Today, I completed my first-ever overnight tour: a two-day, 150-mile, one-way journey from Stockton to Fresno, Calif. -- the culmination of a proposed tour I first mentioned here back in April.

I originally was thinking about starting in Sacramento, but a check of the Amtrak schedules showed that direct train service goes only as far as Stockton -- after that, it's on a bus, which doesn't accept bicycles. Amtrak's San Joaquin trains, however, accept bicycles with no reservations and no surcharge, as long as rack space is available on board. The biggest hassle I found was that other passengers like to stick their baggage in the bike area, and you have to move it out of the way to get access to the bike rack.

Saturday morning, I started at 5:30 a.m. by cycling the 7 miles to the Amtrak station and boarding a train bound for Stockton. From there, it was another 71 hot and not-very-windy miles to Merced, where I slept and vegged out until 4 a.m. today in a motel room I had reserved in advance. After that, I was on the road in Merced before sunrise today, taking advantage of the cool temperatures and brisk winds to guide me another 72 miles back home.

The good news is that, as much as a 150-mile ride can be uneventful, this was a fairly uneventful ride. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to do it all in one day, but a partcularly difficult stretch around mile 55 cured me of such silly notions. I saw a grand total of three other recreational cyclists all day Saturday, and today I didn't see any until I was back inside the Fresno city limits. Never, however, have I seen so many dead, smashed snakes in the road!

Most of the road was in either bike lanes or good-quality shoulders -- or on very lightly traveled rural roads where traffic wasn't an issue at all. And on the roads that didn't have such accommodations, the drivers were generally courteous. Pavement was generally good to excellent throughout, with little debris except on the 4-lane highway from Atwater to Merced. Getting away from the Amtrak station in Stockton was a little dicey, and not just because it's not in the best part of town. Traffic was moderate on the east side of Modesto, and getting into Merced was a hassle because there was no shoulder on a 1-mile stretch of six-lane highway. (I briefly retreated to the sidewalk.) I had previously mapped out the route by car and made appropriate cue sheets -- this was extremely reassuring (and highly recommended when possible), to know what would be ahead and the quality of the road; and since I spent so much time making the maps, I knew the route practically by heart and had to refer to the cue sheets only a couple of times during the whole ride.

Rest stops and services were generally no problem, with breaks and stores available every 15-20 miles. The first segment of Day 2, however, was somewhat remote; the only store between Merced and Chowchilla wasn't open early on a Sunday morning, and I was mighty hungry by the time I reached Chowchilla. (I even had to raid my emergency PowerBar stash.) Two water bottles were enough, even though Saturday's high was 91 degrees. I carried a change of clothes and minimal other stuff in a small daypack on my back.

Elevation gain was negligible. There's a overall gain of 200 feet in altitude from Stockton to Fresno, and just a few small hills along the way, plus a couple of overpasses, and that's it. Figure on, perhaps, 500-600 feet of climbing. Top speed was almost near the very end -- 27 mph on the brief descent to the San Joaquin River just outside Fresno.

As always, these rides are as much about the mind as they are about the body. In the space of just a couple hours, I went from "this is way too easy" to "how the heck am I going to do this" to "this is doable" and everything in between.

The route in brief:
Day 1, 71 miles
Leave Stockton on Mariposa Rd. to Escalon
Santa Fe Rd. to Riverbank
Claus Rd. to east Modesto, then a short stretch on eastbound SR 132
Santa Fe Rd. for about 33 miles into Merced, and through town to lodging
Day 2, 72 miles (a little more tricky zig-zagging required)
Leave Merced eastbound on Bear Creek Dr.
South on Arboleda; east on Childs; south on Plainsburg; east on Le Grand; south on Minturn
Through Chowchilla on Chowchilla Blvd.
Follow SR 99 frontage roads, criss-crossing over the freeway, to Avenue 18 1/2 truck stop
South on Road 23; east on Avenue 15 1/2 into Madera
Through Madera on Cleveland Ave., leaving town south on Tozer St.
East on Avenue 15; south on Road 36; east on Avenue 12 into Madera Ranchos
Continue east on Avenue 12; south on Business Route 41
Cross freeway, follow Blackstone Ave. across the river and into Fresno's Woodward Park
Find your way home