The rain finally stopped, almost two full days after it started. I sat in my room and watched television, and read, and gleaned Globe, Arizona's claim to fame while eating another calzone. Globe, it seems to the locals anyway, is the site of two of the world's biggest copper mines, and everyone working at the mines is both a) very busy mining for copper to sell to China and India and b) spending their off hours at the American motel, getting blitzed. Globe's other claim to fame is that apparently John Wayne stayed in this very motel once, when it was called the Copper Hills motel (the name some locals still use, including the young woman at the Safeway grocery store, who sold me some potato chips, and some chocolate, and various other snacks - I felt like I hadn't eaten in a week.)
Thankfully, the faucet in the sky was turned off, and I waddled over to my bike and made my way to the next stop, Safford. It really felt strange riding after two days of lounging and loafing and reading "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and eating my weight in junk food:, I was sort of in a fog. But it was a beautiful day: 85 degrees, blue sky, nice breeze, good smooth road. So even though I was in a fog, it was a warm enveloping fog, not the cold fog that makes you wet and shivery.
I saw some interesting things today: a hill with cactus that looked like they were climbing to the top. I rode through the San Carlos Apache Reservation - miles of shrubs, cactus, mesas and mountains occasionally interrupted by a town. The towns were a hodgepodge of trailers and ramshackle shacks with piles of scrap metal in the yard, or the remnants of a car, or just dirt and rocks. I stopped at what turned out to be the reservation's biggest store and bought an apple and a juice, then sat out in front of store's adobe wall on a worn wooden bench and watched the clouds roll over the mountains across the street.
I was joined in a few minutes by a guy who ambled out of the store, sat down a different bench, saw me, said hello while getting up and plunking down on the opposite end of my bench. He was obviously Native American (everyone was, I was the only white man around. No one really seemed to mind, though), so I asked him if he was an Apache. He said no, that he was half Apache and half Cree - he seemed a little sad to me, then he went on to say that his father had been Cree, and a rambler and absent for most of his life. His father had also been an alcoholic and had died just a few years ago; he went to get his father in Kansas and brought him back to the reservation to bury him. He was currently living on the reservation with his mother, working as a brush fire fighter, which he said didn't pay very well but he made enough to get by. He was hoping to get off the reservation someday, like just about everyone else, he said. I finished my snack and said goodbye, and as I rode through the rest of the reservation I wondered where all the money from the casino I passed on the way in went; couldn't it provide a better life than the one my Native American friend was living?
I passed into a strange landscape: the hard, cracked floor of the desert gave way to green fields of grass, and row after row of cabbages and other greens. The land from the outer edge of the reservation to Safford is irrigated, though it seems that most of the land is dedicated to the growing of hay, to feed the herds of cattle that graze in the numerous fields in the area. An oasis; strange to see trees and grass and water in the middle of the desert, but there it was nonetheless.
And so magically there were also a lot of little towns on the way into Safford. I stopped at one of them, Pima, for a drink at the local store only to find the store had closed five minutes earlier. I stood on the wooden slats of the old time front porch drinking my water when the front doors swung open and out stepped the prototypical western cowboy: shock of white hair under a broad rimmed hat, long mustache, western shirt, cowboy boots. "If you want something right quick you can come on in and git it" he drawled. I jumped up and followed him into the darkened room, grabbed a Gatorade and brought it to the old fashioned register. As I paid and we chatted about the crazy weather I couldn't help but notice all of the guns on the wall next to the counter; rifles, shotguns, pistols, you name it it was there. Then I spotted what I was sure was a loaded rifle leaning up against the wall in a corner behind the counter: the wild west. I got my change, thanked the cowboy and went back outside thinking if I ever pursued a life of crime I'd make sure to steer clear of his store. He was right behind me, locking the door, jumping into his truck in the blink of an eye and leaving behind a trail of dust as he headed onto the road, all before I even had the cap off my bottle. I thought he either had a hot date or an NRA meeting to get to, finished my drink and followed his dust trail down the road to Safford.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
And Now For Something Completely Different
I woke up in Apache Junction to a cloudy, breezy very cool 60 degrees; I was confused for a second and thought I must be in San Francisco. But then I saw a cactus and some jackrabbits and a Wafflehouse restaurant, just down the street from my motel, and remembered I was in Arizona. I watched the local weather and saw that the area forecast was scattered showers and potential evening thunderstorms, so I scrambled out of Apache Junction at 7:00 a.m. I wanted to put in as many miles as I could and finish up well before the threat of lightning bolts, flash floods and other desert storm miseries.
