Today was our first century of the trip. Or at least it was going to be. Sadly for me, Cacie and Valerie, the girls I was riding with, we never made it past 80 miles.
The morning was good. The ride out of Fallon was long and flat with a tailwind for most of the ride, however when I stopped to use the batroom at a bar in a podunk town 40 miles out of Fallon a lady knocked over my bike and the derailer got moved. Unable to shift out of my middle ring, I tried to power my way through the rest of the day when I got a flat. Then another. Then finally, 30 miles out of Austin my tire gave up completely and yet another flat blew through the rubber leaving a hole.
Stuck 30 miles from our destination, with no signal to contact the van drivers or other riders, we did the only thing we could think of and started walking our bikes towards a road sign we could use as shade (something thats not overly abundant in the desert). After over an hour in the sun, the vans finally found us and picked me up, unable to finish the day on the trashed tire, and with no spare tubes left to put in the tire anyways.
We pulled up for the night at a Baptist Church/RV park in the town of Austin, NV which could not have a population over 300, and set up for our first night of camping. The park was an interesting place to say the least, and although they graciously let us stay for free the ten commandments posted on every wall and bathrooms labeled "Adam" and "Eve" were a bit much. Unfortunately the town rolled up its sidewalks at 8:30 so we weren't able to explore much.
We took some vidoes of our adventure hiking in the desert that I'll try to upload when I reach a place with better 3G service on my phone.
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