My day started when Isabel, Kitty and John's 6-year-old granddaughter, came into my room to inform me that breakfast was ready, so I joined her, Kitty, and John for some homemade cinnamon rolls, coffee, and orange juice. Then we got in the car to take Isabel to school, a tiny country school with about 15 kids per class. As we pulled up kids were milling around on the playground, just beyond which was a sheep pasture containing hundreds of sheep. Kitty explained that shepherds put one black sheep in the herd for every 50 white ones, so that at a glance they can tell how many sheep there are.

Kitty told Isabel's teacher, Mrs. Maiola, about my cross-country trek and she asked if I'd stick around to join the class for the flag salute. That sounded fine. So I was a little surprised when the whole school (it's a small K-8 school, with about 15 kids per class) gathered around the flag and she pulled me to the front to tell all the students about my excursion. So I explained all the pertinent details of where I came from, how long it took, and how I met up with Kitty and Isabel. Afterward, Mrs. Maiola invited me in to her first-grade class where I showed them on a map where I'd been, trying to work in a bit of a geography lesson along the way, and then offered to field the kids' questions. A slew of eager hands shot into the air. All their questions were delivered in a tone of complete astonishment. Some of my favorites were:

"What were you wearing?"
"Do you brush your teeth?"
"Did it take you YEARS?"
"Can I have your autograph?"
"Did you eat?"

I explained that for me, food is like gas for a car, so I have to eat a lot of food and drink a lot of water. Later as I was about to leave, Mrs. Maiola pulled me aside and pressed a $20 bill into my hand. "I'm sure you're fine and all, but here's some gas money."

Kitty, Mrs. Maiola, and the kids at the Magnolia School made me feel like a very very minor celebrity, the kind who is flattered if people recognize her from some small appearance in a B-movie, not the kind who goes around wearing big floppy hats and shades on so people won't bug her.

Back at home, Kitty took me to their seed mill for a round of introductions to the staff (and the sheep) where I got to see the coated grass seed they produce for Scott's and other major brands. Kitty sent me off with some fresh-picked tangerines from their trees, another round of photographs, and a big hug. All of this got my day off to a great start as I set out down their little dirt road back to the highway, getting my first view by daylight of endless flat green fields under a hazy blue sky. It all seemed very California.

But I didn't seem to make much progress. First off, I remembered that I needed toothpaste so when I got into Brawley I stopped at a drugstore which was also a 99c store. In retrospect, that was probably a bad sign. Inside was chaos, a mixture of standard drugstore stuff and cheap knickknacks all haphazardly piled onto floors and shelves. They carried very few recognizable brands, and the only toothpaste they had was Pepsodent. I could not bring myself to buy Pepsodent. I watched the Price is Right religiously as a kid, and I'm pretty sure Pepsodent advertised there along with other geriatric products such as Depends, Metamucil, and Super Poli-Grip, because now I strongly associate Pepsodent with dentures and the elderly. Besides, it only came in the standard tube whereas I needed the travel size.

By then I was hungry so I stopped in a the Mexican place across the street for some carne asada tacos. After that I located a Rite Aid and picked up an acceptable brand of toothpaste. Nearby was a motel with wifi, so I stopped in to ask if I could use it to check my email. The woman at the front desk invited me to use the computer in their lobby, so "a moment" turned into 45 minutes or so. My business partner Ben had written to say he'd spoken to AT&T customer service on my behalf and it sounded to them like something was wrong with my iPhone. He gave me a few troubleshooting steps and phone numbers for both Apple and AT&T's tech support. That was exciting! Perhaps a functional phone was in my near future?

I'd accumulated so few miles all day that I made myself ride 6 more to the next town before getting on a pay phone to call tech support. I'll spare you the intricacies, but suffice it to say that after a 30 minute call involving one of those annoying voice-recognition menus ("Just say yes or no. You responded 'No.' Is that correct?"), one Apple support guy, and two AT&T representatives, and a decent chunk of time on hold, we all arrived at the assessment that something was gravely wrong with my iPhone and there was nothing to be done until I could get to an Apple Store in San Diego. Actually, this was helpful, as I could stop seething at AT&T and just settle in with a lowered expectation that my phone would continue to be useless as anything but a camera. Well, I'd lived without it this long. . . what difference did a couple days make?

So after all that, late in the afternoon, I finally went for a bike ride. This ride took me past more vast green fields, guys laying irrigation pipes, orchards of palm trees, dirt carefully raked into rows, through another Border Patrol checkpoint where they again took my word that I am a citizen, and back into the desert.

It seems strange to me now that I was so worried about riding through the desert, as the desert stretches in Arizona and California have been among my favorite parts of the trip, not to mention the easiest: they're flat, warm, sunny, scenic, and solitary. People's fears of the desert usually involve driving and running out of gas, but on a bike it's a very different experience. It's easy enough to carry food, and water is easy enough to come by because everyone needs it. Tiny convenience stores that don't have gas pumps always have water. And zipping by in a car, you might not notice all the people who live in the desert. Here and there I'd see a house tucked away in the hills, a ranch, or a tiny RV neighborhood. If I ever did run low on water, which I never did, there would be places to get it.

The other concern people voiced was that I'd be alone in the middle of nowhere if anything happened. Generally, I had the opposite problem, that nowhere I went was ever quite solitary enough for my tastes. Being confined to the roads on a bike means there are always cars passing, always an RV or two parked in the sand. But Route 78 leading to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park came close to the perfect desert solitude I was looking for. There was very little traffic, and for the first time I didn't see a single house or RV for miles. And I was surrounded by unlimited camping space.

As the sun set I pushed my bike a mile or so down a dune buggy trail, a grueling task in loose sand, but I was determines to get as far away from the road as I could. Surprisingly, it was almost more difficult to select a camping spot on such a uniform landscape, with no trees, boulders, or landmarks to make one spot any better or worse than any another.

I set up my tent in case I ended up needing it, but thought I'd try sleeping under the stars since it was a perfectly dark moonless night. I lay there for a while in my sleeping bag looking up, watching twinkly planes trek across the sky. In all this open space it was hard to imagine that somewhere people were crammed into coach, their shoulders and necks cramping, their bulging purses and briefcases eating up valuable legroom. Somewhere people were trying fruitlessly to distract themselves from the screaming infant 3 rows back with the crackly audio of an inane romantic comedy heard through faulty headphones. Somewhere, people didn't have enough space.

And there I was with way too much. It was too big, too dark, too quiet, and I felt too vulnerable to sleep. I crawled into my tent, a tiny oasis of coziness in a black sea of sand and stars.