Blueberry Tandem
Death Valley Double Century

They don't call it Death Valley for nothing! Because it was February, because it keeps raining, because I like a challenge and because I must be crazy, I decided to do the 200 mile one day ride across Death Valley called the Death Valley Double on "The Blueberry." The only one crazy enough to do this with me was my stoker, Nellie Mol. My captain, Louie Martin, was too smart for any of this nonsense. The trouble was that Nellie had knee surgery in December and I had been stoking for a year rather than captaining so Nellie was weak in the lower body, I was weak in the upper body, and we both were weak in the head!

We drove down with Nellie's husband and their trailer so we could bring the single bikes as a backup plan in case either of us died in the desert. We started the ride in the dark at 4:00am with a full moon above. This was an out and back of 50 miles from Furnace Creek to Stovepipe. There was one 5-mile climb, but we took it easy to save Nellie's knee. We arrived back at Furnace Creek at 7:30am and headed out again into the desert. There were miles and miles of salt flats. It felt as if we were standing still. Finally, we dropped down to Badwater to see a sign 200 feet up the cliff that said, "Sea Level." We crawled out of Badwater across 40 more miles of salt flats to the 100-mile rest stop. By this time my upper body had enough of this fun and was making it difficult for me to control the tandem. However, the fun was only beginning because we had an 18-mile climb ahead of us over two mountain passes.

We decided to split up onto singles to give my arms a much-needed rest. Nellie's knee needed a break so she climbed into the truck with her husband, Mario, and I droned on alone up the mountain through the desert. It was mentally brutal to climb alone in such a barren place. We had developed a fan club of young people cheering us on as we were the only female tandem team on a ride populated by young 20 to 30 year old studly guys, a few incredibly strong young women and a bunch of old grizzlys. I told the fan club as I climbed in solitude that I had buried my stoker somewhere in the desert.

After a hot, long climb and then breath-taking drop down to Shoshone, I met back up with Nellie and Mario. We climbed back on "The Blueberry" to continue as we both felt much better. At 5:00pm we faced a climb back up over the two mountain passes I had just crawled over by myself. If we climbed the passes then we would be going down the other sides in the dark at 50mph with a headlamp useful only for illuminating city streets. I had removed the drag brake in the delusion that there would be no winding descents in the desert. We made a tactical decision that neither of us regretted to have Mario take us to the top of the second pass and then go on from there. That cut out 20 miles or riding meaning that I would have done 180 miles and Nellie 160 miles. At this point that was good enough!

We started down Jubilee Pass at about 5:30pm witnessing a beautiful orange and pink sunset dead ahead. We had 40 miles back to Badwater in the dark. It had to be the longest 40 miles in my life. We kept coming close to what we though was Badwater only to pull back out into the salt flats. We began to see things moving along side the road in the dark but we did not want to know what they were. Finally, years later, we pulled into Badwater to some hot potato soup. it went down Nellie but no amount of coaxing could get it down me. Another biker told us that we had 17.4 miles left. We pointed "The Blueberry" north and set out to climb back up to sea level and then some. Another year went by before we saw the lights of the resort in the distance. Ever so slowly they became brighter and brighter until we climbed up one last 2-mile bump to drop down into Furnace Creek for the third and last time. We finished at 10:20pm.

Though we did not do quite 200 miles, we do not feel badly about our decision not to climb the two passes and ride down in the dark because it was the safe and sane thing to do. We are very proud of ourselves for never giving up. We both felt that the mental part of the ride was more difficult than the physical challenge, though that was hard enough to make many strong young riders quit. Those who could go no further cheered us on. We decided that we were both happy that we did the ride but think that once in our lifetimes is more than enough.