We departed the coast on Jan 17, after an enjoyable last night in a campground where we slept under a patched canopy of bright stars, stretched out at the foot of tall trees that shoot 60 feet up before there are any branches. Large sticks fall interminably from the heights, knocking every other branch silly before crashing to the ground. We burnt some of them and had a nice fire; I don´t know why they keep falling. We are sad to leave the coast, already wishing I could relive that week, yet excited to experience bigger and better things! We are anticipating less-travelled roads, and not having to pay for camping.

We picked up a map of SoCal, and planned a route to Joshua Tree National Park. Filled water bladders before starting out in the morning, since the availability of water is not as gauranteed as along the busy coast. We rode 45 miles, until it grew dark and with no place to camp beside the road which was lined with fencing, we inspected a small side road, and chose a flat patch of grass beside a switchback to make camp. Next day similar ordea, stopped for lunch and a restful break at a burger joint, where Dave and Andrew enjoyed some burgers after like a week of eating vegetarian. I munched happily on hummus, tomato, and cheese sandiwches. After the rest, however, a headwind picked up and I discovered that wind can be a worse bain to riders than hills. Hills work on your muscles, see, but there´s always an end, the summit to overcome. The wind strains your spirit, because there is seemingly no end, and the discouragement builds as you prod slowly onward. After two hours of this riding, we made our way off Route 166 onto a road that I don´t know the name of, an old pass through the mountains that was on the map but its name wasn´t. An old wooden sign said that constructed in 1905, the road was considered an engineering marvel as it saved 40 miles from going around the mountains. As we began to climb we were relieved of the wind. I was exhausted by nightfall, but again there was no protected cove to camp, so we just pushed our bikes into the ditch, hidden somewhat by a small mound of earth, and pitched tentsbecause it was terribly cold. It felt like our toughest day yet, gaining 2000 ft or so of elevation, and I gobbled down my dinner and then could barely keep my eyes open, falling asleep at like 8 o´clock and sleeping the whole night until light glowed through the tent and cars again hummed past on the road near and above us.

It was burdensome to begin the next morning; it was very cold and I was sore, and we muddled about warming our hands between bites of delicious oatmeal and bagels and later while packing up, so that it was after 9am and already trucks were passing our camp when we clipped into the pedals. Soon we were sweating though; it was uphill all morning as we climbed somewhere above 6500 ft, straining to get over the pass. Finally we made it, high-fived each other and pulled into Pine Mountain Club where we had a splendid lunch and rest, refilled on water, and I got a coffee to warm up. That was a bad choice, because we continued to climb afterwards, and I felt realy bad, couldn´t catch my breath and had to take breaks often. I resolved that caffeine is strictly off-limits in the middle of a ride. But once we got over the second string of peaks we cruised downhill for miles, not pedalling once, left the cold and snow behind us (yes, there was snow on the ground at that elevation). In a nice town called Frazier Park we got more water, and used the sweet touch-screen information board with internet access that was mounted on the outside ofa store to get directions. We found our way onto N2, and were graced with a safet spot to camp, as the glow of twilight hung over the distant still mountains.

After covering about 30 miles before lunchtime the next day, we arrived in Palmdale, CA, where we asked someone for an information center, and ended up riding out of our way to get to it. We didn´t find the information very helpful, but we stopped at a bike shop and picked up a few things, then got groceries, and it was 4pm by the time we rode to a campsite at Saddleback Butte State Park, 15 miles away. We rode real hard, but it was dark when we got there. We had covered 68 miles, our farthest yet, but the work was not over and after dinner we took turns washing our clothes, taking advantage of the plentiful water a campsite offers. This was a new experience for me; a few drops of soap in the collapsible bucket we have, fill it with water then wring the clothes in it. They were surprisingly dirty. Then rinse with another bucketful of waer. Hang to dry overnight on tree branches, bushes, picnic tables, or overhanging pavilion rafters. The next morning my achilles tendons were very sore, so I requested a rest day. This was good because my clothes were not completely dry. We made pancakes, and had a restful morning reading. I washed more clothes, then in the afternoon I took a water bottle shower, since the campsite had no showers. The name pretty much explains it, just rinse by repeatedly filling a water bottle from the sink, soap up, then rinse off. It was cold and took a pretty long time, but so refreshing! Later, Dave and I hiked up Saddleback Butte, and were afforded good views of snow-clad mountains and the surrounding landscape, from which other similes buttes sprang up from flat ground at random. Back at camp, Andrew had ridden to town and gotten special food, and we had a good lunch. ¨It´s 5 o´clock, should I put the beers on water?¨, he said. ¨Definately.¨ It was a good rest day.

