On to California!

After riding over 300 miles on "The Lonliest Road in America" over 13 mountain passes and escaping from the Nevada creeper, we are almost out of the Great Basin Desert. We are stopped in Fallon, NV after a two day 110 mile-long ride through the desert. In two more days we will be California and crossing the Sierra-Nevada Mountains over Carson Pass, which may very well be our hardest climb yet. It's been a long time since we've been in a town with a movie theater, so a lot of us are going to see the new X-Files movie tonight, which is pretty exciting. A local biking association has offered us dinner and a place to stay for the night, which is pretty great as we haven't slept indoors or had a home cooked meal in a while. Actually that's not true we had a fantastic meal in Eureka, NV after our workshop, which went really well. I don't really have anything else to say. If you are going to be in San Francisco on August 4th, you should come to our arrival party. I don't actually know anything about it, but we will put more information about it on the blog later.

1BBM presents "Shifting Gears" at Eureka Opera House

Last in Nevada, at the Eureka Opera House, we with One Big Bike presented a series of workshops entitled "Shifting Gears." Participants heard presentations and discussed the topics of Passive Solar Heating and Cooling, Powering Your Vehicle with Vegetable Oil, and Composting with Worms. It was a memorable experience for us, because our audience at once so gracious to forgive our grimy appearance and engaged in the material we presented. We gifted a number of our red wiggler worms to a wonderful lady named Joy, who intends to start a worm bin right in her home in Eureka. Just think, those worms traveled 2k miles just to find their home with Joy. And they are the same family of worms as the ones we gave to the Living Green Store in Yellow Springs, OH and the ones at Langston Middle School, the Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse, and a number of households in Oberlin, OH. They came from the George Jones Memorial Farm--thank you, Evelyn Bryant, for getting us going with worms last fall--So many people are connected now, and composting, because of you!



We are so thankful to all of the people who have helped us along the way. Just yesterday, a man just back to town from fighting wildfires in western Nevada looked at our route with us, and reassured us that we wouldn't be affected by the fires burning right now north of Sacramento. He also pointed out the "soaks" (hot springs) along the way, which we shouldn't miss, and even invited us to his home, where he has his own hot springs, but it was too far off the route! And Mime, our hostess here in Eureka, was so kind to take so much time out of her schedule to look after our accomodations, recreation (swimming, and showers!), and especially, our appetites! She prepared a great homecooked meal for us with the help of her friends Joy and Ruby. It really is travelers' luck to feel at home on the loneliest road in America.



Highway 50 has been our guide through the vast, wild country of Nevada. Each day new beauty is revealed to us in the endless expanse of basin and range. It's just marvelous, and to think we were so worried about crossing "the desert"! The Great Basin is so much more than that, and so much more than you see on the Interstate.



Next is the "treacherous" Austin Pass, and then it's "all downhill" to Fallon, so we're told. But we've learned that it's never actually as steep or windy as the locals tell us, and that a route which is "all downhill" to a driver is usually a little more nuanced on a bicycle.



We're slated for San Fran on August 4th--come to our welcome party in Golden Gate Park!



"California here come, right back where we started from..."

Truckers, Kittens, and Goodbyes

1. We rolled into Roosevelt and promptly lost John. We stayed up until 2 or 3 looking for him, slept in the park, and looked for him again in the morning. We finally found him around 11 near an auto parts store, lost, phone , bike and attached valuables stolen while he slept on the side of the road, running on a few hours of sleep and some cottage cheese a community center gave him. It sucked. A lot.
2. Later that day, we found a kitten with a broken leg, hobbling around the park and biting everyone who tried to pick her up. John and Benji took her to the vet and got her leg set. We actually don't know her gender because she is still too small to even tell, but we've just been using she. John named her Rose, short for Roosevelt.
3. We came into Vivian Park near Provo for our lunch break and ran into a trucker named Jim and his friend Matt. They live in Provo and let us stay at their house. We had a cookout and shared stories.
4. Due to a lack of bicycle, money, or ID, John had to leave the trip in Provo. We're kinda down about it. We had one last group hug before he left on the Greyhound.
5. Eventually the kitten will wind up with John. For a while, though, she's gonna stick with the trip.

Utah

Today we passed into Utah. Pretty cool, no?

Forgot to mention how cool Ft. Collins was. We spent the morning volunteering at the community-oriented botanical gardens, ate lunch at Rasta Pasta, and spent the afternoon wandering around town and touring the bike-obsessed and generally amazing New Belgium Brewing Company.

You Rock, Rock.

We're in the Rockies! Two days ago, we did Cameron Pass. Yesterday, we did Muddy Pass and Rabbit Ears Pass. It was hard. However, we did get to pee right on the continental divide. We made the 7 mile descent from Rabbit Ears to Steamboat Springs in about 15 extremely downhill minutes, with the mountain to our right and a sheer cliff looking out on the gorgeous valley on our left. Best. Ride. Ever. Also, terrifying.

Expressing the beauty of our surroundings right now is kind of impossible. Hopefully we'll be able to get some pictures up one day.