I laughed when I read this after the race: “The field has made a right hand turn onto the hump between Wrightwood and the descent. It’s a very steep ramp lined by what appears to be the entire population of the town.”

What did the kiddo like best about the race? The packet of jelly beans tossed out the window by the Jelly Belly team support car!

Breakaway (6 minutes ahead):

Peleton:

Rear group (2 minutes behind):

Some videos:

ToC 2010, Stage 6, Wrightwood – Breakaway from Brian DeSousa on Vimeo.

ToC 2010, Stage 6, Wrightwood – Peleton from Brian DeSousa on Vimeo.

ToC 2010, Stage 6, Wrightwood – Rear from Brian DeSousa on Vimeo.

Notice the water bottle that was thrown off to the side of the road in the last video?  A friend picked it up after the ride. The secret ingredient? Flat soda! (If anyone knows who threw the water bottle, let me know!)

Weather-wise, I couldn’t have done this tour at a better time than mid-March, with high temperatures in the high 70s/low 80s  in the deserts and almost no chance of rain. Although that is the norm for that time of year, due to the El Nino weather pattern there were still some winter storms/disturbances in the area through late February and early March, which is unusually late in the season  Luckily for me, I had some flexibility as to exact dates for the trip, so I could keep an eye on the weather and plan accordingly.  Note that this Route 66 ride passes through this area in April, when it is noticeably warmer, but their timing is more likely driven by the need for good weather for the parts of Route 66 in the midwest.

Driving to Barstow, CA, taking the train to Flagstaff, AZ, and riding back to the car in Barstow worked out well. The downside of starting in Flagstaff (elevation about 7000 feet) at that time of year is that it made for a cold start, and if I had started just a couple of days earlier, I might have had to deal with snow/ice issues.  Starting the tour in Williams or further west would have avoided that issue, but Flagstaff had to the be the starting point for me because it was the only Amtrak baggage stop on that part of the route that could handle my bike.

Since Barstow is not a baggage handling stop, my plan was to ship the bike to Flagstaff as Amtrak freight, and the only station in my area that can handle freight is Los Angeles. So my plan was to go to Los Angeles early in the day, ship the bike to Flagstaff, then drive to Barstow and board the train there.  However, I arrived in Los Angeles to good news  – I would not have to pay $45 to ship the bike as freight to Flagstaff, I would only have to pay $5 as luggage, since I had a ticket for that train (even though I was boarding at another station).  But if I had known that in advance, I would have investigated doing this in Fullerton, which is not a freight stop but a baggage stop.  (Confusing?  Thought so!)

Shipping the bike on the train is much easier than preparing it for shipping via UPS/FedEx or air travel. The Amtrak bike boxes are HUGE (40″x70″x9″), so all most people have to do is remove the handlebars and pedals and roll it into the box.  In my case, I also had to lower the seat, which was no big deal.

With Flagstaff at about 7000 feet and Barstow at about 2000 feet, going from east to west worked out well to make more of the ride downhill than uphill.  The downside was that the wind seemed to be coming out of the west most of the time, although this was only a significant problem on the last day from Ludlow to Barstow.

Due to the long distances between services, I did this as a credit card tour, saying in motels every night. That made for a long 113 mile day from Needles to Ludlow, for which it was prudent for me to bring lights and get in a solid hour of uphill riding before sunrise so I could finish the day’s ride in daylight.

Many parts of the route are off the beaten path and so the pavement was not always in the best condition.  I did the ride on 700×23 tires which worked out OK for most of the ride, but I hit a bone jarring rough section between Kingman and Oatman which broke one of my lights, and just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, there was the section between Ludlow and Fort Cady Road in Newberry Springs.  I would recommend wide 700×32 touring tires for a more comfortable ride.

I took my iPhone along on this tour to take advantage of one interesting technological development – the Track My Tour app, which allows writing short notes and/or taking photos for waypoints that can be sent to Twitter (which I also redirected to Facebook).  Cell service is spotty when Route 66 deviates from the I-40 alignment, so the nice thing about this app is that it lets you save the waypoints to a drafts folder for submitting later when you are back in cell tower range.  The downside was that the iPhone GPS was not very reliable in much of the California desert – so often times I had to wait for the GPS to “warm up” and properly detect my location.  My initial concern was that this app might detract from the touring experience, but in this case I think it enhanced it, as I could take out my phone, snap a photo, write a short note, and then upload the waypoint all in a short amount of time.

