62.3 mi / 6:15:00 time / 10.0 mph avg. / 6000 ft. climbing
Staying at Manzanita Lake Campground

Well, that’s done. I’m now in the Sierras! Yeah!

I was out again at first light, heading eastward into the rising sun. Luckily it’s the last morning of that nonsense before I turn south. I don’t really recommend it for the faint of heart, particularly with logging trucks hunting you down (shh, don’t tell my mom!) The several miles along the lakeshore were surprisingly unflat, though I did hear, and then see, a beautiful pair of bald eagles. A pleasant change from the swarms of their uncouth cousins, the turkey vultures, that have been circling above me for days now, waiting for me to keel over. Not gonna happen!

I made it the 10 miles into the big city of Redding (pop. 90,000), located one of the several bike shops, and then sat in the car-free “downtown” area to do some internetting (borrowing Shasta College’s WiFi) while waiting for it to open. Seems like a pretty pleasant town. I didn’t expect the shop to have the VDO cyclometer that I liked so much, but they did have a Cateye model with almost the exact same features. Even better, they don’t think they’ll be carrying Cateye stuff anymore, so I got a 30% on-the-spot discount. Thanks Chain Gang of Redding! One of the workers there said he saw me in Orick a few days ago, and once I was able to remember where Orick was (it’s a dump of a town at the south end of the Redwoods), I realized he was right.

It was late, 10am, by the time I got the new cyclometer installed and calibrated, and the day was already warming up. Redding gets the 2nd most days of sunshine of any city in the US (230 or something) and today was no exception. This northernmost tip of the Central Valley would be getting up to 100 today. That’s basically 40 degrees warmer than the coast was. Hard to imagine in this dryness and heat how the Central Valley can produce so much produce, but the broad Sacramento River that splits the city has a lot to do with it. All these mountains I’ve been climbing collect a lot of water and send it down into the baking valley.

I got all the way down to about 400 feet in the Valley, and then it was time to climb. And climb. And climb some more. 40 miles of climbing, taking me up to nearly 6000 feet. Just to visualize the ridiculousness of this, here’s an elevation profile of the trip from the beginning through tomorrow. All those hills we were talking about on the coast (which was a serious amount of climbing) nearly become invisible once the Sierras enter the picture. Oh yeah, and I’m not even at the top of this mountain yet, I’m at the little jag 2/3rds up it. 3000 more feet tomorrow.

On a day like this, when it’s 100 degrees, you’re going 4mph up a 10% grade on a road with a shoulder that randomly disappears at the most inopportune times, and you know you have at least 4 more hours of climbing to do, a lot of schizophrenic thoughts go through your head. Like, “why the hell am I doing this anyway?” No one answered that one, but it was quickly followed by “another 10% hill? Sure, bring it on! Better to get it out of the way now than later!” Followed by “Whoa, there’s the crumbled bulk of Lassen Peak rising 30 miles away…I’m totally going to get up there, and it’s going to be awesome! ”

No time for real food today. Palo Cedro provided a gas station lunch at the valley’s low point, where I finally ended what was by far my longest Gatorade-less stretch ever on a bike tour. 2000 feet up at an unexpected-but-so-delicious gas station oasis, I followed that with two Gatorades, and three cups of ice cream. I actually had some doubts about making it at that point. But the ice cream helped and I kept on rolling to Shingletown, the halfway point in the 40 mile climb and the only real bit of civilization in the whole stretch. Ate a really hot banana that was in my bag, then used the IGA market/Ace Hardware’s wonderful bathroom to both guzzle cold water and lighten my load. After that, things got a whole lot better. There was still a lot of work to be done, but I was finally up high enough for the cooler temperatures at elevation to take effect, pine forest had replaced the tinder-dry yellow scrub of the Valley, and the grades, at least for a while, relaxed somewhat.

Everything got more beautiful the closer I got to the park, and that served as a good distraction during the last big 1000 foot push. After entering the park, I actually missed the turnoff to the campground, and my new cyclometer immediately showed its worth. The only reason I noticed was because my altitude kept going higher than what my maps showed for today. Oh well, turning around and going half a mile back took no effort at all.

After all that, I feel good, both in my body and in my brain. Only now do I realize I had been fighting a latent nervousness the last couple days, not really sure if I was biting off more than I could chew (you’ve seen that nightmarish elevation profile, right?!) But now, while there’s still a lot more work ahead, I have a new confidence that I can do it. And paired with the satisfaction of where I am and what I’ve already done, I feel pretty awesome right now. To that hot, worn-out, doubtful guy who asked the question 5000 feet and 9 hours ago, this is why the hell you do it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2012 at 6:11 pm and is filed under 2012 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.