PowerCycle

11/26 Happy Thanksgiving! Today I’m thankful that I didn’t have to eat tacos or burritos for dinner. They actually have a Chinese restaurant and a pizza place in town so I splurged for some pizza. It wasn’t turkey but for me it was just as good. Grabbed a motel for the night (US $16). No heat and no hot water at this place either.

A rare treat appeared while riding today… a bike lane! I was really not liking the highway up until this point. Ever since Ensenada the road lacked a shoulder and to make it even worse, there was usually a drop off. To add to the misery there are also reflectors sticking up a half inch every 10 feet. Sometimes they’ll be on the white line, sometimes inside it and sometimes a few inches outside it. Sometimes there are 2 of them stuck next to each other; sometimes 3. I kept finding myself weaving in and out of them which is bad because when you are riding in traffic its best to be predictable. As soon as the bike lane started I noticed that the reflectors were spaced evenly about 15 feet apart. Maybe this section of the road is newer? It kind of looked like it. I ended up making much better time and going up hills was much more relaxing since I didn’t have to bail off the road to let trucks pass.

Something else appeared today and it was anything but a treat. Out in the middle of absolutely nowhere I saw someone stand up in some dried grass about 100 feet in front of me. They were up off the road about 30 feet next to a fence and there were no cars around so I thought it might have been a hitchhiker or maybe farm worker going to the bathroom. As I got closer it dawned on me that I was seeing a lot of flesh. I can’t emphasize “a lot” quite enough. This was very large person and it quickly became clear that they were completely naked. Then they turned toward me and I realized it was a woman. It was clear enough that she wasn’t in trouble because she just stood there paying little mind to me or the cars that were approaching. Giving her a lift was out of the question so I kept on riding. So far that’s makes #1 on my list of strange things I’ve seen this trip.

I’ve been drinking a lot of liquid but even that hasn’t been enough. If you’re not stopping to go to the bathroom every few hours you probably aren’t drinking enough. I didn’t go once today and I drank at least 8 liters of water/Coke/juice. The sun is brutally intense so I’ve been burning off moisture without even sweating. I’ll have to be careful so I don’t get heat stroke, especially when I get into the Desierto Central.

Today marked my first time using an Internet Cafe. It cost $10 pesos for one hour (US $0.77). You can’t use USB drives so I couldn’t upload the couple posts I have in the queue but I managed to check email and make sure my FB friends were having a good holiday. Using Google (search/maps) was rough because everything defaulted to Spanish. The help section is only available in English and that directed me to a change language dropdown on the bottom of the page. I couldn’t find it though.

GPX Track