Impatient with the slow swing into Spring, a revisiting of old adventures

Hello everyone, from Scottsdale, Arizona!

Yes, kt and I are still alive and kicking. We've been attacked by mosquitos, battled with 18-wheelers for highway space, and encountered some bizarre wildlife (I was attacked by a 10-inch lizard while innocently showering at one campsite...the screams, apparently, were heard for miles), and are having a fabulous time.

Lola and I (Lola is my lovely mini-Winnebago of a bike), and kt and Babe (her big blue partner in crime) set out from San Diego about 10 days ago, or so. (I've been sleeping the past few nights in a BED with PILLOWS, so exact details have become a bit fuzzy.) We spent about an hour or so grunting and heaving and trudging our fully loaded bikes through the sand in an attempt to dip our rear wheels in the Pacific Ocean, and then headed east...and directly over a 4,000-foot wall of mountains. Needless to say, there was little opportunity for hill-climbing in Boston, but Lola and I just gritted our teeth and climbed up....and up...and finally made it over the top (though we had to scurry to be on our way again the next morning at 6am to avoid an approaching snowstorm.) The descent more than made up for all the sweating and cursing, however: we flew out of those mountains at 40mph along the 6% grade of I-10, braced against some furious headwinds that howled around the curves of the mountains and tried to blow us right off the edge of a cliff.

The scenery has been awesome...that mountain decent I just referred to is the In-Ko-Pah Pass, and it looks like something straight out of 'The Never-Ending Story', where the huge piles of
boulders resolved themselves into rock-men...either that or some giant made drip castles with red rocks instead of grains of sand, I couldn't decide. So anyway, hurtling down we came like avenging angles, eating up the road in front of us, and we exploded straight out of the mountains and into the desert. And it is FLAT flat flat. With howling winds that, most of the time, were very nicely behind us pushing us along. (Note, MOST of the time. some of the toughest riding has been going downhill against ridiculous headwinds that mysteriously seem to come from every direction, at once.) And about a day or so out of the desert we were in the Imperial Sand Dunes, though it might as well have been the Sahara...huge dunes to all sides, sand blowing across the road, into my gears, my hair, my eyes, all my worldly possessions. You get the idea. And then SHOOM we were out of the dunes and in the midst of the Chocolate Mountains, admiring the remnants of a 500-year old pre-Columbian Indian trail that parallels
the highway we were on and trying to ignore the Navy fighter jets that were on practice-bombing missions in the mountains around us.

We've met some of the most amazing people, as well....there was the guy in Alpine, CA, who
fixed our bikes for free the day after we left San Diego (all that hard-won beach sand needed to be removed from our gears)...he custom designs and manufactures knives in his spare time. Another day, a man in a pickup stopped to make sure we were ok when we were pausing for a water break, and then was mysteriously there again when we were stopped to check out our maps (we do peddle occasionally, really). He bought us some cokes, and it turns out that he is very familiar with our route as he's a snake hunter, and has driven the same roads tons of time at night searching for some nasty things that this camper wasn't too happy to hear about. He's also a rancher, and has about 1000 baby snakes on hand right now, ready to be sold all over the world. One day we were sitting (again) in front of a convienece store in Wenden, AZ, (the cantaloupe capital of the world) and all the town was afire with melon picking season
(highlight of the year, apparently.) We were speculating on how best to procure a melon for ourselves and someone handed us a ripe one out the window of their car. And then there are the crazy bikers we've met...there was one elderly couple who we happily smoked on an uphill, but who then caught up with us when we were suntan-lotioning later down the road; the dude is over 70 and has been x-country on a bike 3 times, and bikes all over the world. We gave him a head start and he passed us some peaches later down the road. And no matter what, everyone is amazed (if not totally bewildered) to see two such heavily-laden, spandex-clad females, and wants to get the heck on over to find out what's going on.

So all that's been great...kt and I are great bike partners as well. She creams me on the
uphills, and I fly by on the way down. She's also really sweet about sharing her sleeping bag on the cold nights when my own bag and costume of shorts, tights, rain pants, biking socks, wool socks, t-shirt, jersey, and fleece vest aren't enough to keep me warm. And conversation flows....the other day we were on the top of a hill, zoning out as we inhaled our second power bar of the day. "Did you see that gumball back on the road?" she asked. Munch, munch. I reflected. The gumball had been about 10 miles back. "The green one?" I returned. "I seriously thought about picking it up and eating it." "Yeah. Same." So we bike, eat tons, and sleep about 10 hours a night...it's been great so far!

This is the second time I've written this (erased everything the first time) so am off to dangle a toe or two in the pool. Hope everyone is well, and keep in touch!

xoxo
s
10/6/2002