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Recounting: Days 0 and 1
Jan. 21st, 2008 11:50 am**note to readers: if you are pictured and would rather not be, let me know in the comments and I will remove that picture and your comment so you can retain your anonymity**
When I start to think about how to tell the story of our travels to Tucson and back, I first think of my father. On our trip from Seattle to Portland last summer (his second), he carried a small, digital voice recorder as he found that it was easier to record his thoughts while he rode instead of having to stop and retrieve pen and paper to jot down ideas or observations.
I've been gaining an appreciation of the extent of his recordings as I learn more about them - when we went to Eastern Washington over the break, I was enlisted to note the departure time and temperature, as well as the members of our party, in a travel journal. He said the idea of keeping a travel journal was inspired by a similar type of record kept by one of my relatives, but that when it came time to write something in it, he was at a loss for what to write and so employed a simple sort of list-keeping, as he is wont to do. (Which makes me realize--aren't you supposed to note that I was on that last coffeeshop bike ride, Dad?)
Anyway, I don't have a voice recorder, so I was forced to keep records the old-fashioned way, in my current repository for all things noteworthy, a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook. Oh, and I also took a few pictures.
But to start at the beginning: our adventure really began on Friday night, when we gathered together at the Bike Saviours for a bit of meet-n-greet and to make sure everyone was prepared for the day to come. Although in the preceding weeks many more had claimed they wanted to ride, when the time came to ante up we ended up with twelve riders and two SAG (support and gear) drivers. We loaded our food and gear into the cars and then headed home to try to get a good night's sleep before the the riding began.
The morning of the ride dawned cold and clear, and after eating a large breakfast and gathering together the remaining items I'd forgotten to pack the night before, I hopped on Spud to ride over to the co-op. Although it was early (around 6:35), everyone was up and excited and ready to go, so after some initial picture-taking antics we hit the road.
Dawn
My friends R and J, who organized the expedition, had scouted out the route ahead of time and made sure that everyone had maps and phone numbers and a good idea of what to expect of the ride. They also planned out our rest stops for every 20 miles or so. Based on their ideas, we broke up into two groups, with the faster riders joining the A group and the slower riders forming the B group. For the initial stages of the ride through the Phoenix 'burbs, we stayed together as a single, large, motley crew. The early sections were quite familiar roads, first along Hardy Dr. to Guadalupe, and thus we gradually worked our way south and east along straight, wide streets punctuated by occasional traffic light stops and occasional glimpses of one of our sag-wagon drivers (C), sitting at a bus stop and waving, or holding a cup of coffee and a newspaper and waving. Stop One wasn't even out of the city, really--we took our first break in a McDonald's parking lot on the edge of Chandler at 9 am. One of our drivers informed us that it was 28 degrees Fahrenheit that morning, which explained why none of us had good feeling in our toes. The location of the first stop was also pretty telling with respect to the state of suburban sprawl in the Phoenix area. It can be summarized as, "lots of taupe."
From the first stop, the A group put on a burst of speed and set out into the first rural section of our ride, along Highway 87 and through Sacaton, Arizona. This was the initial point where it became clear why I was on the ride--one doesn't have to travel far to see new sights in the area, even if the sight is just C bursting out of the car and running along, wearing nothing but his underwear and a cape made out of a giant American flag. Aside from that momentary hilarity, Sacaton was pretty dry and trashy and sad, a New American ghost town, where the cops hung out at the corner and barking dogs tried to chase us down the road (they were small and thus unsuccessful). The place was quiet and full of trailers and shacks in various states of decay.
Somewhere in this segment we saw a dead cat along the road, and a live roadrunner, and as we headed past Sacaton and across I-10, we rode by a smashed pumpkin as well. We reached our second stop at the airport outside of Casa Grande at 10:45 am, where we paused to eat a lot of food and met up with the B group again, briefly.
C at the Casa Grande Airport
...now where have I seen that flag before?
I had a feeling that long breaks were going to end up costing us a lot of time, so with some encouragement we got everyone back on the road again and wove on through the suburban sprawl to Jimmy Kerr Boulevard, which eventually turned into Highway 84, the old highway that parallels the I-10 freeway. Along the highway, we were tantalized by the likes of a weekend swap meet and a roadside bonsai tree salesmen, but we managed to pass up these temptations and the jumbo shrimp in favor of riding our bicycles. We paused again in Eloy, at a convenience store, where I bought a package of absolutely disgusting trucker donuts that tasted like plastic.
When one drives to Tucson, it's a fairly direct route: hop on the I-10 freeway, drive along a straight, flat road for a few hours, and you're there. Having driven to Tucson no small number of times over the couple of years I've lived here, I must admit that the drive quickly becomes fairly tedious. From a car, the landscape is mostly a vast, monotonous, flat plane of dusty soil and creosote bushes, punctuated by occasional distant mountains obscured in dusty haze.
