I took the Cannondale since the Giant is still sitting with a blown up fork and the terrain was described as Fantasy Island -like. There was an unlocked gate at the corner which appeared to lead down a powerline road. What I didn’t know and would later learn is that the nice single track began there as well and I didn’t see it. I went down the powerline road and it sucked pretty bad. Example of the sucking:

I ended up doing a big loop around the place on subideal routes before stumbling on the singletrack. Now we’re talking – it was very fun and perfect for a cross bike. The place was covered in massive chollas but fortunately I (or my tires) didn’t get stuck with any, just my shoes a couple times.

I packed what I’d consider my ‘full’ camping setup; tent, heavy bag, and thermarest. I winged it for dinner (had a ton of pasta when I left at about 4pm) and brought my backpacker stove for oatmeal in the morning, bike tools, a few personal items, a bunch of water, and warmer clothes for the chilly morning hours. Certainly enough stuff for a very comfortable camp but not too heavy and nowhere near as much as you could fit in the bags. The weight was barely noticeable, this bike is a complete beast.

It wasn’t hard to find a very bike-friendly route which even included a neat unpaved walking/biking path through some of the Dove Mountain housing developments. Riding into the sunset – also very nice.

The morning was damn chilly, I’ll likely bring a little more to wear if the forecast is for around or less than 40F. On the way out back to Tangerine Road I got a better handle on the dirt portion of the route. I think I’ll refrain from posting the GPS tracks of my way to the campfire – it may have involved throwing the bike over a barbwire fence and trespassing across the Ritz Carlton (don’t tell anybody). Fortunately that isn’t necessary and won’t be repeated. Not that I’d want to anyway, I was probably pretty lucky not to suffer great injury during the fence stunt.

After securing a job for the semester and feeling out that Susan wouldn’t kill me for getting another bike, I went for it. Henry at There and Back was able to get me one and have assembled and ready to go in only a couple days. After a little fumbling for fit, I took it up “A” Mountain. To my surprise it was insanely easy, no doubt owing to the obnoxiously low gearing (22 in front, 34 in back on 26″ wheels) that is available.

Of course I had to get my old bike home, that was pretty fun too…

My first grocery trip was a breeze. Six bags fit very easily in the bags and the bike’s handling was totally unaffected. Not sure how much more I could fit, the bags expand further but then I might be spilling groceries out on the road since they become less encompassing as they expand.

Things were going very well through about May. I did a few charity events, a short bike tour, was going on lengthy solo rides with good frequency, and occasionally meeting Steve for brief morning rides. At the beginning of the summer the fork on my Giant exploded and my mojo basically disappeared. The heat, no schedule being out of school, and a blown up bike were too much for my ever-crappy motivation and the summer passed with very little biking. That put a damper on the fall and I never quite got back to my spring awesomeness.

These trends are fairly obvious in the above plot. Whereas the first part of the year is steep with no clear features (rides were frequent and large enough that they sort of blend together in the plot), the rest is flatter and there are clearly punctuated little jumps in the line where I’d finally manage to go on a big ride.

2012 will feature many of the same spring events – Bike MS, Tour de Cure, Tour of the Tucson Mountains, spring break bike tour, etc. – so I expect I’ll have another good start to the year. The key will be the transition to summer. Can I avoid becoming a complete pile? We shall see…

I broke about half the teeth off the 16T of my cheap crappy cassette. I knew it would break eventually and horribly, but 200 miles of commuting on flat ground? Ouch.

It was a tragic end to the honeymoon of my enjoying a new chain on the Motobecane. Although, now I have a new chain and cassette to enjoy – yummy.

The ride up the pass was rough, being a massive person will do that to you. Fortunately it wasn’t undoable. I made it, and felt good enough to continue. The new bike has BIG gears (a 36 tooth on the cassette, insane) which made it possible to take a few slow rolling breaks rather than totally stopping.

I’d underestimated the difficulty on the other side of the pass, lots of rolling hills and short steep climbs, and by the time I was at the Bellota turnoff I was pretty severely tired. Turning around that far, only a few miles from Chimney Rock, would have been truly sad. This thought was a good one and it kept me going.

By the time I reached Chimney Rock… it was pretty bad. I describe the feeling as having a ghost-straw stuck into your chest, someone slowly sucking the soul out of your body. There was much walking on the way back to the main road.

This was one of those pictures that was taken so horribly into the sun that the only hope of it even looking like anything was to go black and white… err, I mean – artsy. Yea.

Speaking of horrible pictures, here’s one. My goal was to make it to this exact spot and it felt really good to have made it there on my own (i.e. without the help of my truck).

It got dark on me on the way home. I’d brought my little Spock lights just in case, but wussed out on the night ride across town and got picked up by Susan. This is a ride I will certainly repeat – hopefully with better results, and possibly including some camping?

