Day 50 - Going Going Back Back to Cali Cali

Fifty days. I think i'm nearly ready for this to be over. Not over yet - but my last state crossing occurred on Day 50. California Dreamin'- Land of Opportunity! Land of my home and Donny and friends! Land of Budget Cuts... Still too early to be thinking about that now - two weeks until i have to go back to work.

I was unsure of Day 50's destination. I knew that i was going to cross the state line but it wasn't until over 80 miles into the day's ride. I rolled out of bed at 4:40AM - a new record, i think. Ate up the hard boiled eggs that Dan gave me, plus all the other shit from my Safeway run. I didn't have to deal with much food beyond that since now i'd be in "civilization" (read: gas, food, lodging) more often than not for the rest of the trip. I saw Ben briefly as i left; he was headed to McDonald's and then Carson City that day to rent a car and drive around Lake Tahoe (the Adventure Cycling map tells you not to ride there for road safety reasons) and take a nice rest day. (We parted with a you-never-know-we-could-cross-paths-again dance - but unless something went terribly wrong, i wouldn't be seeing Ben again on the route).

I, however, was rested, even coddled by the friendly folks in Fallon and my probably unreachable goal was the summit of Carson Pass, about 110 miles from Fallon. It was a slow gain of only 1,000 feet until the California border and then a rough nearly 3,800 feet of climbing over 30 miles. More simply put, i was never gonna get all the way up Carson Pass on Day 50. I had 3 days to get almost 320 miles to San Francisco and meet Carlos, Carrie, Hendrik and Phoebe at the Golden Gate Bridge, and the more i could knock out the first 2 days the fresher i'd arrive at the crossed-country destination.

I left just after 6AM hoping to outwit the headwind i knew was going to start taunting my face at some point. I'd noticed that the winds tended to pick up around 10 or 11 in the morning and the earlier i got out, the calmer it was. The ride was pretty smooth for 60 miles, which got me nearly to Carson City. Unfortunately, along with the civilization i had been craving, traffic majorly increased. Carson is big enough for sprawl, and i found myself struggling a little on the inclines trying to stay inside the shoulder (when there was one) and not run over the obstacle course of rusty nails, broken beer bottles and other scraps of metal or glass strewn on Route 50, now the least lonely road in America, thanks to the suburban traffic. The section riding through Carson was slow - due to evil stop-signed intersections and those 3-light mechanisms hanging from poles. They seemed familiar. Somehow i instinctively knew that red meant stop, green meant go, and yellow meant hurry-before-it-turns-red-and-you-get-run-over. I had experienced somewhere around zero traffic lights since Pueblo, Colorado - and about that many between leaving the DC Metro area and Pueblo.

The route abruptly heads uphill at the southern end of Carson City to the very scenic Jacks Valley Road. The sky grayed out the blue, and some drops began falling. Little did i know that this rain would be the last of the trip. About 10 miles further is Genoa which claims to be the first settled town in Nevada. The whole area is impressively smart - smart ranches, smart farms, golf courses, homes away from home, a few shops and saloons. I devoured a huge tuna sandwich (which had the perfect amount of mayo unlike all the tuna between DC and kingdom come), some chips and a chocolate chip cookie as big as your head. From there it was 35 miles to the 8,573 ft. summit of Carson Pass. Thirty-five miles? No problem.

The route from Genoa south to Carson Pass (the area is quite near to Lake Tahoe) continued to impress me with well-to-do poshness (though i did notice that most of the houses i passed sported "for sale" signage). And the Sierra Nevadas rose up quickly in my path. I was hungry to enter California (sounds more sexual than i mean to - but maybe not?) The route at this point had me on gorgeous back roads riding parallel to busy route 89. The disappointing trade-off was not having the WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA sign that i'd been craving for 50 days and nights. I rode on, waiting to see one in the distance, thinking i'd miscalculated the distance to the state line. But no. Eventually, i asked a woman gardening if i was in California, and she said i'd been there already for 5 miles. Old news. I called Donny anyway a little ways down the road and choked back a tear of success and antipication on his voicemail.

By the time i arrived in Woodfords, CA, i knew the summit was a pipe dream. Woodfords was a town. Sort of. Had a store and a B & B and a couple campsites. From there, it was still 10 miles to the top. And it was steep. And i had already gone 93 miles. And i was tired and rained-on. I opted for Hope Valley, even less of a town, 5 miles further up the road. The Hope Valley Campground was $18 compared with the cheapest room in the lodge at $115. Welcome back to California! I arrived at the campground and was relieved to see that the café (with some limited groceries) was still open as i had nothing except an apple and some Clif bars. I smiled hugely at the short-haired woman in her forties that was working at the cafe. I can't believe that i can't remember her name (but it has been 11 days). Let's call her Alex. That was definitely not her name, but it could've been. Alex had just baked about 10 things that looked and smelled delicious. I got some brewed iced tea in advance for the morning's caffeine (since i wanted to be gone before the place opened at 7:30) and some other items for breakfast while telling Alex about some of my travels and how excited i was to be seeing my friends in SF in a couple days and then Donny a few days after that. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there was something about Alex that was just so California - in the best possible way. It was just who she was upon first glance, her openness (and the organic and fresh ingredients in the café) that really made me smile and feel like i was getting close to home.

With a bag full of goodies, i made my way down the path to check in with the campsite host. My site was a little hike up the hill further and because of the dirt and gravel i had to push Whitey while digging my cleats into the ground. The site was picture-perfect, private, wonderful. It made me wish Nina was with me; she would have really appreciated this place. The one drawback was that the bathroom was a full 5-minute walk down the hill which was going to make the morning interesting, especially as the host warned me that it might drop as low as 40 that night. Made me wish for Nina and her extra blankets even more. The bath house was decent and covered in DON'T FEED THE BEARS literature. Funny, if you had told me ahead of time that this area was Bear Central, i might have freaked a little. Or maybe more than a little being totally alone and still not remembering the difference among bear attack survival approaches. But i wasn't freaked. I just plain old didn't think a bear was going to come sniffing up to my site. They know what coolers look like; I didn't have one. They are drawn to cooking smells; the campsite was pretty empty and no one was cooking (and it was about 6:30pm prime din-din time when i was heading to the showers). I'd bag up my food and hygiene

supplies, anything that smelled, as i had every other time i'd camped, and hang the bag from a tree. If a bear came and ate my food, he could have it. My approach to bears had shifted.

Since the café was now closed and i had no dinner, i was "forced" to eat at the lovely restaurant up the hill a bit at Sorensen's Resort. Yummy - great soup, salmon, veggies and another whole dessert to myself. I also had a Sierra Nevada, toasting the mountain range i was currently conquering.

I don't know why exactly (the beauty of the spot? exhaustion? altitude increase? luck?) but i had the deepest and most comfortable sleep that night that i'd had in weeks and certainly the best of all campings-out. It was freezing when i awoke for a pee (i marked territory outside the tent - hell no, i wasn't walking all the way down to the bathrooms! Inconvenient. And those bears...).

The stars were so prominent it was almost aggressive.