San Francisco on May 3 and will arrive in Salt Lake City soon and Boston in August. There have been many bumps along the trail: his support vehicle and driver failed to materialize, sponsors cut funding, and transporting supplies is challenging. Martin, in true American spirit, with support from his friends and devotees, continues to ride. Hail, rain, and roads not designed for bicycle travel have not thwarted his efforts. But thunder and lightning filled skies have.

Martin will spend a few more days in Elko, Nevada determining how to cross the great, dry, unpopulated western desert. He has found local support in Elko, and will soon be back in the saddle and rolling westward along I-80. Research confirmed it is legal, though not pleasant, to ride the Utah part of I-80, as there are no adequate alternatives. The lack of services and bicycle friendly paths is exactly why Martin is riding. He wants to raise awareness of the lack of inclusive design for transportation throughout our nation.

Many cities have started to provide planning and funding to become more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. There are new trails sprouting that take you short distances, but there is no overarching plan for connectivity. Martin’s vision is to raise awareness and build consensus to create that connectivity. In the late 1800’s the League of American Wheelmen bicyclists, lobbied to have roads paved. They were successful in paving roads and the automobile came along and drove them off. One hundred and ten [110] years later cyclists are back and want to complete that dream of long ago to safely bicycle or walk across America from coast to coast, north to south on the "National Bicycle Greenway Network". Martin is out there on I-80 on a HiWheel bicycle to bring attention to our lost dream. Visit his web site at www.bikeroute.com and join his efforts.

When you are out on the road, look for him, invite him to bend your ear, share some bread or provide lodging. Get radio stations to provide updates, put it on your CBs, tell your friends, and follow Martin on his quest. This can become a shovel ready project and collect stimulus money to actually build a greenway, not another freeway, across America. Give your representatives, radio talk shows, and friends a call to support the National Bicycle Greenway Network.

“Where’s Martin”, not Waldo, should build quite a buzz. Keep track of the progress and answer the question, “Where’s Martin”. Help him bring the dream to reality for a better, greener America.

Sincerely,


Ron Bishop - Architect- ADPSR
BishopArchitects.com
Sierra Club NAC Ex.Com.
"Energy Efficiency, Green, Sustainable"
Bicycle & Traffic Skills Instructor - LCI
[510] 652-4667

6/14 SLC Bound Eagle HiWheel Needs Gear Carriers (Sherpas)

At left is the parking lot in Elko where train tracks used to stand

Now that the weather is starting to climb into the low 60's, even though thunder and lightning are still in the forecast, I have a ride planned back into Wells, NV for tomorrow, Friday, so I can start riding to Boston once again. Between myself and the Utah border stands the Pequop Mtn Range. While they climb to 9,200 feet, I will summit them at 6,900.

And just as the California/Nevada state line is made up of casinos and other gambling operations, the Nevada/Utah border at Wendover, also is made up of gaming businesses. Of interest is the fact that it was from Wendover that the Enola Gay began its flight to drop the atomic bomb that decimated Hisroshima and pretty much ended World War II.

During my regroup here in Elko, while recycling and water conservation are foreign words and plastic bags are issued with reckless abandon, I have grown to really like this place. This is so especially as I learn more about it. I spent a good deal of time yesterday taking to Ross Andreson, the photographer from the Elko Daily, who came out to take pictures of me and the bike. A California transplant, Pacific Grove, no less, the city I used to ride to near Monterey when I was training for my 1986 TrasnCon, he told Lynette, Greg and I why there is an 'E' on the hills outside of town.

The 'E' was used for airmail drops as a way for pilots to be able to recognize the stops they needed to make along their way. I had always thought that the town fathers had initialized their mountain sides in an act of civic bravado. We laughed about the 'BM' for nearby Battle Mountain.

