Day 12 - Globe to Safford

Today is a long ride, mile wise. 71 miles, in theory.

The day for me started pretty good. The first 20 some miles went by pretty fast even though there was some climbing. But then the head wind kicked in. It was probably 10-20 MPH and continued all day.

Along the way I noticed a cell phone battery and then I saw the phone. I stopped and picked up the battery, which was pretty beat up and the phone, which was missing the back. Surprisingly the phone worked. My plan is to drop it off at the first Verizon store I see, but it is likely that no one wants it as it was very beat up.

After hours of riding I eventually arrived at Pima with Phil and Max. I stopped to get a bite to eat but it was already getting dark. After eating I set up my lights on my bike and helmet and started riding. A short way down the road I noticed that my front tire was going soft. So I stopped on a corner where there was a street light and started fixing it. A police car stopped to see if I needed help. At that point I declined as I thought it would be a quick fix. Pretty soon it became apparent that the leak was very slow and then a nice gentleman name Lee stopped with his truck and offered to help. I decided that it was time to call it a day and accepted his offer to drive me to the end, at this point it was probably less than 10 miles.

He did so and refused any offer of gas money because, as he put it, he has been in the position of needing a ride and not able to get one in the past. We did make a couple of wrong turns getting to the camp site but made it there eventually. It was a very hard day. 

Tomorrow is a shorter day so we are going to get a slightly later start so we can rest up. Had pizza delivered for dinner which was good. My appetite is still not very good. I tend to get full after eating about half of what I would normally eat.

We stayed in a nice spot as you can see from this picture I took the next morning. We didn't put up tents but instead stayed in the recreation room of the RV park.

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Day 11 - Apache Junction to Globe

Today's ride is from Apache Junction to Globe. Some significant climbing along the way. I think it ended up being something like 4000 ft of elevation gain.

The day started hot. I woke up sweating. The good news is it is supposed to be a lot cooler in Globe.

For me the first part of the day was hard I think mainly because of the heat. I spent quite a bit of time in Superior at a small Restaurant. Phil and Max joined me just before I left. They caught up with me near the tunnel on the climb out of Globe.

This is a climb you should avoid (in my opinion) because it is simply too dangerous. There is heavy traffic and mostly no shoulder. A short distance out of Superior you need to travel through a tunnel. While this is somewhat unnerving because of the noise of cars, it didn't seem like the worst part of the ride for danger.

Phil and Max coming through the tunnel. As you can see there is no shoulder, which is typical of the whole climb where there is a passing lane, which everyone seems obediently to stay in even if there is a cyclist on the road.

From where I took this picture there was a truck broke down. Apparently they blew a radiator hose trying to pass one of our group earlier in the day.

It took me a long time to do the climb and Phil and Max fairly quickly left me behind. At what seems like the top we were welcomed by this sign. To which I reply "lies all lies". It was actually about a mile of downhill, followed by another few miles of uphill, some more downhill, another sign promising may miles of downhill, and then more uphill. By the time I saw the last one I didn't believe a word of it, but indeed there was more downhill. At one point I was keeping pace with traffic, so moved to the center of the lane. Cars still wanted around me to try and fit into the safe following distance I had.

It was shortly after this point on a downhill that a white Van came within inches of me. Bernoulli effect notwithstanding a mirror passing mere inches away from your shoulder is unnerving.

Drivers, please give cyclist 3 ft or slow down and wait until you can. 

In Globe we stayed at the community center. They had a pool. But it was empty. We camped out in the park there. We had some clouds and before I got to Globe there was evidence that it had rained as there was still water puddled in the rumble strips.

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Day 10 - Phoenix to Apache Junction

Today we leave Phoenix.

That isn't to say we are out of town yet. We made it to Apache Junction. City all the way. Stop and go with a long ride through the Mesa residential dessert. No convenience stores and we found a park with a water fountain behind a locked gate. I didn't like Phoenix, but Mesa is not bike friendly on hot days.

I also started the day with another flat. Picked up a self tapping sheet metal screw. I was able to patch the tube without taking the tire off the bike so got going fairly quickly.

We stopped at a couple of parks along the way to refresh our water and rest.

I spend most of the day riding with Hal who bunked with me during the rest day.

We climbed a little, but nothing that you would call a hill. The day was very hot and had many stop lights and signs to negotiate which made it somewhat hard for me.

Stopped at  a gas station after traversing Mesa and bought a gallon of water to replenish what I had drunk and some that I dumped because it was hot.

