Day: July 25, 2019

Thursday 25th July

Here I am sat in a McDonald’s in Kingman. We arrived at Kingman yesterday after a 13hr cycle ride in over 100 degrees. Today we are taking the day off to mull over our options.

The weather forecast for the next week is 115 and above, we have a desert crossing with no amenities coming up. Even though we’re stupid this is a pretty scary option.

What to do.

Early starts, but realistically how far can we get before running out of water. And what happens if we get a flat or mechanical problems, what about a headwind and we simply can’t carry on. So many what ifs…

Night riding. How safe is it. You hear stories and all the above on top.

Is it cheating to get a lift.

Is there a train

How about hire a car…

Are we going to be failures if we can’t complete.

What to do

Sleep on it tomorrow’s another day.

Wednesday 24th July

Looking at our map we knew that today was going to be a long one, but it was longer than planned. Alarm went off at 4:45 all packed and ready to go for 5am. My front tyre was flat a slow puncture over night. Mike changed my inner tube lighting quick to the one that he repaired last night. We were on the road in no time.

Our breakfast stop peach Springs this is 40 miles away but the only thing in between is a r v camp that only do a expensive continental breakfast not for us.

Lots of nothing just one long straight road I heard somewhere that this stretch of Route 66 is the longest preserved stretch I may be wrong.

We stopped in a cool gift shop at Hackberry it had a live musician playing out side and lots of memorabilia around. A welcome drink and ice lolly to get our energy up.

That was 61 miles in and we still had to push on, nowhere to stay. 15 more miles in the heat we stopped for more refreshments at a petrol station, we had been pushing against a head wind for a while. And we still had another 17 miles to go. We rested a while at a picnic table watching a storm getting closer and closer.

The locals reassured us that it would stay in the mountains but it was getting black and the lighting was close. We really don’t want to be cycling in a electric storm. We try to sit it out but time is getting on and it gets dark early, with the head wind it could take us another 2 hours before we get into town.

We make a break for it, the wind has changed direction it’s now a tail wind great but that also means that the storm is headed straight for us. We pedal like crazy just keeping ahead of the storm. A sprint finish isn’t what you need when you have cycled over 90 miles in a day. But we made it before the full impact of the storm hit us.