All in all, it was nice to finally have a chance to get around to doing this bicycle tour, of which I had been planning various incarnations since I discussed this on the bicycle touring email list in 2001!

After yesterday’s long day, the plan was to sleep in today, have a relatively mellow ride back to the car, and drive back home early afternoon. Oh, the best laid plans!

The portions of Route 66 for all of today’s route are now the frontage roads for I-40. The weather was pleasant when leaving the motel room a little before 9AM. I went under I-40 and caught the frontage road on the north side. It started going uphill – no surprise, since the whole day would be a gradual uphill to Barstow.

Also, the pavement was about par for the source, not silky smooth, but not too rough either. But with hills to the north and hills to the south, it created a wind tunnel with a strong headwind! So the first ten miles or so were a slow grind, but with only 55 miles for the day I could go at this pace for the whole ride and do just fine.

Then things started to get interesting after the frontage road went over to the south side of the freeway. I had been wondering why I only saw one car on this stretch for the first 15 miles or so after leaving Ludlow, but now I saw why. The pavement suddenly looked it went through a war, with many huge cracks in the direction of travel that could swallow up my buddy John’s 38mm wide tires! This section was the worst of the trip, much worse than the short secton between Kingman and Oatman that I had complained about a couple fo days ago.

Needless to say, progress was slow. I had let a little bit of air out of the tires to help with the rough stuff. Not too long after that, my back tire went flat quickly. I couldn’t find the puncture in the tube, nor could I find any thorns in the tire. So I figured it must have been a pinch flat, so I just changed the tube and pumped it up to the normal pressure.

After riding on the repair for a little bit, I saw entrance/exit ramps for I-40, the first ones in the 18 miles since Ludlow. The frontage road ahead looked like it wasn’t getting any better, so I figured the I-40 shoulder would be a better ride and went to take a look at the signage on the westbound entrance ramp. When I went under the freeway to go look at the ramp – bam! – yet again, the rear tire went completely flat.

I figured at that point there must have been a cut which went all the way through the tire – one that would only show itself if there was a tube inflated to pressure, thereby leaving enough of the tube exposed to air so that it would pop like a balloon. Since I was now on my last tube, I thought it prudent to also get out my spare folding tire, and change both the tube and the tire.

I took a look at the I-40 onramp signage, and Caltrans in their infinite wisdom must have considered the frontage road to be a “suitable alternate” route for bicyclists, as the I-40 shoulder was posted “no bikes”. Yet it was clear that the county hasn’t spent a dime on maintenance of the frontage road, because after all, no one lives on this part of the frontage road and so everybody uses the freeway. In practical terms, I had used up all of my spare tubes and tires, and if I were to have another mechanical issue on the frontage road, there would likely be no one driving by to flag down for help. So the freeway shoulder it was.

After a smooth, quick 9 miles on the I-40 shoulder, the first of two exits for Newberry Springs came up. Thinking about lunch, I exited since I saw a sign for a truck stop, but I decided to continue on because it looked like a glorified minimart.

I went to investigate the frontage road, because I figured it would be better maintained now that I was somewhere closer to civilization. That indeed was the case, and I quickly came upon the Bagdad Cafe, from the German movie of the same name. Just then a tour bus load of Dutch tourists pulled up and poured inside the little cafe, looking around and taking pictures. I was able to get a seat at the counter and order before things got too crazy inside.

Then the tour bus left and it was just me eating and a couple of locals hanging out. We talked about a bunch of stuff – I’ll have to eventually update this blog post sometime with more about that.

Another tour bus pulled up, and so I figured that would be a good time to leave. Then another two buses pulled up! I guess the Europeans going to the Bagdad Cafe in the US is the equivalent of Americans going to the “Sound of Music” tour in Austria!

After my first few pedal strokes outside of the cafe, I noticed the front tire was a bit soft. I clearly had a slow leak, but it was slow enough to pump up every once in a while (since I was out of new tubes). That strategy worked fine, until one time about eight miles later I connected the pump, pulled the locking lever, and then I lost all the air in the tire. The rubber on the tube had ripped right where the valve stem connects, which is not repairable. Argh! So I looked at the old tubes to see which one I could patch. I never did find the leak in yesterday’s tube, so I put that one in as a replacement and miraculously it worked fine! It was still a slow leak, but actually a slower leak than the tube it replaced!

