3.28.2010

first road post! day three 140 miles

Here we are, day three on the trip we've been talking about doing for so long now. I'll start with the beginning.
We left From Richard and Bridget's apartment on friday morning. We had a small but sweet escort to presidio park and a few others came to see us off from the street. We rode really hard the whole first day up hill. starting from san diego and heading east is a huge climb. But we eventually made it to our sleeping spot. a campground on an indian reservation. we must have come through after office hours so no one was around. Some other people camping suggested we just put our tent up on one of the many open camp sites and see if anyone says anything. we did just that, and fell asleep by 8pm. The high winds came rolling through by 5am, but we were able to stay asleep for the most part until 8ish. Around the time we were packing up A man named Art who told us to just throw our tent up the night before came over and asked us about our trip then invited us over to his trailer for coffee. Coffee then turned into eggs,bacon,potatoes and mimosas! We sat and spoke to art and his wife Juna for quite a while. they were really warm hearted people and were so happy to have us over for breakfast, they told us their story and we told them ours. we then exchanged our info and headed out for day two.
Day two we hit the road late after our breakfast and continued out up hill battle. Along the way we met two like minded cyclist, Huey, who is a 61 year old retired ups driver is riding the same way we are but has hardly any baggage and is staying in hotels the entire way. THEN we met Nancy Wright who was heading the opposite way on a really cool set up and doing a really long ride around the entire perimeter of the usa. http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=RrzKj&doc_id=5131&v=19e check out her story and check out her post about her ride into alpine on the 27th she posted a picture of vanessa and myself! That night we slept at a campground in Live oak springs, before sleep we were able to grab a burger and fries from the restaurant on the same property. I had a beer while vanessa had a milkshake.
we woke up and met a man named jim bob and his dog cig sour! they travel by motor cycle and sidecar. very cool. We mixed up some cold coffee with the via we brought! then headed on our way. and who did we come across? HUEY. we ended up riding with huey all day actually. He would shoot up ahead and we would just keep our pace and sooner or later catch up and we would do this over and over all day. He's on a bike that weighs about 4lbs. so he has the ability to go quite fast! The day started with more climbs as we rode away from the mexican boarder(i took a picture of the fence). but once at the top we realized just what we have been doing and why it was all worth it. we hoped back onto I-8 and dropped from 4,500ft elevation into below sea level over the course of 25 miles. hardly pedaling and cruising at 25 mph. Then looking back as we entered the Yuha desert. it was incredible to see the giants we just rode over. Huey, vanessa and myself pedaled along The Evan Hughes highway for 20 more miles before stopping at the one and only gas station/market. Vanessa and I realized there was no where to safely camp within riding distance for the day. We ended up pulling a huey tonight and got a motel for a real cheap price in El centro. The three of us then ate at the chinese buffet and called it a night.
so here we are, using the WIFI while we can, we've put 140 miles behinde us and about 100 of them were up hill. Tomorrow we plan to get started nice and early and try and get 80 miles in so we can camp out by the colorado river. Vanessa has been snapping digital pictures i've just got film so follow her page to catch up on the cool snap shots.
so please stay tuned. we'll be out here on the road for quite a while but so far the road has been better then good to us, and that's more then i can ask for.
NoBadDays

1 comment:

mikevarga said...

so psyched for you weirdos, and extremely jealous at the same time. wish i was riding with you guys the whole way and not just the last leg. good luck on the rest of the ride and i hope to hear from you kids soon. be safe brotha.