The sun is vertically above

"It is just mid-day. The sun is vertically above. It beats down on my shoulders and dries up the skin of my hands. My hair, over which I had never worn a hat since I left New York, is bleached to a light yellow colour and stands erect, stiff and brittle. The alkali sand and dust have absorbed all the moisture from my fingers and gradually cracks and cuts are developing in my finger tips and at the joints. I find it easier to grasp the handle bars with the palms of my hands alone. My clothes are saturated with dust and my trench boots are cut and scratched, with the seams broken away ; the right sole has pulled away and threatens to come off altogether unless carefully used. I feel that the sooner I get out of the Mohave Desert the better it will be for me."
-C.K. Shepherd

We've made a habit on this trip of ignoring the well-intentioned advice of strangers.
At a diner named for Route 66, a man wanted to send us a different route than the one we were taking which would have allowed us to avoid the wind. I asked if it would be worse wind than Kansas, then had trouble understanding his response, which was to shake his head and mutter "Oh my God," before leaving to return to his table. Rod thought he meant the wind wasn't as bad, so we went on.
Some where in Arizona, tantalizingly close to the California border, we spoke to a gas station manager and motorcycle rider who cautioned us that we would never make it to Barstow in the mid-afternoon heat. We were wearing the wrong kind of clothes, he said, and seemed to think we would end up a pile of bleached bones by the side of the road. We went on, and made it to Barstow just fine, where we got a hotel room for the first time in more than a week.