We left Twentynine palms at 8pm heading east into the desert and unknown, accompanied by unrelenting heat: it was over 100 degrees until well past midnight. The promised west wind of 10-20mph never showed. A slight breeze from the southwest may have occasionally risen above 5mph, but it was no real help. Lydia put it well though: "I'd rather it stay still than have to fight a headwind". Agreed. We were going to really earn the next 100 miles. I'd become like a gambler- convinced by early good fortune that subsequent challenges would all go similarly favorably. I fully expected to be conveyed effortlessly across the Mojave at 30mph like Anzo Borrego Desert. Instead we earned it between 6 and 14 miles per hour, for 12 hours, in dead still air, sleep deprived... and utterly awed by spectacular settings.
About 30 miles east, after passing the last of the lingering residences and buildings along the way, we realized we'd already drank about 4 liters of our 11, each. Sure, temperatures were dropping, but to be more than 1/3rd done with water, and only 1/4 of the way done with the ride, caused us concern. We considered turning back and refueling. The ride now became more than the simple, relatively riskless jaunt that most rides are- we began to feel viscerally the presence of real risk and potential danger. We also were getting tired- pulling an allnighter is always hard, nevermind while exerting onesself steadily, all while in womb-like soporific warmth.
Around 1:30am we needed a break, and lay on our backs for a while. The sky is ridiculously gorgeous out there, and it was bliss for both eyes and legs to take a break. The background anxiety of this race against the sun, and the (potentially literal) dead-line of finding shade before an hour or two after sunup, numbed me somewhat to the beauty surrounding us, but its hard to ignore the milky way extending fully across what seemed like 179 degrees of sky, more stars than I'd ever seen before at once, and about once every 5 to 10 minutes, shooting stars! Every constellation was seen on an unfamiliar scintillating background of lesser stars not seen ordinarily because they are too faint to compete with the least wisp of cloud or stray light- both here absent. We were surrounded by living silence where every insect's noise reaches your ears as if amplified. Your heartbeat is intrusive, you want to shout "down in front" or "shhh" or something to it. It was impossible to not feel some sense of grand awe, even with all the pressure to finish this ride before sunup.
You can see cars coming easily 10 minutes before they pass, as route 62 is laser-straight for incredibly long distances. Even when they are over the next hill, the glow of their headlights over the hill is visible for 5 or 10 minutes before their lights are directly visible. In one instance, I thought I saw a motorcycle, and flashed my headlight to ask him to lower his high-beams, and let him know they were blinding me. But it didn't move, and just got brighter. And then over the next five minutes, it gradually turned into a pair of lights, and after another five minutes, passed us, a car, perhaps doing 80mph. Our eyes were just that sensitized, and the road that straight, and the air that clear.
A few experiences stood out. A pair of bats repeatedly darted into the beams of our headlights, presumably for the concentration of bugs there, even though we were riding around 10mph at that point. Maybe they've learned to hunt near lights, learning that bugs concentrate near them in general -- whether or not there was any real concentration of bugs in this instance because we were moving quickly?
The bats would do coordinated formation fly-by's passing about a foot from Lydia's face, and I'd just see a light gray glimpse of their jerky flying style going by in the side-scattered light. They accompanied us for perhaps 20 minutes, and it was magical. I thought of sailor's stories of dolphins jumping in the bow-wave of a ship under sail.
A jackrabbt almost martyred himself under my wheel, darting across the road. He probably had a foot or two of clearance at closest approach, but it was startling for both of us I'm sure.
