We crossed it on the scurrying freeway almost without noticing it. Next came a long haul across a wide expanse of flat farmland. As the sea receded behind us, normal service was resumed on the heat machine. By afternoon, the altitude had risen further, but so had the temperature, which now nudged 100 degrees at Copperopolis, a sometime one-horse mining settlement high in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The mineral-powered boom years were history and even the solitary nag had either trotted away or was taking an afternoon nap. Back on the coast, we had lost some of our painfully developed resistance to living in an oven, so we poured ourselves into the local store to buy larger bottles for our water. One thing was sure. We might cool off over the 9,000-foot pass the following morning, but the climate was going to deteriorate considerably in a day or two as we rode into the wastelands of America, where the idea of rain was an empty hope. There was a great deal of zigzagging coming up but, as the eagle flew, we were only 200 miles from the north end of Death Valley.
