The Big Move

So I had spent the early part of the season working 30hrs a week at Ooyala, a Silicon Valley startup that provides and end to end solution for managing online video. The job was fantastic and the people who work there are wonderful. They were incredibly accommodating and let me build my schedule around my training and racing, but I felt a little like I was trapped between two worlds and not getting the most out of either. I couldn't work full time because of the racing, and I couldn't train full time because of the work.

It was a tough choice to make, but when it came down to it I let my romanticism get the best of me and decided to go for it.  You can phrase it however you want: "You only live once. You've got the rest of your life to wear a suit. What if you died tomorrow?" and so forth and so on. The fact of the matter is I love riding and racing my bike and there's nothing I'd rather be doing. If I have the audacity to dream of doing that professionally, and the means to chase that dream then dammit, thats what I'm gonna do.

I don't consider myself an impulsive person, but I made this decision in the course of 24 hours and no more than a week later I had my trusty Subaru loaded up with all my worldly possessions and I was on the road. The plan was to live with my sis and her 3 wonderful roommates for the month of May and then strike out for some serious racing in June, July and August. What follows is an account of my somewhat epic and less than ideal trip from the Bay Area to Denver. I should mention that I couldn't help but race the Cat's Hill Classic (one of my favorites) two days before I left and instead of the dreamed of victory I left with some very interesting road rash. I warn you, this is a long post:

"My car officially broke down twice, but I had to pull over due to overheating about 10 times. It all started when I hit Donner Pass sometime around 12:30am. The car overheated like crazy and I had to roll to the side of the road. I had a good laugh to myself about how the flashlight was packed in the middle of the car, totally inaccessible, but luckily I had another in the glove box. The radiator had totally boiled over and although I added some antifreeze and let it chill out I still only made it another 2 miles or so before it overheated again. So I slept for 40 minutes and then made it another 2 miles and so forth and so on until 7:30 when i made it over the summit and cruised into Reno.

Its hard to convey just how wonderful it was to sleep in fits and starts sitting up cramped in my vehicle, with oozing wounds all over my body. delightful.

I had a hotel room booked for the night before, and although they were slightly dismayed that I was checking in at 8am they let it slide. I grabbed some Denny's take out (delicious) and took a soothing shower. Did I say soothing? I meant excruciating. After redressing the wounds i passed out for 2 hours and then set out to see about the car.

I got referred to A-1 Radiator, where they informed that I would require a whole new radiator. Awesome. I told them that the car only had to get to Denver and then it need never drive again, and he assured me that if I wanted to see Denver in the next month I needed the whole shebang. Pricetag: $600. Sweet. I really want to be doing six hundred dollars worth of work on a car with 190,000 miles. To their credit they finished the work by that afternoon and I was off and running.

The plan was to make it to SLC that night and then crush the rest of the drive the next day and get into Denver in time to take an afternoon spin and drink a marg for Cinco de Mayo. So you can imagine my dismay when the engine overheated yet again 11 miles the wrong side of Wendover, NV. In my anger I may have laid some curses on the mechanics of A-1 Radiator that I am embarrassed to put to writing. I have never felt like such a shill.

So after a delightful tow truck ride into Wendover at 2am I landed at the America's Value Inn. It was not exaclty a picture of glitz and finery, but looked slightly more peaceful than the Red Garter, which was the option next door.

A few words about Wendover: Wendover is a casino border town, which means that it exists solely so that sinners from Utah can come get their jollies without being persecuted. It has one street, peppered with casinos and liquour stores, and it is surrounded on all sides by unforgiving desert. Such a place should not support human life, and yet it does. Apparently the entire permanent population is made up of people from California who landed there for a night or two and never made it out. This was the case for the tow driver (from Eureka, living in Wendover for 13 years) and the mechanic (from Arcata, 7 years into his Wendover residency). Wendover is like Jackpot, but not as nice.