When we stopped the rest stop at 1:30am, worrying about water reserves, and feeling extremely drowsy, a utility truck passed us and then put brakes on and backed up. We'd been amazed that noone else had stopped: a few times I'd be bent over the bike tending something when a car passed, and they'd hardly slow down. Of all the cars that passed us that night, perhaps a hundred or more, only two stopped. In this instance, the driver asked "Are you guys allright? Do you need any water?" and so we met Joe. Joe is a supervisor of a electric utility crew, going out to lake havasu city (our destination as well) to repair some downed power lines - they'd been without power for several days, and his crew was getting a jump on things apparently, driving there at 1am! He told us to fill up with as much of his cooler of juice, water, gatorade, and red-bull as we liked, and with quickly quashed restraint, we each filled up our tanks with about a gallon and a half of gatorade and water, and also drank as much as we could there and then. We took our picture with him, thanked him from the bottoms of our hearts, and returned to cycling with a renewed optimism in both human kindness, and the feasibility of our reaching the Colorado river without being seriously dehydrated.
Coming to "Iron Mountain" around 3am, we saw signs for "Iron Mountain Camp" where GPS showed nothing except a strange line going across the land; We saw clustered sodium lights in the distance telling of some civilization in the middle of nowhere, but google maps (I strangely had reception and E internet there) knew nothing of it. We considered camping there and waiting till the next night, and eventually did turn down the "pump house road", but found a sign advertising "authorized personnel only, no thru road, check in with guard at gate". Anticipating several miles before reaching the "gate", we didn't want to waste the effort, and though we were so tired that the asphalt felt comfortable and inviting, we rose up and continued biking.
Around 4:15am the sky started to brighten in the east, and by 4:30 we turned off our headlights. The sun didn't directly appear till 5:30 or so, but it was an amazing experience to see the dawning light on the mountain ranges bordering this sandy, sparse, desert. I started to worry in earnest: my best calculations had us getting in at 10am to parker, and that, only if we didn't get any more tired- hardly a safe assumption. I took relief in the thought that I could build a shade structure, but later that day, from relative security, I realized that would have been only a poor stopgap, not a full solution: the sun heats the ground, and you feel radiant heat from 120 to 150 degree ground warmth, whether or not you have direct sun on you. And if the sun previously hit the spot on which you erect your shade structure, the ground will cook you from below: its necessary to dig away the top, heated layer. (Incidentally it feels really good, if you've got enough water, to lay on such heated ground, since it warms one's legs and back muscles brilliantly, like a sauna).
At 5:30am we passed a rail-line with 8 or 10 liquified natural gas railroad tank cars (empty weight ~50,000 pounds, full weight, 97,000 pounds, the labels said). But they were too high off the ground to provide much shade, so we pressed on. A little farther down the line we saw what appeared to be a railroad service station - just a small building, with a large shade structure tent over top of one or two empty, polished metal, railroad cars. AHA! I thought. As we got closer we saw people, and then as we pulled closer we saw a military troop transport protruding at 30 degrees from a mangled railroad car-- apparently this was a forensic inspection station, perhaps situated remotely because of some hazardous cargo, trying to decipher some spectacular collision? There were too many people though. Then we saw some little corvette-stingray type cars- about eight of them, and some oxyacetylene welding equipment, and I started thinking "What the heck, am I hallucinating?". We pulled up and talked to one guard, explaining our situation, but he said they couldn't offer us shade or shelter for the day- they were making a movie: "The Fast and the Furious, Five". I think someone in a real position of authority might have been more generous, but we were too tired to pursue it further, and they reassured us that, though we were 35 miles from Parker, there would be a gas station in 17 miles. On we went.
At 6:30 the bottom fell out of lydia's gas tank, and she announced she needed to stop and close her eyes for a bit. No argument was possible, but I did suggest we backtrack a quarter mile to the railroad bridge over a wash (the tracks were about 6 feet over the wash's bottom) to get into a little shade- she'd just lain down on the sunlit side of the highway! She consented, but was too tired to even move onto the sheet I laid out, from where she'd stretched. We slept like the dead from 6:30 till 8, and in retrospect it was probably wise: We were riding DUE east into the sun, which had just cleared the horizon. We'd have been invisible to drivers in the glare. That hour and a half of sleep also had an amazing restorative effect. We were woken up by the warmth, sweating even in the shade, but with our eyes no longer protesting so much to be open. As we woke I jogged up to investigate the gurgling noise I heard, and learned that we were next to a huge roaring aqueduct, open topped, and several million gallons of water. Iron Mountain made sense now, too: it was a pumphouse to lift the water over the mountain! I'm not sure if the water is for 29 palms, or LA, or all of southern california, or what, but it is a significant tap on the colorado! The aqueduct, interestingly, ran for maybe quartermile segments open, then ran underground far enough to permit a 2-lane dirt road, or a wash, to run through, before coming up to another above ground portion. It was also a guarantee that our route was level and flat, or the slightest uphill, that we were running next to the aqueduct (in the upstream direction).
