Nevada --> Diamond Springs, CA

So I just want to start by mentioning something that I meant to mention in my last blog post, which was the most amazing descent of the trip! Going into Cedar City, Utah we had an extremely tough day of climbing for about 30 miles and then we finally hit the summit. The descent was awesome. There were no sharp turns and we just flew down the mountain. In 20 minutes we biked 12 miles! I reached 47 mph on my bike, which at points was faster than the legal speed limit for cars!

Nevada was not really what I expected. I expected flat desert and it was actually very mountainous. Apparently Nevada is the most mountainous state in the country (who would have thought?) So we had a lot of long climbs and a lot of long descents. The climbs were all pretty manageable and we didn't encounter anything too steep, which is nice. Nevada was also completely desolate. We would ride 80 miles without seeing even a gas station. It's weird. And between the mountains that we would ride up you could literally see the road all the way to the next mountain (usually 15-20 miles away). That made riding somewhat difficult because you felt like you weren't going anywhere because you were just on a long straight road with nothing on it. Plus Nevada has a ridiculous headwind, which at times made it so we really weren't going anywhere :(Nevada was also the land of the 4k Famine. We had to basically last the week on PBJ and cold cuts. That got kind of old fast.

Some random things from Nevada:

• One town we stayed in, Eureka, was called "the Friendliest town on the lonliest road in America" on their town sign. I thought that was a nice label for the town.
• I came the closest I have come on this trip to serious injury and seriously thought one of my team members had been killed for a brief moment. A semi-truck coming towards us decided to pass the car in front of him just as he was approaching my group and ended up coming straight towards us, in our lane, at about 80 miles an hour. My group got as far into the shoulder as we could and the truck passed within three inches of us. The force from the wind of the truck was WAY too strong for us and he blew me off the road into some gravel (I didn't fall, though), but my team member right in front of me did fall over. And like I said, it was hard for me to see what happened and I couldn't tell if she had fallen from the wind of the truck or if she had actually been clipped by it. That was a really scary moment, but luckily she had just been blown over and sustained no injuries other than a sore hand, which she fell on.
• On the ride into Austin we had a day of some pretty tough climbs. We were so excited when we reached what we thought was our final climb of the day. We even started on a really great descent. And then, much to our disappointment, after about a half mile, road started going back up again. And it kept going, up and up and up, for the next four or so miles. That was really sad.
• On the ride from Austin to Fallon, Nevada, we found a shoe tree. It's a giant tree filled with shoes and it is really a very strange site. Anyway, I took the following explanation of the tree from a website: The story behind the tree goes as such: A young couple camped there on their wedding night and got into a tiff. The woman said she was gonna walk away and the man said, "If you do, you'll have to walk barefoot," and threw her shoes in the tree. Then, the man got in the car and drove to Middle Gate to have a drink at the bar. The bartender talked him into going back to his wife, which he did. A year later, they brought their first child's shoes to the tree and tossed them into the branches. Since then, people have been adding and removing shoes from the tree so that when you drive over a hill on that ver desolate road, all that you can see is this cottonwood tree with shoes hanging from every branch. One of my team members contributed a pair of his shoes to the tree, so the 4k will always be a part of the shoe tree from now on!
• We biked through some salt flats, where we wondered why the ground was all shiny and covered in glass until we realized what it was. Also, there were tons of small rocks in the sand which people had spelled out messages in ("Diana loves Rob" etc). These messsages went on for 15 miles or so and kept me entertained on a pretty tough day of biking.
• We made 4k trail mix, which is basically a mixture of a little bit of everything that people receive in the maildrops. It had chex mix, rice crispies, M&Ms, dried fruit, starbursts, cookie crumbs (leftovers from the cookies my mom sent me), and all sorts of other random things. It's kind of bizarre but pretty good!
• Biking into Fallon, NE we were right near a military base and we could see the test planes flying really low overhead sometimes. Specifically, we passed a B-17 test site. I'm not really sure what that means other than that B stands for bomber. I also know we were only about 100 miles north of Area 51, so maybe the planes were on some secret mission. That would be cool.

And then of course finally we crossed the border into our final state, California! After a 90 mile day and a very difficult 9 mile climb, the team reached the state line in South Lake Tahoe. We all waited and crossed the border as a team, which was pretty special to all of us I think. We celebrated by taking the next day off and spending it on Lake Tahoe. The water was beautiful and warm and we all went swimming. I also was lucky enough to meet up with Melissa Briner, (a friend from Clinton), who happened to be there that week with her job! We hung out at the beach and it was awesome for both of us to see someone from home.

Now I'm in Diamond Springs, California with only two real riding days left and then a day off and then San Francisco. I can't believe it's almost over.

This has been a very long blog post, but I'll close with a quick story that meant a lot to me and some of you will probably understand why, but otherwise I'm not going to explain the significance of this story. I know this story is cheesy and tacky, which I don't really like, but I want to tell it anyway. Today's ride out of Tahoe was extremely slow and frustrating for me. It was supposed to be an easy 65 mile, downhill day. I had visions of being in by 1 or 2. But we got a late start to the day, and then got lost and ended up tacking on about 10 miles to our ride. And it was very hot and had much more uphill than I expected. By 4:00 we still had about 23 miles to go and I was really feeling pretty miserable and was really just not feeling it. Then with about 10 miles to go, I noticed the first and only palm tree that we have seen on this trip. I thought it was kind of cool so I pointed it out to my teammates. One of my teammates yells, "Wow! I've never seen a palm tree! That is so awesome!" Anyway, I know how tacky and cliche this is, but it reminded me exactly why I am doing this, which is what I needed at that moment.

That's all for now!