Biking Across America (7 page)

The day was extremely hot. At a small café surrounded by rows of grapes, I stopped for refreshment and struck up a conversation with two cyclists out on a day ride. They were familiar with the area; when they learned I was headed to Sacramento, they advised me to stay near the historical district of Old Town Sacramento, rather than where I had planned to stop in West Sacramento.

Several hours later, while passing through Fairfield, California, I took another rest break at a grassy area in front of a strip mall parking lot. A fence separated me from the parking area, but I was close enough to hear two familiar voices. The same two men I had met previously had parked their vehicles here while they biked. Another conversation ensued, and they told me about a twenty-five-mile bike path connecting Sacramento to Folsom, California. I had read about the bike path, but didn't know where to find it. It was a great relief to know I would not be fighting traffic on the morrow.

I was one hot and tired biker when I arrived in Sacramento late that night. Based on my conversations with the two bikers, I was looking for the area called Old Town, just off Capital Avenue. It had been quite a day. I had participated in the San Francisco marathon, had entered a bike race, and covered a total of ninety-two miles.

I booked a room in Old Town directly beside the bike path that would take me to prison the following day.

The American River Bike Trail follows the shoreline of Folsom Lake. Riding through the wooded area was peaceful; the chaotic traffic and high temperatures of the previous day seemed far behind me.

I was startled by the shout of an oncoming biker.

“You're the biker riding across America,” he said, and I recognized him as one of the two men I had met the day before. He lived in Davis, California, and had brought his daughter to Folsom for a youth event. On a whim, he also brought his bike along and was riding the trail while he waited for his daughter to conclude her activities. Now he asked me why I was biking across America, and we exchanged stories.

He was a doctor who had previously worked at Harvard Medical School. His wife was also a doctor; they had moved to Davis, where he had a pediatric practice and she joined the corporate world in medical research. After they had a child, he chose to quit his medical career and work from their home. This arrangement made it possible for him to care for his daughter and also to follow his dream of becoming a woodworker; he now built furniture in his little shop.

I admired a man who was willing to quit a high-paying job to do what he enjoyed. Too many folks spend their lives dreaming about some faraway goal. So few actually have the courage to take steps toward that goal.

At noon, I passed a sign announcing the entrance to Folsom Prison. A long, winding road led to the stern gray walls. This facility that Johnny Cash made famous houses four thousand inmates. No tours are allowed, but I rode as close to the prison as possible, stopping at a guard house where I entertained several guards with stories of my bike ride. One of them allowed me to stand in front of the prison wall while he snapped a photo.

In two days, I had pedaled past three famous institutions of incarceration: San Quentin, just north of San Francisco; Alcatraz; and now Folsom. As I stood by Folsom's granite walls, I did not know that I would visit one more prison later in my journey, on a mission far different from sightseeing and a souvenir photo.

I stopped early that day, in Placerville. I wanted to rest and prepare for the big climb ahead of me. The next morning I would
attack Carson Pass, crossing into Nevada as I crossed the mountain. It would be my highest climb yet, a peak of 8,574 feet high. At a gas station, I talked with a local who gave me directions for an alternate—supposedly easier—route over the pass.

At five o'clock the next morning, I left Placerville by the light of the moon and began my slow uphill crawl. My route took me through the Eldorado National Forest, where stately pine trees crowded the narrow road. At a small outpost called Cooks Station, I stopped for a break.

I was leaving Cooks Station, ready to resume my ride, when I met a rider coming from the direction in which I was headed. He was a professor from Oakland, returning to his home on the coast. He told me he had been riding with a group that had left Oakland several days previously. They intended to ride to Washington, DC, on a trip they called “Bike for Peace.” They weren't moving as fast as I was, and the professor thought there was a good chance I might catch up with them on the highway.

Included in this group was a former congresswoman from Atlanta, Cynthia McKinney. I'm a political junkie, and the name caught my attention. Her political leanings were well to the left of my own, and when I'd heard her speak on television, I'd said to myself,
If I ever get the chance to meet her, I'd certainly set her straight
. But what were the chances of that ever happening?

Evening approached and I still had not conquered Carson Pass. Daylight was fading and I could not find a place to sleep. I could feel panic clutching at me, but it was banished by relief when, in the faint light, I saw a sign for an inn. But disappointment set in when I discovered there was no room in this inn for me. In fact, there were no rooms at all, only a small dining establishment. I explained my dilemma to a server and asked about lodging nearby.

“There is nothing close by, but if you wait till I get off work in an hour, I'll take you and your bike to my hometown. It's forty
miles on the other side of Carson Pass, and there are hotels there,” she offered.

I told her about my cross-country bike ride and my own rule that I could not skip any sections.

