Cycling in Palm Springs: Turn on Bob Hope past Ginger Rodgers until you hit Dinah Shore

After riding through the San Bernardino National Forest in the mountains above Palm Springs the day before, I took off on more of an exploratory ride and to get a look at the huge wind farms along Highway 10. Hundreds of these huge turbines spin as the winds off the California coast blow through the pass between the mountains. After working my way upwind and uphill from Rancho Mirage to Whitewater, the ride back both downhill and downwind was a delight. The greatest challenge of the day was to dress for the weather. In the desert winter, the dry air doesn't hold the heat and the mornings are cold.. vest, sleeves, knee warmers and windbreaker. But, in an hour of riding the temperature had climbed from 8 to 18 degrees as the sun began to bake the desert sands.

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Cycle, drink beer, laze by the pool, eat mass quantities of food and repeat. My kind of vacation.

Friday, our last day of holidays, was another perfect day for cycling in January. In fact, any day that you can get out on a bike and not wear heavy gloves in a good day for cycling in January. I rode out north, across I-10 and up through some of the higher desert and back through the wind farms.

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Now, Saturday morning and we are flying back from San Diego to New York. Two more weeks working out on the Tacx trainer indoors and then off to Vancouver for some rides (if the weather cooperates) and then into Northern Thailand for a week up near the border with Burma, riding in the Thai National Parks. The goal for these two weeks is to drop a few pounds riding at home, getting down from 187 to about 183 and to build up my running barefoot on the treadmill (which seems to be helping with my heel pain.)