Twenty-Nine Palms, California - elevation 1950 feet/595 m.

They're starting out rough, high in the California part of the Mojave Desert - where summer daytime temperatures have got as high as 119F/48C and nightime as low as 9F/-12.2C.

Gar's #3

The four of us set off from Oceanside having been greeted by Tim Kilpatrick, a gent from Alabama who has recently completed the coast2coast single handily, unsupported over 34 days. After the initial climb from the pacific, rich and myself headed towards the Bonsall.

Andy and phil take over, and are greeted by a fabtastic canyon climb, which would have lifted their mood, but taken its toll on their legs...and by now, the sun has burnt through the cloud.

We arrive at tucalama, and once rich presents the art of urinating into 4 seperate cups...without spilling a drop, the sat nav has a pop. We change, rich and myself continue to Anza, steady climbing, but nothing as steep as the stint facing andy and phil on the next leg.

Rich and myself reach the summit of the climb, a max height of 4600feet...and then we have the pleasure of the 15mile decent to the oasis that is palm desert. The roads are awsome, the views breathtaking, and the experience...can only be described as top gear on bikes...rich taking up the role of James May.

The bear and phillipousis continue through the desert heat to Morongo Valley, not helped by the Traffic lights. Again, they seemed to have had the short straw, hampered by the lights, keeping them trapped on the dese rt sun, unable to get any momentum they make their way to morongo valley.

Morongo Valley to Twentynine Palms.

Rich and I begin our last leg next to a wind farm the size of Carmarthen. Thousands of wind turbines as far as the eye can see, an there's a damn good reason why they're here...there's one hell of a wind, and we're attempting to cycle straight into it.

Our average speed for the daysrops dramatically as we struggle to maintain double figures, but worse is to come, as we turn right, now with the wind at our backs, we start to get the hills...in what assists the ascending on this leg alone to 4400 feet. By now, my legs are running on fumes, not helped by the 90degree desert heat, and undoubtedly there's no way I could have done that alone, so cheers rich.

We finally reach the summit of our last climb, to hear that the guys have reached the hotel...unfortunately, the wrong one, and they are ushered out of their routine sheepdip in double time.

Day 1 is over, only 14 to go...and toxays climbing and heat outlines the severity of the challenge ahead. There's no doubt...I'll sleep tonight.

Rich's #3

Well I made it beyond 10 o'clock at night, but nobody told my internal alarm that meant I could sleep in beyond 3.

So today is the big off and it started poorly with me moving to the floor space outside the bathroom to sleep (or not as the case turned out) in order to get away from Porth and Pop's snoring. Although I think the enormity of what we're taking on has hit me and nervous tension was the main cause of laying awake.

None of us want to let anybody down but we are where we are and just need to see what the next few weeks hold.