I then came upon a detour sign, since a bridge was out up ahead. I wasn’t sure it would be better to follow the detour or just use the I-40 shoulder, but a nice lady in a pickup pulled up and said that the detour is just a parallel road on the other side of the tracks and would get me to where I was going. This was a blessing in disguise for two reasons. First was a work related reason, as I got to pass right by the Coolwater plant, which was used for coal gasification tests years ago, although nowadays it generates power from natural gas. (I still recall one of our clients saying “I don’t want to hear RR say ‘We did that on Coolwater’ again!”) Second, as it was getting closer to the end of the day, the headwinds were picking up, so progress slowed even more, and I had run out of water. The detour route passed me right by the market in Daggett, which I may have missed if I were on the old Route 66.

A marine base currently sitting on the old Route 66 alignment forces a short detour on the I-40 shoulder. This has been the case for years, with bicyclists exiting at East Main Street into Barstow, as shown on the latest officially published Caltrans map in 1991. However, there was now another exit in between – not shown on my AAA map which shows all of the exits – and a sign direction bicyclists to exit. Therefore, there was presumably an alternate surface street route, but all I could see was a frontage road that didn’t show up on my AAA county map and outside the detail of the Barstow city inset of another AAA map. (I would later find out that this frontage road looped around to East Main Street, but that was not obvious as the time.) So I got back on the freeway, with ancient Caltrans map in hand, and made it to East Main Street with no problems.

Finally, after even more headwinds and more uphill through Barstow, I arrived at the train station just before 6:30PM, where my car was parked, where the tour came to an end. Within the next couple of days I will likely do one more post and add photos to the previous posts. Bye for now!

Yesterday I alluded to my concern that I would not be able to ride the distance in the available daylight. I didn’t want to start at sunrise and put myself in a position where I would have to do the night riding at the end when I may be more fatigued. Instead, the plan was to get an hour or two of riding before sunrise, so that I could be assured of finishing in daylight. This had several advantages, the two major ones being that the first miles out of Needles were uphill (easier to ride in darkness when you’re going slow), as well as the ability to simply stop and wait for daylight for a Plan B if I had problems with the light repair.

So I set my alarm for 4AM, and although I was a little slow rolling out of the hotel and over to Denny’s, I was on the road before 5:30AM (sunrise is about 6:45AM). The plan worked beautifully. All of the night time riding was on the back streets of Needles and then the uphill climb on the I-40 shoulder (I was visible enough, as trucks were changing lanes even though they didn’t need to). Meanwhile, the headlight repair held together, and although I still had another fully functioning headlight, having two was better than one. I reached the exit for US95 pretty much around the time it got bright enough to no longer need the lights.

After about 6 miles of rolling but mostly up on US95, it was a left turn onto Goffs Road section of Route 66. It was already warm enough to take off the jacket and the leg warmers. I also noticed the front tire was going soft, there were two thorns that had lodged themselves in the tire so that they are hard to see from the outside, but you can feel a pinprick on the inside. As I was fixing the flat, some guys in a BNSF truck (the rail line is parallel to the route) stopped and we chatted, and they offered me a couple of small water bottles. Despite having put three bottle cages on the bike, one of them designed to hold a 1.5 liter bottle, I was not about to turn down free water on this stretch with very few services!

Forward progress felt very slow on Goffs Road. I had recalled that the first letter of the old town names along this section of Route 66 were in order from A-H, or westbound that would be H-A. These were the water and supply stops back when a trek across the Mojave Desert would take a couple of days – of course, modern car technology and I-40 have changed things quite a bit. I saw a sign for Homer next to the tracks, there were no old buildings there and it doesn’t even appear on my map.

Finally I reached Goffs and saw a sign with “population 23″ – but more importantly, “elevation 2500 feet” – which confirmed why progress was a bit slow after starting a few hundred feet above sea level. I remember reading that, at one time, Goffs was a summertime retreat for those in the Needles area to get away from the heat. Well, based on the “rule” of four degrees cooler for every 1000 feet, it would only be 105 in Goffs when it was 115 in Needles. I guess that would have been a big deal in the days before air conditioning!

The next 10 miles to Fenner was a nice downhill where all I had to do was soft pedal to maintain a 20 mph pace. So while I felt a little behind when in Goffs, I was 40 miles in at Fenner at about 10:30 AM. I had previously decided that around the 40 mile point (i.e., a little less than halfway), I’d reconfirm whether to press on to Ludlow or turn back to Needles. Since I had 8 hours of daylight for the remaining 70 miles, and my average “touring” pace is 10 mph including stops, I knew I could press on.

