Palm Springs

I like Palm Springs. It's relaxing to be surrounded by all these unhurried grey hairs with all the time in the world. I like the bike lanes. It's pretty under cover, but America's ageing baby boomers aree driving innovation here. Electric cars aren't on the come from GM or Nissan, they're here already, they're just called carts. Entire communities function without hydrocarbons, other than the flights to get here from cold climates and the inexpensive vehicles set aside for the Mexican pool cleaners and gardeners. Cool golf carts share bike lanes and have their hoods shaped like Jaguars and Bentleys. This way seniors sipping Miller Lite have plenty of reaction time to avoid hitting planters or dog walkers because they only go 10mph. The slowness of it all helps the relaxation.

If standing out on the golf course with a blingy cart is the norm, it certainly isn't that way in the gated communities. The grey haired ladies drove beige or sand colored cars exclusively. Mostly Lexus' and little convertible Mercedes. Their grey haired husbands stuck with sand colored Jaguars and Cadillacs - all perfectly shiny because they stopped at one of those "we employ 100 Mexicans" car washes that polish everything to a radiating shine when they left Maine in 1987 to retire here, and it never got dirty since.

Palm Springs seems like a bit of an air travel security hazard. I've never seen so many people skipping the scanner line for pat downs because of pacemakers. One troublesome lady had more than 3oz of lotion because she said it was dry here in the desert.

The mountains around town seem lovely, there must be more road riding than the one obvious climb I found, but I didn't search too hard on this trip. It's re invigorating to remember how awesome road cycling is - we get so little "real" road cycling at home. By "real" I mean the way the Spaniards, French, Italian and Californians get it... mountainous with twisty roads, velvet smooth blacktop, and cycling kit consisting of no more than jerseys and shorts, without even need for a wind breaker.

Cindy enjoyed the big road climb and the slow paced luxuriousess of it all.  Nothing caps off a ride like chilling by the pool for a few hours with life on the slowest of pace settings.