I also learned that since Nevada was a so called swing state during the last presidential election, Barack Obama made three visits to this city of 20,000 people during his presidential campaign. Also of note for Palo Altans, is the fact that Elko was the first city to move its railroad tracks from its downtown where a number of fatalities had occurred to less than a quarter of a mile away where there was open space which ended up being along the Humboldt River. And they did so with federal funding. Where the eight to twelve freight trains that came through once made life complicated for locals with crossing guards and the like, now sits a huge parking lot in what is now a revitalized and peaceful downtown. While not far away one can see the four new overpasses that carry cars over both the waterway and the railroad line.

With its at least 50 or more high speed trains roaring through its busy streets, why can not Palo Alto relocate its rail to its nearby baylands? Something worth studying in the face of all the other alternatives.....

Back to my ride, I still need a SHERPA(S)!! So that we don't have to involve fossil fuel in my ride, who wants to have the ride adventure of their life as we visit Mayors and other luminaries while carrying my gear and food (20 to 25 lbs) for me? An easy task on a regular bike, it would mean almost a 50% increase in speed for me from 7 to over 10 mph........

Also, if you are a Salt Lake City cyclist, who can come out to Lake Point in Tooele to help me get into your downtown? It would be truly awesome if there were a small brigade of such pedalers to help me carry gear and to navigate accordingly. Lou Mellini has outfitted me with directions, but I will have a lot on my plate as I try to document my arrival with pictures and the like. Here is my contact information.......

THX 4 all of U!!

Holed up in Elko, NV - Sherpa(s) Needed

Out here in the Nevada desert, I am holed up at the American Inn on Idaho St. in the small city of Elko. I back tracked to here, 110 miles from the Utah border, so I could rebuild my ride at $32 a night. And be in a place where I can have access to all the provisions I am going to need in order to continue in earnest.

If you've been following this blog, you have seen that this is not the ride I expected to be on six years ago when I first began planning it. Or for that matter up until May when I was still holding out for a support vehicle so I wouldn't have to be a 90-pound fixed gear bike going over mountain ranges. And it wasn't until I got halfway across Nevada when Manny Garcia started carrying my gear for two days that I realized that in between peeing blood and only going 7 MPH, that continuing without support was as much asking for trouble as it gave no dignity to my mission.

Passers by in cars don't take inspiration from what I am doing because they have no idea what I am up to. Instead they feel sorry for me out here on this machine that deserves to be honored as much as  the reason I am riding it. And yet there again, how can anyone be expected to know what I am all about to if I am a party of one?

Once people figure out what my ride is all about, they open up their hearts and their homes. Here in Elko for example, Greg and Lynette Park, two state-of-the-art trike riders who saw me and my bike at a local grocery store, have already offered to drive me back to Wells, NV so I can continue from where I left off.

I hate involving cars but in these bike inhospitable lands, that is the best I can do. We will leave at 4 AM so we can get a jump on the afternoon thunderstorms that are predicted and have been taking place out here for the last few weeks. Because I left Palo Alto without rain gear or warm clothes and now have this computer to worry about, I have been at the mercy of weather none of the locals have seen be this bad for so long ever.

A Saturday salt flats ride is the best we can do for another reason. Because there is literally no where out there one can pitch a tent, even if I carried one, the closest lodging is 100 miles from Wells. And since there is a big convention taking place at the Oquirrh Motor Inn in Lake Point, they do not have any rooms until Saturday nite.

And just because motorists have for the most part only seen me hard at work carrying my own gear, does not mean that I have not had a ton of help behind the scenes. Mr. Bike Oakland, Ron Bishop, has spent countless hours trying to figure out a way for me to bike into Salt Lake. Between plotting out routes at our site, and calling and talking to bike people all over the greater Salt Lake City area, he has pumped a ton of time into this effort. As has his friend, Gail Robinson, who has gotten me into dialogue with her friends Carol and Rob who are now just waiting for me to get there.
 
And then there are the beautiful bike sculptures that Paul Guttenberg over in Davis is trying to auction off as a benefit for my ride. Toward that end, he is working with Lori Yung in Sacramento and once they get better photos of them, all of this will go into fast forward. 