Since Fenner just happens to be where the route crosses I-40, there is an expensive store that is the gas station, general store, and cafe. So rather than dig into my bag for one of my sandwiches, I got a stack of pancakes and reloaded on water.

After crossing the interstate, I returned to the land that time forgot. Traffic continued to be virtually non-existent (about five cars an hour – if that) as I passed through Essex. There appeared to be a few people who lived here, but no services were available.

Then the road started going slightly uphill and I could see some mountains in the distance. Would the road go around the mountains or over them? After a lot of time spent climbing (including passing by Danby Road, the former “D” town), the grade steepened and it was evident that the road would go over the mountains. Graffitied foundations for the old buildings were at Cadiz Summit, which I found out later was at 1300 feet, although it seemed higher.

It was downhill to Chambless, where handful of people lived, but there were also no services. Then the road started going up again towards Amboy (I don’t recall a “B” town). The road is a straight line on the map, which in practical terms means there are several short but relatively steep pitches.

The infamous Roy’s Motel and Cafe in Amboy was open, but only for snacks and drinks – I got a frozen candy bar and a cold soda for a change of pace. I was OK on water and didn’t get any more. Roy’s was at mile 84 and therefore were the first services I recall since Fenner at mile 40. There were a couple of tourists and a couple of locals here, I spent some time talking with both. It looked like the locals were helping with improving the place, one question I overheard was “what do you think about this thermometer above the door?”

I didn’t make it out of Amboy until about 3:30, and I had about 30 miles to go until Ludlow, with the potential of cutting it too close to sundown. By now, the traffic was almost next to nothing, I can count the number of cars that passed me with one hand. I did see two groups of two road bicyclists going the other way. The latter group had what appeared to be a small rented RV behind them, perhaps they were racers from snow country that came to a warmer place to train?

After a few miles it became apparent that I’d be climbing my way out of Amboy to get to Ludlow. I had to avoid the temptation of pushing too hard and not bothering having any food since I was coming down the home stretch. I know from experience because I had bonked at mile 95 of a century ride and didn’t want to fall into that trap here!

Finally I could see I-40, and after hitting a summit, it was about five miles of downhill on smooth pavement into Ludlow, arriving a little after 5:30PM. There’s not much here – there’s the motel (where you have to check in across the street at the Chevron), a few gas stations, a cafe that closes at 6PM, and a Dairy Queen inside one of the gas stations that is open until 8PM. So it was Dairy Queen for dinner for me – ugh, but better than nothing! The motel room is OK, but it cost $46 for the same room that would be $25 in Barstow or Needles.

Since today was going to be a relatively short day, followed by a long ride the following day, I decided to sleep in and wake up when I felt like it – which ended up being 7AM instead of 6AM!

In my mad dash to ship the cold weather gear at the post office yesterday, I had accidentally threw in there my knee warmers. Oops. So it was off the to the local bike shop the morning, which was 3 miles north – i.e., 6 miles out of the way when you count the out and back. Good thing they opened at 8AM – real early for a bike shop.

As would be expected from a not-so-big town/city, the bike shop had mostly kids and mountain bikes – although they had a decent selection of other accessories, as evidenced by them having the leg warmers in a couple of different sizes. I spent quite a bit of time there talking with the owner, who was a friendly guy. I got the impression that he didn’t currently ride a bicycle, but he rides motorcycles and was familiar with all the roads in the area, and so we were talking about the various routes to get to Needles.

So after leaving the bike shop, which was on the far north side of Kingman, I passed by a whole bunch of Kingman suburban retail (Home Depot, WalMart, etc.) which I didn’t know existed there. Finally, after 10 miles for the day, I reached downtown Kingman (hotel was 3 miles from downtown, bike shop detour was 6 miles round trip, plus another mile in there somewhere), and after leaving town on Route 66, the bicycle touring portion of the day finally began at 10:30AM!

After crossing under I-40, Route 66 diverges from the I-40 alignment again and heads up the hill towards Oatman. Almost immediately the pavement quality took a turn for the worst! It wasn’t so bad when it was a slight downgrade, as I could coast downhill, put my pedals and 3 and 9 o’clock, and then lift myself off the saddle a bit. After a few miles of this, one of my lights said it finally had enough, and launched itself from the bike and onto the pavement. After I picked up the pieces, I could see that the plastic groove on the bottom of the light had fatigued and broken off. I also removed the good light so that it wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

Then the road started going uphill, and now I actually had to pedal through the bumpiness. That’s when I started thinking that if I had to do 109 miles of this the next day, I would just hang it up in Needles. (Next time I’ll listen to Lon of his Route 66 Pac Tours when he says to use 32 or wider tires!) Then, as if almost on cue, the pavement got a little better – not great, but on par with the rest of the route.

