Nice Ride After All

Today, I went on the ride that I talked about in my last blog entry. Yesterday, I was able to get a new helmet and pedals with bike clips. (In case you are not familiar with bike clips, there is a picture of one of them on the left.) Note that these clips were inexpensive and squeaked alot! By the end of the ride, the squeaking got pretty annoying.



It is another hot day in Palm Springs, so I got a pretty early start. I left at about 7:15am. It was in the 60's with a slight wind. The start of the ride goes along a road that borders a big golf/housing community. The views on each side of the road were quite different. Lets see if you can tell the difference:


<- Left Side of Road

Right Side of Road ->

<- Left Side of Road

Right Side of Road ->

<- Left Side of Road

Right Side of Road ->

As an aside, this is one of the things that I find so striking about the Palm Springs area. It is located in an arid desert, yet there are many, many golf resorts. Most have a luxury hotel and luxury housing developments associated with the resorts. Furthermore, almost all of them are walled off with only one or two security entrances. As you drive around the area, you come across resort after resort after resort, yet you can only see the entrances and occasionally a hotel behind the entrance. (To get one of the pictures above, I had to hold the camera above the wall.) Also, I could comment on how much energy it must take to build and maintain these resorts, however I would bet you have already heard this rant.

Anyway, I started up the hill on Thousand Palms Road. This is the same hill that I rode the last time I was in Palm Springs. After I got about 1.5 miles up the road, I realized that I had not yet seen a Palm tree. I was thinking that maybe they should call this road No Palms Road. Or maybe to be charitable, I would call it 10 Palms Road. Then I came around a corner and saw this:

It was kind of interesting, there is this huge clump of Palm trees. There may have been a hundred trees in the clump. There are several other large clumps of Palm trees, so maybe there really are a Thousand Palm Trees!

I have no idea why they grow this way. There is a visitor center beside one of these clumps. If I had more energy and time, it would be interesting to investigate this.


After I got to the top of Thousand Palms Road, I took this picture of the road ahead. Yesterday, I was concerned about the amount of high speed traffic on this road. It was not a problem today. Yesterday, I drove the route between 7:30 and 8:30 (prime commute time). Today, I rode this stretch of road between 8:30 and 9:30 and the traffic was considerably less. Furthermore, there is a nice sized bike lane on this road, so it was not a problem.


You will note that the road is perfectly straight and goes for miles. Most of my ride today was that way.

On Varner Road, I came across many of these windmills. As you drive into the Palm Springs area, there are huge farms of these windmills. I wonder how much electricity they actually put out. Considering how much energy must be devoted to the golf resorts, it is kind of nice to think that renewable resources are being used to meet at least some of the demand. Though Barbara pointed out that we never see any use of solar power. This area seems like a natural for this.

By the end of the ride, it was warming up and I was pretty tired. I am not quite as confident about the Strawberry Fields ride as I was before. I am wondering if I felt so great after the Pigeon Point ride because the conditions were perfect (cool weather, little wind and relatively flat). The ride today was a little over 38 miles and I would not have made 60 miles. Or I would have been really, really sore at the end of 60 miles. Of course, it was pretty warm at the end of the ride and I took just a few short breaks and did not have anything to eat. Plus it will be nice to get back my clipless pedals and my bike shoes. We'll see how I do.

This may be my last ride here in Palm Springs. My bike really needs some maintenance. The shifting is pretty messed up. It often won't go into the gear that I want. Plus, I think the rear hub needs to be re-packed with grease. The bike shops here are all backed up with work. (Many people come to Palm Springs for the winter and now they want their bikes worked on before they head back to wherever they came from.) I will try to do some simple things on my own, but I think I am going to have to wait until I return to Santa Cruz to get my bike worked on. The condition of my bike definitely had an affect on how tired I am now.

All in all, it was a nice ride and I would like to do it again.