Day 2: Valencia CA to Victorville, CA

95 miles, about 4000 feet of climbing. Entering the desert! Bad roads, nasty headwinds.

Today we climbed out of whatever valley it was we were in, and came out in Palmdale. Welcome to the Mojave desert! It's a bizzare scene--one minute you're in a desert no-man's-land, the next you're in heavily developed planned communities. It's like someone planted a suburbia seed in the sand and irrigated like crazy.

In Palmdale, we made a slight detour to see the Blackbird Airpark Museum. They've got two SR-71 Blackbirds on display, along with a U2 and a D-21 Mach-6 drone that they tried to launch off the back of an SR-71, although it never quite worked.

As soon as we left Palmdale, it was Joshua trees everywhere. They're not just an album by U2. Different kind of U2, BTW. turns out they were given that name by Mormon settlers who thought the trees' branches looked like a biblical story of Joshua raising his arms and looking Up. And that's about all that's interesting about them.




Today the riding wasn't too bad, until the last 30 miles, when we kept alternating between headwinds and tailwinds, and nice roads and really crappy roads.

GRIPE: we got these really nifty combination GPS/radio things, Garmin Rino's, just for this trip, so we could know where we were, where the other person is, and talk to each other, in case we got split up. Halfway through the first day the bracket on mine broke, and halfway through the second day the bracket on Nancy's broke. How lame! We're really quite peeved, because they're kind of expensive, and now they're pretty much useless to us. Grrr...

Day 1: Santa Barbara CA to Valencia CA

80 miles, mostly flatish. 4000 feet of climbing.

Nancy in the house. We started the day off with a “before” photo in our bathing suits— in hopes that our "after" photos will be more flattering =) Ed and I agreed to take it easy today, to go no more than 130 watts for me, about 150 for him, the theory being that the easier we go, the more pleasant the next month will be. And it was a great day!

We took off with our group of about 30 fellow guests and guides around 9:00 a.m. from the Harbor View Inn right near the pier in Santa Barbara. We took lots of group photos, and then we were off. We rode along the ocean for a good bit, and at one point there were dozens of dolphins swimming in the opposite direction as us. The most shocking part of the day is when we biked on Freeway 101—yes, the 101! Eventually, a bike lane is added, but not for a while. It was sort of scary with the traffic going so fast. Eventually we turned away from the ocean, and inland towards the orange and lemon groves.

Surprisingly, most of the group stayed together until lunch at about 50 miles. It wasn’t the traditional over-the-top Trek Travel picnic, but still much better than I expected for a “feed zone”—sandwich stuff, bean salad, green salad, good cheeses, and of course the ubiquitous peanut M&Ms. After lunch we biked through more orchards and then a 10-mile stretch of highway (not freeway, but still very fast and very trafficked, with lots of heavy trucks). We got to know some of our fellow guests on this leg-- many of whom are 50+ years old and in amazing shape. One is turning 65 this year and dropped me because he was going faster than my 130-watt limit would allow.

After we pulled into our hotel, we got to enjoy one of the perks of this trip-- a 30-minute massages with Dana, one of the two trip soigneurs. We get one every 2 days. She was great! Dana says the guides call us collectively “the honeymooners,” and that she’s put money down on Ed to be one of the people who doesn’t get in the van at all on this trip. Hopefully neither of us will!

All in all, Day 1 was good, not too tiring, and we’re ready for more!