California Day 1 - Las Vegas to Primm, NV

 I can see California from here. Primm is on the state line.

Primm is almost a ghost town. It used to have three casinos with big hotels, a monorail, a roller coaster, and a shopping mall. Now, it is one casino, with a two star hotel. All that other stuff is abandoned.

The hotel was claimed to a Travelodge when I booked my room online, but there is no sign that says Travelodge anywhere, which makes finding it an adventure. It's pretty nice for a Travelodge.

There are also a few fast food restaurants and a gas station. I ate at this Mexican place.

I wound up with a Chile Relleno Burrito somehow. The girl at the counter didn't speak English, and I don't speak Spanish. It was tasty regardless.

Walking back, I discovered what I suspect is keeping the last casino hotel afloat.

There is a ginormous Tesla Supercharger, so people are probably going in to play slots when they are forced to charge here. I'm grateful, because the next hotel is 60 miles away.

It's probably not because they have the actual car where Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death in the dead shopping mall.

It was only 40 miles today, easy peasey, great weather. The first miles were a gentle 2% climb, the last half was all downhill.

I had fully loaded up the snack bag at a Whole Foods by the airport, where they have this totally natural looking xeriscaping with native cacti.

I had lunch at the last restaurant before the desert started, which was about 10 miles from the Flamingo.

It was almost completely empty. The edge of the developed area in Las Vegas is cheap, dense apartment blocks.

The wings were OK, the flavor was right, but they were very mild, and not very crisply fried.

But I am very far from Buffalo.

The plan today was to ride Las Vegas Boulevard the whole way to Primm. It runs parallel to I-15, and it has no traffic and a nice shoulder. 

Also, there is art.

For some reason, quite a number of people have driven clear out here to walk around these stacks of brightly painted rocks. You can see them if you look close. The rocks are very big.

My plan to ride Las Vegas Boulevard clear to Primm had a problem.

The road is closed. This is one of more than a few signs making it perfectly clear that the bike route is the shoulder of I-15.

So the shoulder it is.

It's a really nice shoulder. Glassy smooth, and very little debris. You can actually see Primm off in the distance 12 miles away, in front of the mountain.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/17701848144

California Day 0 - Last Chance Shopping and Errands in Las Vegas

 I loathe Las Vegas. This is the worst, dumbest city in the world. It's a giant Gatlinburg, but with a somewhat lower proportion of hillbillies. Its only purpose is to extract as much money as possible from suckers.

Here are two pictures that sum it up for me:

This is the smoke detector in my room at the Flamingo.

My room doesn't have a coffee maker, either. During the conference, I would just go downstairs one floor and grab a cup early from the urns set out for conference attendees. Conference attendees get a discount room rate, which means we are all on the 4th floor of the 28th floor building, with a view of air conditioning units and spotlights. But today, my conference is over, and I didn't feel like stealing coffee from the next conference, so I went down to the lobby and bought coffee from the cafe in the mini-mall in the lobby. $9. There was a Starbucks, too, but God only knows what that would have cost.

Next up is the picture of my beer, where it has been sitting lonely and forgotten under the tap for 10 minutes at the Gordon Ramsey Burger restaurant. 

When I finally got the absurdly overworked bartender's attention he apologized profusely, and offered to comp me the next one. He said he is still learning "the new system" they just put in place, which I suspect is a system whereby they can have fewer servers doing more work less effectively. 

When the bartender brought me my next, free, Guinness, he apologized again for "making me drink more beer than I wanted to."

me: "That's not actually true."

He laughed. 

The Gordon Ramsey burger is nothing special and it is nowhere near as good as a bacon double smash burger with Old Bay tots at the Cheesesteak Factory on Route 1, despite costing way more money, and the Cheesesteak Factory smashburger is not cheap. Cost of a Gordon Ramsey Backyard Burger with fries and one Guinness, plus 20% tip was $56. Total ripoff.

The airport noise conference ended at 3:00, so I got right on my bike and headed west 10 miles to REI to do my last chance essential shopping and errands, which were air in the bike tires, a headlight since I forgot to back the mount for the light I brought, and a belt, which I forgot to pack, resulting in my pants sliding down throughout the conference.

