Day 4 - Calexico, CA to Yuma, AZ

67.6 miles today
205.4 total trip miles
12.7 mph avg
702’ climbing
FF - 5
MP - My brother Bob & his whole family.  We’ve been business partners since 1989.  It’s rare for such a partnership to work as well as it has . . . and we are still good friends too.

This shouldn’t have been a hard day when you look at the distance & the climbing, but road conditions & too much sun caused my FF to jump up to 5.  As I mentioned yesterday in the WDYLT, I got some sunburn on my face so I really decided to lather up with the suntan lotion.  Problem was that as I perspired it ran in my eyes & burned.  I was still able to see, but it was quite uncomfortable.

The road conditions involved rough pavement.  One of the places we stopped today is a tourist destination called “The Center of the World”.   I would call it a tourist trap.  This is the most interesting thing I saw there.

Bubba warned us that the frontage road we would take to get there has the worst road conditions of our whole trip. What he didn’t tell us is that the shoulder of I-8 that we rode on for a couple of miles before the frontage road was just as bad.  If the freeway shoulder would have been like that when we descended the mountain yesterday, it would have been a rough day.  In the end I think that in order to get to The Center of the World you have to go through Hell.

Lots of desert to see today & huge sand dunes along the highway.  Wish I could have enjoyed it more, but that was tough with my eyes burning.  I rode the last 7 miles through the City of Yuma with 4 other riders & it was a good thing because we needed all of us to navigate it.  Lots of turns & traffic.  There was a nice bridge overlook.

Made it safely & ready to rest up for another day.  Had the City of Yuma historian give us a presentation on Yuma tonight after dinner . . . .  So -

WDYLT - ILT the high school mascot for Yuma is The High Criminals, so named because at one time the high school used an abandoned prison in town for some of their classrooms.