PacTour AZ Day 2 Saddle's Sore

The hills on the road towards Tombstone are really cool.  You can imagine cowboys and indians going at it around these, for sure.

It wouldn't be Tombstone without a stagecoach, now would it!?!?

1 downside of riding on the back of the tandem is this is your predominant view all day...

The Bisbee coffee shop is always a highlight stop.

The Queen Copper mine leaving Bisbee is spectacular.

We dined at the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas tonight.  These stairs have a chip in the 7th row, allegedly where Pancho Villa rode his horse up them.

Fun day today.  We left Sierra Vista and rode thru Tombstone.  Paul got off the tandem for a while as his saddle was uncomfortable.   This left the Turk stoking for Jim up the signature climb of the day - 6 miles - leading to Bisbee.  Turk and Jim descended into Bisbee for coffee, then enjoyed a 20 miles of downhill and tailwind to lunch.

Paul got back on the tandem at lunch and finished the day with Jim, so all's well that ends well.

Tomorrow we do 100 miles, from Douglas, AZ to Lordsburg AZ.  Matt's dad, the original Don, once described Lordsburg as "what it will all look like as we near the end of time..."  Quite true, unfortunately.

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.

PacTour AZ - Staging Day

After driving all day yesterday, we drove the bikes out to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum to check it out and do a little hike.

First a little ride.  Turk standing in a sea of yellow flowers.

Jim and Paul riding tandem, Paul snapping photo, of course.

The Turk nestled in a bed of prickly pear cactus.

Paul next to a Jumping Cholla cactus.

And some creosole.

A Harris Hawk.  

The Javelinas may be metal, but I bet Wes might still pop off a round or two at them.

Metal Lizards, not quite as scary as the real thing.

The plants and cacti were labelled for our viewing pleasure.

And some were nicely presented in "Catus Cups."

No doubt why this area is called the Saguaro National Park - look at the sea of Saguaro cacti.  You'll also notice the "dust devil" in the background.  We won't see much Saguaro after we climb out of Tucson.  We're at 2500 feet here, we'll spend the rest of the week above 5000 feet.

The mandatory photo of a beautiful woman for Wes

Small pretty white flowers growing from the rocks.

Turk and Jim enjoyed the day and the hike.

We finished back at the hotel - Paul listening intently to Lon's rules and regulations regarding the next 7 days of riding.

8 days in the desert.  PacTour AZ training camp, week six AKA "Mountain Week."  This is the 3rd time in 4 years Jim has done this week.  The Turk is her for the first time, as is Jim's tandem riding companion, Paul Freemyer.

We spent 14 hours Friday driving out to Tucson in the Yukon Denali aka the "Red Beast."  We chose to drive since we were taking the tandem and 900 miles isn't all that bad.  Everyone was tired, so we split the driving into 2 hour segments each, very nicely.  Jim and Paul entertained the Turk with about 8 hours of New England Journal of Medicine interviews on the iPod.  The last 2 hours we watched last week's Milan - San Remo race on DVD.  Afternoon lunch was at a mexican food restaurant in Van Horn, TX.  Dinner was at McDonalds in Lordsburg, NM (aka what it will all look like as we near the end of time according to the Don, Matt's dad.)

Saturday am we slept in (Paul slept at least 10 hours which probably equals a normal month of sleep for him.)  Brunch at Waffle House (why the het don't we have a Waffle House in San Antonio?!?!?)  Then out to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum for a 8 mile hilly ride to stretch the legs and test the bikes.  Spring is in bloom here in Tucson with lots of flowers and cactus color.  Jim got hit by a Jumping Cholla, they really do jump onto you.

Dinner at a Sushi restaurant (Paul's first time eating sushi) then an early bedtime for the 5:30am wake up.  We'll be on the road for the 90 mile ride to Sierra Vista at 7am Sunday am.

Thanx for reading.

Reminder to Self - Crashing Hurts

When you crash on the bike sometimes it hurts.  Particularly when your broken bone pokes thru your skin.

Your girlfriend has to share the pain - and she doesn't get any morphine....

You do end up with cool metal parts in your body for a while, however.

Speedy recovery wishes to our friend and teammate Chris Lutz.  He tumbled over another rider on 471 tonight on the Helotes Tuesday nighter tonight.  He's in the Operating Room as we post.

Big thanks to Dr. Jay Marque for helping on the scene and to Dr. Ken Ciolle for checking him again after the ride.  Chris had his private nurse, Kim Ciolle take him to the hospital.  Thanx to all for pitching in and caring for our friend.

Ft Davis and back in 40 easy hours

Off to Ft. Davis at 7am Saturday.  Craig and John nice enough to pick Jim up at the house since he worked til 2am.  Myhre is the king of multitasking - tending to Goofy, while driving, pulling a trailer and talking on the phone.

Foxy gracious enough to lend us his trailer for the 2nd week in a row.  Myhre with the perfect setup in the bed of his pickup.  Bags, food and wheels in the trailer, bikes in the pickup bed.  Jim in and out of sleep in the back seat of the truck.

Jim woke up to see Myhre with no shirt on, he had one on when they left San Antonio.  The next time Jim woke he opened his eyes carefully, relieved that Myhre had his pants on...

We rolled into the Prude Ranch around 2pm.  Ft. Davis is as, or more, beautiful than Big Bend, for sure.

Lots of animals out on the road.