“But no one will ever know you didn't bike those forty miles,” she said.

“I'll know, and it would bother me forever if I didn't ride every mile of my trip.”

“There's a fish camp up the road several miles, up by Caples Lake. It has a small bunkhouse. You could try there.” She knew the owner and tried to call the camp, to no avail. “Everything shuts down at dark up there, but you might be able to find the owner, if you want to ride up there and give it a try.”

I regretted not purchasing a light to replace the one I had lost back in Washington state. I did have a red flashing light on the back of my bike, so I was not totally invisible as I rode through the near-darkness to Caples Lake. The entrance to the camp appeared, but a cable had been strung across the driveway. A “Closed” sign dangled from the cable, but I lifted my bike over it and hoped for the best.

A worker walking across the parking area directed me to the owner's cabin. When he answered my knock, I explained my dilemma and asked about accommodations.

“I do have a room in my bunkhouse that will cost you $105.” I suspected that he was taking advantage of my desperation, but I was so weary from the day's uphill climb that I would not have turned down any price. It was a matter of supply and demand here, just as it had been in Forks, Washington.

I followed him to the bait and tackle shop, where he took my money and handed me my room key. Posted on the wall were the room rates for his humble establishment: seventy dollars. Apparently there was a thirty-five-dollar up-charge for disturbing him after hours.

I struggled to maneuver my bike down a hallway littered with skis and dozens of boxes of solar panels. Then I lugged the bike up a dozen steps to my room on the second floor. The room was very small and did not have a bathroom. For that amenity, I would need to cross the hallway.

One detail about the room caused me some concern. Clothing that obviously belonged to a woman hung in one corner. The pillow on the bed seemed out of place too; it was covered with designs of clouds. I surmised that perhaps a family member used this room occasionally and kept personal belongings here.

It had been the most brutal biking day of my trip. In fifteen hours, I had logged only sixty-six miles, sixty of which had been uphill. I was too exhausted to take a shower or a soak. I just needed to get some rest. At ten o'clock, I snapped off the light and slipped under the covers, laying my head to rest on a pillow of clouds.

I heard a rustling in the hallway. The approaching sound stopped at my doorway. A key was inserted into the lock. Someone was obviously confused and had the wrong room, I thought. But the key unlocked my door, and I could see a woman standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing in my bed?” the shocked woman asked.

“What are you doing in my room?” the equally shocked bike rider replied.

“This is my room,” she said. “I paid for two nights. Didn't you see my clothes hanging there? And that's my cloud pillow your head is on.” Admittedly, my head was in the clouds.

The woman insisted I find the owner and straighten out our predicament.

“No offense, but since I'm in bed and you're fully clothed, why don't you go see the owner and work it out?”

“No, you get out and fix this,” she insisted. I had worked with enough women over the years to know when a battle is futile. This
battle was lost the minute her key turned in the lock. I agreed to do the dirty work if she would kindly step out of the room and close the door so I could get into my clothes.

Back out into the darkness I went. I rapped on the cabin window and rousted the poor owner. He was amazed at my story of a woman sneaking into my room; then he slyly asked if the woman was attractive.

“I don't care if she's a Hollywood movie star. I just want to get some rest.”

We stopped by the tackle store one more time to retrieve another key for the person evicted from the room. The owner apologized profusely to the lady for his error. Our conversation in the hallway drew two ladies from an adjoining room. They had heard the commotion and emerged to watch our little circus.

The situation was further defused by my silliness. “I should have yelled ‘Merry Christmas!' when you opened the door,” I joked. After more formal introductions were made, the intruder and I discovered we were both Christians. Fortunately, we were both Christians with a sense of humor.

I moved my belongings down the hallway to another small room, one without ladies' garments and cloud pillows. Outside, the moon shone over Caples Lake and the waves lapped at the shore under my window, lulling me to sleep.

Just another day on the road across America.

A
s I pushed my bicycle past Room 1 the next morning, I had an impulsive desire to jiggle my key in the lock. Let my new friend Danielle also experience the excitement of someone breaking into her room. But I restrained my ornery side and carried my ride down the flight of steps.

I breathed in the cool morning air and delighted in the scene before me. The moon was still visible over Caples Lake, and in the early morning light I was able to see what had been only shadowy forms in the dark the night before.

The occupants in Room 2 were also leaving. They had come into the hallway to watch the fray the previous evening, and now they officially introduced themselves. Debra had brought her daughter Margo out to these mountains to visit the site where she had scattered her own mother's ashes.

They also told me they had met Danielle the evening before I arrived. Mother and daughter had been dining at the same inn
where I had sought lodging, the inn with no rooms. Danielle was there also, seated at another table. Striking up a conversation, they discovered they had something in common: Danielle's family often visited the Caples area, and she had scattered her dad's ashes up in the mountains too.

