Get Set

Having made the decision that we're going to finish our ride, we are now in the throes of packing, working out our route details, and planning for that last long stretch across the Mojave. This has always been what we considered the "queen stage" of our planned route (i.e., the longest and most difficult). It's over 100 miles from Needles to Ludlow, and had we the luxury of 15 daylight hours, we might actually attempt to do it in one run. That was part of our initial idea when we were expecting to finish it over two years ago. We don't have that much daylight now. So we've got to plan to stop and stay somewhere in the middle.

Note the paucity of services listed there under the orange banner - basically, from the convenience store in Fenner to Amboy, we are on our own. 

And, we are expecting it to be pretty cold! Why are we going now? We're asking ourselves that question as we get ready for what could be bitter cold. The short answer is, we're ready. And it's overdue, well overdue. We picked this week based on weather forecasts that appeared to show clear weather. My plan several months ago was to be teaching again in the spring term, which meant we wouldn't be able to go until May if we didn't go now. We know what happened last year - it got too hot too fast and we couldn't go. We didn't want to go Christmas week, obviously! And we'd agreed to host our bridge club for New Year's so that was out. That left this week. And once you get your heart set on something, well, even at the age of 60, you don't want to postpone things forever and keep putting them off once you've gotten yourself worked up about something.

I am pulling together everything for our trip today. Because of the stretch on Old 66 across the Mojave, we are anticipating spending the night in Amboy. There's a convenience store there, an iconic one at the old cafe and motel called Roy's. The owner of that is the fella who owns El Pollo Loco. He can't operate the restaurant, but he does allow cyclists to camp there, and there's a bathroom, and you can buy bottled water in the convenience store provided you arrive before they close at 8 pm. So, for a trip of only one week, where we anticipate staying in hotels the rest of the time, we're going to have to take camping gear. Roger's concerned about being cold and I get it. This is likely to be one of the tougher nights of our trip! But I think we're going to survive it. With the two of us in sleeping bags in that little tiny tent, we should be fine.

This is our destination, where we are told we can put up our tent.  The inn and cafe are not operational, but there is a small store where we can buy water and snacks.

My primary concerns at this point are for our safety and warmth. (I guess technically warmth comes under the heading of safety anyway.) I've charged up all of our lights and we'll have our supplemental battery so that we can recharge them if we need to. I'll have my reflective vest on, and I'll be blinking from behind with my helmet light. All of this although technically the road is closed! We expect to have to go around some bridge repairs - another cyclist has told us we can get through - on what could be a very lonely stretch of road. 

Not a lot of gear, but a lot to take just for one night camping.

So we have this tiny pile of camping gear: the tent, sleeping pads, the sleeping bags and puff up pillows, and two small towels and some wash up soap. There is a restroom at Roy's. There's no potable water but the owner lets people stay as long as they are self-contained. We'll want to freshen up a bit, and so we're carrying this stuff. We've decided we will not carry cooking gear for the one night. Instead, we will purchase multiple sandwiches from the convenience store in Fenner before we begin the run to Roy's. We should be able to hold them fine while we travel, giving us lunch and dinner en route. In the morning we'll eat our protein bars and pray for coffee at Roy's before we set out for Ludlow! I don't think I've ever heard of anybody who died from a lack of their coffee in the morning, right!?

Here's a kind of fun fact. Our packs were damaged in the accident. You can see how they were torn and the little clasp there in the foreground was cracked when they were wrenched off the bike. Roger was looking into purchasing new packs, which ultimately we are going to need to do since I doubt that these are going to remain waterproof for long with all of the tears on them, but he also investigated just making them do for this week and that is how we learned that we could replace that little clasp for $0.19! So, with a couple dollars of shipping included, we were able to put these babies back on the road and that's what we're planning to do.


We put everything into the packs for our final shake-down cruise today.  We both felt pretty comfortable, and have concluded the Silver Queen v2.0 is ready to ride!

The Silver Queen, v2.0 is ready to roll.