Man, that forecaster was either hitting the sauce or reading the wrong weather tracking map or something. I had a strange ride that day: it was only 60-65 degrees and pretty windy all day - I was cold. I left my sweatshirt on, even as I began sweating heavily due to the day's climb - I rode from the relative flat of Apache Junction, at 1800 feet, to the uneven, bumpy rock strewn roads leading up to Globe, elevation 3,500 feet. I left my sweatshirt on anyway, I didn't want to get sick. The mountains on the way to Globe were beautiful: dark chocolate brown, dotted with little green shrubs and all kinds of cactus - tall spiky cactus with white flowers on the crown and flowers on their branches; shrub like cactus with lunch plate sized sections hugging the ground; half tree half cactus short to the ground with long branches covered in spikes. The mountains themselves were jagged, sharp little razored teeth pushing up through the ground, looking as though they would chew up everything in their path.
The first shower hit around 11:00 a.m., raining fat little drops at a slant for about five minutes. I took as much shelter as I could from a boulder on the side of the narrow, windy mountain road. Then it passed, and the sun shone through the clouds a minute later. I thought great, hopefully that's all I'll encounter today, the random passing shower, as predicted. I let the wind and the sun dry me out, and pedaled on. Two showers later, as I was winding my way up what turned out to be the steepest hill, the clouds turned an ominous, deadly looking dark , so dark it was almost black. And then I felt like I was in a freezer, the temperature must have dropped ten to fifteen degrees in five minutes. I thought uh-oh, and then like clockwork the heavens opened up: it poured so hard I couldn't see the other side of the road. I ducked underneath the only little tree for miles around, and watched as the rain turned into little beads of hail, bouncing off the oily road, off my bike, off my trailer, off of my helmet. The little beads stopped falling after a few minutes, and I left the cover of little tree to wipe off my bike, and the trailer, and myself and then ran back under the tree as the hail made a triumphant return, a little bigger than beads this time, a little smaller than marbles. I waited out two more rounds under little tree, laughing as I thought how insane the whole storm was: for a week I'd been barbequeing, hiding out from the sun, and now I was freezing, hiding out from a hail storm.
I cleaned everything up again, pulled away from little tree and heard rumbling in the distance; at first I thought a tractor trailer was coming up the hill behind me, but I turned to look back and didn't see any traffic anywhere. I heard it again, but this time it was above me: thunder. The evening storms had arrived a little ahead of schedule (six hours or so, but who's counting?) I started pumping the pedals faster while watching a fork of lightning come flicking out of the sky like a blind white snake striking out at the dark. I didn't want it to bite me, so I pedaled for everything I was worth and was rewarded with a downhill run all the way to Globe, just a few miles from the mountain pass I'd just been stuck in. I made it to the "American" motel just before the rain started to come down for good; it rained hard for hours. The parking lot outside my room was flooded, cars driving through had water up to the top of their rims. I took advantage of a break in the rain to run next door to the local pizza shop next door for a calzone and a homemade churro, yum! The pizza shop crew said the weather wasn't normal at all; apparently Flagstaff had a snow advisory in effect and the northern mountains had two inches of snow today. Living in San Francisco with its year round steady weather has made me forget about strange weather patterns in other parts of the country, though I'm starting to remember now. I made it back to my room with dinner just in front of another downpour that lasted all night, pouring rain while I dreamed of sunstroke in a field of snow.
Man, that forecaster was either hitting the sauce or reading the wrong weather tracking map or something. I had a strange ride that day: it was only 60-65 degrees and pretty windy all day - I was cold. I left my sweatshirt on, even as I began sweating heavily due to the day's climb - I rode from the relative flat of Apache Junction, at 1800 feet, to the uneven, bumpy rock strewn roads leading up to Globe, elevation 3,500 feet. I left my sweatshirt on anyway, I didn't want to get sick. The mountains on the way to Globe were beautiful: dark chocolate brown, dotted with little green shrubs and all kinds of cactus - tall spiky cactus with white flowers on the crown and flowers on their branches; shrub like cactus with lunch plate sized sections hugging the ground; half tree half cactus short to the ground with long branches covered in spikes. The mountains themselves were jagged, sharp little razored teeth pushing up through the ground, looking as though they would chew up everything in their path.
