Biker395 

So I had an Eastern Sierra bikefest last weekend. Friday, I planned to ride up to Horseshoe Meadows with some friends, and Saturday, the Eastern Sierra Double.

I had been looking forward to this for a long time. The Eastern Sierra Double is my favorite. If the weather cooperates, it’s 200 miles of spectacular climbs, spectacular scenery, and wonderful descents. The problem is ... the weather hasn’t cooperated much lately. In 2009, there was sleet and snow, and a howling wind on a re-route. Other years, the ride was canceled because Highway 120 was under construction. And other times ... well ... I just couldn’t make it.

But the stars aligned this year. I had the weekend free, the weather looked great, and I needed the training anyway. On top of that, some friends were going to do the Horseshoe Meadow that Friday, so I could do both! Sweet.

So it was with great anticipation I headed out Thursday afternoon on uncharacteristically empty highways for my favorite place in the world, stopping for interesting descansos and whatever struck my fancy.

The weekend started with a TMI moment. I needed a bathroom. I wanted to get as far as I could out of town before stopping, but when the CHP decided to close the northbound 405. I exited the freeway in search of a bathroom.

Someone tell me why so many gas stations in LA feign that their restrooms are out of order? I went to 4 ... count 'em ... 4 gas stations wanting to use the restrooms, and all had signs (obviously there for quite some time) indicating that the restrooms were out of order. I mean, sheez ... I'll buy a candy bar if I have to, but I can't do that if they're all l out of order.

My last great act of defiance was peeing on the gas station. My only regret is that I didn't have enough to go pee on each and every one of them.

No pictures ... sorry.

Back on the road, I dazed into the empty, lonely desert. Gawd, I love driving out there. I stopped to photograph a few descansos ... roadside memorials to people who lost their life away from home.




No doubt, a story behind each one. A loved one lost. It’s always made more sense to me to mark the place and time of our passing at the place fate decides.

I arrived at Lone Pine just after Bob and Laura. I checked in.



Bob resolved to take a short nap, while Laura and I walked over to Joseph’s for a snack for the morning. I bought some fruit, some oatmeal, and for breakfast, the all american XLNT tamale. We had a little entertainment in the market too. A power failure left us shopping in the dark with flashlights.

After dinner at the Totem Cafe, we strolled around a bit and went to bed.



Well, everyone else did. I scurried about, pumping up tires, packing food, and just generally making things so all I had to do in the morning was wake up and get dressed. And when I was done with that, I snuck across US395 to sample a taco truck delicacy.

The weekend was replete with snafus. The first one came when I went to flush the toilet. The lever chain appeared to be broken. No worries ... an easy fix. Well, it would have been if the lever wasn’t so badly rusted, there was nowhere to attach the chain. I shrugged and pulled open the flapper by hand ...

.... and got blasted with a fountain of cold water, courtesy of massively leaking gaskets on the valve. Clearly, the tank cover was not an accessory on this toilet.

Still no worries. I changed and turned over the bed spread ...

... and saw a rather large bug scurry across the pillow. I managed to kill it, but was it the only one? Doubtful. Through the magic of Wikipedia, I now know that bug to be a bedbug. If I had known that then, I’d have slept in the car. One thing I did do is sleep without the covers on. Wish I had a pix of that.

I set the alarm and went to sleep ...

... nd woke up a half an hour late. No alarm. Peachy. Good thing I had everything set up. I got dressed and went outside to meet the others at the appointed 6AM time. The last thing I put on was ...

... or would have been my gloves, if I had not forgotten them. Fortunately, Bob had a spare pair. We mounted our bikes and headed to the climb ... about 4 miles out of town. We had a rippin tailwind too.

All was good until we got to the climb. That’s when I heard the unmistakable pfft-pfft-pfft of a flat. That was bad enough, but to my horror, I discovered that my rear tire was badly worn ... down to the threads in several patches. How can a tire go from looking fine to looking like Hobo Kelly in a few miles? Another unfathomable mystery.

The closest spare tire was in Bob’s hotel room. That meant a 4 mile ride against the wind and back into town. Not fun, but my only option. I was exhausted by the time I got back but I managed to change the tire quick enough. That took a good 40 minutes at least, so I drove from US395 to Horseshoe Meadow Road ... bypassing about 500 feet of the initial climb.



That was a bit of mistake, because I caught the group earlier than I expected. Bob and Laura had cached water along the route, and I caught them at the first cache.