And so while I also wait for the better weather that will help my ride once I do get beyond Salt Lake, I am getting caught up on photos. But before I share the ones from the East Bay to Sacto that were stuck on my iPhone, HERE is what Elko has looked like for the last few days. And before Greg and Lynette bought me dinner last nite, as the rare Renaissance Man that he is out here, he did some tweaks to make Peter Wagner's rack even more functional, plastic welded my sunglasses back together once again and even gave me this really cool little knife I had gotten excited about that he was using! Too much wow!

Here are those photos I just got out of my iPhone once I became settled long enough to install iTunes on this Windows machine.

PA to Oakland/Berkeley

Berkeley to Napa

Napa to Davis

In closing, if you want to come out here and ride with me for a few days, I could sure use your (sherpa) help carrying my food and gear (25 to 30 lbs). Do please advise at NBG@BikeRoute.com

THX 4 all of U!!

btw: While writing this, I set up with the Ross Anderson of the Elko Free Press and Lori Gilbert, of KENV-TV, to do some interviews here at 2PM today. This, as I just heard another very loud boom from the thunder that has kept me on guard for the last all too many days

Rest Day for 50 degree desert with Lightning, hail, .....

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The day we took off to rest after my water poisoning setback, was a very productive one for me. At long last, I was able to get in to my on line banking! Now I know exactly how low my funds are but I did also get into my PayPal account for the first time on the road as well. And Don Loomis, our 2004 TransCon scout was there waiting for me with the gift of a one-hundred dollar day on the road. As was Ed Cox, the man who, as the Sacramento bike coordinator, wears a plethora of other hats in turning his city into a quality of life jewel. He bought two days!!

Buoyed by those two shows of support, I kept stacking up the off-the-road successes. Also of note is the fact that I finally got my iPhone data offloaded and saved! Toward that end, you may soon be seeing more photos the limits of my connection speed have kept my iPhone from letting you see...

Manny and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Elko. And going to and from the eatery, we saw a town that looked vibrant and alive. Elko has its own airport, TV station, college (Great Basin), and every big-box store and restaurant chain one can name. A town that stakes it fortune on the mining of gold , the foreboding Mt Ruby, snowcapped at 12,000 feet, looks down upon the 20,000 people who now call Elko their home.

We even met a happy road construction worker named John, who at 63 remembers when it was less than 5,000 inhabitants. His grandfather, he recalled, owned the first electric skill saw for miles around.

Our hotel room was across the parking lot from a Raley's supermarket where after a few trips. we also got to know some of the workers there. At our hotel, we were the star guests because of my bike and everyone wanted to talk to us. Elko was fun.

It was good that it was because after we left it at 8AM for what was supposed to be an easy 50-mile day to Wells, NV, I almost wished I had listened to my doctor friend and stayed another day.

We were loving life as we rolled along at an easy ten miles an hour (Many was carrying all but my sleeping bag - with gear, my road speed is 7 mph) in the cool 50-degree morning. However, as we would 20 miles later find out, we were being cruelly teased. In fact, it never warmed up and the lightning strikes we could see far off in the distance became a part of our reality as we thought we were out-racing the wet clouds behind us.

At twenty miles from our destination, lightning strikes danced on the mountain tops on both sides of us when soon it was our turn to incur their wrath. The wind grew and the skies opened up with 1/2 inch sized hail pellets. With nowhere to duck for cover, all we could do was ride. After about two miles, Manny found a bridge. Used by local farmers, it did not rise above the freeway, but stayed at its level so it was hard for me to see when I saw him disappear around the guard rail that also shielded it from view.

When I got to his bike leaning against the steel barricade, I stopped too. I looked back at the gully we had just crossed and there was Manny waving at me. Once he got my attention, he pointed where I needed to go to get over the barbed wire fence. Pulling the the sleeping bag off of my bike, all I had on was a t-shirt as I ran across dirt quickly becoming mud to join him.

The spot Manny had staked out looked like a swallow's den As the storm raged outside, the little birds were flying all around and in and out of the little mud homes they had built under the freeway's road bed. There were many hundreds of them.

