Mile 456.3 - The wind says go

I started day 6 in Carson City, 24 miles behind the furthest point I achieved the day before. I also had to wait until 10 for the bike shop to open. I swapped the 4 wrong tubes for the right ones and got a couple more, just in case. By the time I got rolling it was 11:00, but I still wanted to put on a lot of miles.

Thankfully, my legs and Penny agreed on that, and the wind decided to help me. In fact, with the the wind pushing me, I set two personal speed records. On a flat straightaway, I got up to 38.4mph. Then I climbed a hill through a mile long construction zone which basically gave me a coned off lane to myself. I crested the hill and the wind picked up again. I went 51.9mph. The road flattened out over the next dozen miles, and I was able to keep a pace of 30 or higher for more than half of that and never dropped below 26. Thanks to that, in an hour and fifteen minutes, I covered the 36 miles between the capitol city and Silver Springs. That's certainly the furthest I've gone in a single hour on a bike. Again I wonder what it would have been without all the extra bulk on the bike.

I stopped at the Pizza Factory in Silver Springs. As I sat outside eating, a FedEx guy came up, looked at Penny and said "Well, you're going somewhere". I explained the trip. He nodded for a moment then offered "You must really like riding your bike". (I thought about that several times during my hour long 6-8 mph climbs today on day 7, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.)

I continued, passing mile 400 at 32 hours 50 minutes 43 seconds. 7 miles later, I saw my first tumbleweed of the tour. Yay. Soon I came into Fallon. Well, first the livestock exchange, then several livestock, building, or car repair type places. In the 250 miles from Fallon to Ely near the eastern edge of the state, there are only two towns, Austin and Euerka. There may be a couple of crossroads with gas stations, but that's pretty much it. I had to stock up on water. Between water and gatorade I added about 17lbs to the bike.

Because it is largely empty terrain, I didn't have a particular goal in mind, just to get out as far as I could. The stretch of highway 50 east of Fallon is referred to as the loneliest road in America. What little traffic there was was largely semis, rvs, or trucks hauling large amounts of whatever.

Just outside of Fallon is the Fallon Naval Airbase. When they were looking for places to build the Fallon base, they thought it would make sense to put it near Fallon. Shortly out of town pilots in fighter jets were making training runs, practicing landing then quickly taking off again, cutting a huge arc in the clear desert sky, then coming back in to repeat it. I saw and heard them for the next several hours.

Down 50 outside of town, the desert turns into salt flat, its empty pale expanse reaching back to hills in the distance. I came across the ruins of Saltwell, which looked like it wasn't much before it was nothing. At that point hills ranged on three sides of me. Before I started climbing the slope in front of me, I took a break at the entrance to Sand Mountain Park. I could hear the dune buggies long before I saw them some miles down a dirt road. They were tearing up and down a hill that looked just the others around me, except made out of sand, not rock.

I climbed to the Sand Springs Pass and could see what looked like a miles wide wall of sand to the north. As I passed into the area of the Navy's B17 testing ground, it seemed like the dusty wall of gloom was coming my way. I heard more jets tearing through the sky, but my thoughts were on the setting sun and the apparently gaining dust.

About ten miles after the pass, I came to an intersection of a dirt road with the title of state highway. Just off this intersection was a fenced enclosure whose gates were open. On the pavement inside the fence was a very large pile of dirt. It seemed like the perfect campsite. It was blocked from view of cars by the fence, and protected a bit from the wind by the big pile of dirt.

I pitched the tent, tethered Penny for the night (since she's too big to sleep in the tent) and organized all my things inside. Then I engaged in one of my new favorite activities, lying down very flat and still.

Navy aircraft kept watch over me all night. It is much easier to track them in a night sky. I kept leaning out of the tent to watch them fly past, then lay back down and listen again until a particularly loud, close or cool one flew past. There are probably fewer places on earth in less danger of an aerial assault than my camp next to the fenced-in pile of dirt. Thanks for keeping our skies clear.

Day 6, Carson City, NV - Fenced-In Pile of Dirt, NV.
100.9 miles today, 456.3 total. Riding time 5:55:06 with trip total 36:25:05 with a new top speed of 51.9mph.