Day 2: Santa Ana or Bust, The Day that Almost Did Not Happen

Today was a wild one to say the least.  It started last night when we woke up around 11PM to major winds.  I knew today had high winds forecasted but no idea that a weather watch was posted for Santa Ana Winds, steady 15~20 mph with gusts up to 40 mph.   The tent was being pounded, all we could do was try to sleep and hope for the best.   When we woke up, the tent was intact but water everywhere from a water container that turned over.  With the tent shaking we cleaned up and held on.  Around 10:30AM we finally got out of the tent and looked around.  After about an hour of wondering what to do we decided, time to go.  It was late and my target for the day was 60 miles away.  It was still too windy for Sandy to take down the tent by herself and the ride was going to take about 5 hours.  So here comes the confession – to make the day work and get to our destination, Sandy SAG’ed me about 5 miles from camp including about 3 miles into the ACA map.  The official ride today started on 3 miles on an uphill section on I-8 which I was not crazy about riding on a good day.  With safety being a concern and time running out the SAG saved close to an hour of riding.  I would have never thought that weather would be such a major factor in our journey to this point.  Good thing is tomorrow is set to be a nice day in a valley and we hope to be out of California. 

For todays ride, I felt the pressure of needing to cover 60 miles before dark. 

Most of the ride was on Old 80 which had a shoulder unusable for a bike, so I needed to stay left of the white line most of the ride.  There was very little traffic so no real issue, the route also put me back on I-8 near the end for a very fast ~7 mile downhill.   I always wondered when driving what it would be like to get on the highway by bike for one of the long down hills – fun but don’t need to do this again.  

There really was not much to look at during the ride today.  The highlight was seeing the border wall up close.  If you look at the Strava map below I was in Mexico.  Weather wise, it was mostly cold and into a head wind.  The warmest temperature was 58F at the very end of the ride.    

The Wall...

Last time I saw something like
this I was in China

High Point of todays ride

For the night, we are camping on BLM land just off Highway 98.  We are well protected with border patrol driving the area.

Night 2 Camp Site

Today’s ride stats: 

Start Time: 12:44PM                     Finish Time:  5:10PM     

Elapse Time:  4 Hr. 26 Min           Ride Time:  4Hr. 12 Min

Distance:  59.9 miles                     Average Speed: 14.2 mph

Total Climbing/Descent:  3,369/6400 Ft.              

TSS: 124

Average Power:  145 Watts         Normalized Power: 171 Watts

Calories:  2199                               Ave/Max HR: 140/165 bpm

13 minutes of stopping:  Most of this was taking pictures of the wall and call with Sandy to confirm our camping location.

For food, I had one cliff bar and several blocks. For drinking, I finish one bottle – this is what happens when I am cold during a ride.

The SAG took off about 1K ft.

I road in Mexico...

For tomorrow, we hope to get to Glamis, which is right on the boarder of CA/AZ.  We will look for BLM land hopefully on the AZ side.  Time to get out of California, again. The ride will be mostly flat for about 80 miles.

Before I finish I do want to say thanks again to the McGowan's.  After two days of climbing, the training on Sugarloaf really helped.  And I am reading everyone words of encouragement every day - keep it up.