view from the van

Albatross crew member Megan brought her unique sensibility to her photo race report here. Spoiler alert, report highlights include desert vastity, and the relationship between big quiet and big sky.

Also, an article about the women's field from Vaune Davis. She totally butchers my name, but all is forgiven as she puts a link to the page in the Bridgestone catalog that features my bike. Nice touch.

The Albatross Flies

There on the headtube of the Fuchsia Wonder is my little mascot. It is an albatross named Garmin, as it is responsible for navigation. Also, in addition to the standard bird-type wings, this little dude has a cape. Because sometimes, you need a cape.

At the end of a training ride that did not go as hoped (roadside nap was substituted for ambitious all night riding plans) I saw the little guy on the side of the road. I couldn't fit it anywhere else, so I stuck it under the straps I had added to the headtube, thinking I might stick a snack there sometime. There Garmin remains.

Thank you to my friend Karen for some info on my nomen omen.

I once again find myself with the alter ego of a bird not known for grace, but capable of covering the distance. It all started with the Davis Bike Club's lovely 600k Brevet to Antelope Lake this spring. About 50 cyclists started at 8pm. And then we rode bicycles for 375 miles. And the most wonderful volunteers in the universe had a delicious spread of tasty treats for us every 40 miles. Truly.

In the post-ride endorphin-fueled euphoria I decided it was time to revisit the 508. To the people who have supported my training and are poised ready to support my ride, you are the hard core heroes of the story. None of us, solo racers included, do this alone.

On October 5th, we take flight. Wish us tailwinds.

The fuchsia wonder delivers me once again

1988 Bridgestone 550 a.k.a. The Fuchsia Wonder

My most recent ride:

2009 Terrible Two

Not sure why I had such a great ride, but the endorphin high was awesome. The melted tire incident -- in which after 2 flats I used a wrapper to boot the tire and then was the recipient of a friend working at a rest stop literally giving me the tire off of his back (wheel) -- added to my time, but did not dim my morale. I think that riding a bicycle in Sonoma County is one of the most outrageously excellent things in life. May you all experience the joys that I did yesterday.

Only one week before the ride I wasn't at all sure I would do it, and doubtful that I would finish within their cut-off times. I completely shocked myself by leaving the lunch stop one hour before the cut off and even after my afternoon tire mishaps finishing the ride in the daylight.

Earlier I posted some info here on the women riders of the TT which were guestimates made by me. Below is the corrected data from the cycling club (this is for solo riders, e.g. excludes tandems):

Out of 211 total entrants, 14 were female
Out of 174 total finishers, 10 were female

Our numbers aren't real big but our calves are....

Many kudos to the very excellent Santa Rosa Cycling Club and all of its fabulous volunteers.

A time to plant

At the local nursery, buying fruit trees. One apricot and one almond.

Desert dispatch

The latest view from the saddle included the mountains and Joshua trees of the Mojave Desert, along with my very patient companion Brian. We flew into Las Vegas on Dec 31 and spent a week tooling around the desert, flying back out of Vegas on Jan 8, 2009.

The views were excellent, the weather dry but chilly, and the timing fortuitous. A late December snow dumped over a foot of snow and the area was pretty well holed up until they managed to scrounge up some plows. By the time we showed up, the last patches of snow remained in shady crevices, but life would have been much more difficult if we'd decided to come 2 weeks earlier as originally planned.


There’s Brian assembling his bike in the McCarran airport. Some curious security guards asked us what we were doing. They said they had never heard of doing such a thing, and where is the Mojave Desert? I count myself as very lucky to not be a person who has never heard of the ecosystem in which I live.

This is the first trip where I've actually done the majority of the picture taking while pedaling. I can't say it's done much for the quality of my photos. That's my sleeping bag on the back of my bike you're seeing in the bottom of the frame. And the open road, stretching until you can't see it anymore, cresting over the next ridge, which opens into the next basin, which goes to the next ridge....

The photogenic Mojave Yucca, with the last of the day's sun hitting the mountains in the background. And uncountable stoic creosote bushes in between. This was a little south of Baker, CA.

We saw a whole lot of creosote bush on our trip. They can be hundreds of years old (such patience, waiting for the next rain) and are very beautiful when you take the time to look closely)

Why did the tarantula cross the road? Actually, I'm not sure it did, after taking the photo, we engaged in a little wildlife relocation and removed it to a safer spot. Isn't it pretty?

Brian's a lot tougher than me. I don't know that I ever stripped down to a tee shirt. Day time temps were typically in the 30's and 40's (F).

A lovely stretch of road through a Joshua tree forest in the East Mojave National Monument. I think we saw 1 car all morning.

This is how I was usually dressed. As you might gather, I was wearing my rain gear not because it was raining, but because I was wearing every stitch of clothes I had with me. I assure you I quickly put my mittens back on after putting the camera away.

Even my erstwhile companion was frequently seen wearing his rain gear, for the same reason.

A very excellent campspot.


My bike is such a ham, always getting in the photo.


This road was so much fun. This was just before Jean, NV.


You are lucky to have the sensibilities of two very different people informing the photography on this trip. For example, when I take a picture, it is never of a vehicle unusual for the number of axles. Which is to say this photograph contributed by Brian.

Journey to the HERENOW

I've posted an entry in Tour d'Afrique's essay contest "tales from the saddle" here. The winner of the contest is determined by visitors to the site voting. My essay is reprinted below with the typos removed:

There is a point in a long bike tour when you finally let go. For me it’s starts at about three weeks and the transformation is complete at about six weeks. Transformation from getting in a load of laundry between grocery shopping and cooking dinner, need to remember next week’s committee meeting, my boss pissed me off today, I wonder how my stocks are doing, I need to make a dentist appointment. To... it is raining. The road is bumpy. Or sandy, or smooth. Transformation from planning, from living in the just past and not yet present, to being HERENOW.

