Leaving our camp this morning the road out of the camp was so steep that I had to push super hard on the peddles and spun the back derailleur right off of the bike. It was nice that it happened right in the parking lot so it didn’t take to long to put it back on with John’s and Richard’s help then Mary pushed me up the hill while I peddled and we got out on the road with no more mishaps. Today was a high mileage day, but the big deal was the heat. When it gets over 80 degrees my energy level goes way down so I whined quite a bit today. We rode through the city of Phoenix and are camping in Apache Junction tonight. We are staying at a Warm Shower host home tonight camping in their back yard and able to use their showers for free. Warm Showers is an organization of bicyclers who make their homes available for other bicycle travelers to use and then get to stay at other members places. There is like 70,000 members so there are lots of places to stay. The fellow who owns this home is gone but said we could stay anyway. Usually the hosts are home and feed us dinner and breakfast and we have lots of great fellowship. I made several good friends on the last trip that I still correspond with. About 20 miles of the ride through Phoenix was on a bike trail that went along a river/canal and every time the trail came to a major road there was a tunnel under it that the trail went through, so you went down real steep onto the tunnel and real steep out the other side. It was pretty dark inside and in one of them a homeless guy had set up his camp and I came within inches of running over him. He wasn’t used to “trikes” taking up so much room. In another tunnel a bike was coming from the other direction and he didn’t see me and I had to brake real hard to keep him from hitting me, and then I had to push the bike out the other side because I didn’t have the momentum to pedal it out. Tonight I am sitting in my lawn chair letting my wife spoil me with a Starbucks freeze, some delicious soup, cheese and Ritz crackers, and a snack of trail mix, while I read my Bible and write my blog and journal. Tomorrow is going to be a super hard day with major climbing and heat, but Sunday we are taking off, whooooooeeeeee, can’t wait!!!

Today we rode 63 miles and about 53 miles being uphill, but only about a 3% grade which I peddled about 8 miles an hour, so with breaks for water and snacks I was about 9 hours on the road. Every 5 miles I stop for a big slug of water or gator aid, and every 10 miles I stop for water and a snack such as a Baggie of trail mix, and every 15 miles I stop for water, snack, and dancing a jig around my trike. You gotta keep up your routine😀 I mentioned a day or two ago that after fastening the trike to the back of the camper and then pulling out of the campground that the trailer we were pulling swung around and bent one of my handles over. I bent it back up into place and it looked fine. Today while I was going up a particularly steep hill I was pulling on the handles for leverage and I pulled the one that had bent off. So I had to do the rest of the day with one steering handle. It was tricky at best. With little traffic it wasn’t to big of a problem but then I came into Wickenburg during rush hour with no designated bike path trying to maneuver with one steering handle and braking for one front tire. It was very, very exciting, close to being a near death experience!! I kept thinking about what it would feel like to be hit by a truck. I remember reading that you don’t really feel much pain during a traumatic event like that. I was hoping that was true. It was a great feeling to see John and Mary Ann Smith out by the entrance to where we were staying, I had made it!! I took a 6 inch piece of 3/4 x 3/4 angle iron and put it next to the broken piece and then took 4 hose clamps and put them around the angle iron and cinched it up tight. It seems to be holding great. I took a picture of the concoction  but I couldn’t figure out how to upload it to my blog. I will put it on Facebook. My knee is much better with all the Aleve that I am taking, and the ice I am putting on it in camp. Tomorrow we are scheduled to go 95 miles and we are riding through Phoenix to boot, Yikes!  I hope my fix job works on my steering arm!!

If you can’t tell in the picture that is me sitting in my lawn chair with a bag of ice on my knee.  I woke up in the middle of the night with a killer knee ache, and decided I better not ride my bike until the swelling went down. Been icing it all day and taking Aleve, and I am planning on biking tomorrow. I will have to put a note beside this trip saying I didn’t bicycle all the miles. We tied my trike to the back of the camper and we are also pulling a trailer, and when Mary Ann pulled out of the camp ground the trailer swung around and bent the handle on my bike. Yikes, I thought I was stuck in the pickup with the ladies going to quilting stores for the rest of the trip. When we got to our camping spot in Hope Arizona I went right to work on the trike and got it all fixed up good. They were planning on going to a quilting store today, but I prayed and asked the Lord for mercy and they couldn’t find it!! Thank You Jesus! We have a nice young lady that is riding the same route pull in and Patty invited her to camp with us. She is from Quebec and her accent is so strong I don’t understand much of what she says, but she has bicycled just about everywhere in the world. Mongolia, China, Tibet, Vietnam, Laos, Combodia, Europe, lots of great stories. Her goal is to get to St Augustine about the same time as us so we should see her some more. I think Patty is going to adopt her.

we started this morning  in El Centro and are in Palo Verda. An 82 mile ride with some major hill climbing but not as bad as yesterday for hills. It was super hot, I think I heard that it hit  90 degrees and supposed to be hotter tomorrow. I was 8 miles from camp and the ladies came with the pickup to check on me with one hour of daylight left. I could have made it, but I was so tired I let them talk me into loading the trike on the truck, tho they didn’t have to talk very hard to convince me😀 Tomorrow we have 72 miles some major hill climbing and some heat. Boy, I don’t want to not make it three days in a row, that would be major wimpy. All of us are having significant problems with muscle cramps, especially in the middle of the night. John has us drinking Quinine water!! I am drinking gallons of Gator Aid. I took lots of pictures today but the cell service and WiFi are super weak and wouldn’t send the pictures. My Trike is working good now. Very comfortable, no butt pain, neck pain, hand pain, or shoulder pain as last year. Doesn’t go as fast as a regular bike but I will take comfort over speed any day. Rode on a 15 mile section today where there was no shoulder so I have to ride my Trike in the road, and in the 15 miles I got 5 major horn honks. I am not sure what people expect me to do, but I just smiled and waved. When the ladies drove past me I didn’t recognize the pickup but when they pulled off in front of me I thought,”Oh great, someone is going to yell at me” ! I rode right on by, and Patty yelled at me, and I thought, ” I think I know that lady”

the goal today was 87 miles, I made it 50 and then called the ladies to come pick me. It was 4 pm and I knew I wasn’t going to make 37 more before it got dark. It was a tough day of biking with lots of hills, long, long climbs of 6%. John and Richard were way ahead of me but they ran out of daylight as well. We picked them up on the back to camp. On the way through El Cerrito where we are tonight someone came up with the great idea of going to a restaurant for dinner. It was unanimous, and it was a buffet where we went so I got really well fed!. This a very short blog, but I am so sleepy I can’t keep my eyes open.