No Chain: First few days...

It's begun! 3 days of riding down covering close to 200 miles of California and Arizona so far. The climbs out of San Diego were unbelievable, on day 1 the team rose 6300 feet vertically to end the day at Lake Morena national park. We camped out on night number one, a first for me and it was definitely an experience. The thing about the desert is, it's super hot during the day and freezing at night. It dropped down to 34 degrees and no number of layers that I put on could keep the cold out, and the persistent howling of the coyotes did not help. We all woke up frozen and tired in the morning and hit the road for 76 miles heading to El Centro, California a border town. On the way to El Centro we descended down a 6% grade for 10 straight miles, it has been described by people as "being in a video game" and "riding a roller coaster", my group averaged around 36 miles per hour for the trip down the mountain, it was one of the scariest things I've ever done on 23 cm of rubber before. Last night we stayed in a Methodist church in El Centro and cooked a pasta meal as my roomate Pauly likes to call it. Today was mostly flat covering 82 miles from El Centro to Yuma, AZ (A new State!) directly through the desert, at one point we went 20 miles without evening passing another car, pretty rural! We covered the first 40 miles in about 2 hours and then the roads turned horrible, we were riding along a frontage route that followed Interstate 8 and it felt like our bikes were coming apart beneath us due to the number of bumps/pot holes. The road took a a toll on my bike shredding my front tire, so I got to spend some time a long the side of the highway in the hot sun waiting for the van to bring me my gear to change it out. Tonight we had an event at the Buffalo Wild Wings here in Yuma which really turned into us rehydrating and watching the Final 4 basketball games, the first time I had watched a tv in over a week. Tomorrow we head back out into the desert and heat for 80 miles to Dateland, AZ population 461, should be interesting. So far its been a great trip though, I never thought I would get in trouble by the border police for being too close to the fence, or climb some of the hills we hit, or even sleep in a tent with 5 random people I just met last week so even though I feel a little homesick right now I wouldn't trade this trip for anything. No Chain!