Day one: Along the Ramparts

Day one:  Along the Ramparts

Miles: 62

Climb: 625 ft.

Ave. spd: 11.7 mph

At 6:30PM the sun is long gone, and ice fingers creep down the canyons from Mt. Whitney clad in snow and ice above.  Numbing hands clack on this tiny keyboard. Across an arterial creek, lights from an electric transformer facility glare against the darkness.  A great day of riding is in the bag.

Later than I’d hoped, after a quick photo by my brother-in-law, Gary, I finally hit the road as 9AM was closing in.  Bright sun, clouds clinging to the Sierra crest, light traffic and wide, smooth shoulder cried out for a cyclist. I turned up the RPM’s and quickly left Bishop behind.  It was a dreamy day for riding, even if I did encounter light headwinds when the forecast was for strictly tail. But I wasn’t complaining. These were good conditions, and I was going to drink them in.  

I thought of Jodi, off with Patchy on a hike, and knew I’d be missing her, but it’s good to get off by myself sometimes, shake loose the dusty rooms in my head and stew and strain and think and not think and just be.  I always come back better for it. There is value in beating your head against a long, empty stretch of road, letting the hours and miles strip away the obscuring crap until there’s nothing left but wind, sky, and moving muscle, perhaps a silly song in your head about Portegee Joe, the long lost fellow who had a campground named after him, my destination for the night.  Whaddya know, Portegee Joe? Whaddya know?

The miles melt away, the gentle grades up and down left me swinging down the road in fine form, scurrying under the Palisades, jagged and severe Mt. Williamson, Lone Pine and Whitney at last on the horizon.  By mid-afternoon, I was rolling into Lone Pine, a “small town with lots of charm,” sayeth the sign. Fair enough.

I was able to score toe warmers for the coming cold mornings, pick a brew and some groceries, and find my way to Joe, he the Portegee.  One other camper with no signs of movement. A couple of dozens sites, so I took a distant slot and got to work, the sun already below the jagged crest.  Strangely, an older fellow with scraggly white hair and beard decided to come into the campground and pull in right next to my site. He parked, turned up his radio, and proceeded to smoke, the choking cigarette toxins wafting gently right across my table as I prepared dinner.  What the hell? Really dude? Two dozen other sites and you gotta park HERE and dump smoke on me? Eventually, I had to ask him to park down wind because of the smoke. He said “ok,” and did nothing. He was starting to creep me out. Eventually he starting up his small pick-up and moved on.  Phew. One creep gone.

The darkness settled in hard, and it was time to eat, clean up, brush fangs, and knock out this journal.  The trike seat works well for writing, but my butt needs a break and the cold is increasing. Funny, but my fingers have warmed up eventhough the air temperature is 45 F. and dropping.  

Off to bed.  7PM and it’s into the nylon crypt for too many hours--the bane of winter touring.  Tomorrow it’s the big climb over the Coso mountains and the monumental drop down to Panamint Springs.  I’ll think of Jodi and Django on our last tour and how the summit was cloaked in cold, damp fog, the road slick, the views non-existent.  Tomorrow, it will be clear, and I get the full experience of the huge twisting drop. Woot!

Cute kit--a computing solution

Since a smart phone IS a computer, I decided to treat it as such and link it to a very light, compact Blue Tooth keyboard.  I took a thin plastic cutting board and business card holder, added sticky velcro--voila!  Computer station.  Should work fine.  I may be fed up with it by the end of the tour, but it's worth a shot.  Very light.

Sorting, sorting, sorting...

You would think, being an experienced cycle-tourist, that the packing phase of the journey would be less stressful, but I always find myself a bit anxious making sure I've got everything, food selected for the first stage, a drop box loaded for shipping, etc.  But I pile, fret and stare, re-pile, re-fret, and stare some more, go over lists.  How will it fit?  It always does, though sometimes not without some help from a Higher Power.

I'll be running with a one-person Sierra Designs tent, an Exped sleeping pad, and a homemade alcohol Pepsi can stove, the same I used for my cross country ride back in 2007.  She don't cook fancy, but she's light, quiet, and gets the job done.  I've picked up a couple of new pieces of gear for changing tires: Gorilla levers and a Kool Stop lever.  I NEVER want to struggle with taking off or putting on a recalcitrant tire ever again.



