PAV Blog Day 6-11_1.26-31: Santa Barbara to Joshua Tree NP to Tempe AZ

Right now I'm sitting on Milan's couch in Tempe, AZ. We've been lucky enough to stay here for 4 nights and tonight are moving to his friends house to give his roommate his house back, haha. So I've got a few days to cover...

1.26
We left Santa Barbara behind racing towards LA down 1o1. It had been great to have a day with my feet firmly planted on the ground instead of pegs, but I was happy to be back in the saddle. The drive down 101 was beautiful. Lawson comically gave us a tour of the stars from the freeway. Out across the ocean huge oil rigs lined the horizon between the shore and the Channel Islands. They were strangely beautiful.
As we got closer to LA the traffic increased along with everyones need to be somewhere five minutes ago. California's cities are a maze of highways and freeways with strings of side streets and avenues strung in between. The gps is invaluable through these crowded cities and takes alot of the guesswork out of navigating.
Sometime in the afternoon we made it to Andrews buddies house to pickup a part and made a stop at In-and-Out for some Animal style fries and burgers. We threw around the idea of trying to make it to Tempe, which was totally possible, but would keep us on the road for another 6 hours or more. We also had a number of places to stay in LA but they were all the way across town in the wrong direction. We decided to head towards Palm Springs to find a place to camp and hoped it wouldn't be too cold in the desert for camping.
We made our way toward Palm Springs, down highway 10, as the sun started setting. It was a beautiful sunset, one of the first I'd payed attention to on the trip so far. Somewhere near Palm Springs I turned to see a valley full of wind turbines silently lumbering in the night. They ran in rows from the road to as far as I could see into the dark. In every row one or two turbines were not moving, they just sat there, still, while their brothers and sisters danced with the wind. And for a second, for some reason, I felt bad for them, like they were missing out on the fun everyone else was having. Most of the time these types of thoughts stay in my head. Hours on the road makes a person more contemplative, and possibly more hullicinative.
As we climbed the hills outside of Indio, just past Palm Springs, my bike began to lose power, like clockwork. I was able to maintain a speed of no more than 60mph. At this point disappointment with my bike was nothing new but the feeling that it could cost me more than I had saved for the trip has consistently been stressful. It was nearing 8pm and we decided to pull off and camp.
After stopping at one road and watching Bean and Lawson offroad it towards Mexico to find a spot, we continued until we came to a sign for the Joshua Tree National Park. We exited and found an awesome camp spot just before the entrance on blm land. We made a fire and setup camp. If you click on the picture above and look just below the back of the bike on the left you'll see Bean enjoying some morning quiet time. I actually didn't know he was there when I took the picture. He blends in well. Something we'll need south of the border.
The wind began to pick up as we started falling asleep and it continued through the night. At one point I awoke to what I thought was a car door closing and a bag dropping from someones hand. The horror movies have clearly planted themselves in my imagination.
I awoke to howling winds, crisp air, and a bright morning sun. It was a strange mixture of beauty and power. The tent was rippling next to my head and nearly collapsed on top of Andrew and I. Turning to see if Andrew was awake I started laughing at what appeared to be the grim reaper taking a nap in my tent...to be finished later..