Leaving CA

9/16/06

This morning we left Julian on some really fun back roads. They were really curvy through the mountains. Beamerpop and I stayed right together cornering the turns. The road eventually flattened out, the temperature warmed up, and we ended up in Imperial Valley. This is where they make the sugar for the original Dr. Pepper (by the way we had some in Texas…you can only get it in certain parts of Texas). Here in Imperial, Burgma and I got our oil changed since we had been traveling for about 2500 miles already (more for me coming from NC). Beamerpop can only get his changed at a BMW dealership so he’ll have to wait.
Issy (that's my bike) rolled over 10000 miles toady! When I bought her she had 4000. I have put the most miles on her out of any of her owners, and I still have to make it back to NC.
We left Imperial and headed back through the white mountains on I 8. This time the wind wasn’t bad at all and we could ride without leaning into the wind or without feeling like you were in a sand storm. There were some AVT vehicles on the dunes riding around. Looked like fun…but no time, gotta keep riding. As it became dusk all these little caterpillars came out and started to cross the road in both directions. Beamerpop was in front of me and Burgma was behind me. I was desperately trying to dodge as many caterpillars as I could weaving all over the lane. I noticed that neither Beamerpop nor Burgma were doing this. Did they see the hundreds of caterpillars on the road? Yes…yes in fact they did. They just had a different perspective on population control than I did.
I’m starting to really get over the whole dessert scene. It’s flat, it’s dry, it’s hot…can’t believe I’m saying this but can’t wait to get to Texas. At least it’s a little greener there. We made it into Casa Grande for the night. Tomorrow…more dessert!

This is Cvstar reporting...