There was a Bike World on the way to the REI. Bike World is a low end bike shop chain that sells bike brands like Diamondback and Mongoose, barely a step above department store bikes. The shop looks like it has been there forever. It has a very faded "Schwinn" sign out front. But they are awesome. I explained how I forgot my bike mount, and the guy there said "let me see the light", which was a Knog Blinder which has a proprietary mount. He returned with a general-purpose velcro strap mount, which gets the job done just fine. $5. Bike World is the best. 

So on to REI, where I got a belt and some energy bars to get me through the long, service-free stretches of desert highway coming up. 

When you get out to where people actually live, prices become normal. Where people actually live is still weird though. Here's what a residential neighborhood looks like:

What we have here is a large city block bounded by major two lane connector roads (with bike lanes)  where the whole block is a giant walled compound. Walls are cinder block, painted to match the mountains in the distance. Inside are densely packed condos and snout houses. Condos sell in the 300s, snout houses in the 400s. There are miles and miles of these walled compounds. Why would anyone want to live in such a place?

Well you could also choose an apartment in a tower that looks just like a casino, I guess. 

Heading back towards downtown, I came upon this piece of work from Frank Gehry.

It's the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.  There is nothing wrong with this building, it's just that your brain is sick.

I picked my route home so I could see more of the historic Fremont Street District in downtown Las Vegas. Ha ha ha.

https://youtu.be/jJmdve7ST7M

Historic Fremont Street is  now "The Fremont Experience", which is two entire city blocks enclosed under a giant video screen showing seizure-inducing graphics as music blasts away. All two blocks are an open air bar. You can also ride a zip line the whole length of it if you want. I wonder if Las Vegas has a Historic Preservation Commission that approved this?

I noticed that the side streets are named after entertainers from the 1950s and 1960s. Who would have thought that the Rat Pack would eventually become this exercise in humility?

I hate Las Vegas.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/17692221989

California Day -1 Riding Around Las Vegas

I spent all day today, until 6:00, inside the Flamingo Hotel at the Airport Noise and Emissions Conference. The conference is very worthwhile. They brought in Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so there was no need to leave. The conference attendees can roughly be divided into these sets:
* Academics, who study noise and pollution from aviation. They hold the conference.
* People who work for airports and carriers, who are responsible for the noise and pollution.
* Consultants, who are looking for work from the people who are responsible for the noise and pollution.
* Community activists, who complain about the noise and pollution.

I am in the community activist group.  There was a networking session just for us yesterday, and we all decided we are each other's people, and we are the only normal people here. We have gardens and raise chickens and ride bikes. I think everyone else is probably Reptilians. Today is probably going to start making me have work nightmares again.

But at 6:00, I'd had enough, and it was time for a bike ride. The sun goes down at 6:30. I wanted to put some air in the tires (which I purposely had at fairly low pressure for their unpressurized plane ride), so I headed east for a bike shop three miles away where I figured I could use a floor pump with an accurate gauge. Unfortunately, they were closed. So I kept on going east a few more miles, and then turned west towards downtown.

I'm out of range of the tourist megacasinos at this point, and the sun is setting behind the mountains, and the billboards are now targeting the needs of the local residents.

It was pretty dark at this point, so I went to put on the headlight, which was stored in my decaleur bag. Only to find I packed the light, but not the mount. This was not so cool, since there was no way I can get back to the Flamingo before it's completely dark. 

I decided the thing to do was to ride the busiest streets possible past as many casinos as possible, and hope that all the casinos would be lit up enough for me to see. 

This plan worked, and riding around Vegas after dark is definitely the way to go.

Las Vegas has a small downtown that predates all the big casinos that were built starting in the 1960s. The big casinos are on "the strip", which is Las Vegas Boulevard south of downtown. The casinos on the strip are huge, impersonal, corporate spectacles.

Downtown is really cool though. It's on a much smaller, human scale. It has so much neon. And it leans hard into the sleaze.

