Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Day 8 - Wikenberg to Phoenix

Phoenix and a much anticipated, for me at least, rest day is our reward for today's ride. After getting up and getting breakfast ready we cleaned up, packed up and hit the road. Which is more or less down hill all the way to Phoenix.

The road was very nice, except for the normal bits and pieces of steel belted truck tires strewn along the side of the road. I managed to get a flat fairly early on. I stopped to take this picture shortly after Mitch passed me for the last time. A coyote ran in front of my just before this, but of course I didn't get a picture of that.

The haze in the distance is Phoenix.



After fixing the tire, which is a pain on a fully loaded touring bike. I got back on the road. Stopping once to wash my hands and drink a gator aid at a gas station and then later on in Surprise I stopped at a fast food place to use their restroom and drank a couple of glasses of soda.

After that I caught up with Alicia and we navigated the somewhat confusing streets and poorly marked bike paths of Phoenix. The maps have one name, but the  markings on the paths are different. I resorted to checking Google maps and my location on my phone to verify that we were on the right path.

Just before I arrived at the location where we were to turn off the bike path Alicia stopped to take a break and I continued on and soon found Hal sitting in the shade. We continued on to the Motel 6 and are now sharing a room.

Until I reached town I was averaging somewhere around 15MPH all the way in. The stop lights, and bike path slowed me down a lot after that. Still We arrived by about 1 PM. I spent the afternoon messing around with trying to update this blog. I finally found an app that I can use on my smart phone to make it a hot spot without paying something like an extra $60 a month to do it through Verizon. So far the wifi options at the locations we have stayed are mostly unusably slow.

Wen to Cafe Sarajevo for dinner last night. It was good. Eastern european type food. I had a Gyro sandwich and a beer. It was quite filling.


I was also contacted by an old friend Floyd Anderson who lives north of here and made plans for dinner tomorrow evening. Looking forward to seeing him again and meeting his family.

Breakfast in the AM will be at the local Denny's.


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