Jeremy's Bike Blog

With the time change, and waking up when it got light out as I was sleeping in the open, sans bivvy, I was packed up and headed back into Page before 6am.  Not much was open yet, so I went to Safeway, stocked up, grabbed a Starbucks latte, and dicked around, tracing my route through Utah on the paper map pictured below (add defective photo-captions to the list of bugs with the WordPress android app) and making adjustments and tune-ups to the bike for a while. 

This was so that when I got to the Lechee Chapter House, which is where I believed I needed to get a permit to camp on Navajo land, based on some webpage I found, it would be after 8am and they would be open.

The three people in the chapter house, which was actually a trailer, seemed confused by my inquiry.  They couldn’t issue permits to camp at any arbitrary point in Navajo Nation.  When they asked where I expected to want to spend the night and I told them about 50 miles down the road towards Flagstaff, they said they definitely couldn’t help me because that would be outside of their jurisdiction, and I’d need a permit from a different chapter, perhaps Cameron’s or Tuba City’s.  Given that there was a pretty good chance that I wouldn’t be able to get to that chapter house before they closed, or at least I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I was in a race to do so, I said that instead I could probably just ride through that day, being as I was getting an early start.  This was me pretty much just backtracking so as to not acknowledge that I was probably just going to have to trespass.  Doing this somewhat poorly, I elaborated, saying that it would be a long day, at 100 miles, but depending on the terrain and the winds, it was doable.  To that, one of them pointed out that he’s seen other bicycle tourist camped on the side of the road, on the highway right of way.  This strip of land along the road is not considered part of Navajo Nation in the sense that camping on it is not considered trespassing, in much the same way that the same holds for boundaries between roads and private land.  At least that’s what the one guy confirmed when I responded by asking as much.  This was good enough for me!

The same guy also said that it was all down hill from just up the way, to Cameron, and about this he was completely wrong…unless by just up the way he meant 20 miles further.  But the grade was less than 5% most of the time, and the wind was still, and by the time the winds started picking up at mid day, I was on the long descent that he had had in mind.

At 50 miles into the day I got to a junction and the first services since Page.  I was still fine on water (having started with 4 liters), but I took the opportunity to have a coffee and a sit in the shade.   There were some depressing flyers on the ice machine.

Another 35 miles got me to Cameron, and by this time the winds had really picked up, and were pretty head-on.  I got a fruit and cottage cheese salad thing at the overpriced tourist restaurant, having not thoroughly read and considered the information on the menu, and even though I was utterly disappointed when it appeared, I inhaled it in a few seconds.

It took me about 15 minutes to push upwind and uphill to Speedy’s truckstop where, as I parked my bike, a guy in a minivan sidled up and asked “Hey, where you headed?  Where are you staying tonight”.  Uh oh, I thought, this is exactly how Katrina’s friend’s story started, the one that ends with him feeling obliged to get out of Navajo Nation rather than bedding down, which for him entailed doubling back.  For me, it would entail fighting the ferocious evening headwind for another 15 miles, and at nearly 90 on the day (second daily milage record this tour in as many days), and my experiment with the pedals a conclusive failure that badly exacerbated my Achilles tendonitis, this prospect seemed excruciating.  So, I responded somewhat cagily, saying “Um, that way”, pointing South.

“But where are you staying?  There’s nothing down that way for like 30 miles.”
“I know.  I’m good, I got it worked out.”
“I’m supporting a cyclist coming from that way and we’re staying at the hotel down the road.” meaning the one whose overpriced restaurant I was just disappointed by.

Knowing now that he wasn’t a reservation cop trying to hassle me, I opened up.

“Oh, cool.  Yeah, I’m just going to find a spot on the side of the road in the highway right of way and camp out.  It’s cool, I do it all the time.”
“What?!  You’re crazy.  Hey, my guy is only a few miles back.  You’ll see him.”

I went into Speedy’s, which was basically a reasonably well-appointed gas station convenience store, asked the guy behind the counter if he minded me filling my water bottles, and then when he said “sure, back there” pointing to the fountain machine, I did.

I was walking out with my arms full of my 4 liters of water, when I hear “Yo, BICYCLE!”, in a voice that sounded uncannily like my uncle John’s who is New Jersey swagger personified.

“Hey, yeah, that’s me.”
“What the hell’re you doing!?  Where the hell’re you staying tonight!?”

At this point, I should point out that because of my uncle, I’m well versed in the New Jersey technique of expressing appreciation, and neigh, even admiration using language which, to the untrained ear, sounds antagonistic and insulting.  I don’t speak it, but I can understand it.  I told him I could tell that he was from NJ, and that I had family there.  He asked where, and when I told him Brick and Leonia (forgot to mention Wood-Ridge), he said with some pride, but no specificity, that he was from closer to the latter (North Jersey).

