Wickenburg, AZ

6.30.2010

I lied before about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Today was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I feel like this is going to be a recurrent theme throughout the trip. Our ride from Parker AZ to Wickenburg AZ was a total of 108 miles from beginning to end, but the hardest part was the wind and the heat. Throughout the entire trip I doubt we changed more than 20 feet in elevation. Up until today I thought this would have been a good thing. The problem with no elevation change is that there are no downhills to break up the monotony. When you’re going up and down, there is a stretch of misery followed by a stretch of fun. When you’re pushing through wind in the Arizona heat, however, it’s a completely different story. You’re pretty much riding at one speed the whole day, and each mile is paid for with pedal strokes. There is no coasting. In my opinion it’s much harder to keep a steady pace the entire day than it is to climb hills and be rewarded when you reach the top.



To add to the ride’s difficulty, we were fighting a headwind for most of the day, and temperatures climbed into the triple digits in the afternoon. We woke up at 4:00am and were on the road by 5:00am. Our pace line arrived at lodging at 4:45pm, pedaling for almost 12 hours and through the hottest part of the day. Part of the reason it took so long is because we had a pretty bad wreck at one point where two guys went down. We were also plagued with flat tires throughout the day. Our rims would heat up in the sun and literally cause our tubes to explode. We kept on pushing by talking to each other, learning little fun facts or playing road trip games. The shower I took today might have been the best one I’ve taken in my life, and I was sharing it with 5 other naked dudes.

Once we were cleaned up we went out to our sponsored dinner at the local elks lodge. There we enjoyed all the salad and lasagna we could eat, with sweet lemonade to wash it down. I’m stuffed to the gills right now, but I think it’s alright considering I burned about 6,000 calories today. At the elks lodge we put on our first performance of Kids on the Block, a puppet show about some new kids who arrive in town. Mark has Cerebral Palsy, Renaldo is Blind, and Ellen has Downs Syndrome. The puppet show is designed to show kids the many things that people with disabilities are capable of doing, and how to interact with people who may behave differently than them. The show was a hit, and although I was not chosen as a puppeteer for this performance, hopefully I’ll be making my debut pretty soon.

I am WIPED. Nighty. Night. (It’s 9:00)