Day 51: Winterhaven, CA to Brawley, CA

Daily Miles: 57.1 Total Miles: 2760.8

Riding through the desert this morning

Today we got a (little) break from the heat, but we had to deal with the return of our good old friend the wind. We were up and packed early, and stopped at the Subway in Blythe to buy lunch before driving back out to Winterhaven to start the ride. Today's route would feature zero restaurants, and only one place to even buy snacks, at Glamis, 30 miles in to the ride. I was on the road by 9am, and immediately started climbing and battling a headwind. I climbed about 800' over the first 17 miles of the day, and the wind was unrelenting. I was crawling along at a snail's pace at one point and checked my phone to see the wind was at 22MPH. Arg.

Carrie vs. Wind. I am losing.

The only good news was that after about 25 miles I turned from a mainly due south route to due west and so the headwind shifted to a side wind. Well, at least I thought this was going to be good news as I rolled up to Glamis to break for lunch with Mary. As we ate, I realized that the whitish mountains that I had been riding towards weren't actually mountains, they were sand dunes! At first I thought this was going to be super cool (and it would have been without the wind), but things got real rough real quick. I headed back out and was literally being sandblasted. SANDBLASTED from head to toe and sometimes right in my face.

Riding through the sand dunes

It was awful. Then, to make matters worse, I started another small, but fairly steep climb, and was rolling along slowly when I was blasted with a massive gust of wind that proceeded to push me right off of the road. My tires went in to the sandy shoulder and I flew off my bike. Well, I would have flown off my bike if my feet weren't attached, so really my body flew of my bike and my feet and legs sunk into the sand with my bike. I scraped up my elbow and smashed the fingers on my left hand as I tried to catch myself on the way down. Not good, but I really wasn't hurt. It would have been much worse if I had been riding at a faster speed. It was just so annoying and stressful, but I forced myself to continue on. I made it up that small hill and soon started climbing again when another, several-minutes-long gust blasted me again. This time I stopped and got off my bike, but it seemed like it was never going to end. I called Mary and told her to come rescue me. Before she got there the wind let up and I was able to make it over the crest of the hill. I told Mary that I was going to try to go on, and that she should ride up to the Dunes Observation Point, get some pictures, and then she could drive by to check on me in 30 minutes or so. I rode on and eventually made it out of the dunes, and all was well. I continued riding on and on, but still no Mary.

Thank goodness this guy came along!

Finally over an hour later she rolled up and told me that she had a little emergency of her own. While I was riding, Mary drove up to the observation point and the wind had covered the parking lot with sand. She made it out to the far corner to take pictures, but as she drove back, she sunk into a sand pile and could not get out... in the parking lot! She tried and tried and the car wouldn't move. There weren't many other tourists, but a few motorcyclists passed her by without helping. Just as she was starting to get really nervous and was digging the sand out from under the tires with her hands, a couple rode up and offered to help her out. They ended up dis-assembling our bike rack and using the straps to create a tow rope which they used to connect the two cars. Then the husband pushed our car while his wife and Mary put the two cars in to gear and the Accord was finally freed from it's sandy resting place.

Salton Sea from the shores of Bombay Beach

One of the bike rack straps broke in the process, so we're going to need to buy a new one in San Diego for our return trip. But what an ordeal! Today was a rough one for both of us. I finished out the last 12 miles of the day, below sea level, by the way, and then we checked in to the hotel to shower the mountains of sand off of our bodies. After getting cleaned up we drove north a bit to check out Bombay Beach, the subject of a 2011 documentary of the same name, and a shell of a former 1950s tourism community on the banks of the Salton Sea, California's largest lake. It was interesting to say the least, pretty in a strange way, and actually a nice way to end our day. Now we're in the hotel resting and gearing up for our final 3 days on the road.