Lake Havasu, AZ - Parker, AZ

Wake-up today was harder than normal, since we all had a great time in Lake Havasu and didn't want to leave the hospitality of the people of Lake Havasu City. We got on the road to head to Parker, AZ, about a 40 mile ride (shorter than most rides), but even at 7 AM, we could feel the heat already. The ride went by fairly quick, with the heat being the only bothersome obstacle during our ride. We all arrived at the Parker Community/Senior Center, where we would be lodging that night. We didn't have any scheduled programming, so it was nice to be able to just relax and take a break from the usual tight schedule. I had lunch with one of the senior residents at the Community Center, a military veteran/inventor who claimed that he was going to invent the next big thing--something about cars, but he wouldn't tell us what he was creating. He was also a novelist on the side, and wasn't afraid to brag about all of his endeavors. We ate some weird chicken & rice casserole, which looked disgusting but wasn't half bad. After lunch, a few of us made a trip to the Family Dollar to pick up a few things, followed by a bike cleaning session and a nap. For dinner, we had a sponsor buy us sub sandwiches and chips from a sandwich chain that I had never heard of. After dinner, we continued cleaning our bikes, and went to bed to get ready for our 115 mile ride the next day.

Lake Havasu, AZ: Day 2

My day began with a late 7:15 AM wake-up for a breakfast sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. We had pancakes, eggs, and sausage--I also had coffee for the first time in about a month, which gave me more of a buzz than I was used to. After we all ate and introduced ourselves, we all teamed up in groups of five to make dashboard cookies. Basically, we all got a tube of cookie dough and an aluminum platter, and had to make some sort of design on the platter using the dough that we would place on our van dashboards to bake in the Arizona sun. My group decided to make a design of Lake Havasu's popular tourist attraction, London Bridge--one of the guys in our group, Sean Palmer (Colorado), is really artistic, so he did most of the work. The mayor was going to judge the cookie designs later that day after they had baked, so we wanted ours to look the best.

After we made our cookie designs, we went over to a Friendship Visit with some of the people we had met the night before at our potluck dinner. I spent my time doing puzzles with one girl, Margaret, and talking about our pets back home. We started on a 1,000 piece puzzle with a few of the other guys, but we had to leave before we could finish. When I got back to the van, I noticed that our once-pristine dashboard cookie had expanded from baking in the sun, and now looked like a giant cookie-blob that looked nothing like London Bridge. A few of the guys were upset that our design didn't look so great, but I didn't really care all that much.

We had a few hours of free time, so I decided to go to the local bike shop so I could pick up a pair of nicer sunglasses for cycling (the ones I had brought are pretty cheap, and fog up easily while cycling). However, a bunch of the other guys who also came to the bike shop had to get more serious repairs done to their bikes, so I had to wait at the bike shop for the entirety of our free time, just to buy a pair of glasses. When everyone got their bikes taken care of, we went back to lodging to get ready for dinner.

Dinner that night was at the house of the parent of a Pi Alpha in Lake Havasu City. Their house was amazing, and had an awesome backyard with a pool, hot tub, a lot of cool little backyard decorations (including a dog house shaped like a little salloon). They barbequed ribs for us, and made us cornbread, corn on the cob, and lots of other great foods. We spent a lot of time in the pool, and later on watched a few episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger to pass the time. We stayed there until late at night, said our goodbyes, and went back to lodging to get some rest. Our crew chief, Mocha, gave me a haircut in the bathroom using clippers one of the other cyclists had brought--having long hair sucks on a bike, especially when its 100+ degrees out. After getting my hair did, I went to bed to get ready for another day of cycling.