Here is the road entering downtown.

The entrance to the historic Fremont Street pedestrian mall. This is the intersection with Las Vegas Boulevard.

The neon cowboy is about 40 feet tall.

And last but hardly least, the "Heart Attack Grill" where you eat free if you weigh over 350 lbs.

Tomorrow's mission is to go to REI, 10 miles away, put air in the tires, and buy a headlight. Since the conference ends at 3, I should be able to get there and back before dark.

The weather on this bike ride was perfect. It's so comfortable outside.

Here's the Strava Track: https://www.strava.com/activities/17680638828
 

California Day -2 Las Vegas Airport to the Flamingo Hotel

I got to the airport at 6:00 AM to make sure I had plenty of time to get the bike checked and get through screening. This was especially gruesome because daylight savings time started yesterday, so it was really 5:00 AM.

Checking the bike box was an adventure. This used to be so easy. You used to give the Southwest clerk the box, they charge you $50, done.

Now, though, the clerk has never seen a bike in a box before. I explained that it is a bike, and per the Southwest web site, it is "athletic equipment" and as long as it weighs less than $50 and the combined length/width/height of the box is less than 110", I can check it as baggage for an *additional* fee of $75 dollars, on top of the $35 checked bag fee. After searching around on her terminal for the Southwest web site, and using the tape measure, she agreed that I can check the bike as baggage.

The next step was a very long process of figuring out how to enter this exotic, unheard-of situation into her system so I can pay for it. After much consultation with other clerk, I think she just punted and entered it as a regular bag. Baggage was checked, and I had plenty of time to drink some bad coffee at the gate.

And my bike and duffel bag containing my loaded panniers arrive according to plan at Las Vegas.

This is by far the most stressful part of the trip. 
Will my bike arrive? Will it be damaged? Did I forget anything I need to put it back together?  Will the airport be a jerk and not let me put it together?

Everything was fine, here is the bike fully assembled and ready to ride.

When I'm actually out riding, I have everything I need to handle pretty much any situation. Including  camping gear. But when the bike is in the box in the hands of the airline, all bets are off. Who knows what will happen.

I did get some reassurance when I asked the Southwest guy at the baggage claim if anyone would care if I put the bike together right there. "Naw, it's a public space, you can do anything you want." Spoken in what sure sounded like a Wisconsin accent. 

The next adventure was leaving the airport. There is always a side road that will lead you out from the terminal. I thought I found that road but it dumps you out on this, which sure looks to me like an Interstate, even though there are signs that nobody apparently notices that says the speed limit is 35. Right. And this goes through a long dark tunnel UNDER THE AIRPORT for like a mile. In the wrong direction from my destination, which means I have to ride back around the airport on super busy roads. I have not yet seen a bike lane in Las Vegas.

But look what I stumbled upon right next to the airport! Yowza. I miss my GT500 convertible.

No sense in passing up the opportunity to add Nevada to the list of states where I've had pho when that opportunity presents itself. 

And it was very good pho, although there was no tripe.  The top song selection for the cool jazz background music was "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

I am spending the next three days at the UC Davis Airport Noise and Emissions Symposium here at the Flamingo Hotel. I took the early flight so I would arrive in plenty of time for a networking session with other community members fighting airport noise, which happily came with a nice buffet dinner. I am talking on Wednesday morning.

Here is the campground for the next three nights.

 The Flamingo is one of the classic hotels on the Vegas strip. It is nice, but not so fancy anymore. 

The weather was in the upper 70s, sunny, and very low humidity. It was very comfortable riding.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/17665030290/overview

Eastern Shore Ride Day 8 - Georgetown to Cambridge

 The last day of our Eastern Shore adventure was pretty uneventful. We rode back to where Jim's car was parked in Cambridge, through the Land of Industrial Chicken Production. 

This is a Purdue feed mill in Hurlock, MD.

There are vast expanses of flat agricultural fields around here. We rode through them all day, which was especially miserable because there was a strong headwind. And no forests or trees or anything to block the wind and give us a break. It was a 44 mile grind. It took over 5 hours.

