Time? Auburn Old Town Pizza Parlor. About ½ mile from
Auburn Bike Works. I am famished; time to fuel up for the last leg of the journey as I expect it will be another
50 miles. My charge is very low – so lots of pedaling will be expected. My lips feel sunburnt. I hit the bathroom to wash my faces and arms from the sweat and grit. Partly clean, I ordered a small Auburn Aloha Pizza: Canadian bacon, pineapple, and cashews, with large water and large apple juice.
So far I have only pee’d twice today, but seems like I have drank over two gallons of water. Pizza arrives; looks great, scarf down about 3/4s of it, kill the water and the juice. Time to go!
Map: Evening leg of the journey, from Auburn to Sacramento
7:20 PM – Leavin’ Auburn. 405.4 mi, 55.9V, 195.9 Ah. It is near sunset and cooling off, my old nemesis wind is picking up.
This last segment of the ride was by far the most challenging to my spirit more so than it was to my body. I was prepared to accept the heat which is why I worked hard like a dog during the day at the family farm swinging the pickaxe so that I could tell when the onset of dehydration would occur. However I was not prepared to ride in the dark! Now the race was on, to beat the sun down the hill, to conserve power, to push hard - onward using grit and adrenaline – because that’s all I had left to count on.
Leaving Auburn with low volts, I nursed the bike down to Folsom (city) on the Auburn-Folsom Rd down near the American River crossing just below Greenback Lane, near Old Town. A cyclist heading opposite helped me find the American River Bike Trail.
PDF Map of the American River Bike Trail Another Map of the American River Bike TrailI took this all the way to Hazel Ave where heavy construction blocked passage.
Feeling screwed, I rode north on Hazel up to Winding Way and turned west. After about a mile of this twisty road I pulled off as the final light of day diminished. Using electrical tape I mounted my old bike light previously relegated to flashlight ‘cuz the batts were so weak. But I knew this wouldn’t be enough: My sister gave me a bright LED light that is typically mounted on a ballcap visor; it’s kind of a gag gift if you ask me, but in the dark it frees a hand if you’re trying to read a map or fix something under the hood. Well… this little LED light just became my main Headlight, and I clipped it onto my helmet
Right. So now with a total of 5 candle-power emitting something like a ¼ watt; at least the drivers can see me coming even if I can’t see squat, though I suppose it’s better than a poke in the eye, or two. Now the sun is completely down, and we are past dusk too. I finished following Winding Way up to Fair Oaks and Sunrise Blvd.
American River Bike Trail - 1st Detour
Completely lost, I asked a guy at a gas station for directions back to the bike path …or if he knew of a faster way to downtown: He says the bike path is the safest and fastest way to downtown, and that I need to take Sunrise south across the bridge to pick up the bike trail again. In doing so I feel quite buggered.
What am I doing heading SOUTH??? I need to go WEST!!! As soon as I get across the river I see a sign on the other side of the boulevard that says “
river accessâ€Â, so I cross over at the next light and head back north taking the turnoff to the park. As it just so happened a man was chaining up the access to the parking lot; I explained my plight, so he asked me to follow him to the office where he gave me a partial map of the River Trail, and instructs me that I had to take a dirt road down to it. Weary, I am just a little hesitant of dirt roads… but I do so… and immediately got lost.
Bugger me! I see two headlights moving away so I race in the dark to catch them and ask for help. It was a couple that I had passed earlier: The guy sets me straight, points me correctly, but tells me that I have about
20 miles or more to go to get to Discovery Park. And as an afterthought he adds: “
Watch out for the homeless peopleâ€Â.
Frack! 
The map that I have only has 6 miles of path, up to where the trail crosses over on a bridge from the south to the north side of the river.
I’ll have to Braille this. 
Alone, allow me describe what I see: It’s
Pitch Black, like the movie. No moon, but I do have
Venus laughing down at me. The ambient glow of the city provides enough contrast that I can distinguish shadow and nothing more. The grass in the park is dry-blond in color during daylight, so there is a slight contrast between the curving paved trail bisected by a washed-out yellow centerline. Between the two piss-poor lights I can dimly see the first 15-20 feet in front of me well enough, but the rest is all by the mask of light pollution. Hey, at least I can see the horizon,
what could be worse?Oh, but there’s more: It turns out the worst part of all is that there are rabbits frozen right beside the path, and then they bolt
RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE WHEEL, micro-inches from death, mine I believe, and when this wasn’t jumping out in front of me I had deer and skunks doing the same. In this darkness, I couldn’t go very fast. It was however for the most part level ground and I pulsed through it, curve after curve, dodging tree limbs, swerving to get back onto the path, and damn near
sightless. The old rear hub would have failed me here.