We began again in rain, but thankfully not too much; a hard day, 61 miles, we ate lunch on a sidewalk, and rode on through awful sprawling suburbias of Victorville and Apple Valley. The start of a serious argument, when we should have gotten water for the night, but decided to get it at the next town 11 miles further when it was already 4pm. But we stopped at the first place to fill up, the Burger Depot, where the kind owners offered us the grasy plot with picnic tables beside their restaurant to stay the night. Then the couple bought us dinner, a generous act that helped ease our tensious predicament beyond the delicious food. Oh my gosh, that strawberry shake was incredible. The next morning, while we were having an early breakfast, this dude sarted talking to us; he´d climbed Anapurna or some mountain in Tibet, did a triathlon, and he asked us about our trip. Then he walked across the street to his house and brought us back vitamin water, fruitcups, and a bag of almonds. Simple acts of kindness are great! What a friendly place.

We made our way to Yucca Valley and got groceries, then up a 5-mile climb to Black Rock Canyon, a campsite in Joshua Tree. We´d made it to this place, which on a whim back at home we´d thought might make a good destination, an excuse to circumvent L.A. and cross the border somewhere other than Tijuana. After a good dinner and bonfire, I called my best friend, then sat up late writing, my sleeping bag wrapped around me for warmth, heard a few coyotes laugh and sing.

We spent half the next day back in town at the library to use the internet, at an outdoors store, and geting food and water for three days in the park. We all packed extra water since the campgrounds don´t have any, and had to lug it up the climb to the park entrance, but soon the terrain levelled off. This place is a high-elevation desert, which gets its name from a surly, gnarly tree that is actually a huge cactus, with spiky arms that extend in all directions. We ride easy to take everything in, stopping at each info plaque, learning about life in the desert and the geological processes that made the ridiculous rock formations. After diner and cookies at the campground, the young folks at the site next to ours invited us over to their fire, and we made new friends. We warmed ourselves from the chilly, crystal-clear, see the most stars ever night. Some more people showed up and gave out shots of Jack, very warm. Cold, as I retreated to my tent for a short read and long sleep.

We woke and broke camp in a heavy wind, but the day warmed quickly. We stopped at Jumbo Rocks, a big-kids playground where we spent a few hours bouldering, scrambling, exploring endless canyons til we grew hungry. It was so much fun clamboring over gargantuan rocks, squeezing into tiny caves, crawling under tunnels and finding endless paths to somewhere else, all within a few acres; you could spend a long time checking it all out.

