2nd of October - El Centro to Blythe

Garmin says: 98,47 Km 3528 cal 685m ascent

Forgot that it is supposed to be in German as well. Also heute auf Deutsch, leider bin ich jetzt schon etwas muede und muss bald schlafen. Ich hatte ein Loch im Reifen und deshalb zwei geplatzte Schlaeuche, daraufhin hab ich mich die letzten 20km mitnehmen lassen. Wenn ich Ehre besaesse haette ich sie jetzt verloren.

El Centro has an elevation under 0 and is one of the ugliest towns that you could imagine, so I was quite eager to leave it. Already some miles out off town I felt that my back tire didn't run round and I found that it had a hole which would sooner or later flatten it. As I suffered so much yesterday, I had asked Justin to leave El Centro at noon, take some water and check on me. Between the town of Brawley just behind El Centro and Blythe on the border to Arizona was only one place called Glamis and it was not clear whether the grocery store would be open. It turned out that Glamis was the station for people who used their recreational vehicles in the big Sanddune area and camp out there in the dessert. It had barely any groceries, but a huge collection of tshirts with sanddunes or this weird sandhopper vehicles (you know this little lawnmower tractors, which get ridden by predominantly white people over the age of 6 and transported on the back of a Dodge Ram pickup next to a cooler of budweiser sixpacks). The owner of the store tells me people who cross the country on their bicycle come by all the time, which makes sense as this is the only stop for many miles and so everybody following the southern route would stop there. I asked him if he saw the 3 young man in long sleeves and pants with suspenders and he told me that they passed yesterday. He was pretty smug about it:
"They want to do it in three weeks, that is impossible. It takes 8 weeks!" Like he would ever go on a bicycle and would know what is possible - 3 weeks is hard, but they are strong and young and should be able to do this. After having filled up all my water containers, I went on my way over the mountains. At least for a quarter mile and than my tube at the broken tire made such a loud pssssst, that I heard it through my music even before I felt the flat. I exchanged the tire and as it was only until about one a clock that Justin would pass me, I thought I'll take the risk. I had two new tires in the car and would need to have both of them exchanged.

Es war wunderschoenes Fahren dort. Die Strasse ging immer nett auf und ab, so dass man an jedem Huegel noch genug Schwung von der vorherigen Abfahrt hatte, die Temperatur war durch eine Brise in Kombination mit dem Fahrtwind superangenehm und die Wuestenlandschaft mit Sandduenen und dann dunklen Felsformationen zwischen denen verschiedene Kaktussorten wuchsen. Ich kam zu einem Borderpatrol Kontrollpunkt.

I begged them to please arrest me, that I could enjoy some shade. They directed me towards a big fan. The cutest one came over to chat a bit and I asked him what they do with the Mexicans they catch. He said they check first for crimes and the others they send just back, to catch them the next time and over and over... "until you don't catch them and they can mow our lawn or clean our banks." was how I completed this. God - there are not to many nice paying government jobs in this godforesaken area and being in the californian dessert beats the Irakian
dessert every day.

I left the Checkpoint and anjoyed riding with high speed along the rolling hill, when the second psssst hit. I pushed my bike for about a mile until I found a bush which was big enough to spent me some shade. It was past one by now and Justin was supposed to come every minute. My MP3 battery died and I started to get annoyed. About 6 Border Patrol trucks past towards the checkpoint and half an hour later the guys that I met there earlier came from their shift and asked me if I needed help. When the one I talked to stopped I was ready to hitch a ride, but in this moment justin pulled up and we went to Blythe for the night.