Cycling tourists and Warm Showers.

If you've never heard of Warm Showers you're likely not into cycle touring.  Basically it's a list server you can sign up for and if you're on the road touring and need a place to crash you can find someone in the area who will host you.  It might just be camping in their yard and access to a bathroom....or a nice comfy bed, a warm meal, and a shower.  Just depends on what the host offers.

Anyway, I've been a member for about a year and recently had my first visitor.  A gentleman from Spain (more particularly the Basque countryside).  He's on a tour from San Francisco out to Elko, up to Boise, over to Portland, and back to San Francisco....all in search of elements of Basque heritage here in the region.  If you didn't know Nevada and Idaho have more Basque than anywhere except the homeland....and UNR has the largest Basque library in the country.

Anyway Xabi was a great guy and I got two days of culture in exchange for taking him out in Reno and giving him a place to rest up for a couple days.  Perhaps some of you might be interested in a similar experience?  If so check out Warmshowers.org!

Riding with Xabi on the way out of town.

A must have picture with the classic Reno arch.

Reno to San Francisco Tour. First 1/2 of Day 1.

Ok, I'll do this by the day I guess.  Here's the overall route as recommended by Adventure cycling.

We were planning on making it in to Cook's Station.  A little gas station / restaurant / cabin rental / camping location.  By our calculations it would have been about 112 miles and ~8,000 feet of climbing.  Turns out this this was a little ambitious!

Everything started out as you might imagine.  I was up freaking early and got down to Chia's house about 6am.  He was less concerned about time....meaning he finished up packing, loading the bike, we had a couple cups of coffee and left his house a little before 8.  Just to make things interesting...we road a whopping 10 miles to south Reno and had a huge breakfast at the Squeeze In. 

We then hit the road in earnest and made it in to Genoa around noon.  He's a few pics of the morning.

Who frickin' knew there was a designated Bicycle 395!!

A gas station stop in Carson City....Gatorade refill.

Lunchtime in Genoa at the corner store.  Chia was smart enough to have brought enough cold pizza for both of us!

In a complete lack of coincidence we were also right across the street from the oldest bar in Nevada.

And lord knows you must make an effort to make yourself part of history!

If you haven't had a beer here...it's worth a trip just for the nostalgia.

 A little note on the riding to this point.  There aren't any real hills (ok...there's one) and the wind was pleasantly non-existent.  You also discover that there are really nice bike lanes and shoulders for most of the trip....and even some excellent bike paths worked into the mix through some cute subdivisions I never even know existed along the northwest side of Carson City.

All and all we had 50 miles in by noon and were feeling quite confident of our plans.....

Ok, that's all I have time for right now.....tune back in this afternoon.  I'll try to have the "fun" second half of the day written up.

A quick preview of my weekend ride to San Francisco.

Ok, I'm behind at work due to this trip, but here's the dump of our tour to San Francisco.  Basically 300 miles over 3 days of riding with 13,000 feet of climbing. 

I'll do a real write up at some point shortly with pictures.  There are of course some good stories to tell. 

Inspiration to do an epic ride.....

Every year I intend to do this type of thing.  And then what we'll refer to as "real life" seems to get in the way. You know...vacation time is limited, need to visit family, blah, blah, blah....



One way or the other I'm doing at least a short trip this year.  I finally have a buddy who wants to commit, so maybe this year will be there year it happens!  Either way....if this is your cup of tea, this video for the Blackburn Rangers should get you excited to make it happen.

Tour the town by bike!

Ok, I took today off.  We may not be going anywhere, but we're going to go everywhere.  A tour of Reno if you will.  Not sure exactly how this is going to turn out, but we're (wifey and I) thinking of hitting most of the bike shops in town, some good eateries, and a multitude of "new" bars and bottle shop type locations.  If we were in a town to visit this is kinda how we operate, so why not actually explore your own town for new life once in a while!

A few places we might hit (in no particular order):

Back in the Saddle.

I've been traveling over the last week and it appears that bicycle touring is alive and well.  On my trip between Reno and Ridgway, CO (south of Grand Junction), I saw no less than 20 touring cyclists.  While on one particular stretch of Hwy 50 with no town or services in sight I passed a guy on a mountain bike that must have been loaded with 100 lbs of gear.  It was probably in the low 90's and I had a full cooler (including ice cold beer)....how could I just zip past this poor bedraggled cyclist!  Brakes were applied and as I pulled onto the shoulder I had a brief thought that the guy might think I was some NV redneck looking to give him grief for taking up a piece of the roadway.  Then I remembered I drive a Honda Element with a mountain bike on the back.  Needless to say when he pulled up and I offered him a cold bottle of beer (newly bottled "Icky" if your wondering), he was more than happy to take me up on the offer.  I figured it would ease my karma for the 2000 mile road trip I was beginning.  It also made me wish I had a lot more vacation time for a summer tour of my own.  So let the planning begin, a tour is in the works for next year and I'll be sharing my options as I start to do some homework!