We pressed on and continued to be awed by the desert landscape, finally pulling into the last campsite in the park, and one with water. Here we had half a rest day, taking an 8-mile hike in the morning to Lost Palms Oasis, a welcome stop for miners and other past travelers, a true oasis. We had lunch beneath the tall fan palms, and returned to ride out of the park. It was almost all downhill, and we cruised through the Colorado desert region, of which the flora comprrises the area all the way down the Baja. Salty hills loomed before us - You mean I have to pedal? But no, the road carved right through them, and we passed through the artery of dusty canyons, whose veins splayed out parallel to the road on both sides, to splice into a dozen capilaries, then split again. We made camp beside a shining lone tree on a dazzingly green little hill, and Andrew and I went to explore some of the canyons. We walked not far before it was apparent that these were flash-flood formed; I try to climb up a cliff but the ground is like sand and breaks off in my hands. I swear this is where they filmed that scene in Star Wars where R2-D2 has just parted ways with C-3PO on Tattoine, and he gets zapped by the Jawas (it´s great being a nerd). There were S-curves where the flow had undermined the soft sediment, and deep gulches which drop 12 feet and where there must have been a waterfall when the rains came. Andrew found a way to the top, and I scrambled up and we watched the glow of the sun. From above the system of ravines look like a miniature mountain range. We head back for supper. Perhaps one drawback to cycle-touring is you´re constrained to the road. The way we are equipped, where the pavements ends we stop. I´ve done a bit of hiking and I take pleasure in being away from cars and right in there amongst the forest and roots. But with cycling you can travel a lot farther and therefore see much more, albeit from a road. Andrew used to do (and still does) a lot of backpacking before he got into biking, and when I asked him why the transition, he merely replied, ¨The food´s better.¨ It sure is mate, it sure is.

The next day we coasted through Mecca, got groceries, and later stopped at a state park campground for a delicious free shower. We camped further down the salton Sea, at 228 feet below sea level. We stopped the next day in a small town and washed all our clothes at a laundromat (thank God), wearing raincoats and pants with nothing underneath while all our clothes washed. While we waited, we went through our gear and picked out 10 pounds of stuff we weren´t using and sent it home. After that we took a side trip to Salvation Mountain, a colorful and amazing folk-art structure built by one man out of straw, adobe, tires, and lots of paint of all different colors, 100,000 gallons of it according to one yellowed newspaper article pasted on a wall inside one of the rooms. It was declared a monument, and thus protected by the government. Aong with a couple of paint-covered delapidated vehicles, the mountain peppered with Bible verses, hence its name. We were given a special private tour by Leonard, the architect and builder. Salvation Mountain has been his project for the last 17 years.

We were happily advised to visit Slab City, the last free place to live in America. It´s a trailer park, but no ordiary place. People come and go, but every Saturday there´s a talent show with dancing. I wish I could have stayed and learned more about that place, gotten to know some of the people and heard their stories. We got some food at the free potluck and rode on.

We traversed an awful road, rough and bumpy and bone-jarring, not fun at all. But we were given our own personal fly-over by a pair of Blue Angels from a nearby Air Force base. Near Brawley we discovered the worst campsite in the world, right next to a cow CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation). The smell was horrific, it singed the nostril hairs. The densely-packed animals´ braying, no, pleading, accompanied us all night, and I felt bad for the beings and their lot in life, confined with not much room to move around and no grass and little opportunity to just be cows.

We were forced to ride 10 miles on highway 8 and over some mountains, since there was no other way. Thank God we made it through that safely, two lanes blaring past while we slowly ascended a couple thousand feet. But the rest of the day was sweet coasting, down a beautiful country lane that made me try to remember Frank Sinatra songs so I could belt them out; we flew so fast they got lost in the whipping air. We set a new speed record of 45 mph going down those hills. We passed near sections of the fence, or wall, that lines the border between here and there, it doesn´t matter where, but it makes tangible the forces that clash at this place, namely economic forces, or economic disparity, a comfortable way of saying that some people are greedy(us). Walls are awful, symbolic of ineptitude to thoughtfully and compassionately deal with difficult issues.

So we pulled into a camp, our last night in the U.S., and had an amazing hot shower, and that was it, we woke up the next day and rode just an hour before crossing into Mexico. Hurray! A new chapter of our journey begins.

