Cycling Ellen

The theory was that we could sleep in today but the East Coast girl in me is still waking up early.  The good side of that was that Jane, my roomie for the nights here, and I were out to the washing machines before the crowd and our smelly bike clothes are now clean and tucked back into our duffle bags.  After breakfast, we all took over the motel parking lot with rags, degreasers, and lubricants to clean off all the grime and make tomorrow’s cycling feel really smooth.  The grease under the nails makes us look like real cyclists even if we didn’t really know what we’re doing – we’ll learn!

Let’s catch up with yesterday.  We left the motel early as soon as the sun was up for our long day.  I learned that I should leave my gloves and toe warmers in my bike bag.  It was cold out there!  I left town with a group but realized I was going to need to go a little faster to get through the day before dinner.  I pushed it through to the sag at mile 20 past irrigated fields of grass, kale (?) and a huge cattle feed lot.  By the time I reached the sag, the desert was all around again.  Eventually, I came to the Imperial Sand Dune recreation area where there was a whole scene of campers and dune buggies.

The dunes went on for miles and the buggies were out, racing up and down the hills.  I had to stop in the little store in Glenis for the scene (as well as some extra water) and so I could check out the machines up close.  I got an offer to go out for a ride but between the 2 cases of beer in the back and 60 more miles to ride I had to turn him down.

The next 12 miles or so were some of the hardest I’ve done.  It was uphill, into a stiff headwind so pushing as hard as I could I was barely going 8 mph.  I knew the lunch stop was at 40 so there was an incentive ahead, as were the Chocolate Mountains.  Fortunately, I met up with Debbie and Carol and together we paced through to lunch.  As usual, Linda’s food was just what we needed.  After lunch were about 10 miles of some serious rollers, ups and downs, but without a shoulder the traffic was a little scary.  Several women opted to sag through that part.  The reward was after that as Mary Kay and I raced through the next several miles with the promise of chocolate milk at mile 69.

Debbie caught up to us before the store and we chowed down on all the food we usually feel guilty about eating – ice cream, snickers bars, even frozen snickers bars.  Refueled, the last 20 miles or so were a lot easier than the 20 miles before.  We did an AB pattern (right, left, right, left etc.) all the way into Blythe.  Feeling victorious, we cruised into Blythe.  What a long day.  The mandatory cannon ball into the freezing pool (again – that peer pressure) really did feel good.

I’ve done the 2 miles to K Mart to buy more sunscreen and will just relax the rest of the day.  It feels so lazy but there are many days ahead before the next break.  Arizona, here we come!