Day 1 summary

We finished day number one. Everyone is safe and sound. Just gonna start with that.

The total miles for the day were 490 which were comprised of about 180 mi from Oakland to the top to Monitor Pass at which time we began our dirt riding on Leviathan Mine road. Leviathan pretty much sucked as a ride. It is so dry out there it felt like downhilling on marbles.

The earlier post shows a few pics from the 1st half of the day. Ron’s header into the talc continued to plague him. His jacket and pants’ zippers don’t work well. At lunch he took a few minutes to continue the cleaning. Looks like it will take a real whole hearted effort later to get the dust out.

The second half of today – from Fallon to Battle Mtn was 35 miles of street and about 150 miles of dirt. We rode a lot of high speed desert floor type of stuff. (I swear I rode a straight line without touching my bars for at least 10 miles) But we also rode a couple of very nice mountain passes, through some very pretty areas with cool, higher elevation air and even some moisture in the ground.

My bike continued to exhibit (I didn’t write about it earlier) its impressive “death wobbles” at speeds over 70mph, but only sometimes.. I really should have balanced the giant Mitas rear tire. I’ve been adjusting suspension clickers but not finding any real improvements. For now, and maybe until I wear out this tire and replace it, I’ll be in a heightened state of awareness as higher speeds..

The afternoon of riding was fairly easy but things got a bit sticky as the sun set and the terrain treated us more opportunities to practice our deep-silt-rut riding. We rode well past sunset through some tricky terrain. We need a plan for the rest of the ride. Too much screwing around today. 16+ hours. More later 🙂