Friday, September 21, 2012

We Haven’t Left Brenda


….YET!!  We decided to take another rest day at our RV and regroup.  We did some serious paring down of what we’re carrying and were able to eliminate 30 POUNDS!!!!  After re-weighing Bongo and contents, we’re down to 97 pounds on the trailer (that includes Bongo’s own weight) and  17 pounds actually on the bike (not including water which can weigh up to 12 pounds).  Our panniers and rack were eliminated, as well as about 6 inches of trailer platform.  No wonder we were beat!!  We were carrying a 144 pound non-pedaling passenger, not the 100 pound one we thought. 

We plan to head out to Wickenburg very early Saturday morning (3 am?) to try to beat some heat.  It was supposed to cool down this weekend in the Phoenix area, but instead it’s decided to stay up to 106-107 degrees (almost record-breaking temperatures) so traveling early is very important.  Also, camping is out of the question until the temps cool down so it’s a motel in Wickenburg, and thankfully, Warmshowers hosts in Scottsdale/Tempe area.  For those of you not familiar with the Warmshowers organization, it is a network of cyclists who offer hospitality to other traveling cyclists.  Their website is :


With all this heat we’ve been facing, I realize more than ever how IMPORTANT water is!!!  We need to take in almost a liter an hour to keep adequately hydrated during this heat.  It was pretty funny, though -  the other day when we stopped for lunch in Jacumba, the café’ owner  (a middle eastern man) poo-poo’ed people who drink a lot of water or sports drinks.  He told us, “Just drink hot tea, it’s better for you and will actually cool you down” (!!).  He also told us “Just suck on a small rock to keep your mouth wet and salivating”.    I don’t know about THAT – I think I’ll stick to sucking water from my trusty Camelbak hydration pack!!

Oh, and about posting comments to our blog:  we found out tonight that in order to post a comment, you must have an account in either Google, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, AIM, or an OpenID URL.  If you don’t have any of those, I guess you just have to email us.  Google is very easy to start an account with, though; we highly recommend it.

So the adventure continues tomorrow….stay tuned!

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