Click for GPS track in Google Maps

Distance: 43.3 miles
Moving time: 4:36:–

It’s a little over 15 miles from my door to the north trail head parking lot. Figuring I normally ride about 12 miles at Sweetwater, I was looking at a mid-40 mile ride. It went really well. The ride over took only about an hour and my energy was great when I hit the trail. In fact, I probably rode stronger than I ever had at Sweetwater, maybe it was the nice warm-up.

I felt great leaving the trail head as well, my energy still very high. Unfortunately, somewhere between the trail head parking lot and Camino del Cerro I lost the bolt which holds the left crank arm on my bike! I noticed the pedal was feeling a little loose, and I figured I’d broken it – I’m still riding on the crappy plastic ones that came with the bike and they were smashed into the ground a number of times on the trail. What made me discover it was in fact the crank arm bolt was when… well, when the crank arm fell off the bike. That made it pretty obvious!

By some unbelievable fortune, about a minute after this happened the only other mountain biker that was parked at the north trail head drove by and asked if I needed a lift someplace. It was hugely out of his way, but I had few choices. The man was from Ohio, visiting town to do a bunch of biking. He was knowledgeable about local trails, a member of SDMB, and worked at a power plant back at home – all of which made for good conversation.

I had him drive me to There & Back where Steve got me all fixed up. It was a pretty weird end to the ride and I was cheated out of some miles, but it was a great time nonetheless.

When I bought my new cheap and crappy get-dirty camera, it came with this really insane case (complete with a deployable rain cover!). The belt strap is fairly adjustable and works perfectly under the stem.

This was the first time I’d ridden at Sweetwater since they installed some GLORIOUS signs. Easily the most effective trail signage I’ve ever seen. Their presence was a much welcome alternative to carrying around a useless hand drawn map as I’d become accustomed to doing.

Sweetwater is seriously beautiful. These shots are looking NE back toward the Catalinas…

Click for GPS track in Google Maps

Distance: 26.5 miles
Moving time: 2:38:–

The results of the dirt recon were discouraging… much of route which is ideal by map is basically unrideable. But, the purpose of the drive was to have a good time and learn about the route – done and done. My tires didn’t blow up and we had only one encounter with a gun-toting rancher (actually a nice guy), all in all a good day. Oh, and I lost my Losbetos virginity to a sweet, sweet breakfast burrito…

This area surrounding this ridiculously huge tree would have made an epic place to camp…

The sign read “EJ’s Summerhome.”

Video credit: Tucson Velo

The main entrance of UMC had become a significant memorial…

Back at school, the quantity and insanity of the equipment brought along by media folks was something to behold…

The bike is excellent. Granted, my only previous mountain bike experience was on a comically terrible internet warehouse bike, one whose frame I can visibly bend with hard pedaling and whose fork is a stack of rubber disks. That aside, the new bike does seem legitimately excellent. After a brief period of getting my balance back (it’s been a while since I hit the trails) and feeling out the gear selection, things went extremely well.

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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Image credit: Susan

We should have invited somebody with a white bike to join our incidentally sort of UA colored bike gang.

Image credit: Susan

Distance: 18.1 miles
Moving time: 1:35:56

Thanks to the quick thinking resourcefulness of ‘clutch burner’ we got the bike rack on no problem!

The suspension was a bit of a pain since the FOX stuff has been on there for about 18 months. My preferred method for disassembling the front is to undo the upper control arm ball joints, but they would have none of it. After wasting some time, I just unbolted the lowers like everybody else wanted to do in the first place. Ah well, it was done quick after that. Somehow I drove away with Kurt’s brand new sway bar installed – an added bonus! With the frequency of my wheeling taking a massive downturn lately, I’ve been slowly reinstalling practical things like the sway bars and rear seats since there’s currently no reason not to have them.

It looks it’s going to cost me a good few hundred bucks to rebuild the FOX stuff… Considering I haven’t been wheeling much and secretly want a long travel setup anyway, I’m strongly considering selling them. Pocketing their value would be pretty nice.

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.

Image credit: chadfbrown.blogspot.com/

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
Moving time: 4:20:48
Total climb: 2,656 feet

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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
Time: 4:06:05 (door to door)

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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
Time: 3:32:50
Avg. Speed: 15.9 mph

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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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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
Time: 4:16:48
Avg. Speed: 14.0 mph

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
Time: 3:16:02
Avg. Speed: 13.5 mph

Distance: 45.1 miles
Time: 3:14:30
Avg. Speed: 13.9 mph

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
Time: 2:58:30
Avg. Speed: 13.2 mph

Today was supposed to be a 50 mile ride and we felt really good for the first little bit. Riding in a large group offered a great mental distraction and the first 10 miles flew by very quickly. Our pace was definitely slower than the obviously more hardcore bike people, but we were at least in the loose trail of people towards the end.

The rest stops throughout the event were impressive. Huge moving trucks were dispatched to set up tables, chairs, and shade with fruit, water, energy drink and bars, sunscreen, pain relievers, etc. It was fantastic! Susan and I quickly learned to copy others and eventually executed the difficult and elite standing bicycle parking maneuver!

