The Foot Turns the Pedal

Greetings all, this post will cover riding days 4 (3/8) and 5 (3/9). Apparently camping in the middle of nowhere doesn’t include Wi-Fi.

Yesterday (3/8) found us on the road just outside the Yuma Proving grounds around 8:30am and ready to roll. We’d had a great night of sleep in the base hotel and had absolutely gorged ourselves on the free continental breakfast. We’ve been rationalizing our continuing gluttony by openly stating “we’re burning a ton of calories, so eating whatever we want is okay!” Hmmm, not so sure that’s completely true, but it is our reality out here on the road without the wisdom of our spouses to keep us honest. Anyway, it’s become all too apparent that the starting and stopping of Hank the Tank while using clip-in pedals are some of the most perilous phases of the ride on any given day. Odie and I had a “tip over” event trying to stop on day 1, and then on day 4 we had another “tip over” at the very beginning of the day as we were trying to start. We’re both too old to keep having these issues, and it’s incumbent on me to do better. Hank is an unwieldly beast when going slow, and that’s no excuse, but it does hint at a solution---DO BETTER SCOTT!!!

We covered a little over 72 miles on day 4, and the first 30 or so miles were tranquil and welcoming with tiny patches of purple and yellow wildflowers holding hands with the crumbled asphalt shoulders. Traffic was minimal, and I spent a lot of time riding right down the middle of the road. The remaining 42 miles were either on frontage roads along the Interstate 8 corridor, or actually on the Interstate. Not our preferred place to ride, mostly due to the noise that fractured every second, but also because of the preponderance of debris that seemed to be everywhere and threatened to puncture and rip Hank’s tires to shreds. We once again made great time due to prevailing tailwinds, and upon reaching Dateline, we had Date Shakes that made some of the day’s annoyances much more tolerable. A group of twenty or so other riders trickled into Dateline after us, and as we sat in the shade happily sucking thick ice cream through a straw, we implored the others to do the same, and indeed most of them did.

After finishing our shakes we decided to ride for another hour or so before finding a spot to camp for the night. 11 miles later we called it quits for the day, loaded Hank onto the OREM, and then followed a hard packed sand path away from the interstate and into the desert. Finding a suitable spot was fairly easy, and soon The Bob was preparing a feast of macaroni & cheese with a can of tuna mixed in. And in the context of the day and that particular place out of all the other places we could have been, it was damn good! A few hours later it was lights out for the night, our first night of camping a success

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The next morning, riding day 5, we climbed out of our beds and into the bracing chill of a desert sunrise. “It’s going to be a great day to ride!” I thought. And it started out exactly that way as we once again rode the shoulders of Interstate 8 and Old Highway 80 with a steady tailwind that seemed to foretell big miles and happy riders. We made 24 miles before our first break, then pulled into Gila Bend, AZ before noon, sitting on 38 miles for the day. I felt a little fatigued at that point, but it was nothing a 20-minute break wouldn’t fix. When we got back in the saddle though, I could tell my legs had lost their spunk and that it wasn’t coming back anytime soon. We once again turned onto Old Highway 80, heading north now and into a mild headwind. Our pace slowed, and every time I upshifted into a higher gear, I would quickly downshift because our legs weren’t responding as they had everyday up until that point. The sun had slipped behind clouds, and the headwind felt cooler and seemed bored with our progress. Odie and I had been talking a lot earlier, but now we mostly labored in silence, each of us suffering the ravages of sore butts and heavy legs. The Bob met us around the 50 mile point where we yet again we fueled out bodies before returning to our slow grind. We stopped again at 58 miles, ate Peanut Butter M&Ms as if they might hold the day’s salvation somewhere within their colorful hard candy shells, but of course they were merely delicious and void of any such magic. But we were determined to make it to the 70 mile mark, and so that’s what we did. You see, pedaling a bike is a very easy thing…until it isn’t

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As I write tonight, I’m sitting on The Bob’s sofa, my sore butt wonderfully nestled into the soft cushions of his couch. His wife Suzy wined and dined us with protein and carbs, more sweets and some good old-fashioned TLC, this latter offering the very thing we needed the most after a trying day. Tomorrow we’ll be up and out early, our routine becoming more deeply etched into our psyche and our very marrow, as the lives we so recently left behind fade further into the shadows of what we’re attempting. Day turns to night, night turns to day, the foot turns the pedal, the leg turns the foot, and the heart turns it all…