At some point after I had traveled unknown miles, daring not to look at the CA in that it might blind my vision, I stopped a cyclist going the other way and asked for directions. First thing he said was “
Wow get a load of those tail lights! Man where did you get those?†And he just wouldn’t shut up… On and on bleating way… presumption after presumption… I had to stop him and said “
Look, I just want to know how much farther do I need to go to get to the capitol?†So he goes on “
Well, it’s maybe two bridges, no – it’s three bridges, but then look left and the trail will go left, but maybe that’s after the second bridge, but you want to look right, then go left, and…†This is the way this guy babbled for the next five minutes. <sigh, shake head> Bored, I reached down and began opening my daypack… slowly – and I could tell he was eyeballing my every move, nervously. As I reached deeply into my day pack, his chatter went
higher and higher in pitch. This was a very curious feeling for me, but then I found what I was looking for and I pulled it out… slowly… deliberately… in the darkness of the light, my light, and in the full brightness of his – I unscrewed the cap and drained the entire bottle of water, gulp, gulp, gulp. I put the bottle away, cocked my head and looked in his direction expecting a simple answer to my question when he says “
Oh, and there’s a guy sitting on a bench beneath the 2nd bridge; don’t bother asking him for directions as he has Alzheimer’s… or maybe it’s the third bridge, no… it’s the second bridge. Hey didn’t I meet you last week… blah blah blahâ€Â. That’s when I asked what time it was and he told me
10:20 PM. “
Shit†I says, “
So how far is it?!?†He says “
Oh maybe 10 miles, maybe less… maybe 7 miles…†And I could tell he was just winding up to get started all over again: I left this chatterbox to entertain himself. Weird!
Map: American River Bike Trail - 2nd Detour
Chatterbox was actually a little east of where I have it on the map.
Checking, CA says the batts have
52 volts: I pour it on, darkness or not, I need to get the hell out of this place pronto! Throttle on as much as I dare, I cruised about 5 miles before finding a trailside map without a mileage legend; WTF? At least the visor light was useful. I memorized what I saw, including the landmarks and signage.
Chatterbox was wrong: I had passed two bridges already and had another three or four to go. Motor-on.
Then suddenly, underneath the second bridge I came across a guy standing still in the dark slightly off trail who did not acknowledge my passage; he just stood there facing the wall – stone stiff – like, like a
Z_O_M_B_I_E !
Must be the Alzheimer’s guy: Freaky weird, more throttle! Then I saw another guy walking along the side of the path clad in dark clothes; man I just can’t pick these people out until I’m almost right on top of them. Then rustling off to the right; was that another person? I humor myself that it’s
The Night of the Living Dead: They can’t catch me if I keep that throttle going!
Very soon I figured out that I was in
Discovery Park, home for the homeless, and that I was very close to the end. Then the trail took a turn to the right, then right again, up and more right – I was coming out from the basin when
boom – there it was – the bridge to the other side.
Some homeless gal spoke to me as I passed by but it was foreign tongue; don’t stop - I kept going across the bridge, to bright lights, motels, freeways, cars, and trucks…
(sounds like an Eagle's song)And there I was: At I-5 and Richard’s Road. Boy it has been years since I saw this intersection up close and personal. About 35 years before I had this old beater car; my brother and I had been driving back from who knows what when we had broke down here. Must have waited ½ day in the harsh heat for my Pa to bring a trailer and haul our sorry butts home. Boy has it changed, no longer a scary place; all nice and spiffy. I pull over to the Chevron station and ask for directions and they are not clear at all; I end up going about ½ mile farther down the road before I found someone else to boot me over to another street. Drove over to some City road engineers and they said I was two blocks away.
That’s when the bike lost power. I pedal the last block – up the ramp and straight into the station, and parked it right in front of the ticket line.
11:10 PM – Arrived at Sacramento Amtrak Station, 458.0 mi, 42.1V, 210.3 Ah. Total mileage for this day was 173.3 miles.
I was absolutely astounded that I had potentially made it in time. <Yes, yes – ye of little faith…>
Went directly to the Ticket Counter and pleaded my case, and graciously asked not to be turned away (ala Seattle). Upon hearing how far I had traveled, the nice gals made haste to get me on the train, double-doting to be sure. I was shy of serious concern, but those ladies did a fine job, and I never heard boo about the weight of my bike.
All aboard: The train was ½ hour late; we left the station at 12:35 AM.
Next, the Train ride back to Seattle 
What you are looking at is a stream that runs through the property, and he has a weir at both ends to control the flow for water supply, flooding the pasture, that sort of stuff. Just outside the view to the left and right there are very sturdy crossings for heavy equipment. Every year or two he takes a Caterpillar D5 and cleans out the silt. The part you see makes for a great swimming hole, rope et al. I dunno where the slide came from; ghetto methinks. There's an old dredge in the background that is used to pump water in that part.
On the back side of Gold Lake Road, about at the Salmon Lake Rd turnout, I stopped yet again to inspect the rear tire which was rubbing pathetically against the rear brake pad – only to discover that I now had two broken spokes. I don’t know when this happened. Was it caused by Amtrak, or when I was run off the road by the dirt bikes, or when I came out this morning? It doesn’t matter; I have 34 good spokes left and I believe I can still make it. Regardless, I now have to disconnect the rear brake altogether as it was interfering with my Regen. While I am doing this a no-see’m bites me on the lip and it goes numb for about ½ hour. I really hate those little buggers; I’ve been swimming in Deet since the 3rd. 