Exactly at that spot my bike rolled over its 1,000th mile… woohoo!

We finished the ride tired, but not really too messed up. I’d say it went very well and of course was a new personal best for both of us! We’d debated going all in and doing the 75 mile route, but by the 35-ish mile rest stop decided it probably wasn’t a good idea.

Upon returning to camp we asked a man to take pictures of us, intending to pose with our bikes above our heads like crazy people. Unfortunately this person didn’t really understand the concept, and took all the pictures during periods of time when I was not ready… like this.

Determined to have a crazy picture of me in this pose, Susan just took one of me back at the tent. Ha, victory!

A ‘normal’ picture was probably also a good idea to have, so we flagged down a nearby nice old man to take one…

Distance: 50.0 miles
Time: 3:43:41
Avg. Speed: 13.4 mph

Finally it was here! Bike MS 2009… Susan and I had arrived the night before, set up our tent, and slept in the park that was designated as the event headquarters. We had met up with Heidi and Josh, the rest of the AZFJ.org non-team team. There was some concern that we might go a little slow since Josh had not been on a bike in a while and was stuck with a mountain bike with fairly ridiculous off-road tires… but as it turned out, he was not the slow one by any means.

Our home for the weekend…

We were a little slow rising in the morning and getting ready to go, and as a result we were amoung the very last people out onto the road. Just ahead of us were a few guys riding literally in rickshaws they’d rented… read about them here. In an act that was a combination of their awesomeness and our group’s amazing lamess, they actually finished the ride well before us.

Image credit: Heidi

Josh, bored with the silliness of being constrained to the road, took off on many side adventures riding down unnecessary farm roads and at one point flipping head- first over the handlebars into a huge mound of dirt…

Image credit: Heidi

Distance: 36.4 miles
Time: 3:58:58
Avg. Speed: 9.1 mph

The ride was largely flat until the very far end where it became quite steep and hilly. We did a few challenging (for us) climbs and turned around to come back the way we came. I felt great as we began to come back, but soon felt my energy crash. The last few miles were very difficult and slow but we made it!

My hope is that this ride and the one yesterday demonstrate that we’ll be fine for the MS ride…

Distance: 41.9 miles
Time: 3:14:20
Avg. Speed: 12.9 mph

It was a blast! We’ve both come a long way… at the end of the ride I felt great and we easily could have turned around and done it again. The route was in fact very nice.

Distance: 22.8 miles
Time: 1:32:05
Avg. Speed: 13.2 mph

The only information we had was 7:00am and the address of a grocery store. We arrived a little beforehand and were puzzled by the complete lack of any evidence to suggest there was a group of bicyclists leaving there soon… no people, no bikes, few parked cars and none of them had bike racks or anything!

After a little bit of freaking out, a huge herd of bikes darted away out from behind the store… DOH! There was a parking lot on the other side that we weren’t aware of, and the 7:00am time was the leave time! Soon after another group of bikes started to go by and Susan ran out to them. They waited for us to grab our bikes and we were off! Unfortunately this glitched forced us to meet breakfast… so it was a hectic and late start with no food in our first ever ride with a group over an unknown course at unknown speeds. OK!

Fortunately the group turned out to be an amazingly friendly bunch. They were called the Cactus Cycling Club and the motto “We leave no behind behind!” was most welcome to Susan and I. The ride was very enjoyable as was the company. Also, not only did I not die from skipping breakfast – I actually felt really good for the whole ride. Interesting…

We both agreed that coming on another CCC ride would be a blast and something we must do.

Distance: 26.7 miles
Time: 2:15:59
Avg. Speed: 11.7 mph

The plan was to run the Rillito River bike path back and forth until I was ready to keel over. This way I would never be more than 6 miles from my apartment and there would be no giant hills seperating me from home. If able to make it from my place to each end twice, the total would greater than 40 miles, in fact closer to 50.

The ride went fairly well! I went to the West end, past my place to the East end, past my place to the West end again, and back to my place for a total of 38.2 miles. It wasn’t very hard and I wasn’t too beat up physically at the end, but I’d definitely underestimated the mental strain of the ride. Perhaps it was the fact that I was riding the same short and generally uninteresting path back and forth… whatever it was, my brain was in bad shape. Probably should choose something more interesting for next time…

Distance: 38.2 miles
Time: 2:37:23
Avg. Speed: 14.5 mph

Fortunately there was camping, and it was quite nice. The way it was occupied upon my arrival I had the choice of setting up next to either a small family enjoying a campfire, or a raucous group of young people playing acoustic guitars and loud music out of pickup trucks. I chose to be nearer the family, and what an enormous mistake that was. At 8:00pm exactly the guitars were put away, the music turned off, and everyone began to enjoy a campfire talking in low tones. Around the same time the children in the family were apparently stricken by demons and pretty much spent the night moaning and convulsing in their unusually ‘swishy’ sleeping bags…

There were many lines to choose from, including a bypass on the far left not visible in the above pic. I figured the ledges on the far right side were doable, and gave them a shot. The approach was a bit of a balancing act (note the flying passenger wheel), but easily cleared.

