TPT in a Day
When the TPT was celebrating its first section of trail (between Mogul and Verdi), I was living in Truckee (the community of Glenshire) and bicycle commuting to downtown Reno. After meeting Janet Phillips, I was determined to ride the entire route in one day, and on February 6, 2002, after a false start, I did just that.
The false start involved pain and tequila. A friend, Chris Riche, wanted to do the ride so the last week of January we set off. It was a particularly dry winter so snow wasn’t a concern, but it was very cold. Chris was the founder of the Discovery Museum, having taken off a couple of years to do something epic in the community. I met Janet Phillips (then Janet Carson) about the same time. As President/CEO at the Community Foundation, many people that were setting up new nonprofits sought our start-up advice and help with early funding. Chris and I had ridden together many times but he was nursing a knee injury and as we reached Verdi, he was done. Fortunately, the store there had some tequila (for medicinal purposes), and we soothed sore muscles while awaiting a rescue pick-up ride.
So at 5 a.m. on February 6th, I once again started my ride, leaving my car at Tahoe City and heading out, fully wrapped in fleece. Back then, photos were taken with my trusty Eastman Kodak DX4330 Digital Camera and so about every hour, I stopped for a picture. I had told Janet of my plans, and she was most interested in the attempt. She did ask that I not ride through the ranches on the old river road between Sparks and Waltham Way as she was working with Storey County to try and obtain permission to use the old road for the TPT route.
By 6 a.m., I was passing through Truckee, still freezing cold, and then used Glenshire Drive to get to Old Highway 40. None of the trails in place now were there back then, so the ride was on many adjacent roads through this section. I used a hardtail mountain bike with higher than usual tire pressure. That made it dicey as I had to follow the railroad including riding on loose railroad ballast for several sections. There are two railroad bridges to cross as well as one underpass and I had to carry the bike across the tracks several times.
By 7 a.m., I was on a section of Old Highway 40 that is on the south side of the river and not part of the trail now. That spot is pretty close to the huge Andreasson log cabin that can be seen from I-80.
I wouldn’t call it bushwacking, and I knew the route well from commuting to Reno for a couple of years, so I was able to hit Fleish Bridge by 8 a.m., just three hours into the ride. As I reached Verdi, I shed my layers and stashed clothing to pick up later. I stopped at the little store in Verdi for some sustenance, then reached the dedication rock at the first TPT section of trail between Mogul and Verdi by 9 a.m.
Then I got a very unpleasant surprise. As I was going through the railroad underpass at the west end of Mayberry, I got a flat tire. It seemed like a slow leak so I decided to air it up and take my chances getting to College Cyclery on Virginia Street before they opened at 10 a.m. I arrived at about 9:45 a.m., and a few minutes later Randy Collins (owner and TPT Board Secretary) quickly repaired the tire for me. I don’t think I had met Randy before but we were both big fans of Janet and he got me on my way, gratis.
I always think of Reno as halfway between Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, so I was pretty psyched as I headed out through Sparks and then rode down the onramp with the trucks and cars onto the Interstate. A quick side note: most anyone who rides knows that there tend to be strong winds out of the west as you ride through Reno, and I was hoping for big tailwinds combined with trucks making the section from Sparks to Wadsworth super fast.
But this was the one day when there was a pretty big headwind out of the east blowing right into my face. I was actually very happy with the number of trucks and as they passed, I’d swing out (just a bit) to try and catch the draft behind them. Thus, I was able to get to Derby Dam by noon, and then meet a TPT volunteer (although I can’t remember his name) at the Wadsworth store.
Janet had connected me with him and he was my guide through the reservation trail, which I had never ridden. This last section was a piece of cake, and we got lucky as it had just rained and there was a hard dry layer to ride on through the sandy sections. For me it was all about finishing as fast as possible, to set some kind of record. We reached Pyramid Lake just after 3 p.m., achieving a 10-hour ride including stops.
After getting picked up and retrieving my clothes in Verdi, I don’t remember much other than that deep soreness and stiffness and euphoric sense of accomplishment that many of us know from our cycling and hiking deeds. No tequila needed today!
I gave the hourly pictures to Janet and she would sometimes mention at TPT gatherings that I had ridden the entire route. She and I started working more closely together around 2004 when Janet was recruited to Chair the Truckee River Fund, administered by the Community Foundation, and I started to volunteer helping her with non-profit administrative matters as well as fundraising.
As a final note, I do hope to do the entire ride again on my mountain bike, this time on the official full-length TPT, and will do so once we get the final two sections completed. But I won’t try to break the record!
~ Chris Askin, Chair of the TPT Board
