Miles: 91 Miles
Ride Time: 5 hours 33 minutes
Avg. Speed: 16.5
Total Climbing: 3129 feet
Work: 3178 kJ
We are now well established in our trip and think we have the routine down. We should start breakfast at 6 am and we should have our bags down in the hotel lobby at 6:30. Then once the bicycles are checked and water bottles filled we are ready to role. Again we started at 7:15 and spent the first 8 miles getting out of Victorville. We seemed to catch a lot of red lights on our way out of town. But we caught a lucky break once we turned on to HW 18 because we did not have to wait more than a minute for some road construction that had the Highway closed to one lane. It looked like some cars had waited 20 minutes or more to get though.
It seems like our luck is coming from Greg, one of the three riders I rode with today. He is always joking that he is lucky and from what I saw today he is. The four of use formed a pace line and we started banging out the miles with each one of us taking turns for a mile each before the next one would take over. I swear every time when it was Greg’s turn he would luck out and get a down hill stretch of rode.
Riding in a pace line with Greg, Dave and Gary sure made the day go fast. But the real advantage came when we faced some 20 to 30 mile head winds. Each time it was my turn to pull it felt like you were running into a wall. I would work hard for 6 minutes and then be drop to the back and rest for 18 minutes until it was you time to pull. When you were in the back you could relax, comb your hair and check out the scenery.
We were passing through the Lucerne Valley of the Mojave Desert. The Joshua trees were still seen but not in the same numbers as we had saw before.
Lunch was served at a little outcrop of boulders and Dave our guide took our photo. When we finished lunch and got back on the road, the remainder of our group still had not arrived. Earlier Jack had a couple of flats which Stephanie had helped him fixed. When we arrived we tried to give advice but I have a good photo of her telling us she knows how to do it.
Coming into Yucca we had an 8% grade decent that Dave flew down. I was holding on for dear life as I slowed my pace as I was not sure of the road. Also the shoulder was full of stones and junk which made it almost impossible to ride on.
We faced a terrible head wind into 29 Palms. And just when we thought we were done the rode threw one more hill at us which just about killed our legs. Lucky for us on the other side was our hotel. We stopped for Shakes one block from our hotel and enjoyed the air condition comfort of the Jack in the box restaurant. The lady next to us started talking politics but she lossed all credibility when she said Palin should stay home and take care of her retarded baby. By this time we had no energy to argue with her. We just wanted to get to our hotel and jump in the pool.
Our hotel 29 Palms Inn turned out to be very funky. I like its western theme. It is nice to have something a little different. My room is called the “Bottle Room” because in the wall between the bedroom and bathroom are old bottles.
Visit all the photos from today at flickr.
Epilogue
15 years ago
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