Image credit: Chigoe

As expected, it was the rear that was difficult to get up… it was either the link mounts or the gas tank getting hung up, but eventually I found the right angle and was able to crawl over.

Image credit: Chigoe

The second ledge is about the same as the first, but with the added complication of having less room to maneuver less you drive off the first ledge! A few attempts at different angles and I was over.

Image credit: Chigoe

Soon we were at the second major obstacle…

I really wanted to try something I’d seen in pictures called The Bowl, a ledge that must be approached with a sharp left turn, but upon viewing it in real life there is obviously no way it can be done in my truck. The ledge wasn’t too crazy, it was the massive sink hole right before it. I guess that’s why it’s called The Bowl, duh… We all took the notch on the left side without too much difficulty.

The third major obstacle was a choice between The Squeeze and ‘Up and Over’… I attempted the squeeze first, but there was no way to make it through (and keep the doors on the truck) without sliders installed. I think it could be done if you drove up the wall on the right side, maybe next time I’ll have my sliders on (it’s getting kind of old stepping over them in my living room).

Just for fun and with NO expectation of even remotely being able to get over it, I tried the Up and Over… clearing the front end was a challenge, and once on the wall all that happened was the rear of the frame stuck into the ground. My rear wheels never quite made it onto the rock, there just isn’t enough departure angle on the FJ.

Image credit: Chigoe

Fortunately there was a clear bypass over the hill around this obstacle, but unfortunately it also bypassed the really fun looking stuff immediately after that area. The bypass itself was a bit of fun… here’s Jeff coming down:

From that point on there were a few minor obstacles, good fun all around. Jeff and Tim on one such section:

It was a great day! Awesome trail, possibly my new favorite. The obstacles were just the perfect size to be quite challenging but definitely possible in the FJ. There are many lines I’d like to explore on a future outing, particularly on the first obstacle. This is the only carnage I suffered… not bad for no sliders. But honestly, not having sliders was a massive advantage in terms of the extra clearance. Just gotta be careful.

We met Jeff and ran into Box Canyon from the North. Spooky place at night, the walls of the canyon are higher than the reach of the headlights so the rocks sort of fade away into… spookiness.

The plan was to run Elvis in the morning, but running to the Martinez Cabins is always a good time so I suggested we camp there. Fortunately nobody was at the cabin so we set up camp in the small clearing under the trees.

We enjoyed a few beers and a big campfire and crawled into the tents to sleep. The temperatures were mild and the wind light, promising a good night of sleep…. until 1:00am when we were rudely awoken by the sounds of revving engines, loud music, and screaming! A group of people parked directly next to our obviously occupied tents and decided to have an hour-long party. This, of course, was rather annoying. Anyway, I’m not sure what three completely unarmed dudes in tents are supposed to do to confront a large group of rowdy drunkards in the middle of the night… luckily they moved on before toooo long.

Fortunately I found exactly what I was looking for in the Babad Do’ag (wtf is that?) trail off the Mount Lemmon Highway. At 4 miles of length and 1100ft of elevation gain, it would be short enough but still provide some challenge for my heavy ass!

The trail continued alongside the highway for a little before breaking away and climbing up a ridge.

After an initial rocky section, the trail leveled out a bit and wound its way through knee-length grass…

Once atop the ridge, the trail turns and follows the top edge or a canyon… across from which is a crazy waterfall!

Near the waterfall is the end of the trail, marked by a cool little sign… horrendously misspelled sign, but cool nonetheless.

A pic of my stuff by the sign to prove I was there! Well, I guess I could have hired someone to carry my stuff and take a pic… but hopefully that’s a a bit outlandish. To get a feel for my bag, I filled it up with a bunch of random and unnecessary crap – a couple books, my entire camera bag, excessive clothing, etc. After some strap adjustment it was surprisingly comfortable!

View of the falls from the end…

Another cool feature of the end is that you can see over the other side of the ridge you’ve been climbing the whole time. Incidentally, the parking area visible down there has a very brief (i.e. a few minutes) trail near it. That hike was the first I ever did in Tucson while visiting way back when…

Crazy Garmin truck…

Very cool to see the new Camaro… great looking car.

This is the engine in my FJ (minus the supercharger of course)… had never seen one quite so well before.

Nissan Pathfinder with completely stupid amounts of lift for an IFS rig!

This was pretty funny… most gigantic drop-bracket IFS pickup lifts are show-off only crap, and no exception here. Not really sure what that little linkage thing is there, but it’s probably sort of important to be hanging out like that!

New LandCruiser!

Biggest OME spring ever!

Girls in skirts standing on mirrors? Oh marketing…

The arch of speaker DOOM!!!

Crazy interior details…

Me and 1990′s professional bodybuilder Flex Wheeler!

New retro Toyota pickup…

Mad IFS and IRS Tundra!

