Longer

Day 62 - Aug 4, 9:30pm
110 miles. Yes, 110. Austin, NV to Fallon, NV

You read correctly. 110 miles. Third Century so far. I can't help but think back to when i went on this one training ride with my school cycling team. There was this one guy who did about 40ish miles and wanted to take it easy since he was doing a century the next day. I remember thinking whoa this guy is so hardcore. But that doesn't fly now. We warm up to a century with a week of 70 mile days, followed by more, not to mention the crazy heat, headwind, hills, and saddle sores we deal with. So basically I've officially come a long way from my naive training days and i think thats pretty much the story of everyone here. I'll at least try not to scoff the next time i ride with my school's team.

In honor of our mileage, today was the "longest" day of the ongoing Regatta where endurance was tested. In short, if you won an event today, its very likely that at some point we highly doubted your sanity for at least a little bit. Some highllights:

Steven came in with an incredible 40 miles of hands free riding up and down hills and against headwind. My five miles didn't quite pull it out on that one.

Meryl pulled 16 miles on her granny gear(lowest gear) while Carlos and Libby pulled an outrageous 65 miles on their highest gear.

Sonya went 17.3 miles riding with only one foot and to give you a sense of how big all the margins were(and thus how crazy all the winners were) the next closest in this category was 4 miles. A similar ridiculous margin held for Max's 26 miles standing up.

Noah obviously won the "only speak by singing" category with a solid six hours, while Paige carried through in the Pig Latin competition.

What took the cake though was Dennis'(on the left) amazing 6 hours and 13 minutes of playing copycat to everyone he rode with which was easily the funniest thing we've seen all week. While we assumed it was just verbal, he willingly copied every single physical aspect and riding style of his victims ruthlessly.

And since 4 of the 8 winners were from the Black Pearl it makes sense that we stand with a crushing 421 points compared to our closest competitor, the Santa Maria with 291. Nothing like imaginary points to drive bored bikers to insanity...

Even besides the Regatta today was just crazy. More of the same pretty mountains and valleys, and more of the same ridiculous heat and headwind. I couldn't even pay attention to the scenery around me for a good part because i had to keep my head down to distract myself from the neverending road in front of me. It was actually the first day i relished riding into the headwind(somewhat) because since yesterday it has become so clear how this ridiculous stretch is our final challenge, and how much i just want to kick it in the face and prove our worth.

So really really super cool. We're sitting at lunch only to all of a sudden hear the sky rumble and have two navy fighter jets zoom over us! So amazing, first time ever seeing anything like that. But thats not it. About 30 minutes later we're riding and from our right a deafening quaking precedes this fighter jet which passes like 500 feet away from us. I kid you not that i thought an 18 wheeler had snuck up on us and was about to run us over and end my life. No joke. So unbelievably cool to see it pass by that close. Those machines are just incredible. You know that pilot was having some fun with us. We continued seeing them for the rest of the day but never that crazily close again.

We later also passed a sign pointing to the "Navy Centroid Facility". Now as if the word centroid isn't sketchy enough, when the Navy has a base 300 miles inland, you know somethings up. Well we found out that they apparently have a huge elite fighter pilot base here where all aircraft carrier pilots pass through at least once. 3 other riders further up saw a fake village get legitimately firebombed by those same planes from before, as in bam boom huge destruction fireball attack. Yea, and we thought the desert was boring.

The wierd meter spiked even higher when we came across "the Shoe tree" which is this huge tree(also the only tree) completely covered in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shoes that have been thrown on it. Apparently a couple was driving through when they had an argument. The wife threatened to walk back alone when the husband threw her shoes up the tree inspiring a slew of others. Hooray for patriarchy? Either way it was actually unbelievable. So many shoes!

It was only fitting? at this point for Sonya to unflinchingly devour a 3 pound Monster burger at this crazy diner winning a t shirt. To think, only the third woman to ever do so.

We crossed over a decent hill and ran into some really intense lightning in the distance(like actually scary) and some brief intense rain which we started booking it out of finishing the last 25 miles at a solid 20+ mph pace. Kelly, Julie, Doug, and I actually beasted the entire 45 mile stretch from second lunch to the host barely stopping which felt amazing. Even better was seeing an actual group of sand dunes 2 miles or so off the rode. Like aladdin status wavy sand hills. it was so cool and Dan M who climbed up them said they were of course wonderful. At that point, with the jets firebombing, the crazy lightning and rain, the sand dunes, the shoe tree, the monster burgerand our delirious mileage, I probably wouldn't have been that surprised If we had seen Elvis himself drive up next to us.

We had an actual host today, the methodist church, for the first time in over a week and it was overwhelming. Not only is there dinner AND breakfast which is hard to show enough gratitude for, but we're finally around so many nice old folks who actually love and care for us. So nice! A close second was remembering what a traffic light looks like after 200+ miles without one.

But yea, our hardest day is over and the trip is basically downhill from here. Except of course the 4,000 feet we climb up the Sierra Nevadas. But mentally, there are so few days of riding left, and each one is that much easier and enjoyable as a result. Starting with 63 into Reno and our build site tomorrow!

Bonus video of the downhill race we completed today