The first shower hit around 11:00 a.m., raining fat little drops at a slant for about five minutes. I took as much shelter as I could from a boulder on the side of the narrow, windy mountain road. Then it passed, and the sun shone through the clouds a minute later. I thought great, hopefully that's all I'll encounter today, the random passing shower, as predicted. I let the wind and the sun dry me out, and pedaled on. Two showers later, as I was winding my way up what turned out to be the steepest hill, the clouds turned an ominous, deadly looking dark , so dark it was almost black. And then I felt like I was in a freezer, the temperature must have dropped ten to fifteen degrees in five minutes. I thought uh-oh, and then like clockwork the heavens opened up: it poured so hard I couldn't see the other side of the road. I ducked underneath the only little tree for miles around, and watched as the rain turned into little beads of hail, bouncing off the oily road, off my bike, off my trailer, off of my helmet. The little beads stopped falling after a few minutes, and I left the cover of little tree to wipe off my bike, and the trailer, and myself and then ran back under the tree as the hail made a triumphant return, a little bigger than beads this time, a little smaller than marbles. I waited out two more rounds under little tree, laughing as I thought how insane the whole storm was: for a week I'd been barbequeing, hiding out from the sun, and now I was freezing, hiding out from a hail storm.
I cleaned everything up again, pulled away from little tree and heard rumbling in the distance; at first I thought a tractor trailer was coming up the hill behind me, but I turned to look back and didn't see any traffic anywhere. I heard it again, but this time it was above me: thunder. The evening storms had arrived a little ahead of schedule (six hours or so, but who's counting?) I started pumping the pedals faster while watching a fork of lightning come flicking out of the sky like a blind white snake striking out at the dark. I didn't want it to bite me, so I pedaled for everything I was worth and was rewarded with a downhill run all the way to Globe, just a few miles from the mountain pass I'd just been stuck in. I made it to the "American" motel just before the rain started to come down for good; it rained hard for hours. The parking lot outside my room was flooded, cars driving through had water up to the top of their rims. I took advantage of a break in the rain to run next door to the local pizza shop next door for a calzone and a homemade churro, yum! The pizza shop crew said the weather wasn't normal at all; apparently Flagstaff had a snow advisory in effect and the northern mountains had two inches of snow today. Living in San Francisco with its year round steady weather has made me forget about strange weather patterns in other parts of the country, though I'm starting to remember now. I made it back to my room with dinner just in front of another downpour that lasted all night, pouring rain while I dreamed of sunstroke in a field of snow.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Three Weeks and a Day
The greater Phoenix area is huge! I rode out from the middle of the city and for the next 50 miles I was riding through downtown Phoenix, the outskirts of Phoenix, and then into Tempe, and miles and miles of suburban strip malls, business parks, gated communities, even an urban horse farm. Easily the most urban miles I've ridden since I left The City, but surprisingly carefree: drivers were careful to give me a wide berth, lots of the streets were designed for bike riders with either designated bike paths or really wide shoulders, all the way out to Apache Junction.
Still no camping, the winds were really kicking up hard about ten miles from AJ. The weather forecasters had been predicting the local version of a whiteout: the wind was whipping across the desert floor so hard that it was lifting the sand into the atmosphere. The sky for miles around was a dense white; it was like driving through a fog bank with the exception that this fog was hard, gritty and dry. The Superstition mountains are just outside of Apache Junction, but I could barely make out more than a faint outline; I decided to stop rather than disappear into the sand mist. A positive weather note (I think?): it's thirty degrees cooler at 8:00 p.m. than it was at 4:00 p.m., when it was 99 degrees. The forecast high for tomorrow is 85 degrees, practically an ice age in Arizona. I can't wait.
So I'm three weeks and a day into my trip, and I've ridden 1,031 miles from San Francisco to Apache Junction (with a shuttle ride from Wickenberg to Phoenix thrown in, it's fun to mix things up, hey?) If all goes well, I should only have about 3 or 4 more days to go before I hit New Mexico. In spite of the flats, and the heat I'm still having fun, meeting great people, learning about the land and myself. I'm ready for what tomorrow may bring.
