Sunday September, 28 2008 - Day 14
Blythe CA – One of the first things I learned while riding behind Chet and Joe is not pretty but practical, useful and made many a day go by without me getting upset. Two ways it comes. Either I get a warning or not. When I hear the rider in front of me clearing their throat know I have 2 seconds to look down and accept the wash. Many times I never get hit but taking the chance just isn’t worth it. I hear, I duck. That is my rule. Too many factors of wind direction and different riders to know if it is going to clear me so I put my head down and wait to hear the clearing “haaacktoooey”.
The second is much richer and enjoyable – the farmers blow. The farmers blow comes without warning or pattern change. One minute you are clearly looking at the beautiful landscape in front of you and the next minute you are looking through nostril excretion. No warning, no signal, just someone in front of you needed to clear their proboscis. By the 14th day I am actually enjoying such things and realizing the absurdity of my own musings.
From Blythe CA we go north deeper into the desert. Rt. 62 goes due west and is loaded with boat trailer traffic and 18 wheelers. Joe and I start pedaling and we are moving at 25+ mph. I am joyful that the mountains have prepared my legs well and now the flats seem easy to ride at 20 mph. The heat is over 100 degrees but I don’t notice it directly. I notice it because my feet are swelling into my shoes and my lips also feel a bit premenstrual.
We crank along for an hour alternating the lead every 5 miles. I drink often but don’t feel any sweat pouring off my body. It is an unusual experience when I realize it is evaporating immediately instead of cooling me. I think cool and continue to pedal. The road is long and is as far as the eye can see. Be describes this as spinning. You crank away and look up. Ten minutes later you look up again and it feels like you haven’t made any progress. Between the heat and the landscape he is smart by not riding today. My stupidity is proven many times over and Joe has not choice.
Initially my kneed doesn’t hurt and I am elated. Like our initial speed you would think I would learn one day that change is always nearby. Somewhere into the second hour lefty starts giving my signals of unhappiness. I look for a marker in the landscape to load myself back into the truck and there is none. Miles and miles of road in front of me like one of those pictures you learn to draw in elementary school where the three lines come together in the distance and give the illusion of three dimensions. I am stuck in four dimensions and looking to reduce it to two. No such luck.
My happy go stupid morning is challenged and I begin to realize the severity of the temperature when the water from my camelback is as hot as tea. I mouth some and spit it out. I reach down to my water cage and even the water and young coconut juice mixture we have used throughout the trip turns against us. I taste it and it is spoiled. It tastes rancid and I still don’t believe what is happening so I reach for the other bottle. Someone must have loaded this bottle with horse piss and now I squeeze the second bottle for some relief. The horse had a busy morning. I put my head back down and stick to Joe’s tire. My mouth is dry and I continue to cycle hot camelback water through it. I think maybe it is just my curse but Joe eventually dumps both water bottles onto the ground while pedaling at 23mph and exclaims “now I won’t have any temptation to drink it”. I realize we are both screwed. I look into the distance and see no support truck.
We pedal this way for some amount of time. It could be 15 minutes it may have been 45. Time has it’s own perspective and the heat is now talking to my body without letting me in on the conversation. Our pace slows to 20 mph and then to 15. I take the lead hoping to ratchet up the speed but can’t seem to muster more than 15 mph. Joe takes the lead back and I hear him swearing at his laziness. He cranks very hard to 17 mph for several miles and I tell him we are on a very long uphill. I can see the relief in his body with the confirming news that an external factor is responsible for the current slowness.
We get to the support truck and are both in a foul mood. We ask for water only and drink as much from the truck stock of cool liquids. I pour a water bottle over Joe’s head and instead of providing relief it runs rivers of sunblock into his eyes. He should punch me in the nose and say we are even but just asks for a tissue. We get back on our bikes. We ride and he says “I think our tires are sticking to the hot road”. I agree. We continue to be blow around by traffic passing in both directions.
The trucks and trailers that pass within feet of us are acceptable to my risk tolerance today. Any other day I would show a sense of reason and stop. In order to minimize wind resistance we pedal with our head down looking at the white line and looking up every couple of minute to make sure there is nothing major in our roadside path. The real terror is when I look up and a vehicle on the other side of the road is being passed. Now there are two vehicles coming directly at you at 70 mph. Something deep inside me willies and for a moment I become the deer in the headlights. This happens several times but each time I don’t get any more comfortable and the feeling returns. I tell myself the only way off this road is somewhere in the distance and the faster I pedal the sooner it will happen.
What I fail acknowledge is the second way off this road and that is of a religious nature. Joe must have the same feeling as we pedal frantically. The heat remains like a Kansas wind working on us slowly and progressively. The harder we fight the more we suffer. I try to surrender without success. I try to imagine myself in the cooling Pacific ocean the following day without relief. This sucks. That is my conclusion and my condition.
The Support crew must practice feeding Joe. During his race they will feed him while he rides in order to save time and not break is cadence/rhythm. They pull up next to us trying to feed us water melon but without success. On the fourth attempt I yell “move away you are going to kill us”. The truck disappears into the distance and I realize we are going to kill ourselves without their help. We catch up to the parked truck and beg for food and drink. The support crew in the Air conditioned truck is also having trouble dealing with the heat and they hand us rations through the window. Joe throws a blow by saying “it is not support unless at least one of you gets out of the truck”. Bo goes into a 10 minute rant and Joe is pleased that he has excited him. We get back on our bikes and ride west.
We reach Desert Center and go directly to the Desert Center Family Café. We walk in and the fly’s outnumber the patrons 10 to 1. You can hear them buzzing around. I order a milkshake and full meal. Chet joins me and Bo just goes for the milkshake. Joe doesn’t like the idea of so many fly’s and holds out for a while before ordering a mass of food. We eat, cool down and keep shaking our heads in disbelief. Disbelief of the heat, the traffic, the sticky road, the staff, the 35 minute wait for a sandwich and that the Desert Center has been open 24 hours a day since 1922. Their slogan “You need us a lot more than we need you”.
At the Desert Café there is a single waitress and she don’t take if from no one. We are stacked four across the bar stools and at one point Bo tries to get her attention with a hand wave. She is delivering food to a table and igores him. He gets a little Chinese NYC and tries verbally as she returns past us on our way to the kitchen. “We want”, before he can get the rest of the sentence out of his mouth she brings her hand up in the air and then motions towards him to shut it. He is silenced immediately and I go back to looking down at my eggs. Joe enjoys the show so much he thinks he is going to use some of this sweet Vermont kindness and says “you can come work at my store in VT any time”. She spanks him with “I get that offer all the time” and continues walking past as if his offer were some form of rudeness. Chet and I look quizzically at each other and then back down at our food. We drag our molten bodies up from the stools at the Desert Café, load the truck and head towards LA.
This is how the days go by,
Here is a link to the kids and cause we are riding for - http://www.lisas810.com/cause_AOR.html
With gratitude,
Chris
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