Biking to Tucson feels completely different: the straight, flat roads make it easier to find and establish a steady rhythm, and when looking ahead at a straight, flat road and pedaling at the right pace you feel as though you could ride off into eternity. We were a large and diverse enough group (8 riders, several of whom had never ridden a full century--100 miles--before) so that it wasn't possible to establish a pace line, so instead we rode side-by-side and chatted and pointed out the sights: birds, planes, interesting trees, the changing mountain ranges, and the like. Occasionally, freight trains would rumble past on the tracks that paralleled the road, towing massive numbers of cargo boxes, and at one point we passed some naked guy holding an American flag and standing on the limb of a tall tree, waving. We have no idea where he came from.
Eventually we reached the most singular landmark between Tempe and Tucson, a distinctively shaped mountain known as Picacho Peak, a tourist trap of the highest order of magnitude. We paused in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen there, and waded through the depths of gift shop memorabilia to reach bathrooms and the Dairy Queen counter.
Dairy Queen!
The other Rebecca and I considered buying some fast food, but by the time we reached the line and examined the backlit menu, neither of us had any appetite for more plastic and grease, so we returned outside to eat some more of Rebecca's homemade brownies full of almond butter. By that point, the less experienced riders were beginning to hurt considerably, so we held a brief stretching session and got limbered up for the remainder of the ride.
Passing out of the Picacho Peak area, we rode by a small farm with horses and ponies, and chickens and ducks and a turkey who stated, "Gobble gobble!" as we rode past. By 3:41, we reached the hundred-mile mark and held a mini-celebration at our next rest stop. From there, we reached the outskirts of Tucson, and the names of familiar roads began to appear: Ina Road, Orange Grove Road, etc. As we headed towards a bike path along the river, we rode past a backed-up line of cars waiting for a light, and it gave me immense pleasure to smile and wave at the stuck drivers. They had no way of knowing we'd come from Tempe, but there we were, on the outskirts of Tucson. The river path was a winding, up-and-down adventure, and several miles of bumpy roads later, we were there.
Tucson!
Welcome to Bicas
Rebeccas at BICAS
A description of the Bicas co-op is almost deserving of its own post: it illustrates just how incredible a city's biking community can be, especially when the community members feel strongly about the importance of helping others. Tucson seems to have a much more vibrant soul than most of the Phoenix area, and in arriving I felt like I'd reached a new home. I can only briefly list the events that ensued: a tour of the co-op, moments of admiration of all sorts of bike art, a most delicious and serendipitous Food Not Bombs dinner followed by a second dinner at an all-night diner, then off to a co-op member's home on the third floor of a house to hang around for a bit, and then setting up tents in a labyrinthine yard and where we quickly fell asleep.
When I start to think about how to tell the story of our travels to Tucson and back, I first think of my father. On our trip from Seattle to Portland last summer (his second), he carried a small, digital voice recorder as he found that it was easier to record his thoughts while he rode instead of having to stop and retrieve pen and paper to jot down ideas or observations.
I've been gaining an appreciation of the extent of his recordings as I learn more about them - when we went to Eastern Washington over the break, I was enlisted to note the departure time and temperature, as well as the members of our party, in a travel journal. He said the idea of keeping a travel journal was inspired by a similar type of record kept by one of my relatives, but that when it came time to write something in it, he was at a loss for what to write and so employed a simple sort of list-keeping, as he is wont to do. (Which makes me realize--aren't you supposed to note that I was on that last coffeeshop bike ride, Dad?)
Anyway, I don't have a voice recorder, so I was forced to keep records the old-fashioned way, in my current repository for all things noteworthy, a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook. Oh, and I also took a few pictures.
But to start at the beginning: our adventure really began on Friday night, when we gathered together at the Bike Saviours for a bit of meet-n-greet and to make sure everyone was prepared for the day to come. Although in the preceding weeks many more had claimed they wanted to ride, when the time came to ante up we ended up with twelve riders and two SAG (support and gear) drivers. We loaded our food and gear into the cars and then headed home to try to get a good night's sleep before the the riding began.
The morning of the ride dawned cold and clear, and after eating a large breakfast and gathering together the remaining items I'd forgotten to pack the night before, I hopped on Spud to ride over to the co-op. Although it was early (around 6:35), everyone was up and excited and ready to go, so after some initial picture-taking antics we hit the road.
My friends R and J, who organized the expedition, had scouted out the route ahead of time and made sure that everyone had maps and phone numbers and a good idea of what to expect of the ride. They also planned out our rest stops for every 20 miles or so. Based on their ideas, we broke up into two groups, with the faster riders joining the A group and the slower riders forming the B group. For the initial stages of the ride through the Phoenix 'burbs, we stayed together as a single, large, motley crew. The early sections were quite familiar roads, first along Hardy Dr. to Guadalupe, and thus we gradually worked our way south and east along straight, wide streets punctuated by occasional traffic light stops and occasional glimpses of one of our sag-wagon drivers (C), sitting at a bus stop and waving, or holding a cup of coffee and a newspaper and waving. Stop One wasn't even out of the city, really--we took our first break in a McDonald's parking lot on the edge of Chandler at 9 am. One of our drivers informed us that it was 28 degrees Fahrenheit that morning, which explained why none of us had good feeling in our toes. The location of the first stop was also pretty telling with respect to the state of suburban sprawl in the Phoenix area. It can be summarized as, "lots of taupe."
