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Coast to Coast 2011--- Taz, Bob, Basil, and Cindy (and our driver Karlie) --- watch us as we ride across the USA. Keep checking back for stories to go with some of the pics. Most often the pics get uploaded from the mobile and we go back later and add to wording as time and wifi signals allow.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Still catching up...
A short mileage day on rough roads...so we got in early and everyone took a snooze after a big lunch. Dang! I won't be able to keep up with them tomorrow!
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Back on the road
Back on the road means more flats...
We waited until day light to even get out of the tents this morning since it is only a 40 mi day. We hit a section of incredibly rough pavement for about 20 ish of the 40 miles. Once we got to town and felt smoother pavement again it was such a relief...much like the pools felt in back in AZ.
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011
"Dream as if you'll live for ever, live as if you'll die today" James Dean
I would like to think I live this way. I don't quite think I do, but as close as I can allow myself to. I know one thing for sure. I am thankful for my life and how I get to do all the things I do and go the places I get to go to. I'm not a world traveler by any means, but I get around the USA pretty well :).
I believe we write our own scripts to some degree and I've learned to take advantage of this over the past 10 or so years. My hope to anyone out there reading this is that you can do this too. Never think that you are "stuck". No matter how big you think your hole is or how deep you think it is...you can get out. It takes a little giving up of this or that and freedom will follow. "This" may not be riding a bicycle across the country. It maybe a drive across the country visiting every state, or playing golf in every state. Or it could be living WHERE you want to live. Take a chance, go for it, you will never regret it. The only thing you will ever regret is not trying it...and you will have to deal with that the rest of your life.
Oh Boy, give me a day off and look what ya get! TAZ
Play Time! -- Day 20
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Amistad Res. Near Del Rio TX
The water was cool and clear and nice to be in. Bob found a kayak to rent near by. We drug all the other water toys our and went to town. A fun afternoon.
Basil's Account of Century Day
To all my riding buddies,
Yesterday was the hardest, longest and most difficult ride of my riding career! We left our campsite in Saunderson TX at 8:00 am sharp and 108 miles & 11:30 hours later we arrived at our destination 12 miles west of Del Rio, TX on the Armistead Reservoir, just as the sun was setting. This large body of water is on the border of Mexico and the good ole USA and it is a recreational spot where we plan to take our first day off after 19 days of riding.(NOTE: I personally took day 5 off due to bonking the day before).
The map elevation showed the ride to be a general 2000 foot of elevation loss, but as it turned out we probably climbed at least 2000 feet in the effort. That does not sound like that much climbing, but we were also battling a very stiff head wind the entire 108 miles. The entire ride was in desert high country, with hardly a tree over 3 or 4 foot tall. Thank God it wasn’t extraordinarily hot, only about 85 or 90, and there were several stretches of 40 miles without so much as a drop of water to drink. I managed to stay with the others about 75% of the time. Quite frankly there were a few moments when I wondered if I would make it! We arrived in a little place called Comstock at about 5:30 with 23 or 24 miles to go and with the sun slowly setting. I had been behind a few hundred yards at that point and as I rode up, Taz handed me an extra tail light and without actually, saying it, the implication was,” we need to make it over the Anistad Reservoir Bridge before dark, so you need to buck up. Well, there was no way in hell that I wasn’t going to finish that last 20 something miles, and I certainly didn’t want to do it alone in the dark . So to my handlebar bag I go, and gets me a 5 Hour Energy, and off I went, while the others were hydrating. Needless to say I made it but not without a lot of support from the team and every ounce of energy I had in me. I think we were all pretty well beat. It was so beautiful to pull into the RV Campground to see that Karlie( our sag driver) had set up all the tents, which is not in her job description, and had all the comfy lawn chairs up and awaiting our exhausted bodies. Out came the protein smoothies, and shortly thereafter the “Evil Liquid”, commercially known as Mike’s Hard Lemonade (mine was an O’Doul’s).
We have earned this day off, and plan to do some swimming and chilling.
Thanks,
Basil
Thoughts from Cindy
First allow me to thank Taz for the amazingly consistent and awesome updates of this blog, if it had been up to me there would have been one photo from some where back in AZ when we had a short day. My days are little more than riding, eating and sleeping and for the most part I am LOVING IT! There have only been a couple days that were (in Lance's words) a suffer fest, not bad for nearly three weeks of riding.
CA was survival: traffic, congestion, horrendous pavement, some killer climbs on freeways. AZ was HOT, 105 and fresh black asphalt but the RV parks all had pools. NM felt like home with some beautiful mountain passes, great long descents. And now TX... we will be riding through TX for quite a while so hard to say yet.
We're taking our first day off today, next to a big lake that is half in the US and half in Mexico. Plan to do some stand up paddle boarding and a whole lot of nothing!
Thanks for checking in on us... we're doing it!
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Pecos River
Looking South above and looking north below. This is the first REAL water we have seen in a long time.
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Peanut Butter Treat!
Knobby loves when a peanut butter jar gets empty!
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Century Details
Ugh! How frustrating! Half the pics from today and none of the videos from the past couple of days will load up for me! My phone has a 1x for service instead of the usual 3g. Reckon I'm going to have to get a mini SD card reader and upload the old fashion way!
So today was our longest day yet in more ways than one. 108 miles. Sanderson TX to the Anistad Res. just west of Del Rio TX. This was one of the hardest Centuries I've ever done. The map profile said we dropped about 200ft in elevation, but you could have fooled me! This was a hilly ride and we climbed a lot! Wait that is not all! We spent well over half of this ride fighting a severe head wind. The kind where you put out the effort of 20 mph and look down and you are doing 9-12 mph! Ouch! That killed our time! This was also the longest century I've ever done time wise. Okay, enough with the whining.