Indeed, we did make it to the gas station, at Vidal Junction, the hometown of Wyatt Earp. There is nothing there but an abandoned motel (boarded up), an abandoned restaurant (with a giant rooster on top), three or five cabins (for the clerk for the gas station and about three other people), an agriculture inspection station stopping all westbound traffic on 62 (to block aquatic parasites in/on boats coming from lake havasu from making it into california) , and an abandoned gas station (not boarded up, doors unlocked, but too hot to stay inside of). We pulled our sheet out and lay in the shade of the abandoned gas stations's roof over the filling area - several hundred square feet of luxurious shade on hard concrete, which was good because loose sand would not get everywhere. Stretched out luxuriously there, Lydia said it best: "You couldn't buy a bed this comfortable at the Hilton". We slept in the shade for two hours, then refueled at the gas station, which also was a convenience store.
After making smalltalk with some marines who came from the base near 29 palms to Lake Havasu to boat the whole weekend, and who were very impressed with our courage and endurance to bike across the country, we made a lunch on a small picnic bench in the shade. We didn't have many ingredients, but we did make a pasta sauce out of fried minced garlic and onion, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Lydia pointed out this probably wouldn't help with the offensive odor we'd developed by then, the last shower being two days before. But it was Delicious.
At the Vidal Junction gas station, we met Bonnie, the clerk, who showed us great kindness in providing icebags, and showing us how to wear them inside the collar of our shirts, against the backs of our necks. we also met the amazing Marty Pigue, a man who for 17 months has patrolled the Mojave Desert for miles in all directions from here by bicycle, towing a bicycle trailer, and collecting littered plastic glass and metal bottles, which he recycles. Inside the gas station is a picture of him as he took an 8' high mound of trashbags filled with recyclables, in a trailer behind his mountain bike, off to the recycling center several miles south of Vidal. Now he has a four-wheeler, donated by a local patron, with a trailer attached to another trailer behind it- sortof a train. Marty is quite unique, wearing only an orange highway safety vest long ago bleached quite pale by the sun, and he sits there without sleeves in the sun on a 113 degree day in the afternoon sun without much visible discomfort. We talked with him for a while, and played with his Coyote Shepherd Husky mix pup, and he offered to make us a chicken dinner later from his cabin nearby.
One person we met later suggested that the numerous "hills have eyes" references we were worried by, before undertaking this trip, might refer to Marty. The scary stories cited creepy-seeming people in the desert far from any civilization. Marty would bicycle long distances into the desert, and then scour the road for cans and bottles. I can imagine such a leathery, strange man freaking out some unfamiliar people, if they were driving in the middle of the Mojave desert and saw this guy just walking around! But we found Marty to be a sweet and sincere man, who looked you in the eye and seemed most interested in having a positive impact on the surrounding community, and earning the respect of the people he meets. He impressed me.
In the morning the ride to parker was very smooth, and beautiful. On this eastern edge of the Mojave the rock changes to a reddish, rocky conglomerate very unique in our experience sofar, and it was neat to see another change of terrain. We descended into the colorado valley, crossed into Parker, arizona, and then stopped into a "terrible's" gas station to get new sunscreen for me (having now used up a full tube in about 2 weeks) and to get some snacks. It was about 7:30am on a sunday morning, and it was quiet and deserted. It was a delight to be back in civilization again.
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