After passing Cool Springs, the road got real narrow and started to switchback its way up. Posted speeds for the turns were usually 10 or 15 mph. Traffic was fairly light – a few motorcyclists and some snowbirds too, neither of which were in a hurry. The views down to the desert floor were stunning.

After summiting at Sitgreaves Pass at 3550 feet, it was more switchbacks and mostly downhill to Oatman at 2700 feet. Of course, I started to get a headwind after cresting the pass, and combined with the switchbacks and pavement quality, it meant that this isn’t the kind of hill where you let it all go. As a result, I stopped a few times to make sure the brakes didn’t overheat the rims (I have caliper brakes on this bike, not V-brakes) – they were warm to the touch but OK.

Finally, I reached Oatman, which looked like it was out of the old west. As I turned a corner towards the downtown, there was a traffic jam! About every hour or half hour, the locals just stop traffic and have a mock gunfight in the middle of the road! Tourists stood in the middle of the road watching, and the motorists had turned off their engines. Then they clear out, everyone starts their engines, and everything gets moving again!

Oatman was packed with tourists (mostly snowbirds) walking around town, and I was lucky to find the last table in the restaurant at 2 PM! I briefly chatted with a Dutch couple that were surprised that I climbed the hill all the way from Kingman!

After leaving Oatman, it seemed that most of the traffic split off to the right towards Bullhead City, while I stayed on Route 66 for the 20 or so miles towards Golden Shores. It was a nice, mostly downhill section, where I could alternate between soft pedaling and coasting, while averaging about 20 mph in the process. Temperatures had warmed up to about 80 degrees or so – but apparently still a lot cooler than in LA, believe it or not!

The next order of business was crossing the Colorado River into California. To save some mileage, I opted to avoid the “pure” Route 66 routing, which would have been to continue south to Topock and cross the river on I-40, continuing on I-40 for 6 miles before taking US 95 into Needles. Instead, I headed northwest/west on County Roads 1/227 (also marked as Arizona 95 on some maps), and then across a small bridge into Needles.

I then had to decided where to stay overnight. Route 66 through the old downtown is four lanes with no traffic, and most of the businesses were empty. Nowadays, all of the services are up the hill, clustered around the four I-40 exits. I had a choice of either staying near the restaurants or the supermarket. I opted for the latter, since I needed to get supplies for the long 109 mile day with no reliable services.

It was interesting talking with the innkeeper at the motel near the supermarket. He was a civil engineer that lived and worked not too far from me, and he showed up to work one day to find out that he was being let go immediately due to the economic downturn. It sounded like he saw the writing on the wall and had worked out a backup plan. He’s been making some improvements to the property – it’s no Hilton, but it’s much better than the Motel 6 for the same $35 price!

Unfortunately, staying near the supermarket meant that the only dinner choices were fast food Mexican (which wouldn’t have sat well with me), or Domino’s Pizza (I had Pizza Hut last night). I opted for the latter, resulting in the second 12″ pizza completely consumed in as many days.

Then I got some sandwiches made at the supermarket, got some water and other food for tomorrow, and some duct tape and zip ties, which were then used to fix the broken headlight. My average pace has been 10 mph including stops, and so on that basis 109 mile would be 11 hours. Since there’s about 12 hours of daylight this time of year, I need to have working light just in case I’m delayed by a mechanical or other reason. More on that subject tomorrow…

I forgot to mention that yesterday’s 77 miles was a little shy of my expected 84 miles. My cycling computer must be a bit off, or I must have used the most direct I-40 shoulder in a location where I had originally planned to use the old highway. Today’s planned route is 89 miles, all of it on the old Route 66 with no turns, so I would find out for sure whether or not the computer is the issue.

Heading west out of Seligman (which I was told was the motivation for the fictional “Radiator Springs” in the movie Cars), the Route 66 and I-40 alignments take greatly different paths, rather than being roughly parallel as was the case on the first day. That would ensure today’s ride would be a step back into time. I first noticed this when I lost my cell phone signal leaving Seligman. I wouldn’t get it back until the final approach to Kingman.