I will give you an example. About ten years ago I did a solo bike trip across Australia. Truthfully, the first 2 weeks sucked. If I hadn’t just quit my job, put my rag-tag belongings in storage and flown across the globe, I certainly would have just decided to go home. This wasn’t so fun after all. I was lonely. I missed the rhythmic familiar.

I planned the trip to be progressive. I started in the populated southeast, then entered the bush of the northeast, and eventually crossed the remote western deserts. So as time went on, the challenges before me got greater, even as the challenges in my head lessened. Or maybe that in fact is the mechanism. No room for idle chatter in the brain, I need to figure out how the hell to ride this road with patches of deep sand and my pedal is so full of the fine ochre silt my feet stay clipped in every time I fall over so that I keep landing on that ever expanding bruise on my left thigh. So it wasn’t always easy. But I was always there. Always present.

One time, in the West MacDonnell range (west of Alice Springs) I found a single track mountain bike trail. Oooo, that looks like fun, I think I’ll take that. I was carrying several day’s worth of water and bouncing along the rocky path with all that weight eventually sheared one of the bolts attaching my luggage rack. It wasn’t at all apparent to me how I would get that bit of bolt out of the braze-on of my frame, but I remember feeling completely calm. It was late afternoon and I was near a lovely spot to camp, and I sat down to enjoy my evening show of the desert sunset. And after that the full moon rising. It was so bright that night, I wrote in my journal without my flashlight.

The next day I calmly would think of an idea, try it, modify it, try something else, and eventually got the bit of bolt out of the frame. I rode a bit more gingerly from there on, and arranged my loads a bit better. But I remember only feelings of serenity when I think of the sheared bolt incident. I think of the moon that night and the lovely camp spot. That is how things are after you pass through that threshold. The point of letting go.

Here are a few photos from that trip, taken with a cheap point and shoot 35 mm:

A road in northeast Australia, somewhere between Townsville and Mt. Isa, Queensland

That's a termite mound on the left

I only saw a couple of cars a day so I felt pretty safe putting the camera in the middle of the road. That's how far I got before the timer went off.

This is the single track that did in my rack bolt

Cycling Utah and Nevada

I recently rode a bike for 2 weeks in Utah and Nevada, and being the modern gal that I am I thought I'd write a blog about it. Isn't that what one does when one likes to ramble on about something to an imagined audience?

I had a wedding to go to in Zion National Park. I was considering driving out there, but I looked at my gas log for 2008, and I had only bought 19 gallons so far for the year. I really would have blew it driving all the way to Utah. So my trusty Bridgestone and I took Amtrak to Salt Lake City, and proceeded south. I took highway 89 most of the way through Utah.

I can't really explain why I came with no rain gear and no warm clothes, but it only took one day of rain and temperatures in the 40's to buy some new ones.

I walked into a shop called Burns Saddlery in Salina Utah drenched and froze. It's like going to the grocery store when you are really hungry. The highlight of my purchases is the cowboy boot galoshes I am modeling in the photo. I cut a hole in the bottom for my clipless pedals, and they did a better job than any neoprene booties in keeping my feet warm. Not to mention how many times it made me smile to look down at my feet pedaling and see rubber cowboy boots. And the quilted cowgirl pants and pendelton sweater did well by me the next day when it snowed and hailed all day long.
Here's a rail trail that parallels hwy 89 and the Sevier River near Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Here's what I look like when it is 45 degrees. Thanks to my buddy Steve for the Gore-tex bandito. Sure, I looked like I was about to hold up a liquor store, but my face was toasty warm. Steve came down from Idaho on his motorcycle to give it to me. Not to mention be my camp cook for two nights. Thanks Steve!

Congratulations Cheyenne and Mark, I wish you all the best in Florida. Cheyenne and I have been friends for 17 years. Damn. Good luck girl, I miss you already.

I am not sure who is sporting that yellow hat, but it sure is sunny.

As soon as I left Zion the side wall on my rear tire blew out and my pump gasped its last breath. All on the Sunday of Memorial day weekend in Utah. Miraculously I found a well stocked and open bike shop in Hurricane (that's pronounced hurrikin) and continued on my way.

More hail awaited me..

This is a road in Nevada called the extraterrestrial highway. It is right next to a really big air force base. Skeptics might say that observers are mistaking the jet planes for UFOs. But I know what's really going on. Al-Queda's in it with the aliens. They're building landing strips for Islamofascist Martians... (Apologies to The Dead Milkmen). Anyhow, look carefully in the center of the photo and you see a road that goes on and on. There's a whole lot of that in Nevada.

There are an awful lot of abandoned settlements in the Nevada desert. If you are thinking of making a go of ranching in the high desert, I suggest you reconsider. I slept in the abandoned building on the left on a windy night. Conveniently there were hot springs near by.

My companion, the '93 Bridgestone XO-2

Check out this little monkey flower that I found growing along side the road at 8,000' on the pass crossing into California. Ya-hoo for the Sierras. It was the first I'd seen a tree taller than me in 2 weeks (not pictured above).

Aw shucks, what a swell guy. Look who came to pick me up when I only made it to Mono lake and it was time to get back to work. Okay, so the 105 miles a day wasn't the most realistic scheme I've ever dreamed up. Thanks Brian.