The Kool Stop adds a little weight, but it will be worth it if I have to pop the tire on a frozen morning in the Middle of No Where.  I'm also carrying a Topeak Multi-tool and a Leatherman.  Spare shifter and brake cable, couple of folding spare tires, four tubes, two patch kits, a few bolts, some wire and tape.  Clothing will be diverse because of WIDE temperature swings, from freezing or below to possibly low 70's in Death Valley.  I've got a 3L Camel back and will also carry a frame bottle and a 6L Dromedary bag for camp.

I'm still mulling over tech.  At the minimum, I'll have the usual smart phone, a Lumix camera, an iPod, and a Kindle for those long nights in the tent.   The questionable item is a small tablet and keyboard.  It's a bit heavy, but it would be nice for drafting. 

Now I recover from a minor cold that has dialed me back a few notches, and a major winter storm works its way through the state.  The forecast for launch is fantastic!

Selecting Gear for the Tour

I have been doing a fair amount of training with the Haluzak and Burley trailer.  This is a very effective combo and has worked well in the past.  There is now doubt, however, that the trailer adds weight and complexity, opportunities for extra flats, more rolling resistance on the ground, etc.  Its chief advantage is amazing convenience and capacity.  It's SO handy to flip open the trailer and have access to what you need or quickly throw a jacket in there.  But the setup adds at least 10 lbs. to ones overall load.  So I switched to a different setup for a few rides:



I've also enjoyed this configuration and used it to great effect on my cross country tour in 2007.  The panniers are very light, but one does have to jam everything into big, amorphous sacks.  Consistent locations and good stuff sacks are critical.  This system saves a lot of weight but comes at a cost of convenience, and the bike itself becomes a bit unwieldy.  There is, however, something pleasant about riding a fully loaded bike--solid.  The weight takes a lot of the roughness out of the road, too.

The nature of this particular tour--Bishop to Prescott via Death Valley--means lots of very serious climbing, grades that go on for miles and miles and miles, literally hours of climbing on a heavily loaded bike with speeds in the low single digits.  During my training runs, I've been dealing with the touring cyclist's old friend: the slow speed wobble.  Ascending at 3--5 mph means constant course correction to stay upright.  After a while, you get into a groove, but there is still a constant level of input needed, and it gets a bit tiring.  Of course, I've dealt with this before, but as I contemplated crossing the southern Inyos, the Panamints, Death Valley Junction, and the monster grades in the East Mojave Preserve, I was feeling less enthusiastic about fighting the wobble.  Enter this rig:



The Catrike Expedition.  The weight of the trike is less than the combined weight of the bike and trailer but gives unparalleled stability.  And it has a monster low gear for hill climbing, something I'll appreciate on the 14%+ grades of Towne Pass, which will no doubt be the crux of the ride.  On a recent run up my training route to the west, which gains a solid 2,200 ft., I was not much slower than the bike without the trailer, but it was much more relaxed.  Just sit back and sweat.  I've decided that this will be my setup.  I'd converted it to a dirt trike, so it took some doing to swap tires, wheels, shorten chain, etc., but she's back in road touring fit.  So a triker I will be.

I've been collecting gear, sorting, compiling lists, planning contingencies, and I'll post a little about some of this soon.  One possible problem is snow in Prescott.  Since I have to cross a 6,000 ft. + pass to get into town, it's quite possible a winter storm could make riding into town on the last day not so advisable.  Fortunately, just a few miles down the road from Congress, my last town before Prescott, is Wickenburg, where I can rent a UHaul.  I think if snow shuts me down, I will take a day and ride the big grade to Yarnell just for the workout and the views, but at least I've got a handy way to get home.

This winter is shaping up to be an actual winter, and I'll be locked down for about the next five days as a big storm works through.  The mountains will be getting plastered, and steady rain is forecast for the desert--a real treat.  But it looks like I can't leave until Friday when Thursday had been my goal.  Oh, well.  I've got to recover from a little cold that's been going around.  Gear posts coming soon!