Aaaaaaalbuquerque

Nick and I both had terrible sleep, despite having nine hours to collect it.  The clock claimed we had ten hours, since it was showing 10:00am, but the train had moved us into Mountain Time overnight.

THE QUOTEABLE NICK, #1

Nick:
“Ugh. I need coffee.”
Me:
“They’re probably serving coffee over in the dining car.”
Nick:
“Yeah but I don’t have any coffee, so I can’t get over there to get it.”

We took our time waking up, poking the internet, and watching the view evolve.

Snow in the highlands!

We put in a lunch order.  Nick discovered that we could also ask for breakfast items even though the window had passed, and he brought us down a tray of food.  I grumbled a lot about how the other passengers were being lax with their mask wearing, and just sitting around with the doors to their cabins open.  “What’s the point of renting a private room with four solid walls to keep viruses out, if you just leave the door open?”

Nick napped for a while, then woke up and snacked some more.  We both stared out the windows.  I worked for a few hours, then just sat there and grooved on the scenery.

Eventually the train arrived in Albuquerque and we unloaded the bikes.  I made some additional adjustments to get them road-ready, and we took off.

Biking out into the city.

It was one long uphill climb to the edge of the city, headed East.  I lamented that I hadn’t filled my tires all the way to 100.  What we saw of the city was not very pretty.  A broad fractured grid of industrial chaos.  Night fell quickly, and with it came surprisingly cold air.

Love that graffiti!
Some cool local architecture.

We got some Vietnamese food at a place three miles from the hotel, opting to eat outside rather than joining the customers within.  The waiter was very accommodating and earned his large tip.  Nick played us music, including Weird Al’s “Albuquerque”.

After that we kept riding East and uphill, to the hotel.  By the time we got there I had a full bladder.  “BOOMER KIDNEYS: ACTIVATE!” I declared, and rushed inside.

Plenty of room for bike bags, huzzah!

We exploded the gear all over the room, then relaxed for a while. Eventually I set out my little LED night-light in search of sleep.

The red LED candle makes things nice and cozy.

Catching the train

I woke up at 7:00am again.  Argh, too early!

I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, so instead I checked in with work.  Darren got ready to go to a school gathering.  I kitted up one of the bikes and rode to a nearby coffee shop, and purchased a big pile of chocolate and an iced mocha.

Back at the house I discovered that Kevin had prepared a frying pan full of breakfast items for me, including an omelet and almost a dozen pieces of bacon.  I transferred it to a bowl and chomped it greedily.

A fine breakfast thanks to Kevin.

Kevin came home.  We talked about politics, which was refreshing for us both, since it was hard for us to find people who weren’t either too sick of the recent elections or too afraid of the possible unrest to engage with it.

I talked about where I lived, directly across from a homeless camp, next to a park with kids and homeless people hanging around in it, and how I didn’t feel fear from them.  To me, the fear seemed to arise from people who weren’t close enough to see the homeless as people.

“There seems to be much more fear here, in Simi Valley, in these suburbs,” I said.  “There’s a whole collection of people here who think they have a lot to lose and that angry Oaklanders want to come take it from them.  Like, go crawling in their windows, and take their television or something!  So they buy guns.  And when protests come, they carry them openly just to be intimidating, or they hide indoors.  And there’s another collection of people, who are afraid of the anger on both sides — between the protestors and that first group.  They sympathize with the protests but they stay indoors anyway because they don’t want to be caught in a crossfire.  The fear is palpable here, on both sides.  I can almost feel it just walking around.  Back where I live, we see the homeless with this really uneasy combination of sympathy and annoyance, but way less fear.  They’re a menace to property, but they’re also victims and evidence of a failed system.  And they’re pathetically vulnerable.  And preyed on by drug pushers.  And the protestors…  We see those totally differently.  Totally.  We’re on another planet back there.”

Boy do I have opinions!  Kevin was graciously accepting of my rant.  We chatted a bit more, and then it was time to pack things up.  I wanted to leave at 2:30 so we had a couple of hours just to hang out at the station.  Something always goes sideways; best to make time for it.

