PacTour AZ - Day 1 Discretion v Valor

Jim and Paul are riding tandem at PAC Tour this week.

With a week of riding 80 - 100 miles a day, Paul and Jim decided to skip the major climb of the day - notice the quick "transport" from 3500 feet to 5100 feet.  Alot easier in the car for sure.  Turk of course did the whole day.  And only yelled at Jim 1/2 dozen times (a new record for least amount of yelling at Jim on a bike ride) obviously she is really enjoying PAC tour this year!!

Sometimes Jim feels the riding is harder than other times.  Paul swears he's working as hard as he can at all time!!  

The foliage is beautiful.  Big change from the Desert Museum.  Not a Sagauro cactus in site.

Turk enjoying the ride and the scenery (and the draft of the Tandem for sure.)  She's running tubless Hutchinson tires on Dura Ace wheels for the first time.  Perfect for comfort and safety during the long miles over a lot of chip seal roads.

Turk thinks she looks tired after the ride - we still think she looks good!!

It's tough getting the tandem up to the 2nd floor room on the elevator.

PAC Tour AZ Mountain week has officially begun and we've finished our first day.  Supposed to be 81 miles from Tucson to Sierra Vista to with 4100 feet of climbing.  Turk got the whole day in (actually rode around 83 miles because Jim was navigating the last few miles to the hotel.)  Paul and Jim decided to "bump" from the first feed zone to the 2nd feed zone to cut out the major climb of the day - 1600 feet in 15 miles - so they logged 69 miles in 4:45 accumulating 2500 feet of climbing.

15-20 mile headwind most of the day made the ride challenging.  As usual PAC Tour has the whole show dialed in and the logistics are flawless.  Jim has to complain about something, so cold cuts for lunch got his nose turned up in the air.  Turk won't complain about anything - Susan's lugging wine around the state for her!!  Terri did get a chance to ride with Lon for a stretch today, which she enjoyed.  And she had an indecent proposal.   Terri didn't know that Jim and Paul had gotten dropped and a rider came up behind her and she said "Hi Honey" thinking it was Jim.  She realized that it wasn't and explained that she thought the the rider was her husband.  He quickly offered to be her husband, for a night at least.  Jim's gonna keep his eyes on the Turk this week for sure.

Tomorrow's ride heads runs from Sierra Vista to Douglas, which is a border town.  We go thru Tombstone and Bisbee with the OK Corral and Bisbee Queen Copper mine as highlights.

Thanx for reading.