Harcuvar is Mojave for “sweet water” not that I could see any. It used to be a station on the Parker branch of the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe railroad. It’s also known as “Mountain Pass” after the mountain pass truck stop, which used to be very busy when Highway 60 was the main route [...]
In Aguila, which is a mining town, I stopped at a cafe and had the special - a bowl of stew. When you’re hot and thirsty eating hot stew is very odd. So I had a couple of cokes at the same time. This was almost a nothing town and yet it had 3 motels [...]
I kept stopping every couple of miles and limping around and sitting down. Then I assumed that there was a pain barrier and tried going through it but I couldn’t. I grimaced a lot and screamed out loud a fair bit. I simply had to acknowledge that if my leg cannot bend then I can’t [...]
The left leg went after 4 miles. I struggled on for 2, took 2 Tylenol, struggled on, but it got worse and eventually had to stop.
I used several excuses to stop: an ATM to get cash on my VISA card, but it refused adding to my list of concerns; a telephone cheapo job to [...]
Here’s a snap from my Cycle Across America photo album. I haven’t even taken the picture out of the album - so you’re looking at a photo of a photo behind plastic. Anyway, I’m just posting it because it goes with the words from the section of the trip I posted yesterday - a day [...]
The descent to Superior was exhilarating. More so than into New York City.
It was so many factors. The rocks were now orange and elongated into almost column shapes. The slope down was 7% and on the feared shoulderless single lane. I was going from 30 to 37mph. To my side was a wall of [...]
An excerpt from the journal of my 1996 cycle across America.
A serious roly-poly road. Fabulous scenery.
It was at times white gravel, pure white. Other times it was red, other times it was orange, other times it was brown sand. There were lots of yuccas, lots of other plants. I finally got to see my [...]
Yesterday, to deliver a painting, I cycled from the studio into town. 8 miles should be unremarkable but as I’ve yet to collect my repaired wheel I’m riding on a severe buckle caused by 3 broken spokes.
So returning home I opted for a slow photo-cycle away from the usual route of the quays, and zig-zagged [...]
Another XtraCycle photo. Taken in Dublin, Ireland with the Liffey valley in the background - the valley not the shopping centre.
click to enlarge
There’s 20 canvases in that box, each 14 x 11 inches (they came from the US), so you can see that the bike could actually carry 200 canvases without too much effort. [...]
Probably because of how they walk, I’ve always liked rooks.
Sometimes when I’m cycling they’ll be directly on the road in front of me, eating something that even I wouldn’t. As the bike seems about to hit them they opt not to fly swiftly to immediate safety some distance away but instead to just casually [...]
