Bicycling |
A week away from this event the weather looked alright and from what was forecast, it looked like we'd just miss some rain by a couple days. As the days passed, though, this slowly changed until on the night before the ride the forecast was for utter and certain doom. At some point the American Diabetes Association had included on their website a link to tips for riding in the rain. Not good. Despite all that, things looked good in the morning. It wasn't as windy as we'd feared and the skies were generally clear. Unfortunately the 4 hours or so it took Susan and I to reach the other end of the out-and-back route was plenty of time for the predicted doom to settle in. At the top of the observatory climb the sky was dark, the wind intense, and rain was clearly falling very nearby in the direction we were to be heading. A SAG truck was parked at the last checkpoint and the driver, having already loaded up one other rider, asked us if we'd like to call it a day and head back in the truck. Already struggling to keep warm and my rain gear nonexistent, I thought it a good idea. At least we'd made it to the top of the climb. As it turned out, the decision didn't matter. Moments after heading out in the truck word came over the radio that the event was being closed due to weather and that all riders must get off the road. The real shame in this was that I wouldn't be able to relive the awesomeness that was the food at the rest stops on the way back. Nor would I get to hang around with the crazy oatmeal lady... All in all it was a fun time and I would do it again next year. Though next year hopefully we can do the whole route in about the time it took us to do half of it this time. Either that, or I'm bringing a BOB trailer full of beer to better enjoy taking it easy. |
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A quick ride up Sentinal Peak is always a good time. It's an even better time when some crazy hot bike chick joins you. What really tops it off, though, is when she's your girlyfriend!
We should have invited somebody with a white bike to join our incidentally sort of UA colored bike gang.
Distance: 18.1 miles |
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I've delayed going on a MTB group ride with local people for a while now, mostly due to my lack of skill and relative out-of-shape-ishness. This isn't some low self-esteem psychobabble I'm preaching here, it's just a fact that when it comes to mad mountain performance I'm pretty low on the totem pole. I'm really happy about my considerable improvements over the last year or so, then I didn't even know where the totem pole was. Now, I think of myself as sitting at the bottom of the totem pole on a bench, likely eating Arby's and putting off homework while staring up at it. For reasons I'll never quite understand, I decided a great maiden group voyage would be attending an all-day ride featuring 35 miles of singletrack and unknown (to me) thousands of feet of climbing. I think in my head I was planning to rely on the "well you've got no choice but to keep going, what are you gonna die out here?" mindset, which has worked well in the past, but didn't quite stack up on this challenge. First things first... check out the crazy bus thing they had to shuttle everybody to the trailhead!
I read a lot of blogs written by cyclists who can barely be described as human, retelling their experiences riding mountain bikes for 12, 16, 20+ hours straight, often covering well over 100 miles, often well over 10,000 feet of climbing. A few of them dwell in particular on the subject of suffering. They ask if bicycling, among other things, is just a path to finding suffering and the perverse delight that somehow accompanies it for these people. I think about them sometimes when I'm riding because suffering is one of those subjects... you never really know what somebody means when they describe pain, nor can you be sure that your own descriptions match up with or make sense to another person's understanding and experience of it. Is the suffering they endure 10 hours and only half-way into an epic ride something I don't understand because I'm not capable of doing such a thing? Or is mine greater, bent over the handlebars gasping for breathe 15 minutes into a ride, just over the first big hill with 20 more to go... When they return from their suffering, their stories are read and revered by many. They can take some comfort in knowing that what they have completed has been done and can only be done by a handful of people. There is less comfort coming home from a great struggle, knowing that you have really only conquered very little... that you have poured yourself out in barely passing level 1. Or maybe it's the other way around. If suffering and overcoming is the goal, maybe being an overweight, relatively out of shape guy is the best thing there is.
