I actually got up early today. After sneaking my bike upstairs on the side entrance I decided to just walk out the front door this morning. That was a little awkward. Not because I wasn’t suppose to have a bike in the room, not that I asked, but because the double door made it hard for me to get out.
My plan for today was to ride as far into the basin as I could, and then just sort of play it by ear. I was heading into a section of unknowns for me. From touring I knew that the Basin could be hot and unforgiving. I’m pretty sure Sean and I had our worst day of the trip in the Basin. But I was also riding a section I hadn’t done before, as the race route diverges from the ACA maps here, I think to avoid construction south of Rawlings, though that has been completed for some time now. So I was ready for a hot dry day.
I started on the super flat section between Pinedale and Boulder, and saw another cyclist ahead of me in the distance. Eventually I caught up with him and we chatted for a while, and even stopped at the gas station in Boulder for breakfast. I was a little surprised to see another racer that I hadn’t seen in the previous dozen days, either I was getting faster, unlikely, or others were starting to slow up. That made me feel pretty good since I was still feeling strong. Maybe I could actually finish this in a reasonable time.
We yo-yo’ed each other for the rest of the morning, but I had my own pace and I had it in my mind that this would be a very long day, so I wanted to keep it. I stopped at my favorite section before the rest area that overlooks the basin valley. It is a stunning section to see. The basin isn’t all that elevation-ally challenging, but it has its sections of sand and bad little climbs. But this ridge seems to look over miles and miles of rolling nothing.
Around lunch time we both made it to Atlantic City and I got lunch, and a sandwich to go, and probably stayed a bit longer than I should have. The afternoon was going on without me, so I finally got moving again. I had all night after all, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus the Basin is easier to ride at night without all the heat and the wind.
Well this afternoon a thunderstorm was rolling slowly through the area. I would see a flash out of the corner of my eye and then start counting before I heard the thunder. When there isn’t lightning a big flat area is pretty nice, but I wasn’t too excited about being the tallest thing out there in a lightning storm. Eventually the flashes and the thunder got too close together for my comfort and I ducked under a bridge.
It was cool, and there was some water flowing, which was nice and a bit surprising. But I couldn’t really make out the edges of the storm from my cover, so I just had to wait for a flash and count until the thunder. I think I stopped there for about 30 minutes. At one point I even tried to take a nap, but the wind and the thunder kept waking me up.
Eventually the storm seemed to be far enough away from me that I wouldn’t get caught and I started out again. The rest of the afternoon sort of blurred together, as the landscape is very similar, and the landmarks are few.
The most interesting part of the ride was after dark when I had to navigate the route by GPS only. There was no visible trail, road, or path that I could see by just my lights. I had to push my bike up one side of a hill, then down the other side, then up another one. I walked in circles for a while trying to zoom in enough to make sure I was on the right track. Maybe it made sense in the light, I just felt like I would have been totally and completely lost without that GPS track. Who knows, maybe I was lost even with it. I can’t say that I really needed to push up and down those hills even now.
Eventually some semblance of a trail appeared and I felt like I really was back on the right track. That’s about when the wind and the rain started to pick up, and about the time I thought I’d have to stop if it got much worse. It was so windy though that I don’t know if I could have set up camp. As I was straining up a climb looking for some kind of cover where I could hunker down I saw the other cyclist that I had been riding with throughout the day. He was struggling to set up his tent in the wind. At that point I knew I just needed to keep going until I just couldn’t pedal anymore. So I pushed on.
Eventually the wind died down and the road improved. I was cycling through the pitch dark, with a cloudless sky. When I turned off my lights I could see a sky full of stars that was almost bright enough to light my way. With my lights on it felt like I was still riding through the forests with tall trees on both sides of me. I swore I saw some, but any time I’d shine a light to the sides I would just see a vast empty plane.
I gave myself a sleep “bail-out” time of midnight where I could just bed down somewhere for a while. As the time started getting closer and I started trying to scout for decent camp sites a cyclist passes me going the other direction. I was gobsmacked. Here it is in the middle of nowhere, in the literal middle of the night, when I haven’t seen another person or car for hours, and suddenly here’s another cyclist! We didn’t really stop to exchange pleasantries, I think we both had other things on our minds. I put together that he was another racer, much too late obviously, headed south to north on the same race. It was my golden spike, though there were many people ahead of me that I’m sure this rider had encountered.
Sleep finally called to me too loudly to ignore and I set up my bivy on a flat-ish spot off the road.
