On great thing about the military besides the pay (insert sarcasm) is being able to travel to different parts of the world. Recently, my family and I relocated from beautiful New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, to the bone dry desert of Yuma, Arizona.
I heard that a couple of my coworkers are bike commuters. I thought that it was pretty interesting because the afternoon highs have been reaching 115 degrees. A tad bit warmer than I’m used to.
I figure there really isn’t an easy way to getting used to commuting in the heat. So this morning, I got up an hour earlier to ride into work. I took the KMX that I picked up from RL this past weekend. That thing is such a blast to ride. Besides having a pretty cool ride, the commute itself sucked! Sure work is only 4 miles away. But it was somewhere around 90 degrees at 7:00 am and it felt like I was going up hill about 80% of the time. My legs were burning about half way there.
Once I got to work, people instantly crowded around the KMX wanting to check it out. One of the comments I heard was “that’s some wild a$$ sh!t�. It’s funny because he kept on saying it for about five minutes.
Besides the 115 degree heat that radiated from the sun and the road, the commute home wasn’t too bad. It was mostly down hill but had to travel into the wind. One very interesting thing I saw on the way home was a coyote. No not one of those guys who smuggles illegal aliens through the border, the less notorious one (the animal). That was an interesting encounter. He was about 10 feet away from me getting ready to cross the road when I rode past him. I didn’t know who was more scared, me or the coyote.
Commuting in the desert is definitely a tough commitment. Hats off to those of you who live in harsh conditions and still insist on being bike commuters.
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