Tour Log: Baja - Day 7-8

The grind continues.  I'm reminded on last fall's rides with Wenger and Lynn.  Headwind, washboards, sand, solitude.  Again, victories are small.  Like when the only group crazy enough to be driving this road in a car, a Subaru with 3 sea kayaks bouncing about up top hands you a cerveza out the back window.  They had Nevada plates and were no doubt headed south for spring break, but I didn't stop to talk.  I figured it would be much more classy to open and drink the beer without breaking stride.  Eventually the road mellowed to a rocky hard pack...and then pavement again, much before expected.  Somewhere around this transition someone yelled something out the window of a truck that sounded like there might be another rider behind me.  The truck was northbound so that would make sense, but I couldn't really hear him...wishful thinking maybe?  I made sure to take the rest of the day slowly...I couldn't have done much else, the headwind was brutal and I was getting desperately hungry.  Unexpectedly I came across a southbound pedaler and his partner...Matt and Lyn...and we stopped to talk.  They had been riding/hitching/couch surfing since September and they started in Washington state.  Definitely taking their time.  Matt was very much checking out my bike...and maybe soon they'll encounter Evan.  It was good to see some fellow pedalers.  I made it to Puertecitos in some state of delirium and pick up some food and not wanting to ride another inch was convinced to pay to camp.  250 pesos with a crappy wind break and a descent natural hot spring.  The hot spring is marked private property and is somewhat set off in a gated community of crappy houses and California plates and fat gringos with round but wrinkled skin.  And I'm sitting here at a picnic table barely shading the street lamps that beam down on this "camp" waiting to be locked in at precisely 10:00 while listening to the diesel generator that will surely run all night long.  Feels like fire camp!

Puertecitos to San Felipe - 75K of headwinds and those fat wrinkly Californians buying up the Mexican desert along the Sea of Cortez.  This is truly the armpit of Mexico and at this point I'm over it and so is my body - mostly my butt really, it has saddles sores the size of peaches.  I finally made it to San Felipe expecting to find a spring break party but instead found Panama City for the snowbirds of California.  Fat wrinkled gringos that make no slight attempt at learning spanish and a beachfront strip that caters to them.  I was considering going out that night but by the sight of things it wouldn't have been worth the time anyway and so instead I ended up in my room passed out at 8:00.