A Riding Report

Anybody that's trained for an event has hit this point...I'm not physically tired, just tired.  The routes are old, there's not a huge desire to climb on the bike.  I've been riding a lot, been through a 60 serving tub of Accelerade in the past month!  I'm faster and stronger than I believed possible, but that fact fails to charge me up, at the moment.

I figured that a good solution would be to ride a seldom-used route.  So I decided to drive to the town of Amado, Arizona, and ride to Arivaca.  This route I've ridden once as part of my first century ride, but today's route, since I'd drive to Amado instead of ride, would be just a touch under 50 miles.

My hope here is to share a flavor of the very unique pocket of southern Arizona that is Arivaca.  It's a full hour's drive from ANYWHERE.  Anybody that lives there does so on purpose.  Some are outcasts, socially inept.  Others just seek solitude and clear thinking.  Regardless, the people that live there, and in the outlying areas take a lot of pride in their community.  I could shoot hundreds of pictures of the little interesting things like an old hand water-pump mounted on top of a 20 foot pole in the middle of a field.  It's just funny, and cute.

Nothing to share beyond that.  Enjoy the pictures.

Amado is an interesting place, most known for the bar pictured below.

Also in the lovely town of Amado are the Cow Palace and the Amado Market, which has gasoline, but you have to pay the cashier inside, no debit machine on the pump.

If I had left early in the day, I'd have missed all of the wind, but as it turned out, I started just as the wind really started to pick up.  But I brought my camera and decided to not let the wind ruin my time.  After all, the return trip was sure to be a blazing fast ride.

One of the first things I always notice on this road (it's a favorite drive) is this huge cottonwood tree.  I often wonder how old it is, what changes have occurred around it.  It's a survivor.

 And how fun does that road beyond look?

Now apparently, the mailman out here is a Sasquatch, either that or this is a challenge to all major league mail-box baseball players.

Now I am patriotic, but not fanatic.  I am completely convinced, however, that the United States' flag is the most beautiful.  If it wasn't designed to look amazing in motion, it's a lucky coincidence.  This one has seen better days, but where would I be if all things tattered were discarded?

Here's another. Interesting side note:  Flags point the direction of travel of the intelligent.  I was going the other way.

Then there were these gardener/drinkers that decided to decorate their garden fence:

Now most of these pictures I took while riding, but the one below I actually stopped, turned my bike around and rode back to the sign.  If I was into sign stealing ...  it would be mine!

And today was over 80 degrees, as evidenced by the salt deposits I had after cooling off!

If you'd like to see the rest of the pictures, you can here.

The ride took me 2 1/2 hours, actually 2:32:13 to be exact.  There was 1500 feet of climbing.  The return trip took just under and hour's time, so it was very fast.