Day 6 [Palo Verde, CA]

Day six was crazy in every way.  From the ridiculously hard 70 mile ride through undesirable conditions, to the evening fun I had in the 200 person town of Palo Verde.  Let's start with the ride.  I was on the saddle by 8:45 in the morning, and I arrived at my destination at 6pm.  The total actual time spent pedaling was a whopping 7 hours and 30 minutes!  The ride began innocently enough, with a 10 mile flat ride.  Everything after that was a nightmare.  I next entered the dunes, which looked like this:

Looks all warm and fun and you would almost expect Jasmine to fly by on a magic carpet, right?  Well in actuality it was pure evil.  It was cold and very windy.  I quickly learned that sand + wind = god damn it.  Quite often I'd get a nice serving of sand in my eyes and mouth.  This went on for 15 or 20 miles and then came the rolling hills that lasted nearly the remainder of the day.  For about 5 miles I caught a bit of downhill, but there was no coasting as the wind was strong enough to negate gravity's good side.  Just when I thought I was going to die, I was blessed with 5 more miles of rolling hills that brought me limping into town.  

It was nearly dark when I arrived, but since I was starving I went to the town restaurant before heading to the campground.  Setting up my tent in the dark didn't sound nearly as bad as going another 30 seconds without eating at that point.  The restaurant was the only food in town, and in fact, was the only place to get food I had seen since leaving Brawley 70 miles ago.  There were about five other people in that restaurant, all sitting at the bar, and I quickly befriended all of them.  Above is Ed, a Swift truck driver who gave me a tour of his big rig.  Down at one end of the bar was a man playing the harmonica, and then there was a man named Jackie, whom was either really drunk or really crazy.  Either way he was quite entertaining.  Most importantly there was a woman named Janie there who had seen me earlier in the day while she was working to install fiber-optics cables on the side of the highway.  I don't recall seeing her, but this was due to the fact that I had my head down and was probably cursing the entire world as I rode by.  Anyway, Janie was super kind and paid for my entire dinner.  When I was getting ready to leave and go set up camp, she offered to let me sleep at her place instead and I graciously accepted.  I got some much needed rest as a result of this random act of kindness.  Thank you, Janie!