The storm lasted another 20 or 30 minutes as we joked about our temporary new home while hoping nobody would try to steal our bikes. We even had enough presence of mind to snap a few pictures of each other with a freeway road-bed just a few inches above our heads. We had thought that we could include some of the swarming birds in the photos, but by the time we got ready to do so, they had all settled down.

It was not long before we were back on our bikes and headed for Wells once again. To add even more obstacles to our path, the rumble divots began again. What could be worse, I wondered. It almost seemed par for today's course that it would soon get so cold that I couldn't feel my hands. This meant no eating or drinking, photos or notes recorded until we reached the first hotel closest to I-80, the Rest Inn Suites, where according to the manager, 50 degrees below zero was once a winter time reality and that it has rained every day there last May.

He also told us that at 6,300 feet, they are higher than Denver. We climb to over 7,500 feet tomorrow. I feel grateful to all of you who have made this warm room possible.

THX 4 all of U!!

Battle Mtn to Elko, NV 72 miles

Today in Pix

Probably 15 K feet climbing. - more soon!!

Winnemucca to Battle Mtn with Manny

Today in PIX

I left my motel room at 6 this AM, with Manny Garcia, the manager of Cardinal Bike Shop in Palo Alto. He came up here on his vacation to ride with me because, in his words, "he wants to learn from the best". I made sure to remind him he would be learning from someone who is the best at being crazy. 

And crazy we were. The ride started out with the cool and very big skies of the sage brush filled desert. On a delicious shoulder (the speed divots went away by the time we had rejoined the interstate) along the lightly traveled I-80. Of which I commented that back home, some of the roads cyclists use are far more heavily traveled than what were were riding. with better sight lines for the drivers out here. And if you get hit by steel at 40 mph, it is not a lot different than being taken out by a 75 mile-an-hour truck locomotive. 

It was fun watching Manny as he barely pedaled while taking lots of photos of me. And the Penny Farthing Winery people will be happy as I had their handsome T-shirt on that you can buy to help keep me on the road, hint, hint. 

At about mile 25, we looked out on a road that winded up the mountain ahead. Roads always look steeper until you are actually on them. Nor did I think this ascent applied to us because I-80 generally made the same wide sweeping turns that the rail line did to get across these lands. However, as it turned out, it was a climb that I would have to make. To 5200 feet. I was probably out of the saddle for at least a solid mile and maybe two. I did stop a hundred feet from what looked like the top because it appeared as though either the summit was at hand or more climbing was in store for us. And I wanted to be fresh in the event that the latter was true. To my surprise, we had summited! 

Manny said that on the steepest part, I was going 8 miles an hour!! And he said that even he felt it on his multi-speed, state-of-the-art touring bike.

The downhill, however was not that fast and it wasn't long after we were off of it that the freeway was being resurfaced. And as such, the shoulder which we had grown to love had  now become the lane of travel for all the cars and trucks and motor homes. Manny didn't notice the pounding on his bike, but I did. For five long, bone jarring miles. Ugh ............

And then a few miles later for another eight miles, the stamped concrete speed divots, IN and ACROSS the full width of the shoulder returned. All this just as I was beginning to think that Nevada's I-80 could very well become the National Bicycle Greenway route across this state.

Heck there is enough of a right of way that a bike lane could be laid next to the shoulder and separated by a jersey wall. As well, there is so much history out here.. And on a bike, it is a pleasant part of the country through which to ride.

Guess I just have to make sure the Nevada state bike coordinator, Bill Story, knows what we need out there. Now and in the future. So many possibilities!!

THX for all of U!!

Tough 72 to Winnemucca with rumble divot trauma............

Today in Pictures

Up at 4AM. On the road at 5:15 after I attended to a pedal that had gotten loose. And I didn’t stop pumping this 85+ pound fixed gear until almost 3PM. Big gut suck. And I was hammering so hard that I drank all the water I had aboard with 35 miles left to go. And ate all the food I brought along save one energy bar………….

And as I said in my Facebook post, I need hotel lodging to clean up, and recover. The reason I am getting so beat up is because I am either pedaling a 2 or 3% uphill grade and sometimes more. Or I am going down the same graded descent and I have to pedal it since the downhill stuff is not steep enough to rest my legs by coasting. And it’s hot out here. High 80’s all day………..

