Tuesday, August 11, 2009
57: Lost as a Pirate in the Desert
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Fifty-Seven |
 |
| 8/11/09 |
| From Hammett, ID |
| To Nampa, ID |
| 97.7 miles |
| 10 avg mph |
Joann sent us off with a delicious pancake and fruit breakfast and a cantaloupe for the road. We reluctantly said goodbye and headed towards Mountain Home. We were haunted by the heat and an irritating cloud of gnats; we figured out that we needed to exceed 12 mph to outrun these pests, which was fine until we faced a long climb and had to let them catch up. Finally we were back at Tony's Bike Shop.
While there we decided on a solid rubber tube for the front tire; it would slow us down but it wouldn't flat, which seemed worth it at this point. Then we headed out of town and back into farmland.
After a while the farmland turned back into desert. Then the frontage road we were on abruptly ended next to a trailer home with three angry guard dogs. We could just see the highway, but it was too far for us to cut across the sand and sagebrush to get there. We had no choice but to turn around, making our way in stops and starts as the dogs started to chase us. Riding extra miles is always frustrating, but doing it in the desert on a hot summer day is even worse. I was less than pleased.
We finally made it back to a bridge that linked us with a network of back roads, and we entered one of the most bizarre neighborhoods we'd ever seen. A neighborhood in the middle of the desert is going to be unconventional regardless, since the lots are much larger, no one has a lawn, and in the summer no one spends much time outside. But these people had a sense of humor, giving their streets funny names like "Desert Duck" and ironic ones like "Ocean View" and "Sea Breeze." One aspiring pirate took the ocean theme even farther:
But the entertaining sights weren't enough to distract us from the fact that it took a long, long, long, long time to reenter civilization in the form of a large and very welcome rest stop. We almost cried when we saw its sign towering over the highway.
We planned to take a long rest there, so we bought an outrageous amount of liquid: a bottle of rootbeer, a cup of fruit punch, and giant containers of Powerade and water. We also slurped up the cantaloupe from Joann, which was without a doubt the best one I have ever tasted.
When we felt relatively rested and hydrated, we reluctantly got on the road again, riding one exit on the interstate and another 30 miles on backroads before we reached the town of Kuna. It was bizarre to go from the nothingness of open desert to a neighborhood of perfectly irrigated lawns; I appreciated the rare sight of grass but it seemed outrageously wasteful out here. Mini Quizno sandwiches fortified us for the rest of the ride; in frustration I told Kyle that Nampa had better be less than 15 miles away, and I had to laugh when it turned out to be exactly 15. We weren't finished yet though: the street signs didn't match the Garmin map, so we tallied a few extra miles before we finally found the hotel and ended our 97-desert-mile day.
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| posted at: 06:01 |
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