Day 7. General Grant.

The next morning at the hotel, the theme of the day was: I'm going at whatever pace I damn well feel like, thank you very much. I turn on the television, lay around a bit, do some e-mail, and leave, maybe 8:30 or so. Maybe 9:00 - I'm not paying much attention to what I'm doing.

Even after the seven tacos the night before, I'm still hungry. My rate of calorie expenditure is exceeding the rate I can eat. So I stop when I pass the only store in town, a drugstore. I figure I'll grab some protein bars or something. I get five.

As I'm finishing the first protein bar, I vaguely recall something.

I've already eaten, at the hotel.

Hmm. In fact, less than an hour prior, I had eaten four danishes, three muffins, two bagels, two bananas, two glasses of orange juice, a hard boiled egg, and a partridge in a pear tree (OK, I'm making that last part up, the feathers got stuck in my teeth and I never finished it).

I reluctantly decide that perhaps I should only eat one more protein bar.

Since today was a sightseeing day, I drove up to about 7,000 feet to take some pictures of a tree called 'General Grant'; the second largest tree in the world. I take my time, take some pictures.

I saw a bigger tree yesterday.
Tiny? Miniscule? I would be embarassed to call this tree 'big'.



And then I decide to go on a bike ride.

Already being at 7,000 feet, I abandon my car, set up my bike, and start down the hill. Since I haven't been sweating, it's much, much less frigid. I'm almost comfortable. After an hour or so of descending the mountain, I stop at 1500 feet.


Right beside this tree, next to a farm.

The theme of the day: go at my own pace. Right now the pace is slow. I take off all of my ultra-winter gear that I've used for the descent, and pack it into my pockets. My jacket sleeves unzip, my extra wool jersey comes off. I take off my hat and roll it into a cylinder. I have a Clif bar, drink some Cytomax, and begin to head up the mountain.

At my own pace.

Which is now as hard as I can ride.

2000.

After a week of riding, I may not be physically 100%, but mentally, I'm fully recovered. I don't stop to take pictures - all the ones you see here (save the General Grant) are from the saddle, grinding up the mountainside.

3000.

For my last ride, I'm going out with a bang. My previous days were about five hours each, slow, endurance rides. This one's going to be a hair less than three - and I'm going to get my three hour's worth, if it's the last thing I do (on my trip to California, that is).



Whew, almost didn't have the camera ready in time.

When I push past 4000 feet, I look over my shoulder. I'm a sucker for the road-snaking-up-the-mountain picture.




5000. Some snow.
6000. Quite a bit of snow.

I make it to the top, I take a few more pictures. I load the bike into the car for the last time, and call Gary.




That night we went out for Pizza. He ordered a slice. I ordered a pizza. He ate his slice and one of mine. I ate the rest.

And left hungry.

Day 6, Part 3. Why am I in this basket?

One of the nice things about the trip was that my rental car was equipped with Hertz Neverlost, a GPS system. I could ask it where the closest hotels and/or restaurants were.

And I was hungry. In the middle of nowhere.

I was basically in the middle of pretty rural farms, that just happened to be abutting majestic mountains. This wasn't tourism USA. I liked it that way.

But still, I was hungry. And exhausted. And I needed a shower. Badly. So I asked the GPS where the closest hotels and restaurants were. I just needed to get into a town.

But this was all I see.


No can do, the GPS replied. You're 60 miles from anywhere. $#%%^$. OK, I'm going to be on the road for a bit first.

Perhaps it's pick your own dinner?

Orange groves and grape vines dominate the landscape. Every mile or so I see a building. It's late, dark, and I'm sick of driving. I finally pull into 'town'. And pull up to the town restaurant.


Hmmm.

Now, normally, what language other people speak is a political question I'm pretty liberal about. I figure I have no business telling others what language they should speak, just like they have no business telling me to do anything.

Now all I want is some food. I've spent over 30 hours in the saddle so far this week, I'm hungry, my everything hurts, and I'm grumpy.

I go into the local restaurant, and after a few minutes. Manage to order some tacos (if by 'some' you mean 'seven'). As I'm eating a local girl - her back to me the whole time - gets up and walks toward me for some unknown reason. She stares at me, I smile at her.

She recoils in horror. I wonder what's wrong.

In any case, perhaps that's enough effort for this week. I tell myself I'll get up tomorrow, do some sight-seeing. Maybe I'll ride. We'll see.

Day 6, Part 2. Seqouia.

After a rather trying Day 5, I decided to take it easy on Day 6. Only about thirty miles, one mountain. I headed North to the twin parks of Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

You're all bored with my cycling stories, so I'll let the pictures tell most of the tale.

Beginning the Ascent.

Random shot on the way up.

Switchback... you can see the road cutting into the hillside on the right.


The trees frame the mountain.







Check out the road snaking and cutting through the side of the mountain (about 1/3 of the way up).

It took me about two hours to do the climb. At the top there was a ranger station, explaining how difficult it is for a Sequoia to grow into a mature tree. There was a roulette wheel describing the various perils of each new seed.

Mine was eaten by a rodent.

A mid-sized redwood.

Check out the walkway on the left for some scale of size.

At the top, a ranger stopped me (people stopping to talk with me is pretty routine, provided there are actually people there). He seemed surprised when I told him where I started from... 'This is the first time I've seen someone come up here'.