In any case, this event was crazy fun. Crazy fun in that 'I don't think I've ever been so certain I was going to die on my bike' sort of way. We were on the trail at 8am and I was happy to find two other riders willing to stick with me and play caboose to the others. After about 12 miles and what felt like maybe 2 hours, I looked at my phone for the time... 2pm. Oh, no problem - hopefully they'll just be waiting for us at the after-ride BBQ a day late! Not good. Only 1/3 the way through the ride in 6 hours, with only 3 hours of daylight remaining, and with the slightest incline making me feel like someone was sucking my soul out of my chest through an ethereal straw, we needed a plan. Fortunately there was a way to bail off the trail and onto the road... the sweet, downhill road. There were a few climbs before we were back at the BBQ, but nothing too bad. Looking back, it sucks that I missed so much of the real ride. But, my memory in tact, I know there wasn't any choice. I think I'd resigned to bailing for the road when I simultaneously flatted both tires and got stung by a bee repairing them. I can take an omen...
The BBQ was awesome! Beer has never been so wonderful and whoever made whatever random piles of meat I was eating - most impressive. Distance: 34.4 miles |
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Mountain biking has a lot going for it compared to hitting the road. A new set of skills and challenges, nearly constant great scenery, basically no cars, etc etc. The one thing that bothers me about my MTB experience to date, however, has been the fact that I've driven my truck to go biking just about every time I've done it. Something about driving somewhere in order to hop on another vehicle to travel some more and then driving back... just rubs me the wrong way. Then I saw the following video on one of my favorite blogs and felt like a complete pile... Armed with my new GPS and suddenly moved to feel like an incredible lame-o, I decided today would be a great day to do some MTB'ing sans car. There are reasons for wanting to drive to a trail to bike it - it's much easier to get out if something goes wrong, for example Well, screw that! My destination was Tucson Mountain Park and the Star Pass area. This was my first ride in the area, one that I'd been putting off because despite the insistence of locals that navigation is straightforward out there, the sat map made it look like an insane mess of trails and washes in every direction. I'd loaded up about a dozen key waypoints on the GPS and set out. Even with the GPS I managed to mess up the directions. Interestingly, despite taking a few totally different tracks than what I'd planned, I still ended up hitting everything I wanted to. One such navigation mistake lead me to this cool picnic table...
All in all the trip was a ton of fun. The ride out to the trailhead was itself a reasonably challenging ride for me (especially compared to driving!) and portions of the trail were harder than anything I've ridden at Sweetwater, Fantasy Island, or 50 Year. Fortunately, the ride home was basically one really long descent down to the UA. The area is really beautiful...
Despite having only tasted maybe 10% of it (and sucking pretty badly at that), my thoughts on more than one occasion turned towards one day doing this... maybe if I can find a SAG helicopter I'll do it tomorrow. Distance: 26.6 miles |
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I'd planned to ride to Arivaca and back, but was turned off of that plan by some logistical troubles. For one thing, that ride would take me so long I'd have to leave early enough that I'd need a jacket of some kind and would then have nowhere to put it for the majority of the day. Additionally, I'd have to eat a meal at some point and there's basically (i.e. literally) nothing between Green Valley and Arivaca. I wasn't about to bring a lock on such a ride, so blah blah yada yada I changed plans. After some map playing, I decided to ride up to the San Xavier Mission which I'd only ever seen from the highway. On the way, I had an AZFJ sighting, running into CopDoc on Valencia.
From there I rode the length of Mission Road to the South where it ends. That is a very pretty route with mountain and mine views and fun rolling hills. The road surface is generally very crappy, however. Fortunately, traffic south of San Xavier is basically nonexistent and I was able to take a smoother course away from the edge of the road.
Distance: 56.5 miles |
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I'd always known that just North of my parents place in Fountain Hills was a 'mountain park,' but wasn't entirely sure what that was or what I might do there besides go for a hike or something. Turns out there is a great multiuse loop as well as a crazy MTB competition area. I rode the Pemberton Trail, a large loop that basically goes around the perimeter of the park. It is relatively flat compared to my expectations what with the word "mountain" in the name of the place. Either way you ride it, the first 1/3 or so is flat or climbing gradually, the second 1/3 is largely a rolling flat, and the last 1/3 is a gradual descent back to the trailhead. It was a lot of fun! I was advised to ride it counter-clockwise, and that was probably a good idea - the southwest/bottom end is definitely more fun to descend than the north/top end. The north has some wide doubletrack and is a bit sandy, the south/west legs of the ride are fast single track with tons of waterbars to jump.