Route 66 was two lanes (one lane each way) with wide shoulders. Although the lanes themselves were relatively smooth, the shoulder was not, providing a bone jarring experience. This would be the case for most of the day’s ride. But with the road so lightly traveled and the sight lines so good, it was easy enough to use the smooth pavement in the travel lane most of the time, using my rear view mirror and moving over to the shoulder as needed.

Just like yesterday I had started off the day with my cold weather gear. But more importantly, I had a tailwind this time, and although I didn’t know exactly what was waiting for me in the middle, the route would have a net downhill, starting at about 5200 feet and ending at about 3300 feet.

Thanks to the tailwind, I breezed past Grand Canyon Caverns, only stopping to take a couple of photos. Then after where the highway enters to the Indian reservation, but before reaching Peach Springs, I saw a sign warning about a truck lane coming up. Uh oh, I said to myself, that means a big hill. Well, that was true, but it was a truck lane on a 6% DOWNgrade! With the combination of the downgrade and the tailwind, I rolled into what looked like a small town at about 40 mph!

I saw signs further back saying there was food and lodging in town, but after riding around some residential areas I found none. It was quite a shock seeing the living conditions on the reservation. Part of me wanted to take some photos, but the other part of me didn’t want that to be taken as a negative gesture. So no photos of this part.

Finally, I figured out that the rest of the town was “just around the bend” in the highway, and so I saw the lodge, restaurant, post office – and also the railroad tracks rejoining the route. I already had 35 of 89 miles done by about 10:30AM, so it was a good time for breakfast. The restaurant also had free wifi, so I was able to upload some waypoints to my map. It had warmed up during the day, so I changed from my cold weather to my cool weather clothing.

After leaving Peach Springs, the terrain became a little more rolling, although still on a downhill trend with a tailwind through Truxton and Valentine. Hackberry had a neat general store with snacks, drinks, and Route 66 memorabilia.

After leaving Hackberry, the wind changed from a tailwind to a headwind. Looking at the map after the ride, the reason is clear – I had just crossed a small mountain range, so now there was a place for the wind to blow in from the north. Even so, these last 30 miles with a headwind were nowhere near as bad as the conditions on the first day. Furthermore, it was starting to get warmer, so I was down to my jersey and shorts.

Kingman would be the largest city/town overnight stop on the route, and so I started seeing the various lodging choices on the approach to town. I saw I-40 up ahead, and recalling from previous travels on I-40 and stopping in Kingman, the Motel 6 was near the old downtown. So when I saw the Motel 6 at mile 86 on my computer (see, my computer is reading a little low, as the forecast was 89 miles), I pulled in and checked in. It was only after I settled in that I found out that Route 66 is close to I-40 at two locations in Kingman, and there are two Motels 6, each one near an I-40/Route 66 junction. I was at the wrong hotel, about three miles away from the old downtown, with a big hill separating the west and east sides of town!

I decided to make lemonade out of lemons and ride to the post office to mail back home all my cold weather gear (I need the space for more food on Day 4). The Google maps showed the post office on the wrong side of the street, and so I ended up riding right by it, bombing down the hill from the east side to west side of town, only having to climb back up it again. Luckily the post office was open until 5:30, instead of 5 as I had expected, so I was able to squish that gear into a flat rate box and mail it off. I decided to have dinner near the hotel room (a medium 12″ pizza that I ate all myself), and so the plan is to explore the older part of Kingman tomorrow.

Regular readers of my blog entries from previous bike trips know that I try not just to talk about the riding, but also the people and places along the way. But today was a challenging day, so this day’s entry is (mostly) about the riding. So deal with it!

The train was supposed to arrive in Flagstaff at either 5AM or 6AM – not sure which because the train left California before the daylight savings time change but arrived in Arizona afterward, and complicated by the fact that California changes the clocks but Arizona doesn’t. Nevertheless, the train was already a half hour late picking me up in California, and so more delays on top of that meant the train didn’t arrive in Flagstaff until 7:30AM. In transit, the bike started rolling its way out of the side of the previously water damaged box. Luckily, no damage was done, and (thanks to the friendly station attendant for allowing me to set up the bike inside, despite the “no bicycles” sign on the door) me and bike were ready to roll at 8AM!

