Back from Nevada (before you knew I left)

It turns out that airport kiosks will not allow one to access blogger.com because it may contain offensive content. That's my excuse for not updating my blog in ages. I honestly paid $5 for 15 measly minutes at an airport and was denied access to my potentially offensive web page. My other excuse is that my Internet access continued to be spotty and then totally missing while I traveled again (and the DSL modem in my studio is on the fritz!).

The day before my lease started on my fabulous studio my brilliant friend Aditi Kapil (who I have known since high school) arrived in NYC from Minneapolis for a playwrights’ festival in which her first play for adults was being read. Hell's Kitchen is next to the theater district, spitting distance from Broadway and Times Square. Since she had play readings to attend at 4pm and 8pm each day in addition to rehearsals and meetings about her own play, I decided that it made much more sense for her to stay in my studio which was only 10 or so blocks from her theater rather than trek back to Astoria each night (~6 subway stops away in Queens). So, I continued sleeping on Erin (my best friend from high school)'s couch for another few days while Aditi occupied the studio.

During that time, Erin celebrated her 35th birthday with a dinner at a beer garden on the water. I was in charge of taking photos. The highlight was probably the 21 ceramic animal salute wrapping for a present from her friend David.

Aditi's play was one of 8 selected from a pool of like 550 for this playwright's festival. She'd discussed the idea for the play with me before since it involved languages and communication but I really had no idea about what it would be like. It was read by a stellar cast on Aditi's last night in NYC. It was hilarious as well as containing some really interesting ideas about language. It was particularly interesting for its use of sign language (ASL), email, and Sanskrit. She recently finished her first novel, which I am looking forward to reading since my main comment on an earlier draft was that I just wanted to know what happened next.

So, unfortunately I had only spent 4 nights in the studio before I left for a cycling trip in Nevada. At some point way back in May or so, I had decided that the perfect way to reward myself for a month of hard work on sabbatical in NYC was by taking a week to cycle through the deserted roads of Nevada. This was long before I had any idea that I would be spending the start of September cycling through Tuscany rather than actually doing something productive.

However, before I left for Nevada, I was able to get an experiment set up for running with 3 year olds in NYC. I also cycled around Central Park on 2 occasions and met an old member of the New York Cycling Club. The road through (around) Central Park is 6 miles long and over half of it is always closed to car traffic. Between 10-3, the remaining part of it is also closed to car traffic, which makes for a fairly safe, clear ride aside from the joggers, walkers, dogs, and horse-drawn carriages. The New York Cycling Club likes to divide up the levels of riders by their average speed across 4 loops of the park and their ability (or lack thereof) to ride in a paceline. I was gratified to confirm that I place in the higher levels of speed for the club.

I have to admit that I was already tired of traveling before starting off for OATBRAN (One Awesome Trip Bike Ride Across Nevada). It didn't help that I had to rush back from meeting up with my half-sister Charlotte and her family to pack my stuff and be ready to leave for an 8:10 AM flight. Ugh. I truly felt that I was being published (oops, meant to write punished - Freudian slip?) for taking so many cycling vacations in the same month when my connecting flight from Chicago to Reno was cancelled due to faulty brakes after we sat on the plane for 2 hours. I ended up re-booked on another airline, flying via Seattle, arriving in Reno at 2 AM east coast time. I ended up crying in the airport when to top things off my luggage didn't arrive. I didn't make it to the hotel room where I was staying until 2 AM pacific time - meaning that I had traveled 23 hours door to door. Bright and early the next morning, I had to get up and see the other riders off. I rode in a support vehicle, which ended up being fine since the first day of riding was the worst in terms of traffic and road construction. I helped out at the rest stops and got to know the support staff and some of the riders. At first it seemed obsessive-compulsive to log when each rider arrived and departed each rest stop but reasons for it became clear when we were out in the desert with no one to turn to except the support staff that were looking out for us.

There were 55 riders in all. The advertised average ages was 30-40 which made one of my new buddies, Pat, guffaw and say "more like 55". Not surprisingly, there aren't that many 30-40 year olds who can take a week off from whatever they do for a week of cycling. Instead, attendees tend to be people who are retired or semi-retired or advanced enough in their fields to take a week off - that is, 50 year olds. That said, I think there was a higher percentage of racers on this ride than the typical 2000 person state ride. There were about 5 serious racers, 3 of whom were women, 1 of whom had done the female Tour de France. Other reasons why I chose the ride was the low number of participants (~50 vs 2000), the supposedly lower age range, and the more demanding distances (~70-80 per day). There were 4 MDs in the group, two who came from Michigan State. One of them was inspired to demand a sabbatical after meeting me on mine! I had a lot of explaining to do since I was coming from NYC, had Mason MI (my billing address) listed as my origin, and work at Georgia Tech.

I roomed with one of the MDs, Debra from Seattle. She was also traveling on her own. Our schedules were unfortunately a bit off since she tended to get up early to be able to ride at a sedate pace while I preferred to sleep late and ride at a frantic pace. She also rock climbs and occasionally ice climbs. Although neither of us snores, I found out that I tend to talk in my sleep, but only single word utterances (of unclear or censored content). Oh well, at least I didn't kick any cats in my sleep (as I have in the past).

As I feared, all of the luggage on my flight was lost so I spent a day in stinky traveling clothes and was reduced to buying underwear and a top at Wal-Mart (so much for my boycott). My bicycle arrived after the first day of riding and my bag of everyday clothes and toiletries arrived the next morning just before we left for the next town. It was around this time that it finally really sunk in that the bike tour I was on was going across the state, border to border. Unlike other so-called bike rides across states (e.g., BRAG: Bike Ride Across Georgia), this one really crossed the state - it started at the CA-NV border and ended at the NV-UT border. There was another rider whose bike was lost on the same flight and one more who lost his custom built Seven thanks to Fed Ex and a poorly fastened shipping label. Most of the riders came from Nevada or neighboring states, so they did not face such potential problems.

So, I joined the ride on the second day out. This was a 113-mile day because the closest town to the east was 113 miles away from our starting point of Fallon. This is where the idea of cycling the "loneliest road" began to sink in. I got a late start because my rear wheel needed to be trued. As a result, I cycled on my own the whole frickin' way. If you look at a map of Nevada's ghost towns, the state looks fairly full. It's not any more. I like the old strip bar that marks the abandoned Salt Wells town.

It turns out that the climbs and descents in NV were very different from what I was used to from Italy and France. The climbs were so gradual that the main sign that they began was that one noted that one was not going as fast as one thought one should be. Huh, I must be going up. Then they would slowly but unrelentingly slope upwards. There was no opportunity for slick corner cutting on the downhills because they were straight as ... um, straight as arrows. I was riding with my compact crank from France since I had the foresight to read the ride description and not have my normal double put back in. This was good for the climbs but it meant that I could not accelerate on the downhills. I would spin out instead. This was not an issue
earlier in my cycling life! It turns out that being able to draft someone or something is critical under such circumstances. Luckily I was able to ride with Rene the next day. He is a hefty but strong cyclist from Reno, originally from Guatemala. Despite his greater weight, we climbed at similar speeds but he could speed away on the downhills. By drafting behind him, I could go quite fast. However, Rene likes to go really REALLY fast by drafting trucks. His record is 77 miles per hour. So, the generalization is: Rene likes drafting trucks, I like drafting Rene.