Saturday's ride was the first in the Mojave proper.
We scheduled two or three days to traverse the entire segment. Sunday's ride started from where we ended on Saturday - at Roy's Cafe in Amboy, on Route 66 once again. We left the motel at Twentynine Palms around 5:00 am and started our ride at 6:05 am under Roy's circa 1960's sign.
We soon biked past a few local rituals - a bush filled with ladies' undergarments, mile after mile of names spelled out in rock piled along the northern embankment, and another bush chock full of shoes. Then we rode bikes past Cadiz, which we'd scouted via The Little Darkness the day before.
Another glorious sunrise and a long gradual ascent. Our first several miles in the cool predawn and first blaze of sun, the heat started to mount. By 9:30 the temperature was in the mid 90's. The question arose: how far would we go? I'd hoped for a century ride (100 miles), but Peter and Janie questioned the wisdom of continuing to ride in the unrelenting heat. One suggestion was to stop after 50 miles. I said I'd keep going until 120 degrees.
Our primary companions parallel to Route 66 were 100+ unit (rail car) BNSF trains - they kept coming and going as long as we were on our route, sometimes three in an hour. Most rail cars held either a double stack of ocean containers or four half size containers. Other trains held piggyback truck trailers for intermodal transport. Train after train after train, in both directions - which containers full, which empty? I have my guess.
Jody and Janie, cruising down Route 66 in California.
Photo by Peter Doran.
We passed under Interstate 40 and stopped at a truck stop were Janie paid over $5.00 a gallon for gas (ah, California gas prices!) and both Peter and Jane asked if it was time to stop riding. We kept going, "Ahd Meah V'es-reem" - "until 120" - and the trains kept coming, long with a group of motorcycle riders who alternately gave me either thumb's up or the peace symbol in salute. Our time on Route 66 ended at US Highway 93, a major truck route between southern California and Las Vegas, and 300 yards from a rail crossing, where traffic was stopped, waiting for a train to pass. We continued along this busier highway with no paved shoulder, and Janie pulled The Liitle Darkness onto an asphalt patch a mile or two later. It was 11:33am and the gauge on my bicycle had been yo-yoing between 105 and 106 degrees since the rail crossing. Couldn't quite see melting into the hot tar, so I loaded my bike onto the rack, 13.5 miles from Nevada.
In Hebrew: עד מאה ועשרים שנה.
~Traditional Jewish blessing on one's birthday: to 120!
Anyoone smell baked Braverman?
ReplyDeleteHoney cakes!
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