Rolling out of Flagstaff, I was feeling comfortable in the 23 degree temperatures. That was short lived, because once I left town, I could feel the strong headwind, which I later learned brought the wind chill down to 12 degrees. The first part of the ride had only pieces of the original Route 66, thereby requiring use of the I-40 shoulder in some places (legal in most western states outside of urban areas). So I alternated between some protection from the wind due to the pine trees along parts of the old highway, and no protection at all from the wind on the wide open sections of I-40.

I had forgotten to bring my maps from Flagstaff to Williams, probably because I printed out the wrong set, as this trip that was supposed to happen last fall was going to start out of Williams. I remembered most of the routing from the previous time I had done this section, but I when I stopped in Bellemont to warm up some frozen fingers, I was able to get some assistance from locals regarding which parts of the old highway went through and which were impassible dead ends.

By the time I rolled into Williams for lunch, I had only done 30 of the planned 84 miles for the day. Normally I like to get more than half of the miles in before the lunch stop, that allows some flexibility in the afternoon. So I was a bit concerned at the progress. The Pine Country Restaurant was pretty yummy and quick, and I was in and out in a half hour.

After the rolling terrain from Flagstaff to Williams, the section from Williams to Ash Fork would be a 1500 foot drop in 15 miles, with up to a 6% downgrade. Still, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up, as the last time I had done this was into a stiff headwind, where we actually had to pedal to keep moving – on a tandem, no less, and only at 15 mph. Well, today much have been my lucky day, because the winds had died down after finishing lunch, so this time I was able to coast down the hill at 25-35 mph almost all the way into Ash Fork!

I remember Ash Fork very well from the last time I was there. The east side of town had a truck stop and a cafe (with much better food than the truck stop), and the west side of town had the motel. The truck stop is now closed, I couldn’t really tell about the cafe (since I was there between meal times), and couldn’t tell about the inn either.

By now it had warmed up enough for me to switch from my cold weather gear to my cool weather gear. I was concerned about the extra load on my saddlebag, but that proved not to be an issue.

I tried to find the old highway that my map said connected between I-40 exits 144 and 139, but all I saw was a Chevron at exit 144 with no road that went through. So I jumped on I-40 for 6 miles to exit 139, and then exited on to Route 66 again, where it would just 17 miles to Seligman, the day’s destination.

The map showed Route 66 as a straight line parallelling I-40 from my current location to Seligman, and the destination elevation was about the same as my current location. So that should be an easy flat 17 miles for the home stretch, right? Wrong! After the first couple of miles, it was evident that the road was starting to climb. I saw some mesas off in the distance, and I said to myself, “oh s***, this road has to go over the mesas. And it did so by going straight up and over them for the most part, rather than switchbacking which would actually make the climbs less steep.

Add to that the end of the day headwind that started picking up the first couple of miles into the 17 mile section. It would even taunt me by letting up for a moment while I stopped to “relieve” myself, then picking up again when I started pedaling.

Eventually I reached an unnamed but marked summit at 5700 feet. There was even still some snow on the side of the road. I didn’t get the screaming downhill that I had expected/hoped for on the other side of the summit, instead I was treated to more rollers in a headwind.

I finally made it to town just before 5PM – later than I’m normally comfortable doing, but early enough so I wouldn’t have to go scouting for motels in the dark. I stayed at the mom and pop Canyon Lodge, where every room has a theme – my room had an Elvis theme. After dinner I had to muster up enough energy to write the day’s report, and when I saved it as a local draft in the WordPress iPhone app, I lost my whole writeup. It’s a bug with saving local drafts, since I have a cellular connection, a day later I have rewritten the Day 1 update, this time saving as a draft on the server instead of locally. If you can read this, it worked this time!

Although I had done the Flagstaff to Ash Fork section as part of a previous tour, Flagstaff was the only place where I could send the bike. That’s somewhat unfortunate, as it seems like half the gear I brought was to keep warm on the first day. (FYI, this is due solely to the elevation differential, as there are no storm systems forecast to come through the area.). More unfortunately, as the train ride currently nears the end, I just started looking through my stack of printed map scans, and the section from Flagstaff to Williams is missing! I had two sets of map scans – one for a Flagstaff start for today, another for a Williams start as I had originally planned late last fall – and I had printed out the wrong stack! So all I have is the Arizona state AAA map for this section, which doesn’t show much detail. So this first leg could be an interesting test of my memory, more excitement than I really wanted for the first day!

The weather is forecast to be sunny all of next week, with highs in the 70s and 80s – with the exception of a chance of snow flurries tonight into tomorrow morning for Flagstaff, which is located at about 7000 feet elevation. I could delay the tour start by about a day to avoid the flurries, but I figured it best to leave tonight as planned and have an extra day in my pocket on the road.

