Joy on Two Wheels

You see the heat in the movies, you hear forecasts with the high temps but until you experience it, wow! As I highlighted in earlier posts, the heat has been my #1 concern for the entire trip.

Monday afternoon was our first real test and Joy pushed it. We made it to Phoenix early and made a stop then we had a 50 minute ride across the city to our Airbnb. We used our cooling vests (not wet enough we know now) but the helmets just hold so much heat. When we reached the Airbnb, Joy’s face was bright red and she was very short with me. Needless to say I had her go inside and unloaded the bike. I’ve had heat exhaustion before and so has she, not worth pushing it.

That evening we rode 4 miles to grab a pizza and the air was fire. Typically when you ride, the air is quite cooler when you’re moving, this actually felt hotter. It was 109 and unreal.

As a result we planned to leave at 4am Tuesday, . Riding in the dark isn’t ideal but we were going to be on I-10 for quite a while, we took the risk. Boy am I glad we did. The last 50 miles on the interstate we wore our cooling vests and used cooling towels inside our helmets, then we made it to Palm desert where it was 99 degrees at 9 am. One more stop in town to rewet everything and get a drink and we thought we were home free, however. We had a 15 minute ride through town, with stoplights, on blacktop, it was horrible. However, there was a big payoff, see below….

Needless to say I had a huge sweaty smile! In a few miles we gained some altitude and the temps dropped to a “comfortable” high 80’s. This was also our third coin ride for the trip. We ended our day early in Idyllwild, CA, checked into our Airbnb and went to explore the town, which is nice (but half the town is closed on Tuesdays).

Needless to say, we managed the heat and we’re learning a bunch we can apply in the future. I’d also like to finish this post highlighting how awesome Joy is. She really pushes herself to be open to these adventures and I appreciate her so much for being game.