March 25, 2019
Day 1: Pahrump to Beatty
Grocery Shopping Followed by a 75 Mile Ride in the Desert
Marg and I spent three days driving to the start town of Pahrump, Nevada. This is where our group would be introduced, have a team meeting, and spend the night before our first day's ride. Pahrump is a town of 36,000 sprawled all the hell over the surrounding desert. We arrived a day early and had a chance to explore it a bit. With so much flat space and with the idea of coherent zoning looking to be a foreign concept to the town council, Pahrump seems to have oozed in any direction it felt the urge over the years. In true renegade Nevada style, there are at least a couple casinos in Pahrump, and two brothels (which are emphatically advertised as "legal brothels," which is a relief to the local churches and Lion's Club, I'm sure). Pahrump is also the town in which Art Bell, the creator and host of the late night radio show "Coast to Coast AM." The show was a massive cult hit and specialized in paranormal themes, conspiracy theory, and other fringe topics. Bell broadcast from his home in Pahrump for many years. Like, literally from his home, where he had a broadcast tower built. A couple close acquaintances of mine were BIG fans of the show. Bottom line, the Nevada desert seems to attract a great many people looking for high levels of privacy and low levels of government supervision.
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But back to the ride ... There were 13 riders on this trip, and two leaders. Marg and I had hoped that the group would be friendly and harmonious, but we could not have hand-picked such a wonderful group of people. Our two ACA ride leaders, Sue and Dan, led a team meeting the night before the first day's ride and we all had a chance to introduce ourselves. Although we were all quite diverse in where we lived, our riding background, and our working lives, everyone brought along open hearts and open minds, along with a commitment to reach out to everyone else in the group. It was fabulous, and by trip's end we had truly gelled into a biking family. In way of a short roster, there was Marg and I from Wisconsin, Volney and Altana from New Mexico, Jim and Sarah from New Hampshire, Pierre and Marie from Oregon, biking buddies John and Dan from California, Colleen from New York but having lived in Greece for most of the last many years, Andy also from New York, and Steve from Iowa. Our ride leaders were Sue from Montana, and Dan from Arizona. Sue is ex-Air Force and knows how to manage people, and communicate clearly and unambiguously! She was a perfect leader and dispensed tough love as needed. She's a multi-year ACA leader and we were her 4th(?) tour of the current season. Loved her! Dan was a mellow and laid back counterpoint to Sue, a Zen philosopher, and soon to be leading an ACA trans-continental tour starting in May. Between them they were a perfect leadership team for us all. We were in capable hands.
The topic causing the most stress at the opening meeting for many of us was the duty to prepare meals during the ride. The drill on an ACA van-supported tour is that each person is part of a two (or sometimes three) person team who prepare dinner once during the trip. That also includes providing breakfast and setting out lunch items the following morning, but dinner was everyone's boogyman (or at least mine). I am no artist in the kitchen, and prior to the trip I had been comforted by the fact I would simply partner up with Margaret and follow her lead ... no decisions or culinary knowledge needed on my part there. Imagine my consternation when an email was sent shortly before the ride that we'd be paired with someone in the group whom we didn't know! Alarm bells went off and I started picking Margaret's brain for meal idea. At the group meeting, Sue and Dan had made adjustments to the emailed cooking teams, and I had the amazing good fortune to land with Marie and Andy. They both had a FIRM and specific vision of what they wanted to do with a meal (frankly, borderline cuisine) so I breathed a sigh of relief and volunteered to be the team member with a low knowledge/high enthusiasm skill set and do their bidding.
The first day's ride was set to be 75 miles to the little town of Beatty, Nevada. But before we could hit the road there was a major domestic duty to be performed ... grocery shopping! Because there is essentially NO access to food-making supplies in Death Valley we needed to do ALL our food shopping before striking off. Leaders Sue and Dan drove the van and trailer to a Super Wal-Mart a mile from our Pahrump motel, and we 13 riders biked down to join them. Each cooking team was given $240 in cash, which we were to use to purchase all the needed supplies for making dinner, breakfast and lunch items for the entire group on our "duty day." We were told that if we went over that amount it was up to us to pay for the overage and if we were under we should bring back the change to return to the "kitty." Marie, Andy and I agreed that we'd make up the difference if we went over the allotted budget.
