Descent

In this view, you are looking roughly northeast as the 215 freeway descends toward the bottom of the valley. This is an odd exit ramp because gravity is trying to shove you down the hill, yet if you are exiting the freeway, you must of course use lots of braking. At the end of the ramp, you must make a very hard right turn to enter the new road, then you enter a High-T lane which allows you to blast past the traffic lights for a couple of miles. Cool!

11 thoughts on “Descent

  1. When I was a US Army motion picture photographer in Germany (1970-1972), a group of us would ride 10 speeds on some secondary roads around Kaiserslautern. There was a road that allowed bicycle riders to achieve some terrifyingly high speeds, thanks to a steep incline, the length of the incline, and the stupidity of the riders! Bicycle brakes have serious limitations!

    At the bottom of this terror hill, there was a sharp bend left in the paved road and a graveled dirt road that took off straight from the paved road. There was gravel that ended up on the paved road and, if you were unaware of this spot in the road, you got to experience why one slowed down to almost a walk before you came to the bottom of the terror hill.

    Once you experienced the gravel trap, you learned to take a look back to make sure there weren’t any cars behind you, then you merged over to the left lane of the road so you could continue to ride at a terrorizingly high speed on the now-flattening road!

    Your description of this road in Nevada reminded me of this German road where we bicyclists could get up to speeds faster than common sense dictated. But…we were young and invincible! LOL!

    • Wow Doug, that does sound terrifying! Gravel on pavement is a recipe for a bloody face and broken bones. I have hit 25mph on my electric bike cruising down steep paved roads in subdivisions, scary. The bike will go up to 20mph on it’s own. The fat bike tires really help though to roll over rocks and stones easily and braking is very good too with the modern disc brakes!

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