I then stopped at a KFC an had sandwich and cooled off a little before riding the final 3 miles into camp.

It is very hot here tonight. Hope I can sleep. Tomorrow is a big climbing day with a couple of places with limited water stops and a tunnel. But we are going into cooler territory so hopefully it will be easier.

 

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Day 9 Rest DAY

Today was a rest day in Phoenix.

Got a phone call to the room at 1:15 AM from somebody who was looking for a spanish couple. Don't know what was up with thaat.

Breakfast at Ihop. Then a trip down to the Slippery Pig bike shop to pick up a new mirror an extra set of gloves and get some things fixed on my bike. They ended up replacing the shifter cable for the rear and fixed up a few other odds and ends. The bike shifts better now.

Ended up riding about 12 miles for that.

Then I packed up about 10 pounds of stuff I don't need and mailed it home.

Then laundry and I caught up on the blog.

Yesterday Floyd Anderson contacted me about going to dinner. We went to dinner at Claim Jumpper with his wife and daughter and had quite a pleasant evening.

Sometime in the middle of the night a small spanish gentlemen knocked on our door asking if Tracy was in the room. Quite disturbing. He went on to another room and did the same thing. I still got plenty of sleep though.

No picture for the day. But here is my bike ride.

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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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Day 7 - Salome to Wikenberg

It's hard to believe we have been doing this for 7 days. Today we go from Salome to Wikenberg.

Tonight Phil and I have dinner duty so we got an early start. I rolled out a few minutes before Phil. The plan is to see if there is a barbecue grill at our camp site and if so do hamburgers and potato salad.

Sunrise over the mountains.

Today's ride trends generally up hill all day with a downhill into Wikenberg at the end. But there is only about 1000 ft of climbing over about 45 miles of the ride so the grade is not much.

As expected the road conditions remained similar to the previous day. There was one section where it was dead straight for something like 20 miles. The scenery never changed the only way to measure progress visually was to watch the mountain range off to the left slowly move by.

This was the scene for most of the day. A long straight road disappearing over the horizon.

We camped at a very nice campground called the Horspatality RV Park. Of interest here is the proprietor was wearing a side arm. She was nice and very helpful. But the side arm was somewhat off-putting.

We camped on a very nice grassy area.

It turns out that they did have gas grill which required some creative methods of lighting. We used a cigarette lighter to light a stick on fire so we could light the grill as the push button didn't work.

We also were given a ride into town go get groceries by the husband of the proprietor. He was quite nice and gave us a quick tour of the downtown area on the way back to camp. If you ever need to camp in this area this is a very nice location and by far the best camping we have had on the trip so far.

We cooked planned hamburgers with potato salad and macaroni salad apple and pumpkin pie for dessert. No one complained so I think we did OK.

I was exhausted after that and went to bed as soon as I could. I woke in the middle of the night and took some Ibuprofen because my back was hurting. By morning it was feeling a lot better.

 

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Day 6 - Quartzite to Salome

Today we left Quartzite and moved on to Salome. The ride was fairly easy but trended uphill all day. We started out on the freeway which wasn't bad and then had a bit of downhill trough the nice little wide spot in the road called Brenda that had a really nice store. They even provided ice water for us.

After having a pretty good day yesterday I was expecting this shorter day to be easy as well. But it turned out to be a bit harder due to a cross head wind and spending a lot of time in the heat.

When we arrived at hope I spent quite a bit of time resting in the shade before conquering the last bit of a climb. Saw this very nice corvette while resting here.

The last bit was not all that bad, 4 miles of climbing and then a short slight downhill into Salome. Where we enjoyed the accommodations at the Sheffler's Motel. It was probably nice at some point in the past, but I would not ever recommend it unless it was your only option.

There was a nice restaurant and bar across the street where Shelly bought me a beer for helping her out the day we rode into Palo Verde. All I did was give her a few Electrolyte tablets about 2 miles from the end. I figure I owe her a beer for noticing that I dropped my phone earlier that day. We had some chips and salsa and cooled off before dinner.

Ron and Mitch cooked up something that was quite tasty, pot surprise or something like that is what Ron called it.

Rumor has it that there were a couple of baby rattle snakes in the grass eating crickets, which were also infesting some of the rooms from what I hear.

It was a good day. Everyday seems to be hard but I am seeing signs of improved fitness that should make it easier in the days to come.

 

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