The above said, my dollars are rapidly dwindling. My food and drink needs have soared and along with the hotel expense, my per-Diem is now easily $100 a day. Ugh. At this rate, my ride is gonna end pretty soon. Unless there is dollar help ………….

On the road today, tho I didn’t stop for him, one guy knelt down in the middle of I-80 to get a series of shots of me going by. It was uphill so all I could do was drop my business card for him.

A while later, just as my 100-ounce Camelbak started to go dry, a guy in his 20's in a red pick-up, with a bike in back, pulled over well ahead of me and waited. Since he was at mile marker 150 and I took a short break at every 10th mile, I stopped and talked to him.

When I told David Weidinger I was dangerously low on water, he filled up everything I had and even threw in a couple of vitamin waters! An engineer doing field work out here, he showed me a leech mountain that he patrols among his many other duties. He explained that the way they mine for gold now is by pouring a solution over rocks that have been left in a pile on such leech fields and letting that bond with the silver or gold or whatever they are looking for as the chemical then extracts it. Wow!

10 minutes later I was back pumping the pedals when a few hours later and maybe 90 minutes from Winnemucca where I now am, another guy took to the pavement for a shot. Only this was not just another photographer. I found out who he was because Dale just so happened to be at at one of my ten mile rest stops. Besides the fact that he did professional work for a number of well known magazines, he went around the world on a bicycle from 1990 to  1992. While doing so he saw well over 50 different countries and was even joined by his wife, who is now a doctor, for a large percentage of the journey.

He invited me to come stay with him in S Lake Tahoe if I ever get there again. And we had so much in common, that I know we'll be doing a lot of work together going forward when my trip is done......

It wasn't long after I left him that the rumble divots that cursed the beginning of I-80 for me in Reno, now fill the entire bike lane every 20 feet. And this has been the case for the last ten miles. Too wretched -- as in what could be worse.....

THX for all of U!!

Fernely to Lovelock NV

Here is what it looked like

The ride from Fernley worked me pretty good today On interstate 80, the road way itself was excellent. Up at 5AM, I left the hotel I stayed in at 6 AM and enjoyed a peaceful desert freeway and the lands around it made cool by the huge thunderstorm I missed being indoors last nite….

I mean it was so ferocious that I saw puddles everywhere. And to give you an idea how serious the speed divots are that warn errant drivers should they cross the fog line, several inches of water still stood inside them for many miles as I pedaled away.

And I pedaled and I pedaled. And as always, the same 50-inch gear the whole way. Since there was little to distract me from my pedaling effort out here, at times when I didn’t focus my mental energy on other thoughts, turning the pedals at times became laborious. But usually not for long.

I found great humor in all the bungie cord wealth out here. If it wasn’t so hard to stop and then start my loaded bike, I’d probably have 50 or 60 of these load strapping devices to try to figure out what to do with. I did however stop for a stainless steel spoon. I’ve been using the plastic one I got from Marilyn and Sue back in Placerville. I also stopped for a pair of mini-channel locks! Just what I wanted, I added them to the 8” quality crescent wrench I found yesterday.

Nor is this desert as difficult as the one I rode through Eastern Oregon or Southern Idaho back in 1979. Or for that matter, through Southern California or Arizona on my second 1986 ride. The road itself is very nice to ride on. And there is a lot more life out here. I even heard birds chirping away before the cars took over.

As for the Truckee River, I don’t see it any more. The train line and telephone/telegraph poles I talked about yesterday disappeared from view until the last third of the day. They, as does I-80, follow the contour of the mountains that dominate the landscape of this, the most mountainous state in the union.  And in doing so, the wide sweeping turns they take send them through the valleys that ancient rivers carved through the mammoth hills that rise everywhere one looks.

Staying at the Lovelock Inn, in Lovelock, NV. Feeling blessed for WIFI as I recharge my batteries in the full knowing that I need a Bigger Power to keep all this going………

THX 4 all of U