From the first stop, the A group put on a burst of speed and set out into the first rural section of our ride, along Highway 87 and through Sacaton, Arizona. This was the initial point where it became clear why I was on the ride--one doesn't have to travel far to see new sights in the area, even if the sight is just C bursting out of the car and running along, wearing nothing but his underwear and a cape made out of a giant American flag. Aside from that momentary hilarity, Sacaton was pretty dry and trashy and sad, a New American ghost town, where the cops hung out at the corner and barking dogs tried to chase us down the road (they were small and thus unsuccessful). The place was quiet and full of trailers and shacks in various states of decay.
Somewhere in this segment we saw a dead cat along the road, and a live roadrunner, and as we headed past Sacaton and across I-10, we rode by a smashed pumpkin as well. We reached our second stop at the airport outside of Casa Grande at 10:45 am, where we paused to eat a lot of food and met up with the B group again, briefly.
...now where have I seen that flag before?
I had a feeling that long breaks were going to end up costing us a lot of time, so with some encouragement we got everyone back on the road again and wove on through the suburban sprawl to Jimmy Kerr Boulevard, which eventually turned into Highway 84, the old highway that parallels the I-10 freeway. Along the highway, we were tantalized by the likes of a weekend swap meet and a roadside bonsai tree salesmen, but we managed to pass up these temptations and the jumbo shrimp in favor of riding our bicycles. We paused again in Eloy, at a convenience store, where I bought a package of absolutely disgusting trucker donuts that tasted like plastic.
When one drives to Tucson, it's a fairly direct route: hop on the I-10 freeway, drive along a straight, flat road for a few hours, and you're there. Having driven to Tucson no small number of times over the couple of years I've lived here, I must admit that the drive quickly becomes fairly tedious. From a car, the landscape is mostly a vast, monotonous, flat plane of dusty soil and creosote bushes, punctuated by occasional distant mountains obscured in dusty haze.
Biking to Tucson feels completely different: the straight, flat roads make it easier to find and establish a steady rhythm, and when looking ahead at a straight, flat road and pedaling at the right pace you feel as though you could ride off into eternity. We were a large and diverse enough group (8 riders, several of whom had never ridden a full century--100 miles--before) so that it wasn't possible to establish a pace line, so instead we rode side-by-side and chatted and pointed out the sights: birds, planes, interesting trees, the changing mountain ranges, and the like. Occasionally, freight trains would rumble past on the tracks that paralleled the road, towing massive numbers of cargo boxes, and at one point we passed some naked guy holding an American flag and standing on the limb of a tall tree, waving. We have no idea where he came from.
Eventually we reached the most singular landmark between Tempe and Tucson, a distinctively shaped mountain known as Picacho Peak, a tourist trap of the highest order of magnitude. We paused in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen there, and waded through the depths of gift shop memorabilia to reach bathrooms and the Dairy Queen counter.
Dairy Queen!
The other Rebecca and I considered buying some fast food, but by the time we reached the line and examined the backlit menu, neither of us had any appetite for more plastic and grease, so we returned outside to eat some more of Rebecca's homemade brownies full of almond butter. By that point, the less experienced riders were beginning to hurt considerably, so we held a brief stretching session and got limbered up for the remainder of the ride.
Passing out of the Picacho Peak area, we rode by a small farm with horses and ponies, and chickens and ducks and a turkey who stated, "Gobble gobble!" as we rode past. By 3:41, we reached the hundred-mile mark and held a mini-celebration at our next rest stop. From there, we reached the outskirts of Tucson, and the names of familiar roads began to appear: Ina Road, Orange Grove Road, etc. As we headed towards a bike path along the river, we rode past a backed-up line of cars waiting for a light, and it gave me immense pleasure to smile and wave at the stuck drivers. They had no way of knowing we'd come from Tempe, but there we were, on the outskirts of Tucson. The river path was a winding, up-and-down adventure, and several miles of bumpy roads later, we were there.
Tucson!
Welcome to Bicas
Rebeccas at BICAS
A description of the Bicas co-op is almost deserving of its own post: it illustrates just how incredible a city's biking community can be, especially when the community members feel strongly about the importance of helping others. Tucson seems to have a much more vibrant soul than most of the Phoenix area, and in arriving I felt like I'd reached a new home. I can only briefly list the events that ensued: a tour of the co-op, moments of admiration of all sorts of bike art, a most delicious and serendipitous Food Not Bombs dinner followed by a second dinner at an all-night diner, then off to a co-op member's home on the third floor of a house to hang around for a bit, and then setting up tents in a labyrinthine yard and where we quickly fell asleep.