Needles, CA - Lake Havasu, CA

I woke up today excited to finally leave California and head into Lake Havasu, Arizona. I love my state and knew I would miss home, but it's hard to feel like you're making progress when you've been cycling for nearly 3 weeks and are still in the same state. Plus, we only had 45 miles, which has now turned into an 'easy day'. I was selected to 'sweep' that day, which mean you and one other cyclist are responsible for staying behind all of the other cyclists so that the crew members know that when you pass, all of the cyclists are accounted for I swept with Ethan Heine (Colorado), one of the faster guys on the team.
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The day went a lot longer than we had expected.--45 miles goes a lot slower when you have to stop for everyone with a flat tire or a messed up chain. We met up with a bunch of ride-alongs (basically guest cyclists) at  a gas station about 15 miles outside of Lake Havasu, who matched up with our team pacelines to ride with us into Lake Havasu. After a very strong and hot headwind, and a few nasty hills, we finally arrived at the WalMart in Lake Havasu, where we had a few police motorcycles ready to escort us into town. Our arrival was longer than we had anticipated--about 10 miles total averaging 12 mph. We finally arrived at our destination, the local community center/aquatic center, where they had a huge sub-sandwich set up for lunch, along with awesome goodie bags prepared for us from the Chamber of Commerce and Lake Havasu Journey of Hope Arrival Committee. When we had eaten lunch, we all went in the vans and to the lake for an afternoon on a houseboat, courtesy of the local yacht club. The boat was great--there was plenty of food, and  the water felt great after a very hot cycling day. More importantly, downtime is rare on JOH, so it was nice to just relax for a little while. After a few hours on the lake, we went back to the aquatic center to shower up and get ready for dinner. Dinner that night was a potluck dinner/Friendship Visit, with lots of people from the Lake Havasu City Community coming through with great food (including about 6 different pasta salads). There was a live band playing lots of different cover songs after dinner, which we rocked out to with our new friends. After the band played their last song, we all cleaned up the gym which we ate in and said bye to our new friends.

Even though it was late, a few of us decided to head into the town to check out some of the bars.  Unfortunately, because it was a Sunday night, there was literally nobody else out at the bars, and the place we had heard sold $1 tacos turned out to not have any such deal. We stuck around there anyway, had a few beers, and went back to lodging to get some sleep before our much-anticipated day off.

Twentynine Palms, CA - Needles, CA

Today started with a nice early 4:30 AM wake up call to get us up for our 100+ mile ride. We had the option of going 125 miles, which I had decided I would do to try to push myself. I pacelined with Matt Calardo (GWU), Matt Reisen (TCU), and Cory Carson (Michigan State). The first part of the ride went well--I had ridden with Matt & Matt before, and they're really good at making jokes along the way and keeping your mind off of the ride ahead of you. However, once the weather got hotter and the day went on, we all got a little more tired and started cycling slower. Matt Calardo did an awesome job of pushing us through the day, maintaining good conversation and asking random questions to keep our mind off of the heat. Hours later, we hit the rack point at 98 miles and had to finish our ride up. While we were happy to have pushed through the day, I was a little upset that I didn't get to do the whole 125 mile-ride that I had set my mind on in the beginning of the day.

Our lodging was at a local Lutheran church in Needles, CA, a very small town in the middle of the desert nearby the California-Arizona border. We dropped our stuff off at the church and went to go shower at the bathroom by a nearby Marina/trailer park. We hung out in the lagoon for a bit to get our feet wet (it was scorching hot) while waiting for everyone else to get ready. Dinner that night was back at the church, where we had an awesome spaghetti dinner prepared for us. We went to McDonalds later on to get some WiFi and check up on what was happening in the world. Because I don't have a iPhone or any sort of Smart phone, it can be easy to get out of touch with whats going on the world. There isn't really enough time in the day to glance headlines, let alone read a full newspaper, so I take every opportunity I can to get Internet and update myself on what's going on. When we got back to lodging, we all crammed into the little room where we had eaten dinner to set up our sleeping bags and air mattresses. We did a quick practice for Kids On the Block (KOB), a puppet show we're doing throughout the summer that features puppets with disabilities to spread disability awareness to little kids. I play Mark Riley, a red-headed puppet with cerebral palsy. When we had practiced enough, I went to bed to get enough sleep in my last night in California before heading into Arizona.

Yucca Valley, CA - Twentynine Palms, CA

Today was one of my favorite days of the trip so far,  mainly because of the low mileage and lots of free time. We had a late (7 AM) wake up, and had only 21 miles to ride that day into the adjacent town of Twentynine Palms. Most of the pacelines decided to race that day--I forgot where my paceline finished, but we finished the ride in one hour and two minutes. After everyone arrived, we had free time for the rest of the day, which I spent napping and listening to music. A few of us went to the 7-11 to get Slurpees to beat the heat, while and other group went to the pool to swim around for a bit. 