Still no camping, the winds were really kicking up hard about ten miles from AJ. The weather forecasters had been predicting the local version of a whiteout: the wind was whipping across the desert floor so hard that it was lifting the sand into the atmosphere. The sky for miles around was a dense white; it was like driving through a fog bank with the exception that this fog was hard, gritty and dry. The Superstition mountains are just outside of Apache Junction, but I could barely make out more than a faint outline; I decided to stop rather than disappear into the sand mist. A positive weather note (I think?): it's thirty degrees cooler at 8:00 p.m. than it was at 4:00 p.m., when it was 99 degrees. The forecast high for tomorrow is 85 degrees, practically an ice age in Arizona. I can't wait.
So I'm three weeks and a day into my trip, and I've ridden 1,031 miles from San Francisco to Apache Junction (with a shuttle ride from Wickenberg to Phoenix thrown in, it's fun to mix things up, hey?) If all goes well, I should only have about 3 or 4 more days to go before I hit New Mexico. In spite of the flats, and the heat I'm still having fun, meeting great people, learning about the land and myself. I'm ready for what tomorrow may bring.
Monday, June 2, 2008
I Must Get Out of Phoenix!
My shuttle driver from Wickenberg to Phoenix was a kick, a Vietnam veteran named Bill. He was a Native American whose mother was a full blooded Cherokee (I'm pretty sure that's true, though he was telling some tales, like he killed 50 rattlesnakes a year in his backyard, he had owned 32 businesses in his lifetime, etc. I kept thinking of him as Pecos.) He had some other interesting things to say that also seemed true enough: over half the state's population lives in the greater Phoenix area; the deserts on the edges house the largest crystal meth production in the country (lots of shifty looking characters standing on street corners casting sidelong glances at everyone and anything that moved); Phoenix has been hurt by the fall of the housing market, as housing construction accounts for 25% of the local economy. Interestingly, Bill is a motel contractor/caretaker when he's not driving his shuttle, and in the fall he's going to be working in San Francisco at the Great Highway Inn (I think that's the name), just a few blocks from where I used to live. The world is a small place. Bill and I made it to Phoenix without incident. It was a great ride, watching the desert fly by in air conditioned comfort, and what with all of Bill's tales it went by quickly. I thanked Bill and told him if I was ever in Wickenberg or Phoenix (or San Francisco, come to think of it) again I'd give him a call.
I didn't like the looks of Phoenix; dirty, smoggy, hot, concrete check cashing pay day loans get money fast! I just wanted to get my bike taken care of and then get out of dodge fast. The counter people at Best Western found me a bike shop and a cab to take me there, as it was 100 degrees at 11:00 a.m. and I was walking nowhere. The bike shop was being staffed by a great young guy, a nineteen year old Mexican immigrant who was quick to say "no, but I'm a citizen!" when I asked him if he was born here. I was just curious, but I understood why he got a little defensive. Immigration and illegals, as the locals seem to call them, are blamed by some for the loss of local jobs, crime, drugs, etc.
He was very interested in my trip and my bike (he'd never seen a 27 speed before), and I'm happy to report he struggled to get my tire off the rim too (it's not just me, really.) He got it eventually though, and replaced the regular tube I had in the front tire with a "slime" tube (if the tube gets punctured it slimes itself, basically an automatic patch - nice!) He gave me a tune-up too, since I've ridden a thousand miles I thought it was time - brake check, spoke alignment, lube job. I gave him my blog address and thanked him, then went back to the motel. Went out for dinner at a buffet place (food isn't great but it's cheap and all you can eat; I loaded up on spaghetti and veggies and bread) and then I went to a bookstore and bought 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. 411 pages and an interesting premise - Israel collapses in 1948 and the Jews take up residence in their own special district in Alaska. Should make an interesting road companion for awhile.
I didn't like the looks of Phoenix; dirty, smoggy, hot, concrete check cashing pay day loans get money fast! I just wanted to get my bike taken care of and then get out of dodge fast. The counter people at Best Western found me a bike shop and a cab to take me there, as it was 100 degrees at 11:00 a.m. and I was walking nowhere. The bike shop was being staffed by a great young guy, a nineteen year old Mexican immigrant who was quick to say "no, but I'm a citizen!" when I asked him if he was born here. I was just curious, but I understood why he got a little defensive. Immigration and illegals, as the locals seem to call them, are blamed by some for the loss of local jobs, crime, drugs, etc.