Accompanying them was “Sweetie,” a beautiful dog, who had followed them from an adjacent ranch. And Sweetie wasn’t done ... she followed us as we continued up the road.



The road to Horseshoe Meadow has several huge switchbacks, each providing an amazing view of the distant valley floor. Sweetie stopped every 50 yards or so for a looksee.

Stopping at the second cache, it was clear that Sweetie needed some water. We had no dish of any sort, so we made shift with the water bottles. I’ve never allowed a strange dog to lick the business end of my water bottle, but if there was a time, this was it. Sweetie was grateful.

The grade? Variable between 6 and 9 percent. Doable with the right gears. It actually seemed to go by quickly.





There is a bit of a false summit, and we lost Sweetie on the downhill. Here’s the money shot ... at the top!



After munching on a snack or two, we headed downhill. Since it was a lot chillier at 10,000 feet than it was at 4,000, we jacketed up. We also stopped frequently to admire the view. Believe it or not, the descent seemed to take forever.

Biker395 

Near the bottom we encountered a trio of backpackers. They were hoping for a ride up to the trailhead so they could get back to the Pacific Coast Trail.



The rest of the group headed back to our motel, and I volunteered to hop in my car and retrieve the cached water. Along the way, I stopped to let the hitch hikers know that I could give one of them a ride, but only one ... as the back of my car was loaded with bike stuff.


An older gent with a scraggly beard and floppy chapeau got in and put his backpack in his lap. We chatted quite a bit on the way up, including why he was chosen to be the one to go up first.

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get a ride when you look like me.”

I brought him all the way up to the trailhead. Along the way, we stopped to pick up the cached water. Also along the way I saw Sweetie, in the company of another hiker ... carrying one of our water containers. I pulled over to chat.

“I’m here to pick the water up, but if you’d rather use it, that’s OK.”

“Actually, I’m trying to walk down to Lone Pine. Do you know how far it is?”

I allowed that I didn’t.

“Maybe 12 miles or so? Hard to say. Do you want a ride?”

Of course he did.

“I’ll get you on the way down.”

When I returned, I found Sweetie and the backpacker sitting under a few rocks to get out of the Sun. Sweetie was panting. I managed to get it in the back of the car, and the backpacker hopped in the passenger seat.

Sweetie gave me the look. You know the one. The “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” look. I motioned towards the car with my head, and she hopped into the floorboard of the passenger seat. Clearly, this was not new to her.



I scritched her head resting on the console while chatting with Tim about life and hometowns. Tim was from Trona, a town I’ve been fascinated with for years. Once a proud town based on mining the minerals from nearby Searles Dry Lake, it’s dying a slow painful death due to job loss and general decay. It used to have a Ford dealer. Gone. A gas station. Gone. Parks. Gone. Trona High School is still there, and their football team, the Trona Tornadoes, are the only high school football team that plays on a dirt field. They call it the Pit. And they don’t often lose in the Pit.

Gawd, I loved talking to this guy.

When we got to the ranch house, we opened the door, and Sweetie hopped out and shuffled back home. After a short chat with the hitch hikers (still waiting for a ride), I dropped Tim off at the Pizza Factory in Lone Pine, and met the group for a burger at Carls.

I accepted Bob’s gracious offer to sell me his tire. No way I wanted to deal with buying a new one. There aren’t a lot of options for that kind of thing in the Owens Valley. Then I headed off to Bishop to register for the Eastern Sierra Double. Bishop is a place where ducks rule.



I got all of my stuff, met up with Teresa and the gang, and we all met for a carbo-load festival. I had a small garlic and spinach pizza that I ate all by myself. Yum.




Now time to drive the 40 miles up the Sherwin Grade for our home out in Mammoth.

It was a beautiful starry evening. I felt really luck to be there under the stars and the fading light. Just gorgeous. And it was going to be a great day.

BANG.

I briefly saw what it was. A deer had run across my path. And I hit it. But good.



Something like that happens and it takes a good long while to figure out what happened. I immediately stopped, but it took a long while to sink in. Then I saw the smoke and steam rising from my hood. Uh oh.

I spent the next three hours under those stars making and receiving phone calls ... trying to figure out what to do.



In the end, the car and I were towed back down to Bishop. Stefan, who was going to join me at Mammoth called, and I asked him to stay down in the Denny’s in Bishop to wait for me. By the time I made it down, it was after midnight. Since the double was to start at 5AM, we decided to stay at the local Mo6 ... the nicest and larges Mo6 room I have ever seen.



