Day 3 (Thurs, 14 Feb)

Day 3 (Thurs, 14 Feb)

I rode from Brawley, CA to Ehrenberg, AZ, which is just across the state line but nonetheless I made it to my second state in 3 days of riding!  This was by far the toughest ride to-date.  I was riding into a pretty strong headwind nearly the entire ride and about 70% of the ride was on very rough pavement (not much better than packed gravel) - not expected as this was on a CA state highway.  Nearly every mile was a challenge, which across 88 miles is a tough ride (over 7 hrs of riding).

OK, that's the end of my complaining!  On the positive side I have been blessed by some wonderful weather - another day that started out in the 40s (pleasant temp to start a ride at for a couple of hrs) and quickly warmed up to around 70 and was in the 70s for most of the day.  Totally blue skies all day - just wonderful weather to be in the desert - very beautiful.

I met and spoke with the first multi-state cyclist that I've come across so far.  David was his name and he was riding/tenting from Tuscon to L.A.

I also had my first flat tire today.  Hit a big clump of hard dirt and blew out a sidewall.  I've never done that before - rear tire, ugghhh to change out.  That night in the hotel I did put some of my old USAF battle damage repair skills to use and figured out a way to use electrical tape and a patch of nylon (cut from the inside of one of my bike bags) to repair (it held on Friday).

You'll see in the pictures below a few items of note:
1. Imperial Sand Dunes Recreational Area (it looked like there would be a huge dune buggy competition this weekend - there were 100s of RVs when I went by early in the morning and 100s more that I passed on my ride up towards I-10 and AZ).
2. One of the Mtn passes that I climbed through was a primary pre-Columbian route for folks going East-West in this part of CA.
3. Lot's of awesome desert landscape pictures.
4. Some of the aquaducts and farmland near Blythe, CA (in the Colorado River valley)

5. I-10 (I was on it for a couple miles to get into AZ) and the Colorado River (which is the state line here between CA and AZ).
6. AZ state line!

Cool military side note: having served in the USAF (many years ago now) I really enjoy being in the Southern part of the country where more of our military bases are located.  A few things I've seen so far:
1. On Tues, in San Diego I went right past Mirimar air base.  This is the base that hosted the Navy's Top Gun years ago (Tom Cruise went there once I believe as well - mid 80s - wow, time flies...).  It is now a Marine air base.  I was able to see a number of F-18s and another type of jet that I couldn't immediately identify.  Maybe Marine, but I need to look it up (I took some video).
2. On Wed, coming down out of the Mountains and heading to Brawley, I saw at least 2 fighter jets south of me near (probably about 30 miles - I could just barely see them).  I stopped to watch them a bit and they were doing some pretty heavy maneuvers - it looked to me at the time like they were practicing dog fighting.  That night I checked out the military base in that area and it is El Centro Naval Air Facility.  This is where the Blue Angels practice in the Jan-Mar timeframe every year.  I'm not 100% sure but believe it was them that I saw that day.
3. On Thurs I also saw two army helicopters and 2 C-130s (presumably USAF) doing maneuvers on the far side of a valley I was riding through.  Again they were a ways off from me (maybe 15-20 miles) but it looked like they were practicing some low level flying along one of the mountains (I could see their shadows not far from the aircraft).

Cool stuff, and more to come given some other bases that I'll pass by in the next few weeks.