Hmmm?

Well Well, where to start? I guess I will start from the beginning. We were staying with Carl, who was extremely hospitable, and when we had first met him outside the bank we had inquired if he knew anyone that was heading in our direction, namely Tonapah. It was more or less a rhetorical question, since it was half way across the state and everyone we had asked earlier had told us we wouldn't find anyone going that way until we passed the Hiko turnoff. He of course didn't know of anyone and said he would have loved to help us only if his wife would have been home to take care of the cats. Fortunately for us he decided after awhile that he would take us since he was retired and didn't really have anything better to do on a Saturday. So he went looking for us and found us at the laundry mat. It was amazing, probably one of the best days of the trip to that day. So that's how we ended up staying with him. So we woke up Saturday morning and ate breakfast with Carl and hit the road about 5.45am. We made pretty good time. When we stopped in Ash Springs, about 40miles into the ride, I (Chance) took over driving and lets be honest here. I was a little on the fence here. I didn't really want to take such a large helping hand. I was struggling with the idea of "cheating" not completing the trip ourselves but there were a few variable involved in the final decision. One being the intense heat, two being the large distances without services, even though there was water available that we could filter, and the third and most important to me was that Kelly's knee was starting to bother her again. So I talked it over with my dad and was still a little on the fence but decided it was the best idea and by the time I had driven two hours through the most desolate land I had ever seen in my entire life I knew that we did the right thing. After about three and a half hours of riding we pulled over in a turn out, just pass the ghost town of Coaldale NV and loaded up our bikes ate our sandwhichs we got at the gas station, thanked Carl for all his help and said goodbye.
We had about 35 miles to ride that day and we had a pretty good since summit to climb before we reached California. The summit was long but it wasn't too demanding. The heat was starting to intensify very quickly and we had no real idea if there was anything waiting for us in Benton CA or not but we pushed on. The decent was quick and a little iffy because we had a 15-25mile an hour head wind. Wind is that variable in riding that one cannot predict or train for. You never know what it's going to do and it can really make your bike unstable at higher speeds. From the top of the climb to Benton was only about 10miles but due to the intense head wind it took us one and a half hour to do it. When we were getting back on our bikes after taking our boarder picture I was almost blown over by an intense gust of wind. For the first time ever I had been stopped by customs inside the US. When you cross over the CA boarder you have to declare if you have any fruit, veg, or livestock from another state. Of course we didn't and they didn't pursue it and we proceeded to Benton. Benton was basically a ghost town. The only thing in it was a park, a dinner/gas station and a church, where we spent the night. The Dinner was alright, nothing special but the Indian taco I had was amazing. While we were there we met this really nice couple from Tonapah and spent the next hour talking with them about our trip and what lay ahead of us. The were so kind they paid for our lunch, thank you! After lunch we sat around and chatted with the ladies working there, trying to beat the heat. Finally we decided to go set up our tent but when we got to the park the wind was blowing so hard it would have been impossible to set it up and then it started to pour, so we were chased back to the dinner. We decided to pick up some snacks for later and some pop tarts for dinner, unfortunately we didn't check the dates on either and both were out, fortunately the checks mix was only out a week or so and it taste good still but the pop tarts were out 6months! They have a year shelf life! That means they had been there for a year and a half!! wow, well anyways the weather died down and we were going to go set up our tend commando style in the park, even though it said "no over night camping" on a big sign. As we were walking out this lady stopped us and asked if we were the "kids" looking for a place to camp and she told us she was the pastors wife, as she was holding a case of beer and a bottle of booze, haha how ironic. She said we could camp at the church. So we did. It was sand, not grass but it was nice. We set up camp and used the sink in the park bathroom to clean up and were just hanging around.
That's when we met Joel! He was riding by and we waved him down, it turns out he was looking for a place to set up camp as well. So we told him he could join us at the church and he did. He had just graduated from Western Illinois and was riding his bike to LA where he was going to catch a flight to New Zealand and hitch hike and ride his bike around there for three months. He was traveling alone because his friend that was going to go with him had gotten a DUI and couldn't afford it. It turned out that he was going the same way as us, at least for the next couple of days, so we had a new member of our team! The rest of the night was spent getting to know each other and reminiscing about the each others trips so for. It was pretty ironic that we had both pretty much made our own routes and taken more or less the same way and met a lot of the same people. What a small world! Thanks for all your support!