Back in Tucson

We are back in Tucson, AZ! It has been two years and it is everything I remember. We are staying near Catalina Hwy, the road that goes up Mt Lemmon. You can ride all the way around Tucson from here, it is a perfect location.

Saturday 10/24: On the way from Santa Fe we stopped in Tullarosa, NM to ride the White Sands 108-mile century on the missile range.

. It was a fun ride "not a race" with plenty of wildlife and no cars, the best wildlife being the Oryx.

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At the start of the ride a girl with good intentions picked a fight with Todd because I was on the windy side and he was on the wind protected side of the group, it was pretty windy I'll give her that. She thought it was so rude of Todd and told him multiple times to switch spots with me. (my heart rate at the time was ~ 110bpm.) What do you say in a situation like that? "no, I am actually a good rider, I just look slow" (since I have a full Hydrapak, MTB shoes, handlebar bag, Bento Box, tool bag, a front and rear light, etc.) I just said something like "oh, I'll be fine, thanks."

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As it ended up I was the first 108-mile route finisher @ 5.5 hours (2nd to cross the "finish line"), but only because the lead group I was with stopped at the 60-mile aid station for lunch while I continued on. Todd had turned off (alone) at the 35-mile mark to do the "70-mile" loop, which ended up being 93-miles! He ended up being the 1st finisher and beat me by 30-minutes. It was a great ride, we didn't race it (my heart rate average was 145) but it did make it interesting to see if I could "stay away", Todd had his own slow motion race, making sure he got in before I did while not going hard.

After the century we drove a couple hours toward Tucson and spent the night at the Deming Wal-Mart.

Sunday 10/25: Did our shopping at Wal-Mart, finished the drive to Tucson, stocked up on propane and diesel for the winter (never go to Gas City in a big rig!), pulled into our new location, and got in a quick spin to the local coffee shop before dark.

This week is my favorite part of getting to a new town, scoping out what it has to offer, finding the local gym, health food store, mail service, new training routes, etc. We hooked up with Chad Brown and Scott Morris today for a late day ride in Oro Valley, those two are a lot of fun. I was a bit worried they would decide to ride to Mexico while surviving on gas station food and sleeping under the stars or something. But luckily they were happy to do an easy spin and grab a taco at Rubios. Thanks for the pics Chad.

. Now we have a freeze warning, what happened to the warm weather???