DAY 2: 9/21 Pine Valley, CA to El Centro, CA

 DAY 2: 9/21/21 Pine Valley, CA to El Centro, CA. 83 miles, top temperature 102! 

Mindful of yesterday’s heat that knocked us out and today’s forecast even hotter, we decided to get going a full hour earlier today and started rolling at 6:15am. This meant waking at 5:15am as our morning routine takes about an hour. This consists of eating breakfast (cereal, banana and yogurt bought at gas station), filling water bottles (adding electrolyte pill), making lunch to go (in my case PB and banana on rye), packing paniers strategically so items we may need are more accessible, as well as trying to make sure right side and left side are close to even balanced, attaching lights and Garmin after recharging, applying both sunscreen and of course Chamois Butter. Isn’t that last item a nice, marketing name for what’s essentially anti-chafing butt cream? Although sunrise wasn’t until 6:35am, we already enjoyed some light in the sky. 

Early morning departure

Today’s ride could easily be divided into 3 separate rides:

1. Normal Within Expectations 
2. The Descent 
3. Heather and the Heat 

1. Normal Within Expectations

The first section began in a relatively comfortable temperature and lasted roughly 35 miles. We enjoyed descending from 4000’ to 3000’ and climbed back to 4000’. 

After 3 hours we passed Jacumba and we were now riding with Mexico and the border wall about 200 yards to our right. We passed a US Customs and Border Patrol station and we’d be seeing their SUVs up and down the road the rest of the day. Lots to be thinking about especially with Del Rio, TX in the news. Also peace of mind if we had a breakdown they could be helpful. 

2. The Descent

After 4 hours, we came to the start of about 13 miles of a gift from the cycling gods! A descent on big sweeping mountain roads. In certain areas where there are no other roads it is legal to ride on the interstate highway. In fact it was marked for us to do so. This was pure fun! And despite east coasters picturing Heather and Mark as 2 morons on the likes of I-95, it really wasn’t like that. The shoulder was more than the width of a car and with a deep rumble strip separating it from the road. Fact was we felt safe from the cars, it was more the debris you’d have to cycle around including blown out tires, a screwdriver, random pieces of lumber and various metal parts I can only guess fall from cars and trucks (don’t they need them?).  

Thank you, cycling gods

As we completed this joyful ride down (* Editor note at bottom), I could see one of these vast open areas with many wind turbines. This played on my mind because it meant the area is obviously a reliable source of high speed winds. There are 3 types of wind for a cyclist and 2 of them are not your friend. Of course a tailwind is always welcome. A headwind is worse as it can slow you to a crawl. (In our Newfoundland trip there were days we actually went faster uphill than downhill due to wind difference.) The worst wind to me with gear on the bike is the crosswind because it catches the paniers and can blow you either left into the traffic lane or right into a guardrail or off the road. I silently prayed to the wind gods and luckily as we got closer the wind turbines were not moving. Maybe this is our lucky day? Or not!

Wind: friend or foe?

3) Heather and the Heat

At 10:45am, the sign announcing we were entering the Yuha Desert was foreboding. Less than 30 minutes later, Heather is desperate for shade so ate standing in the shadow of a utility pole. 

A thin slice of shade

I had noticed the lack of roadkill on the sides of the road. For those of us used to cycling around Westchester and Fairfield Counties, it’s rare you don’t pass the remnants on a ride.  It then occurred to me that few if any animals could live or would choose to live in this lifeless void. Hmmm could we?

A short while later I heard Heather just behind me yelling “ow, ow”. I turned to find her down on the ground with her bike on top of her. She had stopped to pee, and pulled into the shoulder of the road to stop which was a “soft shoulder” of sand and crushed gravel. She wiped out. Thankfully my better instincts took over and I asked if she was ok before taking a photo. We determined she was okay (next day revealed some nasty bruises) and resumed riding. 

Two hours later, Heather was beat. We took a half hour rest in an improvised hay shelter and an hour later met Magdalena, another water angel. When I say “met”, I mean Heather rang her bell. It’s not that we are fools out here without enough water, it’s the need for cold water and a few minutes reprieve indoors. 

Thank you, hay bales! Is she okay...?

Magdalena revives Heather

Feeling like we had enough energy to make the last 10 miles we started out and a few miles in encountered a “bridge out” sign. Heather will not hear of it and reasons if it’s a river creek, it must be dry now and we can walk across. Well even though I thought differently there was no way we wanted to backtrack and add more miles so we went around and over barriers and safe to say we made it through over the bridge not yet demolished. 

Heather defying the signs

With a few more sit-anywhere-there-is-shade stops, we at last make it to our hotel but not before pit stop at 7-11 next door for chocolate milk recovery beverage! 

I was in disbelief to see on my Strava that we had 6:54 of moving time and 13:44 elapsed time! We had spent equal time resting to riding which is far from our norm. At home on long training rides, a typical ratio could be ride 5:15 out of a 6 hour ride. We don’t ride fast but we don’t rest very much. We needed to try another approach to this heat. 

When planning, we assumed the 2 hardest riding days would be the the first day’s climb and the climb over the Continental Divide next week in New Mexico. Then the heat wave in week one arrived and I added that to my list. But we had not been prepared for the challenge of riding to what the lady in Pine Valley warned us was not El Centro, but that they call Hell Centro. 

*Re: “joyful ride down”: when Heather read this she asked me “Are you kidding? I was terrified, pumping my brakes the whole time, feeling like I’m going to hit something like an obstacle course. Nothing about it was joyful!”  I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Strava, day 2

© Copyright Mark Segal 2021.