We walked back outside, and the two of them continued in their incredulity.  They asked if my mom knew what I was doing, which seemed an odd thing to ask given my age, but instead of pointing this out and telling them how old I was (a grown-ass man), I accepted the implicit compliment that I look young for my age, and gave them the simple and honest answer that yeah, she was worried about me, but kept tabs on my location through Google+ location sharing and this blog.  I asked the Jersey cyclist if he’d like my blog info.  I gave him one of my Amazon business cards with my standard hand-scrawled modifications (@amazon.com crossed out to @gmail.com, .wordpress.com appended to my name), and asked what his name was.  It was Mitch.

The support driver took some pictures of us posing together in front of my rig.

“How much does that thing WEIGH?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m going to pick it up…. Ah jesus, that’s fucking insane”
“Heh, and I haven’t put this 20 pounds back on” raising the 1.5L bottle and jam-packed handlebar bag that I held in my hands.

They called me “fucking nuts” and “a real MAN”, and it was, with my trained ear, very complimentary to the point of being a bit ego-inflating.

They warned me of the road ahead (for me) crawling with cops patrolling from there to Gray Mountain, just outside of the reservation, and the closest place to buy alcohol, and said “but you know, if camping on the side of the road is legal, I guess you’re fine”.

I’m honestly not clear on the legality of my road-side camping, but I figure as long as I’m respectful and, more importantly, hard to find, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission, and I said to them something to this effect.

There were a few more expressions of general disbelief, then some admonitions to be safe, then a wish or two of good luck, and then they went their way.

I finished my business with Speedy’s: Purchase of a $1.75 fried chicken breast that was many fold more satisfying than the $12 fruit salad down the road, and that I greedily consumed sitting on the gum-stained curb by my bike with impunity.  This impunity is a small, but personal favorite, perk of being a road-weathered cyclist.  And maybe I was feeling a bit more impune at that particular moment.

With that taken care of, it was time to ride and scope for spots to sleep.  The landscape being as it was, there wasn’t going to be anywhere that I was completely out of sight from traffic coming from both directions.

I tried going low, scoping out a roadside depression in which I would be completely invisible once drivers were reduced to what they could see in their headlights, but evidentially there was a dog somewhere in the distance that could see what I was up to, and who was intent on incessantly voicing his or her objection.  No good.

A few miles later I got to a section of road that had been blasted through a rocky bluff that was maybe 25 feet high.  I managed to push my bike up one side, and while I was well illuminated by the setting sun, if I got myself and my bike close to the ground, we were only visible to cars at some distance, and from such distance only a couple of small specks.  Moreover, I had a fantastic view of the sunset which I enjoyed while staying low, reading, relaxing, and dumping the inefficiently large remainder of the cheap trail mix I had by then transported 170 miles from Kanab, into my mouth.

When the sun had set and there was still enough light for me to see at short range but not enough light to be at all visible from the road, I set up camp.  Sleep was clearly going to take me as soon as I put the phone away, which surprisingly had a trickle of data, when I noticed some flashes off in the distance in my periphery.  Clouds were rolling in, and when I stared off into them for a couple of minutes I verified that it was lightning.  It was of the ‘heat’ variety, very distant, and not likely ‘touching down’, but judging by the USGS survey marker next to my head that noted the elevation, and the unobstructed views of the horizon, or at least to very, very distant formations, in nearly every direction, I determined that I was at the highest elevation for a long, long ways, even if only by a couple dozen feet.  Moreover, monitoring the movement of the boundary of the clouds that housed the lightening against the backdrop of stars, I determined they were moving in my general direction.  It seemed clearly ill-advised to go to sleep in this configuration, but nested so firmly in the clutches of such a welcome drift into slumber, it took me some time to work up the energy to do the thing I knew it was prudent to do.  Eventually, I crawled out of the bivvy, scooped it up with pad and bag inside, and carried it down the bluff to lower ground, leaving my bike and bags at the top to be struck by lightening if that’s what needed to happen.  I definitely wasn’t going to be packing or shuttling my things, in the dark, half asleep.

Whereas at the top it was perfectly flat, I couldn’t find any very flat ground, but I did find some that was flat enough-ish.  It was in the beam of cars coming from one direction, but somewhat obscured by scrub brush.  Also good enough-ish.  Having the peace of mind rewarded by avoiding the temptation to tempt fate, I was asleep within a minute of re-inserting myself into my bag and biivy.

I woke up, as I typically do, briefly, several times a night when roadside camping, some time later to find that the sky was crystal clear (with an impossible-to-miss view of the band of the milky way).  I was getting restful sleep, but I knew it would be more restful back on my perch, further from the lights and noises of vehicles (the larger trucks with high beams, in particular), and on flatter ground.  It would also be better to be back up there come sunrise, so I made the trip back up, and again fell asleep as soon as I (gratuitously ate a Clif bar and) resituated myself.