October 8: Fallon to Cold Springs, Nevada
Here’s a bit of advice for anybody planning to head off into the wilderness or Highway 50 in Nevada: be prepared for anything.
We stocked up on supplies before we left Fallon because we we’re planning to camp about 60 miles east of Fallon on Highway 50 at a little town (if you can call it that) named Cold Springs. We weren’t sure what services were there.
As it turned out, it had nearly everything you might need. It had a restaurant, gasoline, and a campground with bathrooms, showers, and electricity. What it didn’t have was internet access and, most importantly, a service station. That’s the one thing we didn’t expect to need, but we turned out to need — a service station.
On the way there, we passed another shoe tree. This is the second and largest one I’ve run into on The Dream Tour. They’re quite a sight to see. It’s filled with hundreds of shoes of all kinds — boots, dress shoes, running shoes, tennis shoes, whatever — but no cycling shoes that I could see.
Meanwhile, Pat had checked us in to a campsite and was hanging around waiting for me to show up. This waiting around is something she has to do every day I ride on The Dream Tour. I have to admit, it must be tedious work and I owe her a lifetime of favors for her willingness to come along on The Dream Tour. In any case, about an hour before I arrived, I got a text message from Pat who said the car battery was dead and she was waiting for someone from the campground to help jump start the car.
In fact, we waited for about 3 hours that person or persons to help us out with a jump. We were told they would help us but not until they were finished watching their NASCAR race on television. You have to give them credit for knowing their priorities and sticking to them.
Finally, a guy came out and we asked him again about it. He said he didn’t know we needed a jump, but he’d be happy to help. He finished what he was doing and then he pulled over his truck. It was a quick process to hook up our jumper cables and start the car. After it started and we disconnected the jumper cables, our car started squeaking like it has been doing off and on for the entire tour. We’ve always thought it was squeaky belts and we’ve been applying belt dressing occasionally.
He took a closer look at it (he seemed to know his way around an engine) and concluded it was the air conditioner clutch. He asked if it’s worse just after we start the car (yes, it is). He said that typically, a clutch will squeak like that when it’s cold and then be fine when it warms up. He said it could fail completely at any time, of course, and if it freezes, that would be very bad because the belt will probably break and when that happens you’re not going to be traveling much further.
After that uplifting bit of news, Pat took the car out for a 25 minute drive to re-charge the battery (let’s hope that’s enough). Later, as we sat around the campsite, we contemplated our options. We decided we should stick to our original plan which was to ride to Austin tomorrow then drive back to Reno. I know this sounds complicated, but we were going to be returning to Reno anyway because of an event I’ll be attending at the Renown Health & Wellness Program on October 11. While we’re in Reno, we’ll try to find someone who can give us a second opinion on the state of the air conditioner clutch.
| Total distance: | 62.37 miles |
|---|---|
| Time: | 4:50:08 |
| Average speed: | 12.9 mph |
| Maximum speed: | 30.7 mph |
| Total calories: | 4465 |
| Average heart rate: | 114 bpm |
| Maximum heart rate: | 147 bpm |
| Total ascent: | 2485 feet |
| Total descent: | 980 feet |
| Ride profile: |  (click on image to view a larger version) |
| Ride comments: Clear and calm when I left Fallon, Nevada. Stayed that way for a couple hours. I had a nice 35 miles of easy riding before I reached the top of a climb and the winds seemed to shift to be from the northeast. That slowed me quite a bit. |
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October 9th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Pete
Call me, let’s talk about your mechanical troubles. If your ac belt is one in common with your other accessories like alternator and water pump, you may be headed for big trouble.
John
October 10th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Pete,
I went out to Winnamucca, NV about a year ago for business. Flew to Reno and drove out to Winnamucca. While driving out I saw dozens of these rock messages along the road. I figured someone’s car broke down and while they were waiting for AAA they needed somethig to do.
I’m sure these messages in the sand will stump the archeologist in a thousand years.
Dirk
October 10th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Hope that your mechanical problems are fixed by the time that you read this.
Peter and I both took 3rds in our divisions in the hill climbs this morning. Peter’s division is the toughest of them all, it seems. I kind of enjoyed it, in an odd sort of way, but found myself doing work projects and let my speed and heart rate fall until someone passed me which woke me up. Any ideas on keeping your concentration?
Time trials tomorrow!
Bee