December 25, 2017
Sonoyta - Puerto Penasco, Sonora: 35 feet elevation tonight. A new low!
To those who were concerned on my behalf, my Ibex wool bra did dry overnight.
One more TMI note. Jacinto has not shaved yet and says this excuse for a beard is long enough that the hairs move in the wind. I’m not a man. I had no idea. Although it does make sense.
I'm afraid the lady at this hotel thinks we are high maintenance. I asked for a second towel. Our only towel has the room number on it, #11. The second towel says reception. Then it was absolutely freezing in our room. My nose was cold. Once the sun went down, things cooled off. We have an electric heater, but it wasn't putting out much heat. I asked for a second blanket. She said they didn't have extra blankets, but she came to our room and showed us how to turn the heater up. I still didn't think it was warm, but I didn't want to be one of those complaining Americans. I went to bed with two wool shirts, tights, and my heavy socks. Sometime in the middle of the night I got warm enough to take off all but one shirt. I certainly didn't turn the heater off or even down. By morning my nose was cold again. It's too bad I'm not a coffee drinker. I would have had a large!
I slept deeply until I woke up too hot. Bicycling through the desert must be good for my constitution. This is a fairly noisy hotel, being right on the main four lane road. Convenience comes at a cost.
I have eaten wheat the past couple of days - a hamburger and a couple of burritos. I don't have a real wheat problem, but I do notice the difference. My sinus' stuff up and I have drainage. It feels like I'm getting a cold, but I'm not. We had purchased burritos to eat this morning and I really didn't want to have them. Jacinto kindly let me eat his cold grocery store take out pork chops. That was as delicious as they sound by the description. He also bought me a yogurt and a milk at the gas station when he bought his coffee. The coffee he had last night from a different station was dishwater flavored. This coffee was from Oxxo station, which Kevin endorses. Jacinto said it was acceptable. He is regretting leaving behind his percolator.
BTW, Jacinto rode slightly behind me all day yesterday. he had a 2.5 hour riding time and a 16.2 average. He says he didn't stop if I didn't stop. I had a 3 hour 11 minute riding time and only a 13.6 average. Jacinto was very suspicious of ridewithgps based on those numbers. I decided the issue must be that I put my phone in my pocket when we stopped at rest areas and walked around. Thus, my mileage/speed was still being tracked while I was walking to the bathroom, etc.
Our goal this morning is leaving at 9 AM. I haven't been outside but Jacinto says the wind is blowing and it's cold. The computer says a north wind of 5 mph and 47 degrees. The wind is in our favor. Plus that's not strong enough to matter much anyway. Jacinto swears he's going to use a coat.
OK - I'd batter pack this away. More later. It is a bright sunshiny day out there.
Merry Christmas!
6 PM - We are here, safe and sound. 71 degrees. They have several inches of new snow at home. Even though I ate gas station burritos today instead of turkey and all of the fixings, I'm pleased to be here.
Traffic was extremely light heading out of town. I presume because of the holiday. We had baby smooth pavement with a giant shoulder. I was averaging 22-25 mph on the downhill grade for the first 12 miles. Jacinto was happy at my speed, but said we would get to town too soon. I asked if he wanted me to slow down. No, keep going, he would be fine with eating lunch in town instead of dinner.
I know myself. As soon as I made that first stop, then I never picked up the same speed again. After the first ~20 miles, we still had a wide shoulder, but the shoulder quality deteriorated. I took to riding in the road. Jacinto stayed on the shoulder for quite a while. Then he gave up and joined me. A car would pass us perhaps every 2-3 minutes. If I could tell in my mirror that they were moving way over, I would hold my line just inside of the white line. If it didn't look like they were moving over quite enough, I would scoot inside of the white line.
We still made very good time. Jacinto had an average of 14.2 for the entire day today. He's puzzled, because he says we were riding faster and going downhill, how was our average today so much lower than yesterday's? No one believes me, but I maintain that anything over 10 mph makes me perfectly happy. Let's see what we have tomorrow. We are at 35 feet elevation right now. Tomorrow we have 1,700 feet gain in 62 miles. Which is nothing by Colorado standards, but it's a big deal on this trip.
My legs are sore. I haven't been pushing the pedals this hard at home and haven't been riding 62 miles a day either. It's great. I like this winter touring thing.
Back to the day - the first third of the day still had cactus. That was excellent. There were some new varieties that I did not get photos of because we were being so speedy. I've already warned Jacinto that I will be stopping for photos on the way back tomorrow. There were also a very few plants with yellow flowers. He didn't notice them at all. When I told him to stop and take a photo of the yellow flowers, Jacinto just snorted and said, "Yes, like there's lots of flowers around here." He hadn't even seen them. Tomorrow I'm getting photos of them also.
The second third of the trip had some nice mountains, volcano remnants. That was still interesting. The last third of the trip looked like the panhandle of Texas without the ups and downs. Just a whole lot of nothing. Flat nothing. No water in the distance. Turn the pedals, that's all we did for the last third.
It was a perfectly excellent weather day. We had no wind. Blue skies. I started out with a wool shirt, but soon changed to my white button down shirt. That seemed to keep me cool enough I didn't mind having the wool tights on.
We were a little concerned about traffic getting in to town. The main road in is six lanes across. Again, no traffic to speak of. The cars there were, went way around us. We didn't have a single issue all day.
We didn't make any reservations for this pre trip. You know, that's not my style. Jacinto wanted to play it by ear. We did look at choices on the computer and had things narrowed down to cheap and cheaper. I longingly looked at the condos on the beach, but those weren't in our price category. Posada La Roca was recommended by a couple yesterday. It was built in the prohibition days for Al Capone to hide out. That is located right on the beach and was in our price range. But from looking at photos, it didn't look like our bikes would fit. We ended up at La Senorial for $590 pesos. It is a nice room. We learned our lesson last night and got the electric heater going early. There are two extra blankets on the shelf, just in case.
We showered in a hurry as we were both starving. Nothing was open as we walked to the beach. We went past many closed shops and restaurants. A woman was standing outside of the only one we saw open and gave us the pitch to eat there. After taking some quick photos at the beach (but none of just water, much to Spoon's amazement), we went back to eat. I warned Jacinto I was starving and he shouldn't say a thing about what I ordered.
He was quite sad that our meal cost $40. USD, more than our room. It was good food, the first good meal we've had this trip. I'm not sad. I had fish with garlic. He had Seven Mars soup. I ordered two appetizers and a drink. That's not our usual Christmas meal, but it was good.
Internet at the hotel is bad. Even sitting in the office using their office connection, it took forever to load photos.
We debated staying here a day - but I think food prices are chasing Jacinto back to the USA. We shall see how my legs feel in the morning. I warned Jacinto I will be much slower going uphill, plus my legs are a little tired from pushing the past couple of days. Remember, my usual speed is 10 mph!
Oh - Jacinto had a small pannier issue. When we were riding that bumpy shoulder, one of the pannier hooks lost a screw. Who knows where it is. I thought I had a little box of extras, but I didn't. We used a zip tie instead. Me, I would be waiting for a hardware store to open. Jacinto thinks the repair is good until we get home. You can tell which one of us is Type A and which one is so laid back as to not even have a type . . . .
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Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 106 miles (171 km)
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