DAILY BLOG

We made it to Blythe, CA!

The two common enemies that cyclists often speak of are hills and the wind. However, the second straight day riding through desert temperatures of 104 degrees, I think I’d take either of those over the extreme heat. While we only had 82 miles to ride today, the heat zapped our energy levels to such an extent that it seemed like we rode twice that amount.

Knowing that Blythe was expected to hit over 115 degrees today, we started biking at sunrise to see if we could get all of our miles in before the worst of the day. We did! We averaged close to 17mph over the day’s miles, but had several stretches in which we were pacing at 23-25mph.

Leaving Brawley at dawn

Riding in formation

Justy taking his turn at the head of the pack

Jared looks at the camera

Yikes! Where are we?

When we departed Brawley, the terrain was flat agricultural land, with highway 78 going in a perfectly straight line for at least 20 miles. The terrain changed when the road turned northeast, and we began to experience the desert once again—Sahara desert like, complete with sand dunes. It was spectacular scenery.

Riding by the sand dunes

Spectacular scenery

Rich and Jared

Once we passed the dunes, we returned to the desolate, dry desert, but this time, we had a series of rolling hills, one right after the other, for several miles. After long stretches of straight, neverending roads, Jared and I were encouraged by the variation. We raced down the downhill and used our momentum to go up the uphill. We’d repeat that for each of the dips. When we hit this stretch around 10:00am, the temperature was well over 100.

The final stretch of the day was through Palo Verde and up towards Blythe. At this point, the roads were flat again, and the goal was simply to get there as quick as possible to get out of the heat. We were excited to get into Blythe by 12pm, giving us some extra free time this afternoon. And it is a good thing too—at 6:00pm, the temperature was 120 degrees!

Evangelism tip of the day: bring someone to Blythe. They’ll quickly want some “fire insurance”.

Rich

We are now settling into a routine, working together to load/unload the support van, etc. It is a full joy to do this as a family!

Jordan claiming victory at the dunes

Oh yeah, video camera update. It is definitely broken. We are going to see if we can get any low-cost alternative when we get to a store. Not sure if Blythe has a store or not. May need to wait until Prescott or Flagstaff. But we look forward to providing a full video update for the blog soon.

You can see all of our tour photos are: http://flickr.com/photos/expeditionaryman