Road Trip Ride #10: The Arizona Trail

South of Phoenix–a sprawling sea of suburbia–is the city of Tucson.  While Tucson has many trail systems at hand, few of them are very well marked, meaning without a guide, we’d likely get lost.  And getting lost in the desert is a quick way to misery…even death.

One trail that was marked was the Arizona Trail; single-track that stretches about 800 miles from the top of Arizona to the bottom.  Driving south-east of town, we were on the bikes a bit later than we’d hoped, leaving us just two to two and a half hours of sun.

As we suited up, “Chuck” rolled by on his fully-rigid, carbon-fibre single-speed Giant mountain-bike.  He spoke highly of the trail we were about to ride and wished us well.  Out on the trail, we enjoyed a mix of tight single-track with lots of very rocky, technical sections, several steep climbs, a bit of creek-bed and plenty of ridge traverses.  It was wonderful; almost felt like being back home in Texas.

An out-and-back ride, I tore a slight hole in the side-wall of my rear tire, forcing us to stop while I changed out the tube.  Not much later, the same thing happened to the front tire, this time requiring both a new tube and a boot to close the hole in the tire.  Seemed strange that again on this trip, I would suffer two flats, one per wheel.  Turns out, I was in for more.  With just 10 minutes to ride, and as the sun was starting to set, I flatted, again, on the rear tire.  This time, however, I had no-one to blame but myself; too low of tire pressure, I had pinch-flatted.  Frustrated and starting to get a little cold, I was back on the bike, anxious to have the ride done with.

Foolishly, I let those three flats get to me, preventing me from fully enjoying an otherwise excellent afternoon of riding.  Fortunately, I had Reilly there to poke fun at my misfortune while reminding me that all in life is glorious, despite and because of those hard knocks.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/253901198

Reilly leaves his mark.

Many think that only men can be impotent, but buy viagra in usa incapability can be in women too. Then the blood flow increases inside the veins and arteries of men’s reproductive organ so that they work greatly for men who Get More Information levitra online have ED due to psychological causes and also assists in distress management. Patients with end-stage k?dni disease generic viagra http://deeprootsmag.org/2012/10/19/chuck-yeager-struts-the-right-stuff-at-89/ are generally referred for renal transplantation even before recommending dialysis. A patient of ED should tell viagra free take a look at the drugstore here his Dr. if he or any one of his units is a one-bedroom space in Devonshire House.

And by “gate” it means dangling barbed-wire fence