Day 16 – A Ride From Hell to the Moapa TravelStop

5/23/2019 (Happy birthday, Baby Bro!)

Miles: 31.7

Average speed: 8.8 mph

Vertical gain: 968 ft.

These two photos sort of sum up the day’s ride. The first 27 miles were a dream – beautiful weather, flat, tailwinds, wide smooth shoulder, as North Las Vegas Boulevard went straight out into the desert.

Then the pavement just stopped, and the road turned to dirt and mud, followed by the above streambed which went underneath I15, followed by an endless washed-out dirt road with mud that stuck to my wheels and prevented them from turning. The final 4.3 miles of essentially flat road took 4-1/2 hours. That is not an exaggeration – I took notes. I’m guessing I walked half and rode half.

Maybe the biking touring gods were paying me back. After all, I had been lucky the night before at the Vegas casino. And the first 27 miles were a bikers dream. How lucky could one person be? I was soon to find out.

When not on an Adventure Cycling route, as is currently the case, I use Google Maps as my primary means of navigation, with a printed AAA map as my backup. This despite my personal experience, and also having been warned by several people, that Google Maps is 95% wonderful and 5% horrible. Today qualified as horrible.

The problem is that Google Maps sends you on “roads” that are either non-existent or dirt. Some dirt roads are fine, others not so much. Already on this trip I have experienced both, but none as bad as this.

On the digital map, this route showed up as State Route 40. It was not on the AAA map. The thing which made the road unrideable was the sticky mud. It would jam between my wheels and the fenders, and the wheels would just not turn. If it was the back wheel, the wheel would just drag on the ground. If it was the front wheel, I could not physically push the bike. Typically it was both wheels at the same time. When this happened, I had to stop and clean out the mud as best I could. At first, I used my pocket knife, then I found that an 8mm box wrench worked better.

A few times I had to remove the front wheel to clear the mud. I never did remove the back wheel for the purpose, but I was able to adjust the back fender so there was much more clearance and that helped a little bit.

In addition, on at least four separate occasions, I had to unload all the luggage from the bike, carry the bike and the luggage some distance (ranging from 30 yards to 1/4 mile) then put it all back together again. Considering it took three trips to carry the bike and the luggage each time, each instance probably took a half an hour.

Note the bike at the top of the embankment in the above photo.

It wasn’t just the puddles and ponds across the road. There was also a lot of mud. Not deep necessarily, although sometimes it was, but incredibly sticky. It was like if I touched the mud at all, the bike stopped moving.

So to avoid the mud and the puddles, I would bushwhack around the wet through the desert. The terrain was sandy gravel densely populated with calf-high little shrubs that scratched the hell out of my legs. It was really hard, at best, pushing the bike through the shrubs, but sometimes the ground was wet underneath as well, and then I would just pick up more mud.

Recall yesterday, I mentioned watching a thunderstorm move down a valley. The same thing was happening right now. The thunderstorm was maybe 10 or 20 miles off to my left. If it came my way, I think I was in really big trouble. But I couldn’t go any faster, because I was going as fast as I could go. As I was moving along, I was continually looking for safe places where I might want to pitch my tent. The problem was it was not at all obvious where it was safe from flash flooding. (Where was unsafe was pretty obvious.) In the end, the storms never came my way, so it was a moot point. But I was very concerned.

This went on and on. I could see, in the distance, the Chevron sign at the TravelStop. But it took hours to finally get to the end of the dirt road.

At this point it was 5:00. I had not eaten any lunch to speak of, and my destination was still 30 miles away. I knew I was not going to make it, so I called my WarmShowers host and told him that I would not be arriving tonight.

There was no lodging at this interchange. I thought it would be at least 20 miles to the next interchange, where there was a motel. I felt I was too cooked to ride 20 more miles at this point.

I talked to a couple of cops who were very nice and helpful. They thought it would be fine if I put up my tent either across the street or right here at the the TravelStop. However, the TravelStop security guy vetoed the idea of a tent, said it was not allowed. However, I could sleep in the driver’s lounge. This was a room about 20 feet square, with a big screen TV going in Spanish, a bunch of reclining chairs, and the lights on all night.

I locked the bike outside, and brought all my bags in and put them in the corner of the room next to one of the recliners. I paid $7 to take a shower, which was wonderful. Then I had dinner in the restaurant. There was also a casino, slot machines only, a liquor store, and a fireworks store, none of which I patronized.

Finally, around 11, I was going to spread out my air mattress and go to sleep on the floor of the driver’s lounge. Before I could do so, the security guy came in and told me I had to clear the room. I could leave my stuff and come back when he was done, and my stuff would be okay, but I had to leave the room now because he had to do police business with some woman. I think it was legit, because the room was open and people could see in and she looked pretty sketchy. I couldn’t tell if she was a perpetrator or victim.

So I wandered around the truck stop for an hour or so, and did some reading until I could finally go back to the lounge. I laid out my air mattress and my inflatable pillow and covered my eyes with an empty stuff sack. I slept surprisingly well. I got up once or twice to go to the bathroom, and got up for good around 7, which was much later than I expected, although not a problem.

It seemed a fitting end for a lousy day.