Day 58: Eureka, NV to Austin, NV

• Team distance: 82.30 mi
• Team elevation: 2,861 ft
• Dedication: Uncle Tim and TJ Allen
• Van partner: Casey
• Host: Austin High School

I ended up in the van again today after a terrible night of sleep thanks to a small hole in my sleeping pad. I hate to give up riding time this close to the end of the trip but I knew that I would benefit from another day of relative rest, and Mike really wanted to ride today so I swapped my next van duty with him.

I was in the host van with Casey and we had a very chill day. We’ve received a lot of donations toward our food fund recently so we didn’t have to worry about getting food donations, which was good because we had already hit up all of the restaurants in Eureka yesterday and there was one open food establishment in Austin. After driving to Austin and dropping off our bags at the high school we drove to the nearest grocery store, all the way back in Eureka, and bought sandwich supplies and some miscellaneous items with a donation from TJ Allen’s family. TJ is a former resident of Ulman House who is currently in hospice care after a years-long fight with Ewing’s Sarcoma. TJ loves hearing from members of the team, and today as I was mailing some stickers Maggie collected for him I realized that his family lives 15 minutes from mine in St. Mary’s! Small world.

Being in host van can be strange because you can go most of the day without seeing the team. Some days it feels isolating, but today it was honestly a little refreshing. We did pass the riders a few times driving back and forth between Eureka and Austin because the only way to get between the towns out here is on US-50, the “Loneliest Highway in America”. It is certainly desolate but the road has more traffic than I expected, and we’ve definitely attracted some negative attention from drivers who aren’t very fond of cyclists.

A lot of riders racked after lunch because there was a storm rolling in with more rain and gusting wind. The past few days have also just been exhausting. Back at the host I attempted to nap but my pad was just slowly deflating the whole time. I did manage to find the hole and attempted to patch it but it was still leaking a little. We also ordered $450 worth of burgers and fries for dinner from the one open food establishment, a burger truck associated with the gas station (strange but delicious!).

After devouring our burger dinner it was time for the much-anticipated event of the summer: 4K wedding! Maggie came up with crazy roles for everyone on the team: I was obviously mother of both the bride and groom, and one of my character traits was that I wore lipstick poorly. I got to walk both Casey and Eli down the aisle (aka, into the gym). Jorts were the recommended attire, Cassidy made beautiful bouquets with desert shrubs and zip ties, Glenn officiated in nothing but his bibs, and Casey looked stunning in a thrift-store wedding dress. We celebrated after with sparkling cider and a really good cake, which we did have to wait a while to eat because it was accidentally stored in the freezer. It was a really fun night and we all had a good time embodying our characters with what we had :)

In addition to my leaky sleeping pad, another night of poor sleep seemed probable because the high school was infested with these massive crickets. I have never seen more disturbing insects. We were told not to kill them because it would cause a “bloodbath”, so we just had to deal with them roaming around. One crawled out of my pile of sleep stuff and after that I was spooked, so Maggie and I slept in the water van. It’s actually more comfortable than I expected, and it was a cool night so we weren’t overheating! Most importantly, we slept without fear that the crickets would crawl all over us :)

One random 4K reflection that I feel fits well with this post: some of us have talked about our best and worst days of 4K, and it’s honestly hard to pick. I have had plenty of bad moments on this trip, but I have never had a truly bad day. I woke up today feeling down and discouraged but ended the day with one of the funniest nights of the trip. There are ups and downs always, sometimes in a matter of minutes, but at the end of the day I think we always end up net-positive.

Until tomorrow!

Lauren