Writing this I sit on the bed in a small motel room with tile flooring in Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico, six days across the border, almost 1200 miles since we started in San Francisco, sit contented in this clean, well-lighted place, grateful for a bedstead to lean up against after a handful of short nights holding myself up to read with nothing to rest my back on; while what seems to my unaccustomed ears the typical brass and accordion of Latino music drifts through our window and the smoothness of a small amount of generously given and graciously received pure agave tequila weighs heavily on my eyelids, seemingly affecting more than usual my body which is susceptible to stimulation in its current state of elevated metabolism and water flux. But before I get ahead of myself and backtrack to the termination of my last post, I feel I owe an explanation for my lack of updates on our travels, an explanation that is multifaceted: first, I am lazy. But it isn´t my fault! After a day of riding it is seriously difficult to get motivated to write, cold on my fingers to hold a pen, and much easier to read in the warmth of my sleeping bag, finishing one of my five books so I can discard it and lift its weight from tuggging down on my conscience up every hill we climb. (I brought too many books, but each one has been better than the last, as good books always are; there was a collection of short stories by Count Leo Tolstoy, then One flew over the Cuckoo´s Nest, A History in English Words by Owen Barfield, Down the River by Edward Abbey, and The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman; each presents an intrigue on my intellect that is a welcome contrast to the diminished rate of neuron firing due to the physical exertion that comprises the majority of each day. I find that if I receive fulfillment merely from a book, the rest of life is that much richer). Second, I´m afraid, because this lies outside the scope of my descriptive abilities - how can I express miles of sights, days of scenery, or the nuances of fireside conversations, without falling short of reality, of feeling, in short, of the truth? I cannot. I am petrified by reading the greats; I run dry even as I am awed by Thoreau (quoted by Abbey), ¨We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmer to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.¨ Or Abbey himself: ¨A countryman has a place on earth that is his own, and much as he may love to wander...he loves the wandering more because he has a place to return to, a place where he belongs. A place to live and when his time comes, a place to die. The earth has fed me for half a century; I owe the earth a body. The debt shall be paid.¨ Or by Vikram Chandra in Red Earth and Pouring Rain, the last novel I have, from the same words in the first chapter that caused me to climb a tree at night over a month ago: ¨We are blessed, and how strange it is that we can learn to hate even this; that we forsake these gifts and seek release; the sheets are cool and smooth below me, and this I am grateful for, surely, this must be enough, to feel these things and to know that all this exists together, the earth and its seas, the sky and its suns.¨ Anyways, the point of these quotes, besides maybe promoting some good reading, is to credit every author who has benefited me by purging the way before, for nothing I write is my own, it is all a collection, a reflected myriad of everything I have ever read. Perhaps if I triple the number of books I have read thus far in my lifetime, I will have the ability to come up with something original. But whatever I write, let it be truth. Thoreau again: ¨Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.¨ Or of course Lennon, ¨Just give me the truth, all I want is the truth.¨ Finally, my favorite, an appeal for truth through its primary conveyance - language: ¨Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity - intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and an incoruptible heartfelt love of truth - is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race. To misuse the word shows contempt for mankind. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes man to regress down the long path of his evolution.¨ - Dag Hammorskjolk, quoted in A History in English Words. So read books, and seek truth.

A significant portion of each day, more than I preconceived about the trip when I romanticized its cycling aspect, is taken up by the mundane tasks of camping. Of 26 days so far we have camped 24, by far the longest stretch in my relatively short career. Each night we pull into camp around 5pm, not long before it becomes dark, into a state park or in some sheltered place off the road. We change out of used clothes into other used, but less sweaty, clothing. We assemble the stove, prime the fuel, get water from a spicket if we´re in camp or pour it from one of the water bladders we carry when we know we will be ¨stealth¨ camping, boil it, cook the pasta or rice or whatever. Eat, wolfing down the food before it gets cold and because we´re so hungry. Then have some cookies with peanut butter, lean back and heave a sigh, satiated and stalling to be the one to wash the dishes. By now we don´t even use soap, we just give em a quick rinse and run over with chilled fingers, gosh I can´t even think how many times I´ve smoothed out the crusted bumps coating the inside of my metal bowl, till it shines and one more swish of rinse water for good measure. The dishes we leave out until morning, when the process will be repeated with tea and oatmeal, an essential rhythm we found after like two days. By then it´s probably 7pm and we set up tents, or more lately skip the tent and just diverge to our respective carefully selected place on earth that is our own, to unroll a sleeeping pad and slip inside a sleeping bag to read by headlamp until eyelids make full use of their clout, otherwise we converge around a fire, discussing plans and checking maps, finding excuses to argue, arguing for an excuse to converse (seriously, we´re brothers). Bedtime is 9pm.

