20,065 revolutions

One of these bikes is doin' it's own thing...

After last week's successful Washoe Valley lap on my fixed gear bike with Wolfy and his pal Sean, I thought it'd be fun to try and do a long ride with some climbing and descending. I started making noise about riding up Geiger Grade and looping the Truck Route, then returning the way we'd come. Walker, GBG, Huck Tater, and Smithers were more than happy to call my bluff and run with me on a longish road ride (wa?) Saturday morning.

Weeeeelllll, my fixed gear bike is running a 42 tooth chainring and a 16 tooth cog, so she's geared pretty stiff for long hills. It goes though, and with some standing and huffing I made it to the top of Geiger in pretty good style.Walker was doing laps between our strung out party, checking on everyone, and keeping GBG and I informed of their whereabouts. Huck Tater was happy to call it at Virginia Highlands and Smithers was continuing on to VC at his own pace.

GBG, Walker and I continued on to VC, nuked down the Truck Route then toiled back up via Gold Hill. Now that was Hard. I ended up boot-packin' it from the train tracks to the last switch back.
It was all downhill from there, with the exception of those up hills between VC and Geiger... but we made it. The sustained 30-35 mph spin 7 (?) miles down Geiger was nuts on the fixed gear bike, inducing a kind of Zen where the legs were deliberately moving w/o accelerating or resisting the rotation of the pedals. Nothing felt sketchy though, didn't miss brakes a bit. Riding back across Reno was the riskiest part of the day for sure, playing with traffic on the flat streets in the interest of avoiding hills on the outskirts of town.

We stopped at Bibo's for a caffeine fix on the way in and to see if the weekend’s Soup Kitchen Alley Cat race had begun. Luckily, they’d dispersed so we didn't have to worry about getting cajoled into doing more urban shredding. We stopped by the Satellite to see if the apres Alley Cat party was swingin’ yet, but the place was locked up. Probably for the best, since I’m “banned for life!” from the Satellite. GBG headed home and Walker and I worked our way to the Reno Homebrew store for a few recovery drinks to polish off the ride buzz. Three days later and my legs are just now feeling “normal!”

J.r.

let's see,

[(5280 ft/mile)*(70 miles)]/[(221 in/revolution)(ft/12 in)]= 20,065 revolutions