Kevin and Nick helped to load the van.  We had to take the seats off the bikes and turn the handlebars, then stack everything on the panniers to minimize damage to the frames.  It looked really shady but it worked.

We just got on the freeway when we heard an increasing “thumpa tumpa” sound from the side of the van, then a popping noise.  The left rear tire began to lose air quickly.  Kevin got to the side of the freeway and hopped out for an inspection.  It was flat alright.

Not wanting to work on the freeway, we limped the car along to an exit – thankfully only a half mile ahead – and parked in a tiny shopping plaza by the off ramp.  From there we did a two-pronged attack:  Kevin called AAA and arranged for them to come by and look at the tire, and at the same time Nick and I figured out how to get to the spare tire from underneath the car and get instructions on swapping it out.  We used a couple of YouTube videos as a guide.  When we located the spare we discovered it was one of those little donut wheels, so it could get us to the station as long as we went slow.

Unloading gear temporarily while we put the spare tire on the car.

Nick using youtube to figure out where the tools and spare tire are hidden.

The AAA person called back and said they would appear in half an hour.  Meanwhile we loosened the bolts, jacked up the frame, and swapped the wheels.  In 20 minutes we were done, so we loaded all the gear and bikes back into the car and canceled the AAA driver, then carried on to Union Station.  We still had lots of time!  Hooray!

Last goodbyes before the trip!

Kevin drove around behind a building and we piled the gear on an empty patch of sidewalk.  He hugged us and made sure I had my bag of chocolate.  Need those essentials!  As soon as he drove away, Nick and I got out tools and re-assembled the bikes, then anchored all the bags to them.  Even if we needed to undo our work to get the bikes on the train, it was still worth putting them together so we could use them as wheeled transport for all this baggage in the station.  It turned out to be the right move because the first train attendant we talked to said it we could probably just roll the bikes right into a train car, without even removing the bags.  But first we needed luggage tags, so we were shown to a line at a corner of the station.

The line took over half an hour to service two groups, and when we got to the front of it, the clerk told us that the other guy had been too optimistic.  We might not be able to fit the bikes onboard at all.  Nevertheless she gave us two luggage tags, and said, “If you bring those bikes right to the baggage car, there’s a chance they can move stuff around and find room.  But you better hurry, because the train is on time and will probably leave in five minutes.”

We grabbed the bikes and ran with them, threading through a fast-moving crowd, about half a mile down a long tunnel and up a long ramp.  The baggage car was ahead of us, and the door was open.  An attendant gave us permission and we wrestled the bikes into a corner of the car, between mounds of luggage.  Then there was just enough time to extract one bag each from the loaded bikes before we were told to flee all the way down to the other end of the train and dive into it, to get to our room in the sleeper car.

We made it to the room, shut the door, and less than a minute later the train was moving.  That’s when I discovered that I had chosen the wrong bag from my bike, and instead of laundry and snacks, I had a camera and a computer.  Oh well; time to write!

A few minutes later we got a knock on the door, and an official took our dinner orders.  Nick and I set up and relaxed, playing music and poking at the internet, then devoured the meals when they arrived.  We were both instantly tired, so we set up the beds.  It was cramped but way better than trying to doze in a regular train seat, wearing a mask and breathing shallow, with one arm wrapped protectively around a pile of luggage.

Made it safely to the train, with only minutes to spare.
Pretty good meals on this vehicle.
You do not want to see a light lit next to the words TOILET FAILURE.

The day before embarking to Shattuck

I woke early, not quite rested because I didn’t have my sleep apnea jaw insert. I instantly knew that trying to fall back asleep would fail.

Out in the living room, Mom was already at the computer reading political news. Everyone wanted to know just how much chaos was coming between the end of the election and the installation of the new president. Would the old one start a war? Hijack the courts? Or just gripe for a few months about how he couldn’t possibly have lost and then slink away?

