Today it felt as though we were on a bike tour. I
can’t tell you why, but we finally got into a groove. We have established a
routine that will likely continue for the duration. I also told Sara, as we
rolled into Glamis, that I had confidence we will complete the ride.
Because of the extremes in temperature, we arose at
4:45 am in order to get an early start. We had much to do, and setting up the
bikes took me longer than I thought it would take. We left the Marriott parking
lot at 6:00 heading north with a nice tailwind coming from the southeast at 10
mph. Of course the effect for us was to benefit from the northward component of
that wind; i.e., the Sin(45 degrees) times 10. A few miles later, we turned east
and had to fight that same component that helped us go north.
I can’t imagine that we will encounter on this tour a
road surface worse than the 6 miles on Harris Road between Dogwood Road and
McConnell Road. A field hand warned me that the road would be bad the entire
distance, and he warned me to be careful of the heavy traffic using the road. His
former comment held up; his latter comment did not materialize, lucky for us. After
4.5 miles of riding on Harris Rd., we agreed to use SR 115 north to SR78. The
berm was nicely paved and the traffic was reasonable. We arrived at SR78 and
made a right hand turn into the wind. We agreed to meet Susan just two miles
east of the junction.
We left Susan and rode 21 miles into Glamis, a town
consisting of one building, the Glamis Beach Store. Just before arriving there the
road passed through North Algodones Dunes Wilderness. I have commented on this
stretch of road in a previous log. Before long we approached Blythe, CA, a town
that has the dubious honor of regularly having the highest temperature in the
USA. It was 107 degrees when we arrived at the hotel, not before we made a
wrong turn that added 2 miles and ten precious minutes.
Tomorrow we will leave early again in order to beat
the heat.
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| North Algodones Dunes Wilderness |
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