Showers at Last

5/20/2011, 3:41 p.m.
Athen Sinodinos

I’m posted up in the RV right now with Coco, at the Country Life RV Park in El Centro.  The RV park is a few miles off our route, and I had to get here before 5 p.m. to reserve our spot.  Now I’m just setting up our electronics (charging the laptop, getting back online, plugging in the iPod speakers), killing some time before the guys finish the second half of today’s ride.  I’m not too sure when they’ll be finished, but every half hour they stop to check their phones to make sure everything is okay, so I’ll call them in a bit to see how far they have to go.  When they’re done, I’ll go pick them up and drive them back here for the night.  Then tomorrow, we’ll drive back to where I picked them up to start off our first part of the ride.

We paid $35 at the RV spot to stay here for the night and to use their hot water and electricity (don’t have to use the generator tonight).  I’m so relieved to be here! We all reek.  Seriously, we can’t even stand smelling ourselves right now.  It’ll be great to finally take a shower and brush my teeth in running water.  And there’s a pool here! The guys are going to be pumped when they get here!  

So this morning we had breakfast at a coffee shop in Pine Valley… $11 dollars for a Denver omelet I could have ordered at Denny’s, just sayin’ … We took some time to digest and tune up our bikes, so we didn’t start riding until 9 a.m. (Jack was in the RV for this part of the trip).  Our first stretch was about 30 miles.  We were on Old Highway 80 for most of the ride – no cars, and more uphill.  We’d bike uphill for a good couple of miles, then a short downhill ride. Then back uphill, and back downhill again.  We did this for quite a bit at the beginning, until we finally went down one big downward slope.  My speedometer hit 40 mph on the downhill at one point!

[Just a little insight – we have these pretty cool odometers on our bikes.  It measures our average speed, our maximum speed, current speed, and we can reset it to measure our trips.  I’ve got mine set to measure the entire trip (from San Diego to finish) and one I reset each day to measure our mileage].

Today was exhausting. Oh. My. God.

We’re getting sore (the first couple of days we expect to be), and we can tell we’re getting dehydrated, so we’re trying to load up on as much liquids as possible, and continue to eat.

We finally met up with Jack in Jacumba. We made five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a piece and relaxed a bit before Jack and I switched. 

The guys are in for quite a ride right now.  They'll have finished about another 45 miles once I meet up with them.  I just drove the route they’re about to bike, and it’s going to be rough.  I was going 35 mph uphill in the RV, and in a matter of 8 miles, I hit a monster decline!  I’d say it was about a 6 percent decline.  I went from 3,000 feet to sea level in those 8 miles – it was crazy!  I can’t wait to hear what the guys have to say about having biked it.

Athen on the border of Mexico.

When we were on Old Highway 80, we could see the border.  It’s a biiiigggg wall.  I know they have to have underground tunnels, because there’s no way anyone’s climbing over that thing.  Border patrol was speeding up and down doing their rounds, it was crazy to see.

So as I wait to hear from the guys, I’m going to relax a bit more.  I also need to finish a final paper for class.  Oh and I just spoke to a reporter at the Imperial Valley Press in El Centro.  He wants to come out tonight or tomorrow and talk with us.  It’s so cool we can get the word out about our trip, and hopefully it will help with supporting the cause!