He was very interested in my trip and my bike (he'd never seen a 27 speed before), and I'm happy to report he struggled to get my tire off the rim too (it's not just me, really.) He got it eventually though, and replaced the regular tube I had in the front tire with a "slime" tube (if the tube gets punctured it slimes itself, basically an automatic patch - nice!) He gave me a tune-up too, since I've ridden a thousand miles I thought it was time - brake check, spoke alignment, lube job. I gave him my blog address and thanked him, then went back to the motel. Went out for dinner at a buffet place (food isn't great but it's cheap and all you can eat; I loaded up on spaghetti and veggies and bread) and then I went to a bookstore and bought 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. 411 pages and an interesting premise - Israel collapses in 1948 and the Jews take up residence in their own special district in Alaska. Should make an interesting road companion for awhile.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
I Must Get to Phoenix!
I was glad to be in Wickenberg, it's a small town, 6600 people, has a grocery store and a hardware store and restaurants and shops and cafes but no bike shop, which I needed: I snapped one of my plastic tire levers (which you use to get a tire and tube off the rim) while trying to change my tube, and since I'd only had two (you need at least two to get the tire off), I needed another one. I spent an hour or two trying to figure out where I might get one, and then someone suggested the Ace hardware in town. I oozed over to the store in the 110 degree heat and found that they are indeed the place with the helpful hardware staff. I was able to buy a bike tire repair kit that included four steel tire levers, and while I was telling my sad story of flat tires and broken levers to the counter person, she said "You should get _ to take care of it, he can change any tire." My bikes tires and tubes are wedged very tightly onto a very narrow rim, so trying to pry the edge of a flat tire over the rim is difficult, especially for yours truly with my limited (read almost no) experience. So when Ace man said "sure, bring it in, it's easy", I thought great. I went back to the motel of the day, grabbed the tire and some more water and headed back to easy street.
Boy was Ace man in for a surprise. He'd never changed a road bike tire before, and he struggled mightily. At first, he was afraid he was going to puncture the tire, but he really wanted to learn how change a road bike tube just in case he came across another one, so I told him what to do (slip a lever under the tire edge and slip it over the rim, then move down two spokes and repeat with another lever, and then either slip one side of the tire off or repeat the lever process once more and then slip off a side. Do not attempt while taking certain prescription medication or under the influence of alcohol.) I was too tired to try it myself anymore (always flats at the end of the biking day when I'm most tired; some sort of starnge Murphy's law in effect?) and glad someone else had the energy to deal with it. He got the tire off, replaced the tube and refitted the tire; he didn't have the right air nozzle fitting for my tube, so I thanked him and went back to my room to pump the tube up by hand.
But no, my pump wasn't working, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't operator error. I fit the pump to the nozzle, flipped up the release and pumped away for an hour to no avail. No air. @!*&* And then I cursed some more. I was sweating and cursing and gnashing my teeth but air would not take up residence in my sadly deflated strip of rubber.
There is a bus service that runs from Wickenberg to Phoenix, but it's not made for cargo, just people. I thought, "I could walk to Phoenix, um, no I couldn't." I called a shuttle service that makes the Phoenix run and asked them to pick me up at 9:30 the next morning in my disgrace, broken chariot and all. I love the desert I chanted as I walked to the local ice cream shop for a double scoop of cherry vanilla, thinking I'd better eat it inside or it would melt quicker than I can pop a tire tube.
Boy was Ace man in for a surprise. He'd never changed a road bike tire before, and he struggled mightily. At first, he was afraid he was going to puncture the tire, but he really wanted to learn how change a road bike tube just in case he came across another one, so I told him what to do (slip a lever under the tire edge and slip it over the rim, then move down two spokes and repeat with another lever, and then either slip one side of the tire off or repeat the lever process once more and then slip off a side. Do not attempt while taking certain prescription medication or under the influence of alcohol.) I was too tired to try it myself anymore (always flats at the end of the biking day when I'm most tired; some sort of starnge Murphy's law in effect?) and glad someone else had the energy to deal with it. He got the tire off, replaced the tube and refitted the tire; he didn't have the right air nozzle fitting for my tube, so I thanked him and went back to my room to pump the tube up by hand.
But no, my pump wasn't working, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't operator error. I fit the pump to the nozzle, flipped up the release and pumped away for an hour to no avail. No air. @!*&* And then I cursed some more. I was sweating and cursing and gnashing my teeth but air would not take up residence in my sadly deflated strip of rubber.