Killer wasn't with us or we may have had a few heads to mount on Monday morning.

After a minor trailer mishap at the Ranch we did our first stage - the Mount Locke McDonald Observatory Hill Climb.  The pic may look blurry, but that's your actual vision after climbing the last mile to 7000 feet at race pace.  

The plan was to do the 3 stages of next months Hammerfest stage race as training and recon.

The Hill Climb stage starts at Prude Ranch and ends at the Observatory.  11 miles with 2000' climbing, 500' in the last mile.

Folks interested in training and racing with power can learn alot looking at their data.  For example the last mile here - Jim planned to ride the last mile at 400 watts.  If you look at the heart rate, looks like the mile went as planned.  However, looking at the power you can really see it moving downwards from 400 watts initially.  This helps with analysis of the training and planning for future rides and races.

Next we drove down to Ft. Davis to ride the TT stage.  Out 9 miles, then back 7 miles.  False flat uphill with 500' climbing out, then 7 miles back.  25-30mph steady headwind going out combined with the constant uphill grade resulted in a 16mph average going out and 32 mph average coming back.  Good info to plan for the upcoming race regarding racing heart rate and gearing.

Ayers forgot his pants to change into after the ride.  (We wouldn't know that Myhre dropped his keys to the bike racks til the next morning.)  Craig initially he tries to squeeze into Myhre's 31 waist shorts, which didn't fit for some reason.   So he puts on Myhre's jammies (scrub bottoms) and insisted on being called Dr. Ayers the rest of the weekend.

We were suspicious that Dr. Ayers oufit contributed to the "45 minute" wait at the Hotel Limpia in Ft. Davis, so we drove to Alpine.  Had a great meal a the Reata Restaurant.  Kane recommended , not sure if it was because of the food or its 5th St. address.

Sunday did RR loop. Tough tough course. First 5 miles downhill w/ tailwind, nxt 35 falseflat uphill into 25mph headwind.  Then the climbing began.  Jim waited for Craig at the top of the feed zone climb, checking out some stinging insect to pass the time.

Craig came hammering over the top without looking back.  His day was about done as he was near total body failure and close to vomiting.

Or perhaps it was Balmorrhea?

So here's the Road Race stage.  Now to figure out how to race it in a month...

Starting the final 15 miles (without Ayers who was puking under a tree hoping the coyotes didn't come grazing before Jim and John got back with the truck) Jim rode past a pack of Javelinas.  West tells me that the Javelina is closer relation to a dog than a pig and this one got separated from his peleton and started barking at Jim!!

Great weekend, a trip we'll have to consider annually as prep for the Ft. Davis race.  Prude Ranch makes a great staging area, the roads are great, the rides are tough and food is excellent.

Thanx again to Foxworth for the use of the trailer and Myhre for doing the driving.  Stay tuned to see how the race goes next month!!  The biggest disappointment, particularly for Wes was that we didn't stop to get a pic of the most beautiful woman in West Texas (in contention beyond there for sure.)  She was riding horseback in a halterback as we drove back to the ranch after picking Craig up off the road.  In our exhausted state we didn't think to turn around a ask her for a picture.  Oh well, Wes was supposed to have gone with us, I'm sure she'll be out there in a month watching us race.

Big Bend

Dan, Gary, Wes and Jim staging for Tuesday's ride.  Off road across the Old Ore Road towards the Rio Grande Village - 30 miles of rocky single track.  Dan was already a bit banged up from an over the handle misadventure in McAlister park getting ready for the week.  Gary decided to duplicate the stunt on this ride, landing on his shoulder, hard.  That eliminated off road riding for the rest of the week.

Wednesday road ride from Presidio to Lajitas was "highlighted" by the mile long climb with 14% grades.  We rode along the Rio Grande on a nicely rolling road.  That's Mexico in the background.

Thursday's ride started by climbing the 1 mile, again with 14% grades, out of the Chisos Basin.  This is the money shot of this location, looking west thru the "Window" where you get to watch the most beautiful sunset you will ever see, every night of the year.

After the 1 mile climb out of the basin you get to up your average speed with 6 mile 4-% grade descent down to the main Big Bend National Park Road.

A little bit of headwind compensated nicely for the mostly down hill ride, everyone seemed happy on the day.  Gary took the day off, his shoulder finally got the best of him.  Plus he got to spend a bit more quality time with his wife Ann, who is annually gracious enough to ride sag for us.  That allows us to do point to point rides and choose our directions based on the wind direction on a daily basis.

Stopping along the Ross Maxwell scenic drive Jim and Wes stop for a photo op looking back at the "Window" leading back into the Chisos Mountains.

I kinda told Wes I wouldn't include this pic, so let's keep this on between us OK ;>

Dan, Gary, and GG have been going to Big Bend every year in late February.  GG decided to tear her knee apart skiing so she sat this year out rehabing from surgery.  Jim joined the group last year for the first time, and somehow earned a reinvite for this year's trip.

Since GG had to miss this year, Wes decided to go along.  Usually we do 2-3 MTB rides and 2-3 Road rides, this year ended up being 3 road rides due to a combination of Dan's cracked rib and Gary's separated shoulder.  Are we getting older our just unluckier, or maybe both.

Anyways, the trip was good, the fellowship was great, the rides were spectacular (where else can you ride 50 miles with spectacular vistas on great roads while being passed by maybe 5 cars.)

Definitely worth the trip and highly recommended to all.