Day 4 (4/24/22): This was NOT in the brochure
Start: Brawley, CA
End: Blythe, CA
Miles: 90 miles
Elevation Gain: 3,417
No rah rah, isn’t this the coolest thing ever talk today. Today was hard. No. Today was brutal.
It started out so nicely in Brawley. More brilliant sunshine. Nice flat riding through farmland. So pleasant.
Then I got to the Imperial Sand Dunes National Recreation Area—a very cool place, but not for a bicycle. It turns out sand dunes are very windy places which means three bad things for cyclists. Wind is just bad if it’s coming at you…which it was. When you get to the highest point of the road through the dunes, you’re treated to a mini-sandstorm. And when cars and RVs whiz by you at 50-60 miles an hour you and your bike get pelted with sand.
But this wasn’t the really bad part of the day.
I blew it with my water planning. No. I didn’t run out of water. I actually had too much water that I had to carry in a pack on my back. I didn’t think there was any place to purchase water between Brawley and Blythe, but wasn’t the case. I should have known. The 3 extra bottles of water along with clothes and supplies for 2 days on my own gave me the joy of carrying a ~20-pound pack which was a back breaker. I won’t have this problem when I go out on my own on on Miles (all supplies in panniers attached to the back), but I was on Smoke in the interest of speed, so I had to carry a pack. Within 2 hours, the pain was excruciating, so I started eating everything I possibly could, putting on the warm clothes from the previous day so they weren’t in the pack, and shoving the one small pack strapped to Smoke as full as I can get it. Eventually, this worked its way out.
But even that wasn’t the really bad part of the day.
The really bad part of day started in the sand dunes area when I picked up a 15-20 MPH headwind that decided to keep me company for the next 65 miles. I can’t think of a more miserable stretch of riding. Even delivering the Star Ledger on my bike in 1977 during a Nor’easter wasn’t this bad. It was amazing. Even on the downhills, you couldn’t coast more than 10 feet without the bike stopping. I was on the road for 11 hours. Oh yeah. And when I got to the motel where Tish was waiting (a sight for sore eyes as my father would say), we had no water. Let’s just say I needed a shower in the worst way, so I borrowed a playbook from Bart’s North Hollywood days.
Highlights
I finished. A confidence boost.
What am I Grateful for Today
This one is easy and is serious. Before we left, a number of the youth ambassadors for the San Diego JDRF chapter sent along cards and pictures thanking me and cheering me on. There’s a blog post you can read about them. Some of them are hanging in the van right now. I really fell back on THEIR words of encouragement when it got tough. As is the case with Lexie, they have to deal with T1D all the time every day. I was just having a bad day; I could push my way through it. I really appreciated those notes when I receive them. I appreciated them even more today.
Lastly, I found Blythe to be more depressing than Brawley.