Pahrump, NV

6.23.2010

Well, we hit the desert. Today was a 145 mile trip from Barstow CA to Pahrump NV. 60 miles of this trip was on an interstate highway where bicycles were not allowed, so our total ride turned into an 85 mile journey. In the beginning we were making really good time, with an average speed of about 22 miles per hour. Then the sun came out and the wind started picking up and we got slowed down a bit. Todd said there wouldn’t bee too much to look at, but I disagree. There were mountain views on each side of the desert we were passing though which were absolutely beautiful. At one point we passed through a salt flat that looked like it had just snowed. There were also parts where the roads were cut through the mountains that we could see rock layers of all different colors.


It was a good ride, not too long but still challenging. We’ve officially moved on to the portion of our trip where the biggest challenge will be wind and heat. Today’s high was around 95 degrees, but I’m sure I’ll bee looking back on this day once we’re in Texas envious of the temperature.

We are yet again without a friendship visit, but there’s a cool tradition for the Journey of Hope cyclists I wanted to mention and haven’t got a chance to yet. So we all know that the biking is a pretty tough leg work out, but not really too tough on the upper body. The solution to this problem is to do one push up for each mile traveled at the end of the day. This is completely on your own and at your own pace. Some riders are doing 2 per mile, but I’m sticking with the one mile one push up philosophy. Tonight I owe another 25 pushups to the Journey of Hope gods before I can go to sleep, because I got some out of the way at crew stops earlier. So far I’ve done over 700. Too bad there won’t be too much time to hit the beach once I’m back home.