On the good side of things... the temp was about perfect! It was Cindy's first ever century! Great job Cindy! Bob, and Basil did great too. Everyone went at their own pace to some degree...at mile 70ish I realized That we might not make it by dark. I started pushing harder and everyone fell right in doing their beat to go harder as well. We rolled into camp just after the sun fell over the horizon...as you will see in the video IF it ever loads!
Also, I'd like to mention that Karlie was a big part of this effort today. She met us for lunch at the 60 mile mark...and had to wait a LONG time as we were delayed by the wind. Then she ran into town (past camp) to shop for supplies. THEN...when we got to camp at sundown she had all the tents set up with everyone's bags in them! All we had to do was eat and fall into bed! Thanks Karlie! You are a rock star!
Jerry from SC and Tammy from NO Cal
Traveling separately but keeping an eye on each other though the wild wild west. They were a couple of west bounders we ran into today.
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Sunday, October 2, 2011
Thoughts from Basil.
Well after 18 days we are getting into pretty much of a routine. It goes like this. We wake up about an hour or so before daybreak and prepare to leave camp when the sun is up enough for us to get safely on the road. That entails breaking down the tents and loading gear into the van, eating breakfast, packing "lunch" for the ride. For me lunch is pretzels, trail mix, red liquorise,& pickle juice. I usually have my three water bottles filled from the night before. Without fail we each pump our tires to 110 every morning.
And then we ride anywhere from 50ish to 90ish miles. The distance is determinded by the terrain, available services, & available camp sites.Our average today is about 68 miles. There have been some awesome climbs and heavy winds, especially here in Texas. Several times now, our sag has met us at the halfway mark of a days ride because of the durth of any services whatsoever, but typically Karlie takes the van to the days destination, where she looks for a campsite and shops for provisions. We have not been hungry, but we are eating prodigious amounts of food for dinner,while on the road we only nibble.
When we finally get into camp we immediately drink or eat a protein supplement, and chill for a bit, before getting to the evenings business of setting up tents, doing laundry(every other day or so) and eating dinner. Cindy has done 99% of the cooking and Bob and I usually clean up. Taz is our scribe and she is responsible for the great blog site you are reading. We all pitch in some way or another every day. If there is time we each get on our computers to catch up with friends and news from back home and then it is time to sleep, because tomorrow gets here sooner than later and it is time to hit the road again.
And then we ride anywhere from 50ish to 90ish miles. The distance is determinded by the terrain, available services, & available camp sites.Our average today is about 68 miles. There have been some awesome climbs and heavy winds, especially here in Texas. Several times now, our sag has met us at the halfway mark of a days ride because of the durth of any services whatsoever, but typically Karlie takes the van to the days destination, where she looks for a campsite and shops for provisions. We have not been hungry, but we are eating prodigious amounts of food for dinner,while on the road we only nibble.
When we finally get into camp we immediately drink or eat a protein supplement, and chill for a bit, before getting to the evenings business of setting up tents, doing laundry(every other day or so) and eating dinner. Cindy has done 99% of the cooking and Bob and I usually clean up. Taz is our scribe and she is responsible for the great blog site you are reading. We all pitch in some way or another every day. If there is time we each get on our computers to catch up with friends and news from back home and then it is time to sleep, because tomorrow gets here sooner than later and it is time to hit the road again.
Century to Day Off Coming Up!
Tomorrow we are going to try our first Century. The enticement is a day off at a large reservoir near Del Rio on the Mexican/American border. I forget the name of it, I'm sure you will see plenty of it once we get there.
We have been pushing pretty steady trying to keep/get the averages up so we can make it to the eastern beach of FL around Halloween. It was tough in the beginning with the AZ heat and mtns and heat exhaustion and such. The weather is much better here in TX with cool nights and mornings and bearable afternoons. We seem to be catching up now, but everyone is very ready for a day off. Our average daily mileage needs to be around 68 for us to arrive in FL on schedule. this is with no days off. As of the end of our day off, day after tomorrow we will actually be 2 mi ahead of our average again even with the day off!
Are you thoroughly confused yet?
Ha! These are the things going through my head as we are cruising along at anywhere from 13 to 21 mph depending on who is pulling, the terrain, and wind and such. This along with constant bike, body and team checks as we roll along. Of course there are other things going though my head as well. Like the next adventure!
Classic
We saw this group of classic motorcycles stopped for gas. This one was a 1942 BSA, it was the best looking of the bunch.
Hog Wild!
We saw some Wild Boars on the road again today. These were three medium sized ones. Taz got video as well but has to wait til we have a better signal to load the videos. Bob got this shot with his camera.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Movie Night!
WE are slowly watching The recent stage race in Colorado. Some one recorded it for us before we left, one of Cindy's friends, Thanks you!
A Day on the Road in TX.
We were down to patching tubes out on the road today, taking a break where ever we can find a place that is not prickly to lay down, and Bob and I trying to be cowboys...
Nice day!
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These were the stats about the time we rolled into tonight's camp in Marathon TX.
Remote Camp - cold night!
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We woke up to a chilly 38 degrees on this remote mountain top camp this morning! It was 35 miles one way and 60 + in the other direction to the nearest anything.
No sleep for him tonight! Day 16
Sorry but vid quality...kind of on a fly thing...but u get the point of it...plus we are climbing at the time.
:)
:)
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The Davis Mountains.
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All the mtn pics from the past few days are of the Davis Mtns.
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