nevada california

I'm sorry it took me so long to post again. The reason is that I was in Nevada and western Utah were there are no towns, much less libraries.

Devin came out to Cedar City and we rode along highway 50 and some other routes through the high desert of Nevada and across the Sierras into California. Weather started to get bad so I'm worried that Dan might run into some trouble. We were freezing cold on several days even though we were in the sun, it's just a very cold area of the country. Also the wind would really fade us. One day we rode hard all day and could barely make it 59 miles into the next town.

downhills felt like flats and flats felt like uphills and uphills felt worse than usual. the wind was ice cold also and went through us completely. i don't want to complain too much about it, especially cause it's over now, but let me say that it was very difficult and leave it at that. having devin with me made the whole hting much easier. he has been my friend since i was 7 and he was 8 and it's like the girl scouts say about old friends and silver and gold.

the weather cleared up a few days ago and we had a much easier time. also we left nevada, even up in the sierras it's nowhere near as cold as it is down in the desert. california is, as always, the most beautiful place on earth and the central valley's almost complete lack of hills is a real feather in its cap.

I'm in Davis at Danya's house. Danya is Devin's girlfriend and she goes to graduate school here studying geology. I saw all kinds of rocks this week. sedimentary, igneous, all that.

Thank you amy for the paper moon info. thank you refath for telling me happy birthday but you aren't supposed to have my phone number and you aren't supposed to have a phone at school. don't you read the paper? congratulations to ms. sarah walsh who is working for the US state department in venezuela and leaves tomorrow. apparently she can't come down tomorrow cause she is taking a brimstone bath. thank you dad for the words of caution about the cougars. i read the same article in harpers or the atlantic or whichever about that. the real danger is getting hit by a piece of falling debris from a semi or sideswiped by a car but i'll watch out for cougars as well.

It's my birthday tonight but tomorrow I will be in SF. Anyone in the area is invited to come meet me at the ferry building for dinner and a drink. I want to go to pakwan or taqueria cancun or both. Call me tomorrow around 6. i will probably be in a better mood than i've ever been seen in before. if you are trying to talk me into going to mexico or houston, this would be a good time to approach me.

i will soon summarize this trip and let you know what i have learned, how i have grown as a person, what insights i've gleaned into the soul of america, my thoughts on matters ecological, my poetry about shreds up radial tires on highway shoulders, what keychains they sell at gas stations in kentucky vs. utah, all that shit. as always, i'll gladly sell you the whole seat but only the edge will be needed.

as always pics are at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/79019224@N00/

Western Utah

I'm at Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument, or at least right near it in the town of Escalante. A million things have happened. I spent the night before last sleeping outside in a brutal cold front but I still have all my finger, toes and my nose. Utah looks like another planet and they people make it even more disorienting cause they are all mormons and the innkeepers do things like make the european tourists who are unmarried but travelling together sit through morality lectures.

Almost all of the weakness has been driven out of me. When I see a hill I no longer fear it I just go up it. The process of me going forward on my bike is now almost toally involuntary. The other day in a motel I woke up in the morning and i thought "there is no possible way a brother like me is getting on that bike today" cause my whole body was in pain and I was tired and wanted to watch the giants/rockies game. but 25 minutes later I was forcing myself up a steep grade road. i also realize that even though the giants have matt cain, their wild card bid is not shaping up to be real exciting baseball.

the right way to go on a trip like this is with wool and steel. wear an all wool jersey, anything else will stink and will either be too cold or too hot. ride an all steel bike. anything else will be too rattle-y and will break. wool and steel. think about it, if conan were taking a bike trip would he wear a nylon/wool/spandex blend?

Also I take back everything I said about NPR. They are great. I'm lucky to be able to get paul harvey and rush limbaugh on my radio in the canyons. If you tell me the first two lines of anyh song in the top ten country singles charts I can tell you the chorus cause it's only country stations out here. I did hear bon jovi's 'dead or alive' which is good cause i am actually riding on a steel horse. i saw the wire on HBO if you don't watch it you should. Don't worry if you haven't seen an episode yet, it's like trainspotting or clockwork orange where the dialect becomes easy to understand after a little while. I also saw a movie where andy griffith was a small town preacher trying to raise kids and a black and white movie which i think was from the 70s about a travelling con man/bible salesman and a little girl that travels with him in the 1930s. the guy may have been beau or jeff bridges. what movie was this does anyone know?

my favorite subjects for movies are con men and time travel. if a movie has either of those things in it i'll watch. i think a good movie would be one about time travelling con men but i'm not sure how it would work. I tried to watch the movie where al pacino and matthew mcconaughey are football gamblers but fuck that movie.