The cable was still stretched across the entrance, and I again lifted my bike over the obstruction and joined Route 88. Within an hour and much to my relief, I at last wheeled to the top of Mount Carson, an elevation of 8,574 feet. Although I would reach much greater elevations later, in Colorado, this was the highest mountain I had climbed since hiking through the Smokies two years earlier. I pulled over to the roadside and took in the awe-inspiring view. Six-hundred-acre Caples Lake stretched out below me, shimmering in the early morning light.

It was time to reap the reward of the previous day's uphill struggle. I would be leaving California and entering Nevada this morning. If all went well, I hoped to ride 113 miles to Fallon, Nevada. And nearly all of it would be coasting downhill.

An amazing panorama of mountains and meadows unfurled before me that morning as I glided out of California. On Fredericksburg Road, I passed the Fredericksburg cemetery and was in Nevada. Ahead of me lay Carson City, and I already knew what challenge awaited me there. In Carson City I would meet up with US Route 50, known as the loneliest road in America.

How could it be any lonelier than those roads I had already traveled? I was finding this bike ride much more solitary than my hike on the Appalachian Trail. I was very much alone out here on the highway, and I sensed that intense loneliness was never far behind my whirling wheels. I'd been trying desperately to stay several bike lengths ahead of it. Could I outrun it on this desolate road that would take me across a hot, barren desert and the entire state of Nevada?

On many of my downhill miles that day I relaxed, hunching over the handlebars, watching the landscape flow by. The temperature approached 100, but a slight breeze kept me from overheating. My front tire tube was not so fortunate. Back in Folsom, I had stopped at a bike shop and inflated my tires to their maximum capacity of 110 psi. Now the heat from the asphalt surface increased that pressure even further; when I stopped for a rest break, I heard the front tube sigh.
Pssssst
. Apparently the pressures of life on the road were too much for it to handle.

Fortunately, the tube deflated while the bike and I were both at rest, but I was still about eighteen miles outside Fallon and alone in the hot desert. I unpacked my tool kit, including a tube of glue and tire patches. I had not had occasion to use the glue before and assumed I had a full tube of adhesive. Much to my surprise and dismay, the container was empty. Of all those tubes riding down the assembly line to be filled with product, I had purchased the dud. Fortunately, I carried an extra tire tube, and I inserted that instead of patching the blown tube. With my little air pump, I inflated the tire to half capacity and cautiously continued on to Fallon.

At a service station in Fallon, I added a little more air to my tire and went in search of a room. Later, a trip to Wal-Mart replaced my empty tube of adhesive with a full one. I also purchased a new headlight to replace the one I'd lost just before crossing into Oregon, and I finally bought a pair of sunglasses. I'd not felt a need for them before, but who crosses a desert without eye protection?

The next morning I began a new ritual. Remembering how Danny laid his hands over his door frame and blessed it each time he passed through, I determined to do the same with my wheels. The gentle laying on of hands was accompanied by a little ditty I had composed:

Keep my wheels going round and round,

keep my bicycle on the ground,

keep my tires full of air,

bless and keep me everywhere.

Perhaps it was not up to Nashville standards, and it was certainly not destined to be flashed on any church wall during praise service, but it was for an audience of only one.

My goal for that day was a little outpost fifty miles out in the desert called Middlegate Station. Ahead of me on Route 50 there were many stretches where there was no service of any kind for up to eighty miles. I decided to stop for the night at Middlegate and chart out the remainder of my ride with whatever information I could acquire there.

I rode through miles and miles of nothing. Salt beds covered the desert floor with crusty layers of white crystals. Sand dunes rolled on for miles, visible at great distances. Miles were difficult to judge. The curve in the road that I thought was just a mile ahead turned out to be ten miles away. The land was barren, with only sparse sagebrush. And it was hot.

It was a solitary ride through the empty desert, and I could feel the loneliness creeping closer. Occasionally a big truck roared past me, and I saw signs of mining in the area. Military aircraft sometimes screamed overhead. The US Navy uses this area as a training ground for pilots in the Top Gun program. They actually drop bombs on the desert floor during training. Later I would joke to one of the workers at Middlegate Station that the practice bombings actually improved the landscape.

If the desert was foreign terrain for me, Middlegate Station was as close as possible to being on another planet. Or, rather, it was in another century. Middlegate was a stagecoach stop in the 1800s. The Pony Express stopped here to change horses. Time had also stopped in this little cluster of buildings and never moved on. Very little has changed since the last stagecoach clattered up to the station. A dilapidated old carriage was parked outside, and a welcoming sign on the front wall read,

WELCOME TO MIDDLEGATE

THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

ELEVATION 4600 FEET

POPULATION 18

The “18” had been crossed out and a “17” written beside it. Middlegate Station is slowly decreasing in population and will probably one day be covered over by shifting sand dunes. Of course, a misdirected bomb could also cause some changes.

