April 24 - Desert riding on I10

Today started with breakfast at Denney’s at 5:30. I believe that I have about 30 more early morning breakfasts at Denney’s in the near future. Each day I have a choice of French toast and eggs or waffles and eggs. Some days I also get to have hash browns. Whoopee! I will say that we do get enough calories for breakfast.

Yesterday my four flats made the Mike's, our tour leader, blog.

http://www.bamacyclist.com/Journal2007/Fast07/07fast.htm

If you need another view of the ride you could check out his blog. Mike is a really nice person, good leader, and great cyclist. If this because of or in spite of his spending 20 years in the Air Force I do not know. The other crew members have also be very helpful especially the mechanic Shawn would does yeoman’s work each night to keep our bikes in working order. From what I have seen during the last two days his job is not going to get any easier as we move eastward. There seem to be a lot of very nice racing bikes with spiffy wheels that I don’t think will make it to the Atlantic. I really believe that my need for a new rear wheel yesterday will become a relatively minor problem before we reach the end of the ride. I hope everyone’s bike makes it, but I would not bet on it. There was someone today with four flats, I don’t know if he had any yesterday, but as I had none today, at worst I am only tied for having the most flats. I am hoping to fall behind the leaders in this race very quickly.

Today’s ride was east from Palm Springs to Blythe CA. After an early sprint to Mecca CA, a town with little positive going for it and definitely not to be confused with its name sake in Saudi Arabia, we climbed Box Canyon. If I can figure out how to do it I will post a picture of me in the canyon. Box Canyon is very impressive and quite beautiful. Our leader, Mike, thinks it is the nicest road on the ride. It being only day two I am not sure that I am happy to hear that. However I think that there could be a lot of very nice seconds on the trip, at least I hope so.

Once the canyon climb was done, we got onto I10 for a 65 mile excursion across the desert. There were three stops for us along this section of I10, but only one place where tourists could get any services. It was a lonely road, inhabited mostly by 18-wheelers and today by 30 cyclists. We had our lane, a wide breakdown lane and the 18-wheelers had their two lanes and we kept to ourselves. The major hazard was the tire debris that the truckers leave in the breakdown lane when they get a blowout. Steel belted tires have very fine wires that seem to have a need to leave dead tires and jump into whatever new tire comes along. When that tire is a bike tire the wires eventually cause a puncture. They can be so small and hard to locate in the tire that the same wire can cause several flats in one tire. Ouch! Luckily, I didn’t have any wires latch onto my tires. Riding on a freeway is not all bad as 18-wheelers can also be a cyclists best friend. Every time one passes you the draft they create can add half a mile per hour to your speed. The effect can last for up to a minute.

We were also lucky today as the temperature never got above 90 in the shade. Not that there was any shade on the road, but temperatures over 100 are usual for this part of the country at this time of year. Lastly, I want to say that physically I am doing fine and looking forward to tomorrows ride and getting into Arizona.