I moved gear around in the van and the garage, packing a small suitcase with bike touring items I might add to my main pile in Simi Valley. With the van squared away, I handed the keys to Mom, and she placed them in her desk.

Dane enjoys masks.

Dane in thee olde countree.

My nephew Darren woke up, and we assembled the laptop in the living room and played Castlevania IV with a tiny little USB game controller. Not a flashy game, but decently fun after all these years. Mom returned from her doctor appointment and fixed all of us “the special Darren omelet”, which was a well-cooked pile of eggs with bell peppers and cheese, plus toast.  We ate around the table and then I told my nephew it was time for me to visit with grandma again.

Mom and I sat in the back yard and caught up, talking about houses and cohabitation.  I was feeling optimistic about my current relationship. I was also acutely aware of how much experience I had, and how it changed my behavior. I talked about how much more connected to Berkeley I felt than to other places in the country, or even the rest of the Bay Area.  Mom hunkered over my phone and poked the map, and showed me where she lived as a kid in Berkeley. We used the street view feature to explore a walking path near her house. Modern maps are astonishing.

Soon it was time to pack up and go.  We loaded everything into the trunk of Mom’s car and drove to the station.  I took a roundabout way there, getting lost, just like I had last time. At the station Darren and I contemplated getting french fries – not because we were hungry but because there was a fast food kiosk right there at the depot – but there wasn’t time.  We saw a homeless weirdo walking around, with a mask pulled down below his chin, muttering to himself.

The train arrived a few minutes later and we dashed onboard, walking through several cars to find seats.  Along the way we passed through a car with the homeless weirdo in it, flanked by two train attendants who were telling him to show his ticket or get off the train. He kept yelling, “This ain’t your train! You can’t tell me where to sit!” over and over.

We sat in our seats for almost half an hour and the train didn’t move.  Eventually a woman announced on the PA that they were waiting for the police to arrive because a man on the train was refusing to get off. 15 minutes later the train started, and when it reached the next station my nephew and I saw three police officers manhandle the homeless guy – flailing and screaming – down the aisle of our car and outside the train to the platform.  A few minutes later we were moving again.

Darren and I busted out the laptop and did some silly photoshop stuff, grafting his older brother’s head onto various Smash Brothers characters.  Then we opened the game emulator again and played Actraiser for two hours, building up several cities and fighting boss monsters. Like Castlevania IV, the game had aged pretty well.

Playing Actraiser with Dane.

We arrived in Simi Valley almost two hours late. We got a ride to my sister’s house and immediately sat down to dinner — a delicious beef stew she had been cooking.  We passed the gratitude candle around and I talked about how grateful I was that we all had the resources to weather this COVID storm without real hardship.

For many hours after dinner, I took over the living room and turned it into a giant staging area for collecting and packing equipment, making very sure I didn’t lose anything or include anything I didn’t want.  I packed the bike bags and stacked them by the door, then told Nick he could use any of whatever I’d left out.

Organizing a lot of stuff.
Zeke the cat enjoys gear.
Zeke the cat enjoys sitting on gear.
Zeke the cat attacking a face mask.
Zeke the cat likes bike seats. All cats like bike seats!

Then there was nothing more to prepare. I retired upstairs to sleep, thinking about how I hadn’t shared a bike tour with anyone in five years, and how interesting it was going to be spending some time with my eldest nephew Nick.

Albuqueque to Shattuck: Why?

My nephew Nick and I had plans to go riding around Denmark and Norway this year, but of course, COVID-19 swept that off the table. The very idea of boarding a long-haul flight seemed crazy, even if all the flights hadn’t been canceled.

During the summer I felt stir-crazy and took a bike trip across Nevada, which went well. I was outside in hot, clean air almost all the time, far from other people, with UV radiation blasting around me. It was restorative and felt reasonably safe. But I didn’t have Nick with me, and I still wanted us to share a bike trip together.