Since we got to bed so late, Stefan and I elected to do the 6AM start. Those are the fast guys. Stefan is fast. Yours truly is not. Do I look a little apprehensive?



One advantage with being in the fast group is that you really scoot along in that paceline. We made rapid progress around the Owens River, crossed US395, and headed to the first rest stop in the Round Valley, with roads framed by poplars and cottonwoods. It was beautiful.

But it was time to climb. The Sherwin Grade is a 3000 foot climb at about 7-8 percent. It ain’t easy, but we were going at it pretty hard, so we got up pretty quickly. On to Mammoth Lakes.

Along the way in a little town called Aspen Springs, there is a sweet little descent that heads right into town and a long roll out .... well ... a long roll out if it weren’t for that flippin stop sign at the bottom. Guess where the CHP was waiting for cyclists running stop signs? Yep. We heard they handed out several tickets.

Stefan was feeling his oats on the flat part of US395 and he was kind enough to let me pace behind him. I wasn’t sure I could keep up with him for long.

Next, we climbed to Mammoth Lakes, and turned down the Scenic Loop and back to US395. At bottom, there were three ... count ‘em ... three CHP cruisers waiting to hand out tickets for not stopping at the stop sign.

Incredibly, Stefan got confused and rode the wrong way up US395! We yelled at him to stop, as did the CHP officers. But no ticket. I guess they were stop-sign blind for the day.

We climbed Deadman Summit (how is that for a name?) and turned off onto some of the sweetest cycling miles you’ll ever see ... the June Lake Loop. Within about half a mile of the turnoff, you get the view from Oh! Ridge. It is aptly named.



Then you scoot downhill through the little burgh of June Lake, through some aspens, past the ski resort, then drop down a twisty road into even more aspens, all in the shadow of Horsetail Falls and Carson Peak. It is amazing.

Biker395 

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.

Bikey Mikey

Great story! Hope you didn't bring any bed bugs home.

So, what happened with the car?

Dudelsack

Epic by anyone's standards.

qcpmsame 

You need to write for a living doing stories about bike trips and ride summaries Vic. If it were me that would be a half a paragraph and maybe one picture done poorly and small. I'd still be typing Sunday if I tried to do the report you did. Very nicely done and persented, sorry about your WRX, hope it isn't a total the deer here have done in many a car or truck. I saw a pair of does on my afternoon ride yesterday, thankfully they stayed on the side of the road. I couldn't get the courage to write that I got done in by a deer on the 50+. Well done sir, well done.

Bill

climberguy

Great story and photos, 395. It made my morning. I felt like I was there with you and at the same time it made we want to go there and ride. Bill is right: you should publish a collection of cycling stories, with a catchy title like "Tales from No-Man's Land" or some such. Thanks.

Dave

big john

Thanks for posting, Vic. What are you doing Saturday? L.A. Wheelmen have the Encanto/AC/39 loop starting at 8:00.

volosong

Wow! What an adventure. And all this in a single weekend. Sorry about the car. Wonderful write-up and images. (You're the first one I know who has their BF UID on their license plate.)

David Bierbaum

Remember to be on bedbug alert. Those things travel with you along with any clothes and suitcases you bring with you, and pesticides pretty much don't work on them anymore. Heat is about the only certain method to kill them when they infest a home...

This is why I don't travel...

TromboneAl

Great story -- I enjoyed reading it.

Did you feel like giving up at any point, such as when the car had to be towed and you knew you wouldn't get much sleep?

Biker395 

That's a story in itself. My first call after the crash was to some friends of mine that live in nearby Mammoth Lakes. I was kinda midway between Mammoth Lakes and Bishop and looking for a shop recommendation. They recommended a shop in Bishop. A call to AAA revealed that they would tow the car only 7 miles, and I was a good 25 miles from town at least. And since it's an AWD Subie, it must be towed on a flatbed, so this was going to get expensive.

So a tow truck driver finally shows up (after 3 hours!). Turns out he was not the one that was going to tow me, but he was headed home to Mammoth Lakes from Bishop and wanted to chat.

"Have you got comprehensive on your car?"

I do. He explained that they would cancel the AAA call and make it an insurance call ... that way it would be completely covered. The guy from Bishop showed up moments later and the two of us rode back down to Bishop with my car on the flatbed.

There is no approved State Farm repair facility anywhere near Bishop ... the nearest is Ridgecrest. So my options were to tow it to Ridgecrest and choose one of the two approved shops there (at no further cost, and with the repairs lifetime guaranteed by any approved State Farm shop), get it repaired in Bishop (no national guarantee and perhaps out of pocket costs), or have it towed to Los Angeles (beaucoup towing costs).

