There's a reason why there are huge wind farms here.......

So apparently yesterday's gale-force winds are not all that unusual around here.  We passed thousands upon thousands of wind turbines today as we made our way through the western edge of the Mojave Desert from Palmdale to Tehachapi CA.  Also lots of solar power generation.  Here's a picture of some solar panels near a school yard as we made our way out of Palmdale & environs.  Later on we came upon fields of panels - acres & acres.

I must say that I do like the desert landscape.  Lots of Joshua trees again today.  Apparently they only grow in the Mojave Desert - who knew?

We fought a bit of a headwind for about the first 14 miles.  Then..... bliss......  13 miles of flat terrain with a tailwind.  Woohoo!  We sure made good time through that stretch. We didn't see the SAG until mile 27.  Seems they were busy attending to Linda's three flats - yikes!  She finally jumped in the van and got a lift in to Tehachapi.  Mile 27 to mile 43 was to be our climb du jour.  That entire stretch was populated by wind turbines as far as the eye could see in any direction.  The road up through the turbines can be seen in the first photo.

Gotta say the legs were a bit empty after yesterday's hills.  When today's hills topped out at 10%-ish, I had to get off the bike for a few minutes.  Finally - saw the SAG at the top of the hill.  What a welcome sight!  Had a nice long stop there before heading down the other side and into the small town of Tehachapi.  Population about 14,000 - 41% of whom are incarcerated in the local State Prison.  Given that, there are actually a surprising number of stores in town. Apparently Tehachapi had a significant agricultural component to their economy until the recent drought years. Seems it hasn't entirely disappeared, though. We headed off to a German bakery for lunch after checking in.  Yum!

We had a few people topple off their bikes today.  Nothing serious, but a few more ladies who are looking forward to the day off tomorrow.  I'm planning on spending a lot of the day lying around and trying to heal some lingering wounds and sore joints from last week's collision with the asphalt.

Stats for the day:
86 km / 53 miles from Palmdale CA to Tehachapi CA
3133 feet up
1759 feet down
Weather:  Pretty darned nice.  Started about 15C and quickly rose to low 20's.  Climbed throughout our climb into the low 30s and then cooled off to high 20s.  Bright sunshine all day.  Quite windy - sometimes in our faces and sometimes at our backs.