I awake every morning at 7am naturally, a constancy which I appreciate compared to the college schedule. Someone eventually succombs to hunger and staves the cold to heat some water, for tea and oatmeal flavored with walnuts and raisins and other dried fruit, then we have bagels with cream cheese or peanut butter. On special days we have pancakes, Andrew cooking one at a time and continuously mixing batter until we are all stuffed with flour and syrup. After breakfast we air out our sleeping bags in the sun while we change into riding clothes, then pack everything up and head out usually around 8:30am, removing layers of clothing within the first 15 minutes after warming up from riding. A snack around 10am, lunch around 11:30 and maybe a longer break to digest a bit or avoid the hottest part of the day, another snack in the afternoon, stop for groceries or to refill our water bottles, and hopefully reach our destination or find a suitable spot beside the road before it gets dark. That is sort of a typical day.

We really eat like kings though - gourmet gorp, freshly-mixed guacamole, sandwiches of cheese and hummus, pesto pasta or Thai peanut stir-fry, all the peanut butter and cookies we want; I never end a meal unsatisfied. We snack on fruit; once we bought like 10 pounds of bananas for a buck and they were gone the next day. One of my favorites is wheat tea - green tea made with the water drained from cooking whole-wheat pasta. Mmmm!

So the first week we were on the coast, riding down Highway 1, or finding bike lanes to pick our way through towns. We camped on the beach a few times, wiling away the afterning reading after a leisurely day of 26 miles, or taking a quick dip in the frosty breaking waves, shock therapy on sore muscles. We make whips out of sea plants washed onshore, then have a throwing contest with a 12-foot long thick seaweed cord, Dave wins. Andrew and I explore another cliff cove, cilmbing over slippery rocks and inspecting sea urchins or whatever they are that close when you poke them. I read on the steps that access the beach down the cliff until the sun goes down, head back to camp and change before we spread out search-party style to scrounge for firewood in all the vacant campsites´fire rings. Or another day of 60 miles, ending in a long mentally straining climb which I prided myself in overcoming. We took two showers that first week; not a big deal after the 9 days I went showerless this summer working in the mountains of Colorado.

My legs blew up to twice their size in the first few days, pumped full of blood from throttling up and down every last Pacific coast hill. Every night the first two weeks I was sore, but felt better after a nightly stretch routine. I love stretching, it feels great and is so relaxing. I stretch in the morning too. I am sore in my butt from the saddle, on my quads and inner hamstring. Muscle soreness doesn´t bother me, it just means I´m gaining muscle. Joint pain is bad though, and my right knee was starting to bother me after a few days, until I checked my shoe cleat and noticed it was ever-so-slightly askew, which was turning my foot slightly inward. That´s not so bad for a little while, but over 30,000 revolutions per day (I approximate), it becomes a serious issue. The pain dispersed after I straightened the cleat. I´ve also had problems with tightness and pain in both achilles tendons, which was alleviated after more shoe and saddle adjustments. Bicycle issues have been moderate; Dave´s bike popped three tubes in two days, I´ve had to patch three myself. I ran over my sunglasses with my trailer, and had to pick up a $3 pair. I also lost a water bottle over an awful road, but replaced it with a regular water bottle.

We passed several elephant seal colonies, ate lunch beside a beach strewn with hundreds of them, laughing out loud at their snorting and fart-like noises, barking at each other as they flub huge bodies past each other.

That´s all I´ve got time for now. I miss everyone and wish you all the warmth we´ve got here in Mexico! Asta luego.