We had lunch halfway at a rural market/gas station in Reliance, which is on the Delaware/Maryland state line. We are winning and winning some more with gas station fried chicken this tour.

All in all, this was a really fun and interesting week of bike riding. In eight days, I rode 420 miles.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/16575670598

Eastern Shore Ride Day 7 - Berlin to Georgetown

 It was the easiest ride ever today. Flat, 60 degrees out, strong tailwind, and only 36 miles. Why can't the tailwind be on the 60 mile day and the headwind on the 36 mile day?

We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, stopped for snacks at a gas station, and got in at 3, when Quality Inn check in starts.

This is a really nice and really cheap Quality Inn. It's next to a huge shopping strip with a Walmart and a beer store. There is a Fins Oyster Bar for dinner too. Not scenic, and not glamorous, but way, way cheaper than Berlin.

Berlin was so fun though.

We are in Delaware now, and most of the day was spent riding in Delaware.

Delaware is the same as Maryland when you are away from beach towns. There are lots of stinky chicken houses, and farm fields where they grow food for chickens. And forests in swamps. Today was mostly about the chickens.

One weird thing here is the fields are all planted with radishes.

I've ridden by many fields so planted, and I was puzzled by what was planted, because it sure looked like radishes and I was mystified about why anyone needs so many radishes. Do chickens eat radishes? Today, I pulled one up, and it sure enough was a radish. The picture this app says it's a radish.

So I asked perplexity.ai "Why do farmers in the Delmarva peninsula plant radishes in the fall?" The answer is that it's a cover crop to improve the soil and to take up and stabilize excess nutrients so they don't end up in the bay. The radishes are left in the fields to decay.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/16565698319

Eastern Shore Ride Day 6 - Crisfield to Berlin

 Time to say goodbye to bleak and sad Crisfield. The view over the bay from the condo is amazing though. That's Smith Island in the distance.

Monday morning in Crisfield has even more limited dining options than Sundays, so we made do with the First National Bank of McDonalds.

A crazy person was ranting and raving inside Micky D's, and he struck up a conversation with us about our bike tour. 

Turns out he had a great tip about the ruins of a very old church just off our route, in the tiny but ancient town of Rehobeth, MD.

The church in ruins was built in the 1780s, on the site of an earlier church from the 1680s. I can only imagine what it was like here in the 1600s. There probably wasn't a giant chicken house behind the church then.

Since we are riding back roads as much as possible, the only place for lunch was Pokomoke City, where we chose gas station fried chicken over McDonalds again. 

Turns out the Krispy Krunchy chicken was fantastic, and the sides were made there and fantastic too. This could be the next R&R Taqueria, which also started in a Sunoco station.

There are a surprising number of old churches back in the woods here in the lower Eastern Shore. I think there are almost as many churches as houses.

Today was a long day. It was sunny and nice out, but it was 60 miles with plenty of headwinds. We made it into Berlin right when it was getting dark.

Berlin is quite a nice town. It's just inland from Ocean City, and there are lots of restaurants and a fancy historic hotel. It's a town for romantic getaways for couples with a lot of money. For people like us who are cheap bike tourists, well there are a lot of cheap motels 20 miles farther along the way to the beach with McDonalds next door.

Since the Atlantic Hotel is near brewpubs and breakfast options, we booked two expensive rooms, because this is still the best option. The room is so small the bike barely fits inside.

We had a lot of fun at dinner last night, first at the Berlin Brewing Company two blocks over, then at the hotel bar. At the bar we were sitting next to a couple where the woman was trying to set the guy up with one of her friends. She said she was a turtle and he was a Nittany Lion. Jim said his wife went to Penn State, and I asked her if she had ever been to the 'Vous. Which got her going ("Of course! I was in a sorority practically next door!") and now we are best friends for life, until she had to get a ride home so as to leave her friends she was setting up with no escape. They were still talking when we went up to our rooms.

Here's the Strava track: https://www.strava.com/activities/16556480698