Then in October I visited my father, and we went through a bunch of old photos, including some he took in Oklahoma when he visited the family farm over 30 years ago. The land has long since been sold, and all my extended family members moved on to other places, and my Dad no longer remembered where it was, except that it was just a few miles outside the town of Shattuck, probably to the north-west. We brought up Google Earth and scrolled around there, and used “street view” in the browser, and found some old survey maps and traced all over those trying to match the contours of the land with his photos, but could make no progress.

An old topographical map showing Pony Creek near Shattuck

The whole thing made me very curious. If I went to Shattuck, could I find someone who remembered the farm? Even if I couldn’t, could I get a feel for the land as my pioneer ancestors had known it? Nothing gives a better feel for large chunks of land in a relatively short time than a bicycle tour. Maybe this could be a trip that Nick and I take together?

Using the Reno plan as a template, I came up with a route that started and ended at major Amtrak stations and passed through Shattuck:

Mostly downhill, and with the wind mostly behind us.

I pitched the idea to Nick and he was for it. We already had the hardware prepared, thanks to the canceled Denmark trip. All I had to do was drive my bike south to his, so we could board the train in Los Angeles.

Time for adventure!

Comparing Garmin GPS Trackers

I don’t know why it’s so hard to get all this information in one chart, including the relative physical sizes of the trackers, but here it is:

  Garmin 1030 PlusGarmin  1030Garmin ExploreGarmin 830Garmin 530Garmin 130 PlusGarmin  130
Price 599 499 249 399 299 199 169
Dimensions (mm)114x58x19114x58x19105x55x22  82x50x20 82x50x20 63x41x16 63x41x16
Weight (grams) 124 123  116  79.1  75.8 33 33 
Touchscreen YYYYNNN
Screen Size (Diagonal, in.)3.53.532.62.61.81.8
Resolution282×470282×470240 x 400246 x 322246 x 322303×230303×230
Color Display YYYYYNN
Battery Life (Hours) ~24~20~12~20~20 ~12~15
Can Import Maps YYYYYNN
Has Base Maps YYYYYNN
Storage 32 GB16 GB + microSD16 GB + microSD16 GB16 GBn/an/a
Waypoints/favorites/locations 200200200200200?100
Routes 100 100 100 100 100 30 15
Activity History (Hours) 200 200 200 200 200 100 100 
GPS  Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
GLONASS Y Y N Y Y Y Y
GALILEO Y Y N Y Y Y Y
Barometric Altimeter Y Y N Y Y Y Y
Accelerometer Y Y Y Y Y N N
Wireless Connectability ANT+, Bluetooth, Wi-fiANT+, Bluetooth, Wi-fiANT+, BluetoothANT+, Bluetooth, BLE, Wi-fiANT+, Bluetooth, Wi-fiANT+, BluetoothANT+, Bluetooth 
VIRB® Control Y Y N Y Y N  N
Calories Burned Calculation Y Y N Y Y Y  N
Interval Training Y Y N Y Y N N
Advanced Training Sessions Y Y N Y Y Y N
Estimation Of O2 Consumption Y Y N Y Y Y Y
Aerobic Training Y Y N Y Y N N
Virtual Partner Y Y N Y Y Y Y (On a path)
Virtual Racer™ Y Y N Y Y Y N
Time/Distance Alerts Y Y Y Y Y ? Y
Garmin Cycle Map (turn-by-turn, directions) Y Y N YYNN
Works With Power MetersYYNYYYY
Smart Trainer Control YYn/aYYYn/a

My own choice among these remains the same as it was several years ago. I went from the Edge 500 over to the Edge 130 and have stayed there.

  • It’s just as accurate of a time/location/distance recorder as all the others.
  • It weighs less than half of the 530.
  • It can be seen in all weather conditions, including pitch black.
  • It can be operated even while wearing thick gloves.
  • The battery lasts 15 hours.
  • The power consumption is so tiny I can fully charge it from the generator in my hub by riding for less than half an hour.

The only downside for me is that I can’t upload offline maps to it (though I can upload my own pre-made routes).