For dinner that night, our Project Manager, Paul, decided to take us all to Joshua Tree National Park to grill some burgers and hot dogs. The park was beautiful--there were lots of really cool rock formations, and, of course, Joshua Trees. While Paul and a few of the guys got the food ready, a few of us decided to do some bouldering and rock climbing. I was surprised at how well my Sperry's held up while climbing up the rock formations. Some of the climbs we did reminded me of scenes from 127 Hours, so we were sure to take caution in our climbing. Once the food was ready, we all climbed back down to our picnic site and ate burgers, hot dogs, and watermelon. When we were all done, we went back to lodging (which was infested with cockroaches) and got some rest for our long ride the next day.

Victorville, CA - Yucca Valley, CA

Today started out with an awesome 5:30 AM wake-up, with leftover pizza for breakfast from dinner the night before. We had another 75 mile day ahead of us going into Yucca Valley, CA, and I knew that I would have to ride fast in order to beat out the heat that would inevitably wear us out later in the day. I rode today with Matt Calardo (George Washington University), a frequent paceline buddy, and Ethan Heine (University of Colorado). At first I was a little nervous, since Ethan is easily the strongest cyclist on our team, and I had never ridden with him before. However, his speed coupled with Matt's enthusiasm and motivation got me through the ride. I struggled to keep up with the other two guys, but they pushed me to ride hard throughout the entire day--we even got up to 40 MPH at one point on a flat part of the ride! With lots of rolling hills thrown into the ride and the desert heat creeping up on us, the three of us finished the ride first among all of the pacelines, giving us plenty of time to relax. We didn't have any scheduled Friendship Visit, so we all got to relax at our lodging at Yucca Valley High School, where we were sleeping in the gymnasium. After a Crew Chief lunch of sandwiches, we all got settled in for some much needed relaxation. After showering and shooting hoops in the gym, I read for a bit in the book my mom had sent me, "Determined to Win", by Jean Driscoll, the biography of a woman in a wheelchair and her experiences with wheelchair sports. Our dinner was provided by Matthew Calardo's parents, a delicious meal of New York style pizza. When we had all eaten our fill, I went back to my air mattress for some reading, music, and sleep. Overall, a pretty relaxing day to reward the team for a tough and successful bike ride.

Ontario, CA - Victorville, CA

The day started out a little slow, since I was tired from getting only 6 hours of sleep the night before. However, we were greeted in the parking lot by a group of police officers on motorcycles, who would be escorting us out of the parking lot and to the city border. The ride started out fairly easy while we were still in the city, but got more difficult as we left the city and into the desert, our first experience of the trip in scorching heat. After a little while, we were stopped at an interstate on-ramp by our crew chief, who gave us instructions and cautioned us to be safe while riding on the interstate shoulder. However, the CHP officer that had been monitoring us decided that it was too dangerous, and we hopped in the vanso to get pulled ahead a few miles to our next crew stop. I felt bad, since a lot of the other cyclists had to ride on the freeway shoulder through lots of debris and some very fast moving traffic. When everyone gathered together at the next crew stop, we all began our long and slow climb up the next mountain pass, which seemed to take forever. However, with the support of my paceline (Evan Lin of University of Washington, and Jeffrey Brooks of Colorado State), we all made it to the top without stopping, and were treated to a very nice downhill thereafter. We hit another crew stop for lunch a few miles later (Little Caesar's Pizza) and got to relax for a bit at Serrano High School before finishing the last 25 miles of the ride. What I thought would be an easy, downhill finish turned out to be one of the most miserable experience on a bike I've ever had. We had an incredibly strong crosswind pushing us sideways, punctuated only by headwinds pushing us backwards. After what seemed like forever, we finally arrived at our destination, a local community center in Victorville, CA. When we had showered and cleaned up, we went over to the High Desert Church, our lodging for that night.

We all dropped off our belongings at the church and made the trip over to another local rec center gymnasium, in an area that slightly reminded me of something out of 'The Hills Have Eyes,' with lots of old abandoned housing in the middle of the desert. The team seemed to be in low spirits from the tough ride that day, but our general mood was greatly lifted upon greeting the participants at our scheduled Friendship Visit. We had a potluck dinner sponsored by the family members of the participants there, and had an awesome dance party--even in the desert heat, we all had a great time. After cleaning up and saying our goodbyes, we all went out to get ice cream, and then back to lodging for a good nights rest.