Tundra motorcycle transport/pit insanity…

One display had this flipped over Jeep…

On the skid plates there were trail names with arrows pointing to dings and dents… one was Crown King! Crown King is a lot of fun, but I’m not sure it’s quite up to ‘signing your skids’ level… but that’s OK.

It’s THE RAPTOR!!!

Yes, that’s right… complete with a dinosaur head coming out of the rear diff…

In the back of an Escalade EXT… an awesome setup, but I definitely prefer Guitar Hero.

Our booth…

The whole thing was a huge success for us! We met with many different companies and individuals.

Back at the booth, the big interest item (even more response than the truck, believe it or not) was Corbin’s hand cycle…

There were a few companies and people at the show that I knew from other things in the offroad world, like the Overland Journal people and BajaRack! It was cool to see a picture of my truck that I took during the summer being used at the BajaRack booth…

The BajaRack FJ was looking good…

Other items of interest at the show included Tom Sheppard’s truck…

…the bizzarre FJ pickup thing…

…the amazingly hideous ‘FJRunner’…

…and a nicely built FJ outside.

The way to the show was pretty cool as well. It was my first time ever to the Hoover Dam and the first time I’d ever heard of let alone seen the incredibly massive bridge they’re putting in across from it.

Lunch consisted of watermelon and probably one of the most failed attempts at chicken I’ve ever experienced.

We wandered around that side of the lake, but could not get very far due to some locked gates and such. Defeated, we ran back the way we came to I-17.

At Table Mesa, Jeff and I with Miss R2 wandered around in search of Raw Deal – a trail I wasn’t satisfied I actually knew the location of. Soon we found it, but there was not much interest in a random run. With nothing else to do, we drove up to Rock Springs for dinner and PIE.

Later, back at Table Mesa, came the hilarity of me getting out of Jeff’s truck ‘to take pics.’ This was of course the code word for my escaping the terrifying doom that was Jeff’s attacking the obstacles! Chigoe put on quite the show as well on the big chalky step off the main road.

That evening on the trail also featured what was probably the funniest thing I’ve ever heard on the CB. Unfortunately it’s one of those ‘had to be there’ moments, but in the middle of a discussion about how we’re all kind of weird, Chigoe comes on the radio and declares, “Do you think we like chaddar dogs?!? It’s all we can afford!!!!”

Good news is I completely blew through the hills that had me slowed up last time. I got the ‘end’ of that ride (Sunrise & Swan) much easier. That last hill near mile 19 pretty much kicked my ass, though, and it was slow from there out. Well, it was slow when I actually had to power the bike… most of it was fast downhill from that point.

Time: 1:58:50
Distance: 30.1 miles
Avg. Speed: 15.1 mph

It went really well. On two occasions I stopped for about a 5 minute break, but I think that was a result of my trying to keep too great a pace. I was passing people on really cool bikes who were dressed like Lance Armstrong the whole time, maybe that should have been a signal I was riding an unsustainable clip. So, the last few miles of the uphill portion were pretty slow but overall I’m happy with how it went. Next time I’ll probably try something in the 30-mile range.

Time: 1:07:57
Distance: 17.2 miles
Avg. Speed: 15.2 mph

I was surfing the net for an easy way to make the above elevation profile and came across MapMyRide.com which looks really cool. I have tons of navigation tools for use in my truck, but that all revolves around having a GPS with you and making a log of the route. The MMR site has some typical tools, but you can use it without having any route data – you just click around on the map where you went (it even follows the contour of the roads automatically and such).

You can check out the map of the route there by clicking on the link below. A fun to do there is figure out how many calories you would have burned if you did this ride as, say, a 600-pound man in 15 minutes… the answer is shocking!

View Interactive Map on MapMyRide.com

Things I learned…

• Can’t sustain pace of 5-ish mile daily commute ride for much longer than that…
• Backpacks for any longer than that are a BAD idea.
• No need to carry the huge amount of water I did around town. Must have ridden by 50 gas stations and stores. 2 cage bottles is probably more than enough in town where supply replenishment is everywhere.

I’d been looking forward to this run for a few reasons. First, The Gap is epic and always a good time. Second, we were running it North to South which I have never done. Furthermore, we planned to wheel down the wash to the ‘Lost City,’ a rumored collection of buildings and homes that were abandon mysteriously (I was told the people left all their stuff behind). And lastly, we were being invaded by our FJC-Central friend Cameron who was visiting from Canada!

The wash to the Lost City was fun. It had that ‘raw’ feeling that washes sometimes do. Rocks were just sort of thrown everywhere and the path to take wasn’t always well defined as it typically is on a more established trail. (It’s worth noting that this wash is a marked trail – randomly blazing through washes is not cool!)

There was one major obstacle along the way. The best way down it was across a sort of bridge of rocks, very interesting stuff.

Sonic hits it and Jake follows…

I went for a different line because I thought it would be fun and it looked do-able. Plus Jake and Sonic are the spotting dream team, so there was nothing to worry about.

