Mojave airport with lots of parked planes sitting out in the desert
Tehachapi, CA to Barstow, CA 92 miles. This day starts at 4000 feet and down to 2300 feet in the first 40 miles. Then goes up to 2500 feet in the next 20 miles. Then down to 2200 feet at Barstow.
Lucille:
April 26 - Saturday - Brrrrr. It was cold in Tehachapi this morning. After Tom and Eric left, I decided to walk a few blocks to see what was to be seen. I quickly found 3 great-looking shops - an arts and crafts gallery, antique store, and a quilting shop. Well, these just had to be investigated! The problem was that it was a little after 9:30 and 2 of the stores opened at 10 and one at 10:30. It was much too cold to stand around for a few minutes, so I walked back to the motel for half an hour, checked out of the motel, and started out for the day. I'm glad I went back. The shops were worth the visit. Next I drove about 12 miles west to the Cummings Valley to an ostrich ranch. What unusual and interesting birds they are! I had never seen one up so close. Too bad this place isn't closer to Belmont. It would have been a great place for Nancy and me to take the NDE students on a field trip. Still thinking like a teacher. I had my sandwich at a picnic table at the ranch, overlooking the valley. It was a pretty spot. On the way back to Tehachapi, I stopped at a lilac farm for short visit. I wish I could have bought some of the pretty lilacs, but it didn't make sense to take lilacs on a long trip. The trip across the Mojave desert went without any problems, and about 20 miles west of Barstow I received a call on my cell phone. " Where are you?", Eric wanted to know. I couldn't believe it. They had arrived in Barstow before I did. I was so happy. That period at the end of the day when I'm waiting for them to arrive is still an anxious time for me. I really had fun today
Reality TV
The desert has many different plants.
Waving at first train going past us today
Another wind farm close by. As you could guess, it was windy.
92.56
20.3 mph
Max Speed 47 mph!!
4:33:21
Total Trip Distance: 84.29
ERIC:
Day 5 - (4/26/03) Today was the best day yet! I was a biking machine. Today was the opposite of previous days as Dad had a hard time keeping up with me. The day started with a long downhill ride. We reached speeds up to 47 mph. This made it very exciting as we had to keep an eye out for the many obstacles in the road. After we got down the hill the wind was on our backs. We did the first 30 miles in 1 hour 20 minutes. For quite some time I was comfortably traveling at 31 mph. We were lucky enough today to have a state rest stop that we were able to stop at for one of our breaks. I learned about the local history of Borax. The 90 miles went by very quickly. We actually got to Barstow before Mom. When we got to Barstow we found our map was not exactly correct. It had us going over a bridge that did not exist. This was fun as we got to go off road for a little while. It made for a nice little adventure. The whole day was going too well so we had to have a little diversion. We reached Barstow early today so we were able to have a nice relaxing afternoon. It was a good thing that today was an easy day as last night I realized why Mom drinks decaffeinated coffee at night. It took her a while to go to sleep. Around 1am Mom tried to quietly call the front desk to ask them to call the Louders upstairs to turn down the loud TV set. She made such a noise and turned on the lights and woke us all up. The problem was she could not make a call since the phone was unplugged because we had it plugged into the computer. It was almost as funny as the day before when my alarm on my phone went for at 7 am to wake us up. I have never seen anyone jump out of bed so quickly in my life. Maybe my phone is too loud. I have been having a great time with the parents. We now need to decide the plan for tomorrow.
Wind farm at top of hill. Lots of windmills.
TOM:
Today started out cool and overcast. We discovered that the temperature was about 50 degrees when we walked outside for breakfast. This caused me to add a sweat shirt over the white long sleeved shirt and cover both with the nice red bike shirt that carried three bottles of water for the 90 mile trip across the desert. Thanks for the great bike shirt, Melanie. As we prepared to leave at 8:55 am (getting earlier) I decided to put on the wool gloves that I have been carrying on the bike since leaving on this trip. Our first 18 miles was down from the Tehachapi Pass to the valley. This was a fast, fun and easy trip. At 20 miles we turned left in Mojave, still staying on Highway 58. The terrain was now flat but the wind that had been from several different directions as we came down from the pass was now at our back. This continued to make the trip very easy. We made our first stop at 30 miles which took less than one hour 20 minutes. It was time to remove the sweat shirt as the temperature had now reached over 60 degrees. There were no clouds in the sky as we had observed the last two days. Our second stop was at a rest stop near Edwards AFB. By then we had traveled just over 46 miles in 2 hours for an average speed of 23.3 mph. This was really exciting to be moving so fast and easy since the last two days had been slow and difficult. We finally got the tail winds that we prayed for two days earlier. We completed the trip in less than six hours, including all the stops. This makes 5 days in a row where we have set new records for ourselves. Before starting this trip, our longest bike ride was a 100 km (about 62.5 miles) Breath for Life bike ride starting and ending in Foster City. Anyone in the SF Bay Area should take this ride in June. It is fun and for a good cause, the American Lung Association. The first three days of our trip we exceeded the distance each day. On the fourth day we climbed 3800 feet, the highest elevation climb for a day, and today we had the best speed ever. We saw some great sites today. Check out the sample pictures. Thanks for all your comments.