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It gave me the greatest of pleasure to see Marie and Andy in action. Andy had constructed a detailed shopping list for the meal the night before, Marie added her on-the-fly suggestions and modifications, and I happily stayed out of the way so as not to derail the magic they were making. I declared myself the world's best cart pusher in the grocery shopping phase. The most supernatural outcome? Remember we had $240 to spend in our shopping budget? Our total? $239.83! Hell Yes. High fives were exchanged all around, and we proudly returned our 17 cents of change to Dan and rolled our cart out to the van, where we stowed away the vittles. Gradually all the other teams did the same and we were able to head down the road.
Sue had provided us all with paper maps/cue sheets for the day and, prior to the ride, RideWithGPS files had been made available for those of us with Garmin devices and such. Honestly, for the bulk of the routes during the week, it would have taken some world class confusion to get lost in DV, as there was usually only one option each day ... AKA, "The Road" that goes the direction you want. But the GPS files were handy in getting out of Pahrump.
Once out of town, the vast portion of the day was riding on two state highways that had fairly generous shoulders. There was not a huge amount of traffic, but Nevadans are accustomed to highballing along at 80+ MPH and for a while it was a little disconcerting when 18 wheelers would roar by. But out here there are few if any alternatives so the highway was the only option. One long portion of the route had a "stealth" rumble strip laid in. It was a bit obscured by overlaid chip-seal, and you had to look rather hard to see it there. The rumbler was far too easy to forget about it and mindlessly drift into its evil clutches. It only took two episodes of teeth rattling, vision blurring wake up calls to keep me from hitting those bastards. C'Mon Nevada DOT ... make those rumblers a bit more biker friendly!
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The day's suggested lunch stop was about 45 miles into the ride at an isolated crossroad named "Lathrop Wells." There is a state highway rest area, two gas stations, the Area 51 Curio and tourist swag store, and (I kid you not) another "legal" brothel. That's it. In the 75 miles we rode today, this was the one and only oasis. One comment about visual perspective out here: As we were approaching Lathrop Wells, my Garmin said it was three miles away. "Huh," I muttered. "There's no way that place is three miles from here ... it can't be more than a mile, so the stop must be over the horizon somewhere. Weird," But no .... that was the stop and it was indeed three miles away. The wide, vast, open spaces make your perspective go out of whack. Places that seem only a mile distant are actually 3-4 times that far! It took me days to adjust to that. We stopped and downed the lunch we had made at the start of the day, before grocery shopping (sandwiches, chips, cookies, carrot sticks - those who know me will not miss the irony of me willingly eating raw carrot sticks). We were amazed to see that our cell phone was getting full four bar LTE service out here in, truly, the dead-center middle of nowhere. We don't get decent cell service in our house and we shook our heads about this. We did not hit the tourist shop, but later in the day seeing some of the fun "alien" themed socks and T-Shirts some of our group had bought themselves we rued not having done so. Oh well, next time.
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About 30 miles later we paraded into Beatty, pop. 1010, town motto, "Gateway to Death Valley." Tonight we were still living the lush life, staying in the Atomic Motel. It is a hardscrabble little town, but with more than a touch of effort to keep it as vibrant as possible, with a lovely little public library, a local historic museum, and a few other businesses or public spaces that have seen plenty of TLC.
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Gradually everyone rolled into town at their preferred pace, we got our room assignments (rooms with actual keys to open locks, not swipe cards! Quaint!), and swapped stories of the day's ride. It was a truly satisfying start to the trip. Margaret and her cooking partner John whipped up dinner (Maid-Rite style hamburger sandwiches ... shout out to the Quad Cities!!) for the group and everyone chowed down without complaint. We had our post-dinner map meeting, and we all shuffled off to bed.
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Today's ride: 75 miles (121 km)
Total: 75 miles (121 km)
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3 years ago