Tag Archives: Kingman

Friday 26th July

Yesterday’s little dilemma was pondered over. We ruled out cycling all be it at night it simply was too dangerous with out support the desert is a unforgiving place and we are lucky enough to have friends and family that care about us, we couldn’t do that to them or ourselves. Yes we feel your love ๐Ÿ’• thank you for your kind words of support.

Ok no cycling what then. The cheapest way is to get a lift, we’re off the main highway now. To find someone going our way with room for two passengers, two big touring bikes and all the luggage could prove difficult.

Next cheapest option train. We look on the am track website. The only passenger train going our way was a cross country one that would get to our station 11:30 pm and drop us off in Barstow the next safest stop after the desert at 3:30 am. If nothing else we could do that but what do you do in a strange town that time of day. Also it wasn’t clear if we could get the bikes on, the website said if there’s room. What if there wasn’t.

Car hire. You can’t hire a car one way for one day. Minimum is three days and to hire a big enough car for us, luggage and bikes was a tad expensive. Brain wave there’s a truck hire centre near us. Let’s call in and see what the smallest they have. Bonus we can have a truck for 3 days unlimited mileage for half the price of a small car.

So now we have 3 days of going anywhere we want as long as we return it to Barstow on Monday afternoon.

Here we are in Las Vegas for the night. Not sure where we will be tomorrow it’s a adventure I tell you.

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.