The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas .
A close-up of the building. Brain Health, huh?
En route to Barstow I determined that I was more likely to be able to hitchhike out of Las Vegas than Barstow so an extra $20 to the driver landed me in Las Vegas at 9 pm. I found a cheap room, and headed out toward Boulder City and Hoover Dam, figuring that I could easily catch a good ride when traffic was moving slowly across the old dam. Right.
I rode up a long, gentle hill out of Las Vegas to Boulder City, the town created to build Hoover Dam in the 1930s. At a bike shop there where I stopped for guidance, I learned that a newish bridge bypassed the dam, bikes weren’t allowed on it, and the climb out of the canyon was 2,000 feet. I found a decent hitching spot and gave it my best, but after several hours it became increasingly clear that a ride was highly unlikely: all the traffic was local, or semis, or jacked-up macho pickups (often pulling jacked-up macho power boats) or little rental cars. I was pretty discouraged, and eventually gave up and headed back to Vegas. I figured my best (and last) hope was a bus from there to New Mexico, hitching be damned.
Fifty-six miles of riding this day and I ended up right where I started. I stopped at the Greyhound station, where I learned that indeed, any bike must be boxed to be carried on the bus, and yes, they sell bike boxes at the station, and no, they had run out and had none. I stayed the night at the Las Vegas Hostel, heading out in the morning to locate a bike box. Of course, the catch-22 is that the only way to carry a bike box is by bike, but I was able to strap the large box to the trailer and return it to the station, leaving it for later use and purchasing my $125 ticket. (I got the 5% senior discount only after showing my ID to the agent who didn’t think I was old enough to qualify as an Old Fart.)
The Bellagio fountain on the new strip
A roughly 80 kW PV array in front of the new Las Vegas City Hall.
Yes, everything is a bit askew, much like the city.
I wandered the downtown and the strip for the afternoon, limited to riding, as Las Vegas isn’t a town in which to leave a fully-loaded bicycle locked up in public. To me, the highlight was Cleveland Clinic Event Center designed by architect Frank Gehry, known for his wacky and creative buildings. I’d like to know where he gets his acid.
Kiss, I giss, on the old-town “Fremont Street Experience”
Your intrepid blogger after three-plus months of riding ready to return home.
I returned to the bus station at 6:30 pm, disassembled the bike and trailer and made two neat, heavy parcels. The bus left at 8:30, with a transfer in Flagstaff at 2:20 am and arrival in Gallup, New Mexico at 6 am. I’m now writing this in a wifi coffeehouse in Gallup, having had little sleep. But I’m in my home state, with about 200 miles left to ride. I could have ridden the dog into Albuquerque, but wanted to complete this last stretch across Nuevo Mexico.