This was my first ride out with the new GPS, a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx I got at REI with mad Christmas gift cards - thanks Santa(s). That worked extremely well, I suspect I will be very happy with it. Additionally, it was the first time out using a rear rack and bag rather than a backpack. A sweaty back on a cold day really bothers me, so a rack it is. Distance: 15.3 miles |
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After failing to make it Green Valley about a week ago due to truly cruel winds, I tried it again... this time - success! Getting out there was extremely easy, which made me feel good since it wasn't too long ago that I would have thought those 30 miles alone were an accomplishment. I ate a chicken sandwich and some fries and had a liter of Gatorade at Carl's Jr. and after a brief rest turned back up the road towards Tucson. I expected to feel slow having stopped and eaten, and indeed I felt pretty terrible for about the first 15 miles. Exactly what happened I don't really know. I considered that it might have been dehydration, but couldn’t be sure. I drank 1L of water before leaving and had 1.5L along the way to GV, sweating freely the entire time. On the way back I didn’t sweat so much despite obvious exertion which concerned me – but I couldn’t tell if it was dehydration or the fact that the humidity was in the single digits and the wind had picked up quite a bit. In any case, I consumed massive amounts of water and sports drink and continued on… at about mile 45 things picked up randomly and I felt pretty good for the remainder of the ride. When I had finally made it back to my apartment, my cycle computer read 59.5 miles... a few laps around my complex solved that problem to make the number a better milestone. Hey, riding is riding! Distance: 60.0 miles |
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Back in Fountain Hills at my parents place to visit for Easter, it was a good opportunity to go for a ride up there. I knew the route I did the last time I was up there continued to become something known as '9-Mile Hill' so I thought I'd give that a shot. From the internet accounts I'd seen of it, the hill was a continuous 2-3% grade rising about 1,300 feet from bottom to top. For me, this should be a fairly massive challenge! It really wasn't that bad. The portion of the ride I'd done before went by very fast and soon I was at the hill. From the bottom, it was fairly intimidating - it just sort of went up until you couldn't see it any longer. Once you'd ridden to that point, it still continued until you couldn't see it any longer... and on and on. I found I was able to climb about 10mph and plugged away without much problem to the top! w00t. Distance: 44.3 miles |
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Susan's parents house is in Green Valley about 35 miles from my apartment along a nice road... perfect! Or so I thought, the weather had other ideas. I didn't last very long riding head first into 35mph winds... longer than I thought, but Green Valley was not going to happen. The way back was fun though, with the wind and slightly negative grade allowing me to effortlessly ride around 25mph. Distance: 45.1 miles |
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I don't think there's much question that the road up Mount Lemmon is one of the greatest possible bike rides in this area and probably one of the best in the state and country! I could contain the fascination no longer... Even attempting this was an interesting choice for me since, at 300lbs. and not in very good shape, I generally suck to an amazing degree at any kind of hill climb. It's something like 16 miles from my apartment to the base, so I figured I'd ride out there to warm up and so that if (when?) I failed miserably to climb anything, I'd still get a good ride out of the ordeal. I set out going east on River Road... had someone filled the tubes of my bike with lead? I felt terrible and slow. This was not going well. Somehow I managed to avoid turning around despite nearly doing so many times and found myself at the "Mile 0" sign. I called Susan to give her my last goodbye and set out. After literally about 100 yards of riding in my lowest gear (a 36/26 of all things) I had to stop. Truly, this was not good. After a few cycles of riding and stopping for a few minutes, I was not even through the first turn... oh boy. Then, a sign - encouragement sent from above! An overweight and aparently quite elderly woman rode by me and said hello. Not far behind came her (I assume) husband who looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 years old... This sort of thing (including a girl that looked like a 14 year old version of Susan on a mountain bike) happened a few times as I sat on the side of the road and drove me to press on. Soon I was at the Babad Do'ag parking area and vista near the 3-mile point. A joke by the standards of people who do this sort of thing, but a pretty satisfying accomplishment for me. The real reward was the way down... gravity likes me, it was insane fun carving out the turns at 40mph. Lesson learned: windy roads at 40mph on a bicycle is more fun than 150mph on a motorcycle (and probably more dangerous...) Distance: 39.6 miles |
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