Day 1: SD to Phoenix

The first day of my 6 week trip. I had originally decided to get on the road at 5AM that day...but after staying up till 2AM packing the night before, I slept in and decided to get out of town at 3PM. And after still more packing and delay, I finally left SD at 4:30. Right in the middle of traffic. D-oh. At least I'd be skipping the hottest part of the day in the desert.

SD to Phoenix was easy. I took the I-8...really the fastest route there from SD. I had a lot of people on the road giving me thumbs up. At one point, a guy in a beat up Toyota truck swerved and nearly hit me while trying to give me the 'rock-n-roll' hand sign. I stopped a few times to stretch and take pics.

Somewhere around 9PM I was getting sleepy so I stopped at a rest area with vending machines. For whatever reason, the soda machine would NOT take my dollar bills. So I ended buying a coffee and burning my tongue while attempting to drink about half of it. Strong stuff, it perked me right up.

I stopped for gas in Gila Bend and ran into a few other people on bikes. I guess I look like I'm going somewhere interesting because I get a lot of people approaching me at the gas station, asking questions. It's good, they're all very friendly, and I usually give them my card. (I had made up cards for the trip.) Then from Gila Bend on up to the I-10 into Phoenix. I got lost looking for my friend Nathan's friends house that he had arranged for me to stay at. My silly GPS kept telling me to turn into Phoenix's city streets instead of taking the 101 bypass around the city. And eventually I gave into it's messages and did. Which meant I got into Scottsdale around 12:45AM. Doh. Very tired, but wide awake from that rest-area coffee/jet fuel. After a beer and some chips, I fell asleep at about 2AM. Ray, my gracious host for the night, has a cool dog named Max that kept me company thru the night.