To avoid the heat we took early calls (4am) to get up and ready to roll. We left about 6 and by 10 am had covered about 120 miles. It was still cool so we coped well when compared to the oven of yesterday; imagine what it must be like in Summer!
The Mojave dessert is barren and bleak but still offered some wonderful scenery; the roads, however, were terrible; huge pot holes and uneven surfaces made riding difficult and uncomfortable. As noon approached the hot wind returned to make our day a little harder.
We stopped off at Ludlow then Amboy, which is where General Paton did all his troop training for the tank brigade he commanded during the second world war and Newberry Springs, the only natural source of water for miles. All these small towns depend on this natural spring and years ago you can imagine the difficulty in fetching water by horse and cart!
RL told a story of how the west was really tamed and it involved an Englishman called Jon Harvey. He introduced B & B's for railway workers and employed young women who wanted to come out west. It was these women that became the brides for the many raucous men that ran wild in this territory. Saloons and brothels were soon replaced with schools and churches.
The English seemed to have a hand in everything back then!
Whilst riding toward Victoville we were overtaken by the CA Hells Angels, about a dozen of them, so we can say we rode with the CA HA....for all of 20 seconds
At Victoville we had our farewell dinner hosted by Eagle Riders and said our emotional goodbyes to RL who was leaving at 5am to ride the 750 miles home to his wife and family. Tomorrow Andy from ER will take us the last 110 miles into Santa Monica and the finish line.
No comments:
Post a Comment