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: tmac

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

The last part was the classic ‘flop and slide’ move… dirty gas tank kisser.

Image credit: tmac

Soon we arrived at the Lost City. It was exactly as it had been described to me – some really nice homes that appeared as though one day the residents vanished, leaving everything behind.

All the doors were left wide open…

No one has any explanation for this place – how it got there, what happened to the people, etc. There was evidence to suggest that families lived there until the mid or late 90′s, but the whole thing is a huge mystery to me.

Lots of these critters lurking around…

Out back was a strange vehicle whose frame appeared to be a bunch of huge air tanks. The wash had certainly gotten the best of it!

We stopped for lunch down in the wash and Sonic set up a shooting gallery for some raucous entertainment. I was impressed by the whole thing. He established areas and rules and strung a line of caution tape to mark the range which was surrounded by rock walls.

Then it was time to unveil the arsenal.

Jake’s manliness could hardly be contained… I wanted him to bayonet me for a cool picture opportunity, but then I decided that would probably hurt a lot and perhaps lead to my death.

Cameron abandon his Canadian virtues regarding guns and pretty well F’d up a bowling ball with the Bushmaster…

I went at one of those sheets of paper with the targets on them at 25 yards using the gangster-style MAC and actually did pretty well, considering I’d never before fired a firearm of any kind. It was a ton of fun.

On the way out of the wash I tried to take the same line I came down on the single obstacle, but it was clear that wasn’t going to work easily. Once up the obstacle with the front wheels, the bottom of the truck was just completely laid out on the rocks. Who knows if I could have done it, but it would have taken too long so I went up the other way.

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Tim, by chance, had some issues coming up… the dirty hitch licker he is…

By then it was well into the afternoon and we’d only cleared probably less than 10% of the Gap trail. So we pretty much blasted through that, largely skipping the most gruesome optionals.

TrAiLbUsTy1 did manage to get a voyeur upskirt of me, though…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Nearing the end of the trail finally around 9PM, I decided to go off on a line and nearly flop my rig. It was pretty funny. My wheel is up pretty high in this pic, but it was still a relatively stable spot. What was bad was the four foot ledge just in front of my passenger front tire. It would have been over for me for sure if I hadn’t stopped here. Was able to back up no problem and go the normal way…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Back at the gas station it was time for a staged group shot…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

…and some dancing with karate!

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

- AZFJ and Disabled Explorers at the Tonto National Forest Salt River Cleanup
- Amateur radio convention in Pheonix
- Dirt route back to Tucson (Baja style!)
- Rice Peak solo night run and camping

I arrived at the cleanup to find Lance and Heidi ready to go. The national forest people had set up some tents and free lunch awaited us after picking up some trash!

The cleanup itself was an interesting affair. We were stunned by an amazing lack of garbage – quite the opposite of what we were expecting. We walked the banks of the Salt River a ways and picked up very little debris. In some way it was a let down that we weren’t able to really make a difference in the area, but despite this we agreed our not being able to pick up anything was a good thing.

Back at the parking area, we made the rounds at all the organizations tables to spread the word on Disabled Explorers.

I stated to set up my tripod so the three of us could get a group shot in front of our trucks, but in the distance we spotted something that would make for a muuuuch better group shot. And like any good friend, when I got home I immediately cropped Lance and Heidi out and made it my facebook profile pic.

Next stop was the HAM radio convention. It was very clear what sort of meeting we were at just looking around the parking lot… this guy gets all the ladies with this thing…

But nobody’s coolness could compare to that of the Arizona Radio Truck of DOOM!

A few people had ridiculous amounts of antennas drilled into the body panels of fairly new and often nice cars. Like this GMC Envoy, for example…

Inside, I had to pose with the most expensive HF radio I could find… Does your radio have its own monitor and a knob the size of a baseball?

After the convention and a brief stop at Lance’s house for official Disabled Explorer’s business, I hit the road and blasted down Willow Springs Road with the sun setting over the mountains…

I’ve done this 50ish miles of dirt literally a couple dozen times on suspension including stock, spacer lifts, and OME but this was the first time since I’d installed the FOX 2.5 system from All Pro… wow. Airborne, no problem… Big whoops, no problem… it was a ton of fun.

After that I head through Oracle and up towards Rice Peak. I would be meeting some folks in Oracle to run The Gap N->S the next morning, so I decided to camp near Oracle rather than drive the 30-some miles home only to return after the night.

I thought I would try to camp literally on the summit of Rice Peak since there is a nice clearing there, thinking I would get up with the sun rise and do some photography. When I reached the summit, it took about a half a minute to discover this was not going to happen since the ground is a huge pile of little rocks… my memory had it a bit grassier.

Up on the summit, I found this guy checking out the welds on my BajaRack…

I head back down the summit and went the ‘wrong way’ at the T-intersection before the summit which leads to the dead end. There is a very small clearing there, only large enough for one vehicle which I thought would work. But, it was the same thing… rocks galore. So, I backtracked a few miles back down the trail into the lower elevations were there is camping everywhere and found a good spot for the night.

