Day 2: Palm Springs, California to Blythe, California

Distance: 134 miles
Climbing: 3350 feet
Temperature: 104 F, that’s right, 104
Average Speed: Unknown, but faster than yesterday. Accidentally reset my computer about 60 miles in.

Today was what you would call a hard day—long and very hot. Only 3 of us weren’t riding in the van for most of the day. It was a 42 mile rollout from Palm Springs, maybe 25 miles of very gradual climbing through a lovely box canyon, and about 70 miles on I-10 and a frontage road into Blythe. All was through a baking desert. And when I say desert, I mean parched, lifeless, and relentless.

The SAG team did yeoman’s work keeping us watered up on that stretch of I-10. I definitely wouldn’t have made it without them. Like a tree I must be watered. I’ve got video of the box canyon, but the time is getting a bit late so I won’t be pulling it together until tomorrow.

I’m concentrating on recovering right now. I’m hurting a bit—crampy, sore, thoroughly antisocial. The physical definitely impacts my mood. I’m planning on soft pedaling most of the way tomorrow. I definitely don’t want to go as hard as today. I don’t know that I could even if I so desired.

But enough bitching. I did something really hard today. I pushed myself and tested myself and proved something to myself. Someone made the comment today that he had nothing to prove, and he may not. And it may just be a phrasing to indicate that he knows what his limits are. But I don’t. And I don’t feel that way. I feel like I’ve got something to prove practically every day. Otherwise, isn’t it just the slow death of stasis and non-discovery? To struggle against mighty obstacles seems the most human of endeavors. I want to be a human, a living, struggling, occasionally failing one.

My second thought: despite it being a hard day on the bike, at no point in time did I say to myself that I’d rather be shilling credit cards right now, not even a little bit. A hard day on the bike is better than the best day at work.