Blown Back to Ely
A show that I watched back at the hotel in Ely on Telemundo
Ely, NV: Today I got blown out—literally—before I could reach my next destination: the Border Inn Casino.
I hit the road and made a solid attempt, but the headwinds were gusting over 30 MPH. I knew it was going to be bad when I actually got hit by a tumbleweed. That’s not a metaphor. A literal tumbleweed. If it were a lot bigger, I was in my bathing suit, and it was moving even faster, I could have been hurt. The following video is me babbling about the wind and Clint Eastwood movies.
This next stretch is really hilly, and I need every advantage I can get to make it in a single charge. As I pushed forward, I watched my battery percentage drop like a rock as I rode straight into the wind.
One silver lining: I’ve learned that seated riding makes a huge difference in gusty, swirling winds. If it weren’t for the neighbor kid, Asher, down the street—who I loaned an old unicycle to—I might never have learned. He showed up at my house weeks ago, fully geared up, and rode into my driveway seated.
He looked up at me and asked, “Do you know how to ride seated?”
Embarrassingly, I said, “No.”
Shamed by a 10-year-old, I learned. And I’m glad I did. The winds I’ve faced on this trip—and the need to eke out range on longer segments—would’ve stopped me without that skill. I’m just glad I can’t see what I look like doing it.
Yesterday, I ran into a crew of British people hanging out in front of the hotel I’m staying at. Turns out, they’re filming a Discovery Channel reality show about gold miners. I had seen them the night before at The Prospector restaurant—where they seemed amused by the giant margaritas with inverted beer bottles sticking out of them. One of them asked me what I was doing on a unicycle. I told him. He said, “Oh.”
Tomorrow, I’ll make a second attempt to reach Border Inn. I need to get over the pass before bad weather hits tomorrow night, and I’ve got to get to lower elevations. Snow is scheduled to be on the pass if I have to wait another day.
Tomorrows route: A little bit of grade
I got a text from my childhood friend, Kurt. We met when we were three and have probably interacted weekly for the past 55 years. If there’s a dumb idea or half-baked adventure out there, we’ve done it. Like that time in high school when we tried to build our own towed parasail ride by buying a surplus parachute and attempting to launch from behind my mom’s Wagoneer. We actually got airborne. We didn’t get arrested. We didn’t get hurt. I call that a win. Or the time we tried to build DIY scuba gear from stolen fire extinguishers. Didn’t work. But we still dive together today, and that experiment always comes up.
His text today was a video—just his head poking out of a sailboat hatch in rough seas somewhere in the Mediterranean. Heavy wind. Heavy swells. No narration. Just one solid minute of him looking very unhappy and completely silent. It scared the hell out of me. It seemed like the last video he would ever send. Unlike Kurt, if you ever send a last video, say something. silence is overly dramatic.
From the cryptic text, I learned he and the knuckleheads he’s sailing with had been in heavy seas for over 26 hours. It was rough. Really rough.
Boy, what if that was our last text interaction?
As I cruised back through the headwinds toward the Holiday Inn Express, where I could regroup with room-temp air and basic cable, I thought about people who do real adventures—the kind where you can’t just turn around and go back.
I was relieved to get a follow-up text saying he was alright.
I think he was faking it.
Now that I know he’s fine, I’m worried I may have shown too much concern in my earlier text response to his video. I don’t want him to think I’ve gotten soft.