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.