Cross Country USA: Victorville

So... today was clearly my 3rd favorite day of the trip. But - one of my fellow explorers had three flats and a crash (not injured though!) today so I consider my day pretty good. We started with a 23 mile climb up Bouquet canyon (no bouquets, however but at least it was shady) and then a very nice 10 mile mostly downhill section which lulled us into a false sense of security that things were looking up and then basically fought a headwind across the desert for the next 60 miles on some roads that clearly have given up most of their spirit to the wind, sun, and sand - a lot of sections in really bad shape and just constant pounding on the feet and butt (needless to say, all three are pretty sore tonight - two feet and one butt that is). Spirits remain high, however, as we have not had any major injuries and have not yet resorted to eating the sled dogs.

Victorville is located in the Mojave desert and is named after Victor - who was the manager of the telegraph station (there was a stage stop here before but apparently the telegraph was such a big deal that Victor had the town named after him) - the name was changed from Victor, CA to Victorville at the suggestion of the postal service due to confusion with Victor, CO (presumably not named for the same guy). It's a town of about 120,000 in the middle of pretty much nowhere - there's a lot of open scrub land (see picture) and along the road I saw a partial airplane fuselage, 6 discarded couches, a dining room chair set, and 16 broken plastic chairs among other things (you get a little bored out there - also, you know you're with a biking group when we're all excited about 4 miles of new pavement - it's the little things, right?). We did see some Joshua Trees today which is always cool but it was fleeting - they will be back in two days as we head SE... (though we are missing the town of Zzyzx, CA if we went NE and their mineral springs, and likely a head shop or two).