A guy told me that spinach no longer exists, it blew my mind.

devin flew into utah and will meet me soon. he should have flown into las vegas cause i am closer to there now. victor, pay your phone bill so you can figure out a way to get here. take a bus east on h-way 50 or something. i may make it to SF by my birthday, if I don't I will eat a hostess cupcake with a candle it. if they don't have hostess cupcakes then i'll eat a sno-ball.

I want to dedicate all riding for this week to all of my friends who got married this summer or are getting married soon: tarita fazio, peter geniella, ben wood, howard slobodin, andy granelli, chris perkins and esecially ari rosen, whose wedding I couldn't attend cause I was in Western Kansas. I'd hoped I would get hit by a car so that I could attend but it didn't work out.

If any of my former students are still reading this, let me know if you want to get an internship at this place right by ITHS which will teach you how to fix bicycles. i think it also gets you into college. it's the sort of thing that i'm jealous of you guys for having around you. The other thing is PS1, the art museum that you guys never go to and that the school has no relationshiup with. it's one of the greatest art museums in the country and it's like three blocks away.

Colorado

I'm in Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo is the hometown of Ricardo Lazo and Colorado is where my mother's family comes from. I rode 300 miles in the past three days, much of it at night cause traffic was light and there's less wind. The great plains are very boring but I did see prairie dogs and rabbits running around.

Caedmon, don't be offended we were all just playing. Jill, everything I could think of to tell those kids has curse words in it, and they've never heard those before so it could scar them. Try to talk Eumine out of the marines though doesn't he watch the news? Andy, thanks for sticking it to the man by reading my blog at work. Justin, firstly I never took any notice of the ethnicity of any of my students and secondly all references to santa are forbidden if you are using school computers.

The most interesting thing that happened in the past few days is that I met a real live hobo who goes to the annual hobo convention every year. His given name is jim but his hobo name is the Texas Rubber Tramp. He is from texas and instead of riding the rails he rides a bike. He persoanlly met boxcar willie in branson missouri. He had two teeth that I could see. The guy rides an old old bike around the high plains of texas, colorado, kansas etc going to lumber yards and getting wood to carve into train whistles which he sells at the hobo convention in iowa which has been going on for 110 years apparently. Everything he was saying to me was blowing my mind. He rides on interstates and if he gets hit by cars he shakes their insurance companies down for money to finance his lifestyle. he has an adopted daughter in san jose who works for IBM. I'm not even sure how much is true but it's all great.

I bought him dinner and had a good talk with him, the guy rides solid rubber tires and once weighed his bike at a truck scale at 950 lbs. The man is 59 years old! I took a picture but as usual can't upload it right now.

Also

I watched a movie at the motel last night called Bound For Glory staring David Carradine as Woody Guthrie. I am urging Jake to watch it for the scenes of rail-riding and union-busting. I also think he would like F.I.S.T. if he could get past S. Stallone which is hard for a lot of people. What goes for jake goes double for all the rest of you.

I also listened to the guy who plays the PC in the apple ads on NPR yesterday. I don't think he's so funny cause he stacks the wack and fails to show me the funny. hobos+spaceships+straight face is supposed to equal a laff riot but it doesn't. I am starting to hate self-satisfied tone of voice that everyone involved in any capacity with public radio has, including the authors and musicians they bring along. I think that NPR should hire jim rome and have him read the news and give commentary, etc cause he has a better radio voice.

anyways i've dallied long enough in ness city, i'll upload the camel pics ASAP.

Western Kansas

Stefan don't hate Caedmon. Remember to ask yourself what jesus would do. WHAT JESUS WOULD DO! I think what she meant was that even though I was talking a lot I wasn't taliing shop about bikes cause I find such talk to be boring. I love bikes but they are basically 2 circles of rubber, 2 triangles of steel and a length of chain. As long as my bike doesn't break down. I'd rather talk about the scenery, people, radio etc. I don't want to talk about mileage or maintenance. A lot of peopel I meet have these biking computers which always make them crazy cause they spend all their time measuring the grade or looking at their RPM's or 7 day rolling average of mileage or whatever. I'm proud to not be a real cyclist in the sense that I don't go in for all that.