Well, maybe if you didn't have three feet of snow, more people would visit!


Same mid-size tree, with bike for scale.




The bark is over two feet thick.


Yet another picture of a tree. How many more are you going to look at?




At least one more, methinks. There was a reason I chose this particular mountain - on its slopes rests the largest tree in the world, a Giant Sequoia known colloquially as the 'General Sherman'.

Eh, I've seen bigger.



General Sherman, from across a meadow.

Usually I hate to have people in my pictures; it's a pet peeve. Here, though, they provide a great sense of scale. See the woman in the red jacket? She's about halfway across the meadow, headed towards the tree.

What's that white thing on her head?

Let's zoom in.


That's another person.


Let's look at the total picture again.

The largest tree in the world.

With some terrible photo-shopping... OK, I haven't even tried yet...




Just two more descents to go...

Day 6, Part 1. Ghost Town.

After the trying day before, I went to bed at about 7:00 local time. And got up at 3:00.

Hmm.

What to do? I had intended to just get up and start driving, but now I had time for one more thing.

I wanted to see a ghost town. And what could be more ideal than seeing one in the dead of night?

I decided to drive the hour or so to Rhyolite. In the early part of the last century, it was a boom town, with 10,000 people, 50 saloons, 2 churches (that's a 25:1 ratio, people!), 2 undertakers... banks, stores, all that.

And getting there at night, I'd be able to crawl over the ruins without the admonishment of park officials.



Or so I thought. Barbed wire. Drat, foiled by the National Park Service yet again. No matter.

I drove around a bit. Most of the buildings were gone. I didn't even see squatting prospectors - or even the Brady Bunch. All in all it was a bunch of crumbling buildings.

Day 5, Part 2. Complete Idiots.

I'm personally embarrassed about this.



A golf course in Death Valley. Gee, let's water the lawn some more. Idiots.

Day 5. A ride to hell with Dante.

So, of course, one of the claims-to-fame of Death Valley is that it's the lowest point in North America.



Which I figured would be a great point to start a bike ride. I mean, hey, there's a mountain literally two miles as the crow flies, 5500 feet - Dante's View. Peering over the sheer cliffs, you view the salt-filled basin and mountain ranges.

In any case, the sign said, 30 miles to Dante's View. Perfect. I had a decent night's rest, despite (because?) of the power outage, and I got an early start. Sixty miles would make a great round-trip ride through the desert; twenty miles of more-or-less flat, and a ten mile climb to the summit. I put two liters of water on my bike, two liters in my jersey, forced myself to drink a liter, and set off on my way. Hey, I was prepared.

Now, as you can see, the road wound around cliffs and canyons; a welcome change from Michigan topography.

But there was a problem, of course. When I was forced away from the protection of the canyon from the canyon wall, I would face the wind.

OK, 'wind' doesn't due it justice. Think massive wind. Unrelenting. Thirty-five miles an hour, pure headwind. For reference, I usually bike at around twenty MPH. When I'm time-trialing, I go about twenty-five.

And now, all I could manage was seven. SEVEN. On the flats. Working hard. My powermeter said I was putting down the mustard, but the wind was licking all of it up and more.

It's tough to tell grade in pictures - but this one was about a seven degree descent. I should've been doing forty miles an hour. And I was doing fifteen.

Suffice it to say - what was supposed to be a one-hour warmup for a nice mountain climb turned out to be a three hour ride through hell.

And appropriately enough, it was punctuated, halfway through, by a memorial to the namesake of the valley.

A few miles later, I stopped for a break - Zabriskie's point; a rock rising about 100 feet from nothing. I must admit it the views from the top were reasonably photogenic.

So now I'm about 25 miles into my trip. Since it's thirty miles one-way, I'm almost to my desination.

$#$%%.

What did that sign just say?

20 MILES left to Dante's View?!?

It turns out that it was 30 miles from Badwater, my starting location, to the BEGINNING OF THE ROAD THAT LED TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN. I mutter vendettas against the national park service.

And press on through the wasteland.

Why couldn't you have shown me this picture BEFORE I started?

I must admit that I was a little disheartened. The climb was completely unprotected, climbing up the ridgeline of the mountain above. The wind - which was blowing south when I started - turned to the East, so it was an almost perfect sidewind.

After another two hours or so of climbing, I reached my destination. Dante's view.

Telescope Peak, Over 11,000 feet, juxtaposed with the lowest spot in North America.




By now, every tortured exhale was steaming. My sweat was freezing. I usually take my time at the top of a mountain, enjoying the view, taking pictures, drinking some water.

Not today. I'm cold beyond belief. It's time to get down to the valley. The least enjoyable part of any climb - the descent.

I take off down the hill, and stop every ten minutes to warm myself up; breath into my hands. When I pass by the memorial an hour later, I finally start warming up. I stop, rinse the salt off of my face with the last of my bottle. Twenty miles to go.

Keeping in theme with the luck of the day, the wind had stopped. I had no tailwind to carry me back. Pedalling becomes difficult. I have no blood sugar, how hard I can go is limited by how quickly my body can process bodyfat. I finally coast into the car. I rest for a few minutes and load it up.

It's time to go. That's enough of Death Valley for me.