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
Time: 3:14:30
Avg. Speed: 13.9 mph
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 Ifigured 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
Time: 2:58:30
Avg. Speed: 13.2 mph
The night and morning were once again very cold and despite going to bed extremely early, it was not much fun to get up. I wanted very much to be present for the start of the ride this time and to stay within view of other cyclists during the ride to some extent. As fate would have it, we were on time… and the start of the event was late.
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
Still hungry for bike action and with another opportunity to go for a ride in a new place, we set out again from Susan’s relatives place in Chandler. Today I planned a much more ambitious route of about 40 miles (to be a new record for us both). This was to ensure that we’d be OK a the MS ride in only one week where we planned to do a 35-40 mile ride.
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
Because we’d be in Phoenix to see the musical RENT and visit her relatives, Susan and I brought our bikes up and planned to ride someplace in Fountain Hills. I search mapmyride.com for local rides and after ruling out the so-called “tour of pain” decided on a nice route that would take us out of town into some nice rolling hills and nice scenery.
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
Since Susan and I had never before ridden with a group of cyclists really in any capacity let alone a major event, we thought it wise to go out with a group before taking on the Bike MS event. There were many training rides scheduled by the MS Society in the Phoenix area, but not so much down here in Tucson… fortunately there was one at least, and we decided to do it.
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
To date the longest bike ride I’ve ever done was just about 30 miles. At the end of this, I remember quite clearly, I was exhausted do a disturbing degree. So, feeling that 30 or so miles is pretty lame as a personal best, I wanted to push on into something more like 40.
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
After an interesting day of looking at a Land Rover belonging to a young woman who also owned a bunch of dogs and a camel (really, a damn camel!), I set out for the Chiricahua Mountains. My plan was to drive into the mountains themselves and most likely camp at the Rustler Park campground before returning to the national monument for a hike of the ‘Big Loop.’ However, given the time and the enormity of the hike facing me the next day, I decided to see if there was any camping available in the monument itself.
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…
We left Martinez Cabins and headed out towards Elvis using the GPS tracks I had from Yetti (on AZFJ, not THE yeti). The wash was easy to find, in fact right off one of the main roads. Once in the wash, you drive… and drive. and drive. then you drive some more. I was starting to think something was up (even though we were clearly following the GPS track exactly), when we came around a corner and BAM we see this! Definitely the right place.
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. 