I'm in Ness City which used to be an oil town. I stayed last night in a place called the Derrick Inn in a motel that looks like it was built in the 70s for oilmen. There are pictures of gushers everywhere but they don't really do much for me. Dan became allergic and then has had bike trouble so he is staying here for the day, I would just as soon get out and into colorado and i can't help him so i'm riding a lone for a while it looks like. Western Kansas has three towns named after horace greeley, the socialist editor of the NY tribune from the old days, the towns are Horace, Greeley and Tribune. I think today I will ride through Modoc which is also the name of Jake's favorite villain. I'm now going west on highway 96, a state route i think. i see very little of interest. one thing i saw yesterday was a dead turtle that had been run over in the street and had apparently dragged its crushed body to the side of the road to die. it was heartbreaking.

Pete I knew you would clear up the jake brake stuff. Pete is alwasy the best source for turcker related knowledge. I watched a show on CMT last night called 'trick my truck' where hardworking truckers get their trucks customized by a team of mechanics. I feel like pete would be really into it. I realize that the reason truckers relate to country music so much is cause it is more likely to deal with trucker-like themes such as alienation, loneliness, rambling etc. because of this, it makes for the best music for driving cross country.

Caedmon

I want to go on the record as admitting my mistkake as far as Caedmon' name. In my defense I met her after a solid day and night of mountain appalachian riding some if it with no map cause mine was lost. Her blog describes me as not being a real cyclist though (I met her in pippa passes so it's in that section of her journal). Am I not wearing the ridiculous spandex shorts? I guess my legs aren't shaved though so she is probably right. I'm proud of her for finishing her ride and jealous of they her diligence with her journal. I think one of the drawbacks to riding with other people is less time to compose thoughts and think and all that, most of my posts are just a random collection of nonsense and and giddiness cause they're all written in a hurry.

One other interesting thing is that all matter of plants grow wild in kansas, everywhere. I can't really be too specific but it was really a surprise to see some of the plants although admittedly the camels were a bigger surprise.

Central Kansas

This is in some ways the hardest part of the trip. There are no hills at all, just a very slight constant uphill, almost unnoticeable. There is usually a crosswind and sometimes a headwind but never a tailwind somehow. I can see nothing for miles but just more road, pastures on my left and salt marsh on my right.

Last night we rode into the night to get to the next town. Riding at night is totally safe because you can see a car coming from about 5 miles away and we are on roads where traffic is so light that I was passed by about 10 cars in 2 hours of riding. The strange part is riding towards a distant light on a horizon for 2 hours and watching it get no closer at all.

I was wrong about good morning america, I should have said the title was 'city of new orleans'. Jake and my mom are right. I had never heard the song before in my life but felt that I knew it anyways. Another song that gets played a lot on country radio is 'green green grass of home', the kenny rogers version, which i remember listening to on the car radio as a small kid with my mom. The best country song I've heard int he past few days is "the race is on" by george jones. I advise anyone who makes this trip not to bring an ipod because firstly it's unsafe, secondly it will break and thirdly it won't give you weather reports. Get an AM/FM radio with a speaker, it's the only way.

I saw some camels and fed them grass through a fence, also a zebra, I took pictures but they won't let me plug in any devices to their computers here, I'll do it later. I'm currently in the town of Larned, Kansas and it will be a couple days before I get to Colorado. I'm about 1200 ft up right now, something like that but I think by the time I get to pueblo I will be at 5000 ft so it's a long slow steady climb.

Another thing that happened is last night Dan and I went to the only business in Larned open for labor day, a smoky bar. We had some coors draws and we met an older drunk guy who wanted to show us pictures of his grandkids. He also complained about the kansas city royals, who were on TV getting pasted by the yankees. apparently all of the beer in kansas is watered down by law. also there are signs that say that the jake brake is prohibited in town. What's a jake brake? is it unsafe? noisy? somehting truckers use? I know pete knows about this so let us know, peter.