I decided to camp along Box Canyon in Florence. It’s a pretty easy trail that I know very well and camping is plentiful. Running it at night alone was sort of, well scary I guess. My HID’s are still off the truck so I had only the headlights to show the way. The light reflecting off the tall, narrow canyon walls and fading off both in the distance and vertically was a spooky. Then there’s that whole monsoon season flash flood thing…. I never did see the Boogie Man, though.

We head out and stopped to air down on the dirt road leading to the mountains.

A few minutes in we heard cries to come look at a pile of cow poop… Beetles! This guy was carrying around a huge ball of poop.

The first stop was at Gunsight Pass, the most popular point in the area. The pass is named so for a rock formation which looks like a gun sight, but which can also be confused for certain parts of the female anatomy. Alternate titles for the pass will be left out here…. Whatever it’s called, the scenery is excellent.

View from the parking spot…

Those are looking West towards Green Valley and the like. Back East is more of the Santa Ritas.

After a brief sushi snack, we pressed on into Sycamore Canyon. There is a very cool spot I know in that area, reached by ridiculous shelf roads and featuring a great spot to have lunch.

Getting there was great fun. The trail is hard to find and generally not used very much. This time of year with all the rain, it was extremely overgrown. It was genuine African-safari style out there.

There is a small clearing on a summit where we parked. A few yards north are some rocks on a cliff’s edge which make nice sets of natural tables and chairs. It was time to bust out the sushi!

Jake is the sushi king…

Gratuitous AZFJ.org address placement!

Susan and I after sushi on the summit. I like taking pictures with her because she looks good and next to her I look like an ape.

We continued back West toward the ruins at Helvetia. Truly the ruins there are ruined; the area has been raped by visitors and little remains of the old buildings. Still we wanted to visit hoping to see some mines and perhaps the infamous hill climb in the area.

On the way over, I stopped to conquer all of nature.

Behind where I was subduing the earth were some cool rocks, colored by the copper in the area. I still have no idea why the copper should make things green, but that’s what I’ve heard.

Stopped at the top of the big hill climb near Helvetia…

Near the ruins was a small obstacle that we looped around to tackle. Microbe crosses with style, check out the rear flex…

Up, up, and away!

It was a lot more than the front could clear. I had to take it at an angle, and grind the front end up the wall.

Image credit: CactusCruzer

Image credit: CactusCruzer

Once I was lined up against the wall I just backed off. This would have to wait until another day with some more people and trucks around. I wouldn’t mind a strap on the front for the first go, don’t really know what to expect… unlike a few folks on some of the forums, wheeling is NOT a machismo game for us and backing off an obstacle to save for another day is not a big deal.

Image credit: CactusCruzer

Running the trail at the same time as us was this guy in a monstrously built Jeep. They entered the wash long before we did and wheeled some pretty ridiculous stuff. Unfortunately, he bit off a little more than he could chew in this deep water here…

The engine stopped and he winched himself out. After poking around under the hood for a few minutes, he discovered that he’s blown a HOLE in the block of the Corvette engine he had in there…. ouch!!

While this was going on, Cayce’s dog decided my truck was its new home. It took quite some coercion to him out…

I gave The Step another go… without success today. Tried a few different lines, but couldn’t get over.

Here’s what the looks like from the approach…

Hung up on slider here, had to back off…

Tried it over to the left, made it about half way and had to back off…

Bad day for The Step! Failure!!!

Once we were done with The Gap, cactus and I decided to run Rice Peak really quick… that’s how we roll! It was a great time, and it was really interesting to see how my impressions of wheeling have changed since I last did this about a year ago (one of the first times I’d ever wheeled).

Jeff on the way up…

At the top there was a little party going on… the first thing that happened was a guy came up to my truck and yells “Hey, where’s Trail Bus!??!!”

Turns out they’d seen my rig on the net and knew Jake. Funny thing to happen on a random mountain summit!

Interesting rig to see up there…

I’m a bit… uhm.. larger than most people pictured in such situations.

Susan looks much better pulling off the bicycling look.

It was my first time out on a ride other than going back and forth to school on the new UBER BIKE!

This was sort of interesting to see right next to where we stopped for a drink…

As I am still crazy behind on updating my blog, I will again sort of barf a bunch of pictures at you with brief descriptive phrases.

Flex shots…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Uh oh, Dan… is that too deep?!?!

Not too deep for Dan the Man from Tuscon! I followed…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Video credit: Sonic FJ

The next cool spot was a little rock garden…

I gave the chute at Three Feathers another throw…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: Sonic FJ

…and then Jake wowed us with another middle line conquistador move.

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

The real highlight of the day was back at the gas station airing up where I displayed my prowess with the manual transmission, driving about 100 feet and even shifting into 2nd gear!!

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

It was a great run with lots of fairly ridiculous optional obstacles to play around on. I am crazy behind on writing these blog entries (more real life than internet? wha?!?!) so I will just briefly narrate a barrage of pics.