I left my keys with Brad the mechanic and then rode from one end of town to the other in search of vittles. The best I could find was a Subway, unfortunately despite the ubiquitous and infuriating national advertising campaign they had no such thing as a Five Dollar Footlong. Highlight from lunch: I spilled my iced tea all over my crotch.

I did find a starbucks inside a casino, and the barrista assured me that training at altitude would surely transform me into a ProTour rider. I also gambled, because honestly what the hell else is there to do? However, I decided that i did not want to end up a permanent resident, so I limited my wager to one dollar. I'm proud to announce that I turned that dollar into a dollar AND a quarter. It may not sound like much, but thats a far sight better than the stock market and a clear sign that despite being covered in road rash and stranded in Wendover I am an exceedingly lucky individual. Boom.

Brad was a nice guy, and he told me that the radiator really had nothing to do with the overheating, but that it was instead caused by bad wiring. This meant that the car was pulling a huge load on only 2 of 4 cylindars. Thats like bike racing with a backpack on and pedaling with one leg. I would overheat too. He didn't have the wires, but he knew they would in SLC. He said I could keep it from overheating by driving slowly and delicately and running the heater full blast. "Ahh yeah! Its like havin' a second radiator!". So, armed with 2 gallons of antifreeze and a sense of dread I headed off.

Driving through the desert with the heater going full blast is just about as awesome as it sounds.

I got to SLC and headed for the Subaru dealer. Mitch was the guy who helped me out. I was pretty excited to have a specialist looking at the car, and I was heartened by the fact that wiring should be less than a hundred bucks to replace. He listened to my story, took one look under the hood, shook his head and delivered five crushing words, "Bad wiring won't cause overheating." 

Turns out the car had a blown head gasket. Prognosis: grim. $1200 - $2000 to fix and 4 days of work. Clearly out of the question. I asked if it was even possible to make it to Denver in such a busted machine and he sighed, shook his head with a look of pity, and said maybe. He was a kind man. He wished me luck, gave me a few more tips on how to keep my engine from exploding, and didn't charge me a dime for pronouncing my car dead.

What should have been a 7 hour drive took me about 10 hours. I had to baby the car with the utmost care: running the heater full blast non-stop, keeping a constant eye on the temp gauge and downshifting on any rise in the road, sometimes doing no more than 35 on the freeway. I made it a good 3 and a half hours before it overheated. Then again 2 hours later in Laramie, and an hour later in Fort Collins. I guess I should mention that when I say it overheated in these towns, what I really mean is that it overheated near these towns, never close enough to get to a restaurant, which was a service I desperately desired having had nothing more substantive that popcorn and Milk Duds since the Subway that morning. Alas, no such luck.

When I overheated on the side of the freeway past fort Collins I was only 40 miles from my sisters house, but I had to sit for 20 minutes letting the engine cool down. Then, sure enough it blew up again less than 20 miles down the road. Such agony. I was really beginning to lose it. To be so close and have it all start coming apart was almost too much to handle. So I said screw it, and after 10 minutes started her up and cruised along the freeway at 45 MPH (or less depending on the terrain) giving the car just enough gas to keep rolling forward. I should say that the last 2 hours or so I had a terrible compilation of punk songs on repeat at full volume to keep me present. I must have been a sight. An unshaven, deranged man in bloody PJs slow-rolling down the freeway in a subaru busting with all my worldly possessions and blasting terrible punk from the 90s at a deafening volume.

I finally arrived at 1:30am wearing the same clothes I'd set out in two days prior, with my armpit road rash having fused my arm and torso together, and smelling like I'd been traveling in a heated dumpster for 58 hours (which is pretty accurate).

I am happy to report, however, that so far the trip has been well worth it. My living situation could not be better (I love my sister to death and her/my roomies are a kick in the pants), the weather has been incredible and the riding is world class. I'm a mountain man at heart and I hadn't realized how much I'd missed this land until I returned.