The previous text was written earlier in the day, now fast forward to later in the day. The bike shipping from LA was successful, I didn’t know until it was time to pay that I didn’t have to send it as freight – I could still check it as luggage, since I would be boarding the train, even at a different stop. That was good to know because it meant it cost me only $5 instead of $45 to get the bike to the destination. It probably meant I could have sent the bike on it’s way from Fullerton (which was a luggage stop but not a freight origination point), which would have saved a three hour round trip to LA Union Station. Unfortunately, the savings on shipping the bike was almost eaten away by the $30 increase in train fare for buying the same day instead of on the web a few days ago.

Packing the bike itself was actually quite easy. I brought my spare Amtrak cardboard bike box that’s been in the garage for about ten years and brought the bike unboxed for the trip to the train station. The box is so big, that all most people have to do is remove the handlebars and pedals, then roll the bike in the 40″x70″x9″ box. I’m tall enough that I also had to lower the seat.

All that left very little time for packing, which turned into a mad dash consisting of printing out a list I’ve put together for a similar trip and then randomly grabbling all of the items and throwing them in my big Carradice saddlebag. Luckily I’ve been through this before. I’m traveling fairly light, using my commute bike instead of my fully loaded touring bike, but it concerns me that the saddlebag weighs about 10 pounds. But much of that is clothes for the cold first day, I may consider mailing them back home afterwards.

Now a few ramblings on technology for the trip. I’m typing this blog post using the WordPress iPhone app and a Palm Bluetooth keyboard (as mentioned elsewhere on this blog – the driver only works on jailbroken phones). I originally had problems with saving “local drafts” on the phone when not in cellular range, but uninstalling and reinstalling the app fixed that. Still, the local drafts feature seems a little buggy, but hopefully it will be a moot point as I should be within cell range at the end of each day.

I’m also carrying a small backup battery for the phone. No need for the solar charger on this trip since I will be hotelling it every night, so I can use my phone charger.

Well, I’m pretty tired, and it probably shows in the writing above. So I’ll call it a night, and hopefully you enjoy my daily updates!

I just received BikeBrain as a gift last week, and I thought I’d give some first impressions.

BikeBrain is program that is run on a Palm-series handheld organizer that provides basic cyclocomputer functions and ride routing. It comes with a plastic case to mount the Palm organizer on the stem or handlebars, and a Vetta cyclocomputer-like pickup mounts to the front fork and plugs into the port on the bottom of the Palm. (The Palm organizer is not included.) Overall, the mounting system is definitely secure enough for road use, though I don’t think it could survive an endo off-road. In spite of that, I got a used Palm Pilot 5000 to use with BikeBrain instead of using my “good” Palm.

BikeBrain also comes with a desktop software program (PC or Mac compatible, but I’ll say PC from now on) which is used for editing routes and viewing ride data. Data transfer between the Palm and the PC is done via the same “HotSync” technology that is normally done for other Palm applications.

BikeBrain not only does “normal” cyclometer functions such as current/average/maximum speed and distance, it also can show various graphs from the ride data: such as speed vs. time, speed vs. distance, etc.

To record a route, you start riding, and at every change in direction, you press a button which records the turn direction and the mileage at that point. Then you download this data from the Palm to the PC, where you can then type in the street names and other information.

One disadvantage of this recording method for multi-day touring is if you’re recording a route while on tour, you can’t go back and put in the road names at the end of each day without a PC.

This tool would be great if you’re the one responsible to generate route sheets for an organized ride. It would also work good if you’re doing a century ride and you got the cue sheet the night before and typed the directions in on a laptop and then transferred them to the Palm handheld.

I haven’t gone on any really long rides with BikeBrain yet, but based on some battery life tests I’ve been doing with the Palm, I think I can get at least 2 full days of riding with rechargeable NiMH batteries (longer with alkalines). On a long tour, I would use a solar charger to keep a spare set of batteries charged up.

The software can be just a wee bit “buggy” – for example, if you create a new route on the desktop and then save it, it will automatically save it using the name of the route without prompting – if there are any “illegal” file name characters in the title (for example, “/”) it will choke.

Overall, I think there could be a few improvements to the software, but it’s still an excellent training tool.

The website is http://www.bikebrain.com/ (can’t believe the website is still up after all these years!)