Day one

For the first 15 miles or so, the road is awful! Many, many holes 2' around and 4" deep,
with the asphalt so worn the stones are exposed so it is jarring as you bump along. 
I took this photo to show how bad it was, but as I see the photo now; this was the good stuff.
There was one half a mile long section that was newly paved,
just enough to highlight how awful the rest of the road was. 

I know, this is not going to interest many of you. But it was kind of amazing to me. Each tented hay pile you see is roughly 50'x50'x20' high. I biked past this area for over a mile along the road and it ran back from the road about half a mile. Thousands of tons of hay piled and waiting for something. Many of the piles are much larger than the ones you see, perhaps 150'x100'x30'. Who knew hay was worth stockpiling. In the center of this complex there are many track trailer trucks and a railroad track runs along the back of this area, certainly they must ship hay all over S CA. 

This is what I road through most of the morning. 

Starting out 10:30 am, in Ocotillo CA, along route 80 east on Sunday, October 8th, 2017
If I appear less than happy, I'm just figuring out how to handle this
newly weighted down bike and I'm standing along side a road
dead center of  absolutely no-where, about to start peddling to
FL and feeling fairly certain that I have lost my mind.