No Services Next 100 miles

That was the sign that greeted me just outside of 29 Palms early Thursday morning. I had expected that there would be a service station about 55 miles from town, or at the least something in what I thought was the town of Rice, 77 miles away. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, and was on my way at 6:30 after buying two bananas, 2 power bars and a half gallon of Gatorade to supplement my gallon and a half of water at a store on the edge of town. I was jolted to attention by that sign, which seemed too cheerful with its blue background and bright white lettering - it would have been more appropriate to have a black background with a skull and crossbones, and a Warning! or something. I thought hard about what I was about to do; I'd never ridden 100 miles, and I knew I only had until about noon before the heat flared up. But I didn't think I really had a choice. No matter what route I took to Arizona I had to cross mostly barren desert. So I picked up the pace and sped out of 29 Palms.

The first five hours went by quickly, I'd biked fifty miles by 11:30 and was feeling pretty good. I had a banana and a power bar left, along with a quart of Gatorade and half my water. But it was getting hot, about 95 degrees, and the wind (oh the wind, my new travel partner) was starting to kick up, so I thought I'd pitch my tent on the side of the road, get out of the sun, take a nap.

What a disaster! The wind was blowing so hard it was all I could do to hold on to my tent, much less stake it out. The ground was the usual few inches of sand and then unyielding earth, hard as iron. I tried staking an edge of the tent sideways in the sand and covering it with small rocks; no good. The wind grabbed the tent and flung the stake through the air; it's still out there somewhere, trying to find a purchase in the ground. I would have looked for it, but I was too busy trying to make some sort of shelter with my tent fly, after stuffing my tent into the trailer. I tried to tie one corner of the fly to the bike and the other corner to the trailer; if I'd had a smaller tent pole it would've worked, instead the top of the fly just stuck to me - I felt like I was being suffocated rather than protected from the sun. Additionally, the fly had picked up most of the grease from my bike chain and was threatening to slather me with it. I gave the whole operation up, shoved the fly into the trailer alongside the tent and moved on.

It was getting hotter by the minute, and by 2:30 I was burning up. I checked the mini-thermometer I have hanging from my safety flag and it read 110 degrees. I still had thirty miles to go, and I was running out of water. All I could see was desert 360 degrees around; the shimmery heat rising from the black tar road, which had the consistency of a s'more, the blinding white of the glare from the sand.

I was still hoping I might encounter a service station or something in Rice, but that hoped was dashed by a good Samaritan who stopped to give me some cold water about 10 miles from where I thought Rice was. He told me Rice used to have an airstrip, and hence a gas station, but that the airstrip went out of business and the gas station soon followed suit. Rice is now just an outdated dot in my road atlas (believe me, they're going to hear about that one), though the ex-town does have one claim to fame - a shoe cemetery with hundreds of pairs of boots, flip-flops, sneakers, work shoes, heels, etc. put there by locals, I guess. In what was becoming my delirium, I snapped a few pictures - I couldn't pass up a good photo opportunity, danger of heat stroke or no.

I rode on past the cemetery, feeling more dehydrated, hungry, light-headed with every turn of the pedals. I constantly got of my bike to walk; my legs were feeling very rubbery and I was too weak to pedal for very long. I started to think I was in real trouble; my water was almost gone, and all I could think about was drinking: water, milk in a cold glass beaded with sweat, with ice cubes floating on the top. Then, as I was coming over a rise, I saw what looked like some sort of ranger station a few miles in the distance (it was the first structure that wasn't burned out or abandoned I'd seen in about 60 miles); it had that desert adobe construction, with what looked like a chimney in the rear of the building. I made my way to the dirt road leading up to the station, and in my growing desperation for water did something I wouldn't usually do: I left my bike and trailer on the side of the road and walked up the dirt path toward the station, which was about a half mile away. It was all I could do to walk in a straight line and hold onto my water bottle, but I was encouraged by a sign naming the land around the station as public park land, though it was used mainly for ATV riding. Unfortunately, the closer I got to the "ranger" station the less it looked like a public use building, it was too abandoned looking, too quiet, and had a barbed wire fence all around the outside. I discovered that it was indeed a station, but a meteorological station, and signs posted "no trespassing", "keep out", and my favorite "trespassing on these grounds can result in death", from electrocution or other mishap.

Deflated, I stumbled and swayed back down the path to my bike; some guy was looking everything over as I approached, probably thinking he'd found a good deal. I waved and started to jog down the road - I'd really be screwed with no transportation. I'm not sure if he saw me or not, but apparently he decided he didn't like what he saw after all, got in his truck and drove off. At that point I was waving for him to stop; I thought he might at least tell me how far it was to Vidal Junction (next town on the map after the ex-Rice), which I was thinking of as Vital Junction, i.e. it's vital that I get there or I'm going to die. Luckily right after he left, as I made it to my bike, I was able to flag down a couple who had been zipping along in their Mustang. They were able to give me a bottle of water, and told me that I could actually see Vidal Junction from where we were standing, about seven miles, they thought. Then a CHP officer pulled up behind us, the couple wished me luck, saying "help is here.) And were they right. I'd seen him pass me in the opposite direction an hour earlier; I'd started to wave him down but he looked intent on where he was going so I thought better of it. The officer told me Vidal Junction was indeed seven miles away, and that though there was a store and a restaurant they would probably be closed for the day by the time I got there, but that I could get all the water I needed at the agricultural station in town. He asked me if I was alright, if I thought I could make it, if I wanted a ride into town. I was feeling energized knowing the finish line was within my sights, and told him I'd be fine. He gave me a bottle of Gatorade, wished me luck and pulled away. I pulled into town an hour later, feeling pretty ragged but vital, alive.

It was the longest riding day I'm likely to have: twelve and a half hours, from 6:30 am to 7:00 pm. I drank two quarts of water in about 5 minutes at the agricultural station, and three more quarts throughout the night - I didn't want to drink too much because I thought it might make me sick. I pitched my tent about 50 feet from the road in what looked like a wash, a few trees around my tent, on the hard ground repeatedly ravaged by floods in the spring. I had cramps in my legs and back all night, and I spent a lot of time pushing out rocks from under my sleeping bag. But I made it through the loneliest stretch of desert I had to cross, thanks to friends I didn't know I had.