Mile 5854

My inner clock is still ticking Eastern time, and so I wake up at 4 AM this morning.  Since I'm awake I can also pack and hit the road, making some miles before the heat sets in.  I'm leaving El Paso, TX  with a full moon shining from the Mexican side, and making it quite pleasantly to leave town.  Soon I hit my yesterday's target of Las Cruces, NM and continue into the barren country.  Soon I see the sun rising in my rearview mirrors and with the moon still up it makes a nice  light over the prairie.  A coyote is trotting on the shoulder, and birds of prey are sitting on the power poles looking for their breakfast.  After passing the Shakespeare Ghost Town, and the Steins Railroad Ghost Town, I'm running into Benson, AZ.  But I'm far too early to hang around for the usual shootout at Tombstone at noon, and continue to Tucson, AZ.  The landscape by now is only dessert, sand, cacti, some brush, and rocks.  Also with the sun rising, the temperatures do too, and my thermometer on the bike for the air temperature is hitting the right hand limit, so we have 120F or more.  I have to stop almost every 60 to 80 miles to cool down and gulp down Gatorade and water, and cool my head and neck by pouring water over it.  It has the effect like an air conditioner when the air through the helmet vents flows over your head.  It lasts about 30 to 40 minutes, then the hair and helmet liner are dry again and I start the process over again.

The view never changes - somewhere along I-10 / I-8

Interesting enough, the US Custom and Border Patrol has set up several mobile check points, like mini border crossings, where every vehicle gets checked.  Before I reach San Diego, CA, this will happen three times to me.  Anyway, after Yuma, AZ, and now I know why in the Wild West Yuma was such a feared location, there is simply nothing than dust, sand, and heat, I come to the mountains.  Very quickly I'm up at 3,000 ft at Jacumba, CA, going even a bit higher to 4,000 ft further west, and what a difference that already makes. 10F to 15F makes it so much more pleasant, and when depending down into El Cayon, CA and La Mesa, CA, I can feel the see breeze already.  Talking about breeze, this mountain range is high wind area, and so it is plastered with hundreds of wind generators.  I remember those huge fields of Windturbines when we came first time to California in 2000, it was somehow a sign "you are in California now". Anyway, I also passed a solar farm, about 2 miles long, and I couldn't see the end of the depth from the Interstate.  I also passed a solar thermal plant at Gila Bend, AZ, interesting as they are not using a tower design but are a parabolic through plant.  On top they  using molten salt thermal energy storage.  Very impressive this plant.

Gila Bend, AZ - Solana Power Generation Station

At about 3:30 PM I finally make it down to San Ysidro, CA and this time I'm really carful not to get into the wrong lanes and ending up in Mexico.  Figure it wouldn't be that easy as at the Canadian border to come back into the US again.  But I'm learning, and finally find my check point, the San Ysidro post office.

3 out of 4 ain't bad - better than Meat Loaf who only made "2 out of 3 ain't bad"

Quickly got a gas receipt and then turned my bike North and onto I-5 toward Las Angeles, CA.  But reaching the outskirts of San Diego I decided otherwise, and looked for a nice place which I found near Oceanside, north of Carlsbad, CA.  That leaves me with a short run to LA tomorrow morning, up the Grapevine into the California's dust bowl and up to Sacramento, CA and perhaps over the state line into Oregon.  Big day today, but the finishing line is near.  Hope it won't be as hot as today again.  And I'm missing my riding buddy, not the same without you.

"I love you not for what you are, but for what I am when I'm with you." - Erich Fried (Roy Croft), Austrian Poet