The Ride Report

Today is my birthday but I’m not much in the birthday mood, so I decided to celebrate by going for a solo ride. I’ve been wanting to ride through Death Valley for awhile now, but I never can seem to find the right time to do it. Today looked like the day — I’m off work for the next two days, I’m grouchy and anti-social so it’d be doing my friends and family a favor to go off by myself, Death Valley has cooled off enough to where I won’t get completely baked… I decided there’s no time like the present, and what better way to celebrate a birthday than to spend it facing Death?

Here’s the route I planned: Ride northeast to Baker and enter Death Valley from the southern end, ride up past Badwater to Furnace Creek, exit the west side of the park, cut through the pass to Owens Lake and Lone Pine, then ride 395 south to home. 620 miles and almost 13 hours in the saddle, according to Google Maps. Check it out:

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Nice route, eh? I wish I’d done it.

My plan fell apart early. I intended to do it all in one shot, in a single day, and that meant getting an early start. I was going to get up at 6:00 and be on the road by 7:00 … but everyone knows you get to sleep in on your birthday, right? So I didn’t get up until 8:30. And then I screwed around for awhile taking care of some really important tasks, like watching TV and checking my email, so I didn’t get on the road until noon.

I headed east on the 210 and started doing the math as I moved. With my late start I wasn’t going to get to Badwater until at least 5:30, and that was without making any stops for pictures or piss breaks along the way. That would be right around sunset, and I didn’t really want to be traipsing around in the desert at dusk, or riding through the mountains on my way out after dark. And even if I did, I wouldn’t get home until around midnight and I’d spend half the trip in the dark, and I had brought my camera intending to take pictures. Plus which, the further I got from home, the more I realized that as cranky as I’m feeling today, I still wanted to see my daughter and hear her wish me happy birthday.

So I settled on La Verne. That’s where I decided to bag Death Valley, got off the freeway, found a movie theater, slept through Body of Lies, and then rolled for home again. The real totals? About 83 miles and an hour and a half on the road. Here’s the actual route:

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Granted, it’s not nearly as adventurous or picturesque as the first route, but this one ended with dinner with my wife and daughter. That’s pretty cool too.