Turns out a friend of mine is was an insurance adjuster in Ridgecrest, so I called her to get a recommendation for one of the two Ridgecrest shops. Turns out her ex-husband owns one of the two, and does great work, so that's where it's going.

It also looks like the damage will be 3.5-5K, and even with the salvage value, that is probably not enough to total the car. That's good, because I really do love my car ... I have no interest in replacing it any time soon.

Thanks! I'd love to, but I've got a professional conference I have to go to this w/e. Snoozer. There had better be internet access in the meeting rooms, or I'm going to gnaw my fingers off.

Thanks! You know ... if I ever retire (rather than just kicking off right here at my desk, fingers frozen on the keyboard), I intend to ride my bike to strange places, take pictures, chat people up and write about it. I do love adventuring around.


You know how the whole Biker395 thing got started? I wanted a junk e-mail addy, and rather than use my name, I picked the moniker "Biker". Of course, that was taken, so it suggested Biker2006, Biker95763, Biker23 ... all kinds of stuff. But because I have this thing about the Eastern Sierra (and US395 rolls right through it), I chose Biker395. And it's now become somewhat of a moniker. Kinda strange.


We are on the lookout. With all the other snafus of the weekend, infesting our house or our place in Mammoth would really be icing on the cake.

Oh, and an interesting side note I forgot to mention. When Rick and I were driving home, we actually passed Laura and Bob on Highway 14. I leaned out of the window and waved ... knowing that it would set them off wondering ... what the hell happened to the blue Subie? Lol. It was a weekend of funny coincidences!

Biker395 

Nah. The only thing that would have stopped me from doing the double was if the body shop was open on Saturday. If that were true, I would have wanted to chat with them and see how long the repairs would take. I had the option of just heading back up to Mammoth and working from there while the car got fixed.

As it turns out, they were not open Saturday or Sunday, so there was no point in changing my plans. I operate pretty good on little sleep. I actually felt pretty strong as the day went on.

Oh, and BTW ... the weekend of misfires continues. Commuted home last night on the bike (I have no car at this point), walked into the kitchen, and got stung by a flippin bee. My left arm is swelling up pretty good right now. I'm looking almost Popeyeish.



If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.

TromboneAl

Better hope it was an amicable divorce.

Biker395 

Lol ... trust me ... I asked her about that.

DnvrFox

Wonderful story and pics. You should write profesionally for a bike mag or whatever.

az_cyclist

Did Stephan ride the Solvang Double in March? He looks farmiliar to me.

Biker395 

I think so. He's silly strong. That bike he's on weighs at least 25 pounds, and for a long time, he rode with tennis shoes. A few months ago, he did the Tour de Francis on one gear (one of his cables broke), and still finished way before I did. I think he slowed down a bit for me.

dalameda

Seriously, I said it before and I'll say it again. You need to come out with a coffee table book of your amazing pics(well, except for the deer damage), and now you can add wonderful narrative to it as well!

Rick@OCRR

Great story and photos Vic. Even though I'd heard most of it from you already, it was still great to read and see your photos (okay, most of which I'd seen on facebook already). But still, great story and great to see the photos again. Sorry about the Subie! Rick / OCRR

Randy Bosma

Worth every one of the 15 minutes it took to read this thread!

big john

He probably doesn't even know how much potential he has, even though he has done some crazy climbing rides. Even with that, he's friendly and will slow down as he passes me and take the time to chat a bit.

Lesper4

Great right up 395, I talked to Stephan at one of the stops (towards the end) because I keep running into him, At Solvang Double, Hemet Double, BA this year and last year, Last years KOM rides and I think Cool Breeze Double Metric. I probably saw you just didn't realize it. I was wearing the BA jersey from last year. Sorry to hear about the car, I guess the deer really were migrating. I will though up my pictures this week. I took a few in the Alabama Hills in the arches as well. 395 is just one of those special roads, this year we are backpacking in Utah but will be back in the Sierras next year. I have a few day hikes in the sierras this year instead (Whitney, Muir, Gould).

az_cyclist

I rode Solvang and Hemet this spring. I am sure I saw Stephan at Solvang.

Bikegeek1968

Sweetie! She is a great dog. My family has spent a few days at on of the cabins the ranch owners rent. She was great with our dog and both of the kids, even if she did lead them all into the sheep pen.