Happy Halloween!

The past few days happened really quickly. So there we were in the Californian desert. We had about four more days and a 4,000 ft climb between us and San Diego. We had planned on visiting David's cousin Chris and his wife Darnell when we got to San Diego. But, luckily we checked our email before starting those last four days. Chris, who is in the military, was leaving in two days. So, we rented a car and drove to San Diego. Although I felt a bit of remorse about not biking the whole way, I didn't mind skipping those mountains. They looked scorching hot. They had no trees, just rocks.

So, we stayed with Chris and Darnell for three nights. Then we started making our way up the coast. Hooray for the ocean! It's so nice to see it again. And to be in a reasonably cool place with lots of breezes.





Now we're in LA. Isn't that crazy? Chris and Darnell actually lived about 30 miles north of San Diego, so it only took us 2 days to get to LA from there. We're staying with Dave's friend Erin while we're here. Erin is a resident adviser at a music school downtown, so we're staying right in the heart of the city. It's amazing. We're trying to figure out what we want to do today.



Here's a picture of the Imperial Sand Dunes. It was very strange. We were riding through desert all day, then suddenly we were in the Sahara. Then after a mile or two, *poof*, back to the desert.


This is a purple prickly pear cactus. I put a different picture of it in my last post, but you can't really tell that it's purple. I'm hoping this one will turn out better.

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you're all dressed up in amazing costumes. Dave and I are going to be fitness unicorns.

Almost to San Diego

We made it to California! It's funny, now that we're only four days away from San Diego and the coast, it feels like time is slowing down and it's taking forever to get anywhere. Well, maybe it also feels that way because it's so freaking hot. The high for today is 103, so we decided to take a rest day.

oh, shoot, they're closing the library ...

Arizona

Yesterday we made it into Arizona. We camped that night under tall pine trees. The next day, after only a mile of biking, we were out of the forest and into the desert again. We started the day with 14 miles of almost uninterrupted downhill. Glorious. We had a good climb after that, but then another big downhill. Tonight we're staying at a casino campground. We're going through an Apache reservation. Then, we'll hopefully make it into Phoenix by Friday.

We're in New Mexico now. I'm very pleased to be out of Texas. New Mexico is magical .... and very steep. We made it over the highest point on the trip, Emory Pass. It was an intense day. We climbed about 4000 ft over 34 miles. It started out as a gradual uphill. That turned into bigger, rolling hills. Then, we gained 2000 ft over the last 8 miles. It was steep and neverending and cold by the time we reached the top. The next day was amazing, though. That night we camped at a primitive site a couple miles from the pass, so the next morning we started out with a beautiful downhill going through pine forests. I loved being surrounded by trees. The past couple of days we've been going through different parts of the Gila Wilderness Area. It's gorgeous. I'd like to come back and do some backpacking around there. I loved it because it reminded me alot of forests in the Smokies, but then I'd see a cactus right beside a pine tree. It's really fascinating. We also went to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and hotsprings. I'll tell you, if I had a hotspring at the end of every day of biking ..... well, it'd be nice.

This is part of the road we took up to Emory Pass. We weren't even at the top when I took this picture.

We crossed the continental divide twice in the past three days. The elevation there is 6599 ft.

I'd been seeing these plants all over the place, but this is the first one I saw in bloom.

Looking up at the cliff dwellings.

View from inside the cliff dwellings.

Birthdays, big hills, and broken wheels

So we're on our 9th week of the tour soon, with only two weeks or so left until we're in San Diego, and we're just beginning to see other cyclists on the roads. I guess the very first groups we ran into were just east of El Paso, and we barely had time to wave really, but now that it's getting more into the proper season for riding the southern tier (Ie. the season that neither heat nor monsoons will try to kill you) we're seeing people out nearly every day. We had our first decent pow-wow with another couple of cyclists last night. They are both great people and I hope to keep in touch with them, even if it's just reading their blogs. One of them is a woman named Dorit, who I really only got to kind of brush past in conversation, s she really took to Julia. The coolest thing about Dorit, besides the German accent and that unabashed willingness to share one's opinion that many of the Europeans I've met travelling have exhibited, was that she has this way of completely contradicting something that you say or criticizing something that you do, without being, in even the slightest sense of the word, offensive. I'm not sure if it's a function of her demeanor or tone of voice, or if it's that she has generally great intentions behind whatever she says, but I feel like she could tell that my entire life is a mistake in a way that still left me feeling pretty good about our encounter as a whole. Which isn't to say that she's an overly, or even overtly, critical person. It's more to say that she's a wonderful conversationalist. Anyways, she befriended a bicycle messenger named Justin from San Francisco at a BMA fundraiser and convinced him to be her support driver on tour. I'm not sure how much convincing, if any, was actually needed. Those are the kind of details that escape in brief encounters I guess. He was cool too, which is probably cliche to say about bicycle messengers, as nobody really expects them to be anything else. But I guess if you have to be seen as a stereotype, the fit hip bike messenger is not a bad one to be stuck with. Anyway, we had dinner and drank beers and geeked out on politics, future plans, and odd gearing designs for a few hours. Also, Dorit, if you're reading the post, thanks so much for the hospitality. We definitely owe you a dinner next time around. Maybe home-cooked gumbo someplace on the west-coast?

By the way, this has all been happening in Silver City, the night following the last of our climbs out of the Gila Forest. The mountains here are amazing, and nearly unforgiving, not so much in the steepness of the grade, but the duration of the climb and the thinness/coldness of the air at the top. We're acclimated now, and at lower elevation, but the first day in this area, which I count as the day we climbed to Emory pass, there were definitely times when I felt like I couldn't breathe enough, and that the road would never stop going up, that around every corner, there would be another gradual .2 mile long climb. Coming down the mountain was pretty sweet though. the eastern side had very few sharp turns, so I was able to make them with slowing to very much below 20mph, and all this time we were surrounded by canyons and gorges the monkey in us all can't help but want to tumble into and live in, eating prickly pears, grubs, and stream water.

Here's a picture of Julia topping a hill on the way to the Gila Hot Springs.

Ha Ha, tricked you. It's a picture of our birthday cake in Las Cruces. It's amazing that it's in one piece (the cake, I mean, not the picture) because we had to ride with it bungee corded to my rear rack for about three miles over potholes that night. We made ourselves so sick. Happy birthdays to us.

Here's the real picture of Julia topping the hill.

Pretty incredible, huh?

Anyways, tying up loose ends, Mom, Erika and Nate, if you do manage to come out west and meet up with us on tour, that'd be killer! Maybe LA? Wine country? Who knows if the wineries are still doing their thing for tourists in winter?

If not, then maybe Portland, or wherever we settle. I'm hoping to be able to save up for a plane ticket back to Rochester for a weekend at some point. Maybe we could all come west on the same flight?

Also, Ally and Everett (sorry if I misspelled) We have a bunch of pictures from the cliff dwellings for you, but we don't have an email address. if you want, you can call us and leave it as a message.

okaybyefornow,

david

p.s. Gale, thanks for hosting us in Silver City, and for the cork ribbon, and for the chocolate bar you just opened. yum.