Big granite wall of doom thing…

Image credit: Sonic FJ

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Jake dancing on JEEBUS…

In the wash…

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Dan recreates the car wash at the 2008 FJ Summit…

This is how MEN cut sandwhiches (aka ‘this is not a sandwich for you,’ or ‘you need more SEAT TIME for this sandwich’)…

‘The Step’ optional obstacle…

Back half of the trail…

Image credit: Sonic FJ

Sauce on Sunday – AZFJ.org

Because homedad lives in Phoenix it was very hot in contrast to the perpetually perfect and beautiful weather we have here in Tucson. The first order of business was to erect a gigantic shade by nailing a tarp to the house and tying it to some trucks!

Here Todd from Expeditioneers goes at it in the shade. He was the man of the hour with the suspensions, doing the bulk of the work himself.

The work went on well into the night. Dead stock suspensions were strewn everywhere….

The food was excellent, especially the gnocchi by Jag! I spent much of the day wrestling with kids in the pool. A tremendous day!

It was still there, as were the people. No one pic does the stupidity of this justice, but here a few to give you an idea…

After a few more failed attempts at a safe recovery… we hatched a new plan. homedad and I wheeled around to the opposite side of the high ground from the Jeep and rigged up the winch cable OVER the hill. I’ve seen this sort of thing before and was pretty confident it wouldn’t destroy the steel cable we had. This was a whooole lot of ground to drag across, so I didn’t know if we’d be able to overcome that.

The short story is, no the winch couldn’t pull cable and the Jeep across the ground like that. In fact, homedad’s truck caught fire and burned up a bunch of wire!! It was crazy!

So, with a burned up winch and much of his wiring harness destroyed but the truck magically running somehow, what did homedad want to do? Well, some wheeling of course! What a guy!

We found a wash that had some cool cracks in it we could play around on…

All in all, a very weird day.

Seeing our group, this guy stopped and chatted… what an amazing rig! *drool*

We broke up into two smaller groups to keep things manageable. I led a group over to the cool Indian fortress ruins where we stopped and chatted for a bit.

Back at the campfire, a good time was had by all as usual. Food, drinks, and good company were plentiful. As the group broke up, a few of us decided to check out Raw Deal as a last minute night run.

The whole affair was a little disappointing. First, the rock stacking in that picture above is ridiculous (somebody try to get a minivan through there?). Second, the trail didn’t offer much in the way of obstacles, just a bunch of ledges. But, I largely attribute this to my unfamiliarity with the wash and the fact that it was pitch black outside. I’m sure there are things to play on someplace in there! A return trip during the day is in order…

As we were airing up and about to leave, a few people in a pickup came up to us. They wanted help recovering their Jeep which they said was in bad trouble. Never wanting to pass up a challenge (and something in there about Karma, too) homedad and I followed them to where the Jeep supposedly lay in a bad spot.

Usually in this situation, the vehicle is stuck in a very easy spot and the people just don’t have anything to pull it out. A small berm or a little bit of mud is what I expected. Nothing could have prepared me for what we saw this time, though… they had driven their Jeep down what obviously wasn’t a trail and driven down an extremely steep descent and had two wheels dangling off the edge of a 20-foot cliff. How it was even stopped there I don’t really understand… dumb (drunken) luck.

There was no real way to stage a recovery either. The descent had a 90 degree turn in it and there were no large rocks or trees to sling a pulley around. Add to this the fact that the Jeep literally had zero recovery points on it. homedad tried a few different things, but none of them worked and nothing felt safe.

There wasn’t much we could do. We wished them luck and departed. It was 4am.

The first order of business was for Sonic to show us that he is a man, no a gorilla, amongst us mere boys by going DOWN the center of three feathers.

Image credit: SonicFJ

Next I hit the chute once more. It was an interesting bookend to the Continental Divide Expedition… the Thursday before and the Thursday after I left nearly this same group of us went to Chiva and did the chute.

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

At some point down the trail, the frog licking commenced. No, I didn’t actually lick the frog. But Jake, well who knows. It should be known, however, that Jeebus officially does not recommend frog licking.

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

There was not much picture taking since we’ve been on this trail a million times and it was dark. But there was plenty of fun and plenty of hardcore wheeling to be had. The trail looped back to three feathers and we happen to all park in such a way that made a cool picture.

Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

As we were parked there I realized I could not find my camera, it wasn’t in it’s bag. I searched the truck thoroughly and it didn’t turn up. After freaking out and getting ready to camp there for the night and look once day broke, microbe finds it… sitting in the middle of three feathers. It sat out there the whole night! I must have put it down to climb around on the obstacle or something and forgotten about… incredible find and THANKS MICROBE!!

More stories and pics from the night on FJC-Central…
JEEBUS IS A TOAD LICKER *or the alternate title (( Chiva Falls Night Run ))

My birthday was a few days before and I was surprised with a super awesome cake of an FJ driving over a mountain or something. Here I am treating the cake FJ in the manner I do my own…