A string of mobile homes had been cobbled together end-for-end and given a cheap façade to create lodging accommodations. The reasonable cost of a room at this makeshift motel—only thirty dollars—more than made up for the previous rip-offs I'd suffered. The first order of business was a shower to wash off the hot desert sticking to my body. Refreshed in spirit, I then set out to explore the compound.

I had dropped down a rabbit hole into another realm. Several weather-beaten outbuildings dotted the area, and rusty vehicles and campers sagged into the sand. Horses in the corral and dogs drifting around the buildings almost doubled the population. Middlegate Station itself was a ramshackle, tin-roofed building housing a bar and small restaurant. Outside, an old gas pump and a propane tank still offered services, right next to an ancient wooden telephone booth. Inside Middlegate Station was the Henhouse Grill, just an open grill in the corner of the bar—but oh, what good food came from that crowded corner!

Should I live to be a hundred, I doubt I will ever meet so many eccentric characters in one place as I did during my two days at Middlegate.

While waiting for my lunch, I struck up a conversation with Russell, the bartender and waiter. Russell was a lanky, unassuming character in blue jeans, a big hat, glasses, and a graying beard. My first thought was that he was probably an out-of-luck drifter
who had taken up residence here and worked for food and board. But I discovered he was actually a biologist who had moved here eighteen years before to study the desert. At the time, this Great Basin desert through which I was riding was the only desert in the world he had not studied. He spent one nine-month period living in a tent near a spring in the desert, observing the longhorn sheep and mountain lions. At night, wild mustangs came to the spring to drink. When it turned cold in the desert, he'd make a fire out of the brittle undergrowth of rabbitbrush.

Sensing a connection with this man who obviously loved nature, I asked if he ever read Edward Abbey, a western nature writer who was known as Cactus Ed, as much for his prickly demeanor and his witted barbs as for his writings about the actual cactus in his beloved desert. I thought Russell even looked something like Edward Abbey.

At the mention of Abbey's name, a faraway look came into Russell's eyes, and I saw a tear slide down his cheek. “You really got me there, young man,” he said. “In my eighteen years here, you're the first person to mention Ed Abbey. My wife and I used to read his work to each other when we were studying in Nicaragua.” Earlier, Russell had spoken fondly of the years with his wife in Central America, and I knew his wife was no longer with him. Not having enough sense to stop prying, I asked if recalling those good memories had brought the tears.

“Oh, no, it's not that,” he said. “It's the desert. The desert.” He repeated the word sadly. “It's what they are doing to the desert. They're destroying it. They're even building golf courses out there in the desert.”

My food arrived and Russell was busy with other customers. I started a conversation with Kathy, who was the wife of the owner and ruled the roost at the Henhouse Grill.

“How did you end up out here in the desert?”

“You have to be unusual to survive out here,” she told me, “and we all have our own stories. Some people are here because they're hiding from whatever or whoever is chasing them. Some of us actually enjoy this place. I worked for many years in Lake Tahoe, and the stresses of an upper management job drove me out here.”

Another character joined me at the counter. Kathy introduced me to Sleeping Bag Bill, a nephew of the owner of Middlegate Station. His uncle had given him room and board in exchange for work when Bill had been laid off at the local cat litter mine. Several miles out in the desert, an operation was mining zeolite, the active ingredient in cat litter.

But Bill had a drinking problem and a penchant for doing crazy things. Parked out in front of the building was an R100RT BMW motorcycle. This was Bill's ride. The bike had no windshield, and so he'd placed a sleeping bag between his handlebars to divert the wind. The sleeping bag was also convenient for those times he had imbibed too much and was not able to find his way home. Thus, his nickname.

In front of Middlegate Station was a long stretch of road where Bill liked to show off by riding down the road while standing on his seat and pretending to be surfing. After too much alcohol, he did this foolish trick without the benefit of clothing. That was too much even for Middlegate standards, and his cycle had been grounded.

Several other folks now joined us at the counter. Their introductions included the information that they were riding bicycles coast to coast, on a trip called Bike for Peace. That sounded familiar. While I was slowly climbing Carson Pass, the biking professor I'd met had told me about these cyclists.

“Are you the group Cynthia McKinney is riding with?” I inquired.

It was indeed the same group, and we discussed their plans for crossing Nevada. They had six riders and a support vehicle. Their plan was to cross the desert by riding in the cool of night instead
of the heat of day. The vehicle would follow them, carrying extra water and food.