There is a bus service that runs from Wickenberg to Phoenix, but it's not made for cargo, just people. I thought, "I could walk to Phoenix, um, no I couldn't." I called a shuttle service that makes the Phoenix run and asked them to pick me up at 9:30 the next morning in my disgrace, broken chariot and all. I love the desert I chanted as I walked to the local ice cream shop for a double scoop of cherry vanilla, thinking I'd better eat it inside or it would melt quicker than I can pop a tire tube.
I Must Get to Wickenberg!
It's fair to say that I'm going a little stir crazy after a week of small desert towns and their little hole in the wall motels. The televisions get three stations (sometimes; in Bouse the motel cable was directly connected to the owner's television. Whenever he switched stations, so did I. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to CSI; I turned the set off and paced back and forth some more.) I've finished my book, and bookstores (or books, really, other than the Holy Bible and the local phonebook) are about as rare as standing water in the desert plains. There do not seem to be any vegetables in the restaurants or stores out here, other than the potato (chips, fries), the iceberg lettuce salad and the cucumber (dilled, in jars on every store counter, next to the fresh! jerky.) The food is invariably fried or covered in gravy. Coffee most often resembles the desert after a rain storm; sludgy gritty blech. And my body was getting used to the 50 miles of biking a day; I've got a lot of pent of energy after riding only 20 to 30 miles a day and then sitting around in these isolation chambers. I'm slowly being driven nuts.
For instance, after breakfast at the only restaurant in Salome (which was very good, big platter of Texas sized French toast and a giant glass of milk) I spent three hours sitting in the backyard of the other motel in town, Scheffler's. It was a pleasant enough three hours; the Scheffler's were very into gardening and grass!? It was the first grass I'd seen since just before 29 Palms, amazingly vibrant green, green like peas fresh out of the pod, and coolish due to the shade from the three or four palms and the pine tree standing vigilantly over their oasis. I watched the birds that flocked to the lawn, chasing worms and bugs and each other through the branches of the pines and the giant palm leaves. I watched a spider eating the fly that got caught in it's web, just in front of my eyes (at first; I moved when I realized I could be a potential victim of web in the face.) I braved the heat and walked back and forth to the local store, about 100 feet down the road, for water. I played hide and seek with the housekeeper's pet Chihuahua puppy, with her pink painted nails and her rhinestone dog collar. I listened to some Mexicans playing their Sunday morning mariachi music while they drank beer and laughed and spoke to each other in the language I have not used since I ordered tacos in California. I took a nap. And then I still had to wait an hour before the owners came back from church to open the motel for the day. On the one hand, being away from the stress of the city is nice, on the other hand it would be nice not to feel like I'm one of the last survivors of some catastrophe that's wiped out almost all of civilization.
So I determined I would chance it the next day and ride to Wickenberg, 56.5 miles away, after spending quality time with my room's three station television watching an all day marathon of "Law and Order." I got dinner from the store (the restaurant closed at 4:00 p.m., Sunday isn't a big day for them, I guess); veggie pizza straight from the freezer to the pizza oven, eat it up yum. I turned in at ten to the pitch and roll of my angry stomach and woke up at 4:30 in the morning, then I took a shower, got my things together and was on the road at 5:15 a.m. It was already 70 degrees, but there was a nice morning breeze and 111 degrees seemed far away. I rode along at a good pace, and pedaling was easy, 1234 1234 1234 (that's me cranking along keeping some sort of cadence to roll along as smoothly as I can.) I passed the town of Wenden in half an hour, and was in the town of Aguilar by 8:00 a.m. I stopped at THE store (most of these towns only have one of anything, if they have it at all) to pick a half gallon of Gatorade and some extra water, no more dehydration for me, no siree. I've been measuring how well hydrated I am by how much more forearms sweat; if there isn't any water running down my arms, or at least beads of moisture while I grip the handlebars, I need more water - I have to stop quite a bit.
Newly supplied I was ready for the push to Wickenberg. I had been making good time all morning and thought I could make the last 25 miles in about 2 hours or so, 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. is hot but bearable. Too much later and my head starts to ache and my blood feels like its boiling. About 5 miles outside of town, I ran into a crew retarring the opposite side of the road. There isn't much I've encountered that's worse than the smell and feel of molten tar wafting up from the road and completely enveloping me while trying to get away from the men spreading out the black mess onto the cracked road with shovels, while other men crush the mess over what used to be a mess. Unless it's trying to steer my bike around the residue flying through the air, landing all over the trailer and me and the bike, getting into my tires, sticking to the spokes. I could feel the crunch of individual pieces of rock under my tires, and one ping in particular felt like a tube popper.
