Along the way to the lunch stop, we pass by Mono Lake, with its tufa towers and volcanic islands, the last of which erupted a mere few hundred years ago.
Lunch was at a park at the North end of Mono Lake. It was the usual Planet Ultra Subway sandwich affair. And nice little black bugs biting my ankles. We finished quickly and set off for Highway 120. All along the ride, it seemed like every time the wind kicked up, the route changed direction away from it. It was our lucky day. Here’s Stefan near Mono Lake:
A lot of people hate the Sagehen climb. It can be hot. It is long. But today, we had a cloud covering the entire climb. That was sweet.
CalTrans has resurfaced Highway 120 too. The descent down Sagehen and into Adobe Meadows was sweet.
The descent from Black Lake to Benton was also amazing. After we got to the rest stop in Benton, someone looked expectantly at John, an experienced doubles rider on a tandem with his son. It was if the look was familiar enough for him to answer the question:
“I stopped looking at 62 MPH.”
From there, we had the usual headwind from Benton back to Bishop. But we managed to duck in behind a rippin double tandem train, so we scooted down to Bishop to compete the ride in under 14 hours. Yea.
The ride included dinner at Holy Smokes BBQ. I really like it when ride organizers do that. It’s not the cost ... it’s the fact that by organizing dinner, every one of the riders shows up and we can all swap stories. It was a great day.
Stefan and I drove up to Mammoth to sleep in the condo. Fortunately, this time ... no deer. And we managed to get some decent sleep before we awoke and drove back to Bishop.
Stefan didn’t have room in his car for myself, my bike, and all my crap, so I hitched a ride with my buddy Rick. Rick and I have ridden thousands of miles together, so it was nice to catch up.
So were my weekend snafus finally over? No! I came home to another little present ... notification that a fraudster had gotten a hold of my credit card number and made 30 attempts at making fraudulent transactions. Lovely. That may well have been my Lone Pine host’s parting gift.
And why did it take so long to write this up? Well, my computer’s power supply went belly up Monday AM.