Five miles outside of Wickenberg I realized my front tire looked a little flattish, so I stopped to check and sure enough it was. I picked up my bike and threw it into the canyon on the side of the road (just kidding, dream sequence - I just sort of sat there and thought oh well, three weeks, three flats - not what I'd hoped.) Thankfully the road into town was downhill, so I coasted/wobbled into town, glad I didn't have a flat in the middle of the desert.
For instance, after breakfast at the only restaurant in Salome (which was very good, big platter of Texas sized French toast and a giant glass of milk) I spent three hours sitting in the backyard of the other motel in town, Scheffler's. It was a pleasant enough three hours; the Scheffler's were very into gardening and grass!? It was the first grass I'd seen since just before 29 Palms, amazingly vibrant green, green like peas fresh out of the pod, and coolish due to the shade from the three or four palms and the pine tree standing vigilantly over their oasis. I watched the birds that flocked to the lawn, chasing worms and bugs and each other through the branches of the pines and the giant palm leaves. I watched a spider eating the fly that got caught in it's web, just in front of my eyes (at first; I moved when I realized I could be a potential victim of web in the face.) I braved the heat and walked back and forth to the local store, about 100 feet down the road, for water. I played hide and seek with the housekeeper's pet Chihuahua puppy, with her pink painted nails and her rhinestone dog collar. I listened to some Mexicans playing their Sunday morning mariachi music while they drank beer and laughed and spoke to each other in the language I have not used since I ordered tacos in California. I took a nap. And then I still had to wait an hour before the owners came back from church to open the motel for the day. On the one hand, being away from the stress of the city is nice, on the other hand it would be nice not to feel like I'm one of the last survivors of some catastrophe that's wiped out almost all of civilization.
So I determined I would chance it the next day and ride to Wickenberg, 56.5 miles away, after spending quality time with my room's three station television watching an all day marathon of "Law and Order." I got dinner from the store (the restaurant closed at 4:00 p.m., Sunday isn't a big day for them, I guess); veggie pizza straight from the freezer to the pizza oven, eat it up yum. I turned in at ten to the pitch and roll of my angry stomach and woke up at 4:30 in the morning, then I took a shower, got my things together and was on the road at 5:15 a.m. It was already 70 degrees, but there was a nice morning breeze and 111 degrees seemed far away. I rode along at a good pace, and pedaling was easy, 1234 1234 1234 (that's me cranking along keeping some sort of cadence to roll along as smoothly as I can.) I passed the town of Wenden in half an hour, and was in the town of Aguilar by 8:00 a.m. I stopped at THE store (most of these towns only have one of anything, if they have it at all) to pick a half gallon of Gatorade and some extra water, no more dehydration for me, no siree. I've been measuring how well hydrated I am by how much more forearms sweat; if there isn't any water running down my arms, or at least beads of moisture while I grip the handlebars, I need more water - I have to stop quite a bit.
Newly supplied I was ready for the push to Wickenberg. I had been making good time all morning and thought I could make the last 25 miles in about 2 hours or so, 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. is hot but bearable. Too much later and my head starts to ache and my blood feels like its boiling. About 5 miles outside of town, I ran into a crew retarring the opposite side of the road. There isn't much I've encountered that's worse than the smell and feel of molten tar wafting up from the road and completely enveloping me while trying to get away from the men spreading out the black mess onto the cracked road with shovels, while other men crush the mess over what used to be a mess. Unless it's trying to steer my bike around the residue flying through the air, landing all over the trailer and me and the bike, getting into my tires, sticking to the spokes. I could feel the crunch of individual pieces of rock under my tires, and one ping in particular felt like a tube popper.
Five miles outside of Wickenberg I realized my front tire looked a little flattish, so I stopped to check and sure enough it was. I picked up my bike and threw it into the canyon on the side of the road (just kidding, dream sequence - I just sort of sat there and thought oh well, three weeks, three flats - not what I'd hoped.) Thankfully the road into town was downhill, so I coasted/wobbled into town, glad I didn't have a flat in the middle of the desert.
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