The Papago Peddler

My first adventure of 2008!
I woke up at 6:50 this morning. Yes, thats what I consider early for a weekend. Maybe I have a little bit of college hours left in me after all these years. I was getting up to mountain bike. In a race no less!

I showed up at Papago park ready to go. Signed the documents, payed the $30 fee and headed out on a couple of prerun laps. After two laps I learned that I don't have the ability to do warm up laps. I just really like passing people whether they know their racing me or not! haha!
I watched the pros and it struck me, as it always does, that mountain bikes "look" slow. Most likely because I'm more used to seeing dirt bikes which are startlingly fast.
Don't let that fool you. Piloting a 25 or so pound bike which kicks and bucks with every golfball sized rock you hit is a hoot. You're on your toes with legs bent the whole time trying to anticipate each jolt. There is no way to expect each one so you just hold tight, let the suspension (in my case my legs) soak up the bumps as they come.

After watching the pros I did all of the last minute bike prep items.



I had a chance to ride the course the weekend before so I sat around looking like a weirdo with my eyes closed picturing the course and running a lap. I did two "mind laps." No, it didn't tire me out to much. :)

A shot of the empty start/finish line.


My buddies Brandt and Mike came by the race. Mike was checking it out for a possible future race career and Brandt was saddling up for his first race.
(this was only my second so I'm no pro)
Danica was the photog and pit crew. I decided not to carry anything ,but a water bottle and a clifshot gue pack. In a 40 minute race I figured a flat means its over. If I needed anything Danica was there with it and Mike was there to ceremoniously mock me. :)

I took a Clifshot and road over to the start line. Brrrr. It was somewhere in the fifties and every second at the start line was sapping energy, real or imagined.
Brandt on the right and I a row up on the left. Its a mass start and the placement is first come first serve.

And we're off. My "strategy" ,although I don't act like I know anything about strategy besides pedal lots and do it fast, was to get out front in the beginning.
I figure if I could get out front that I would be able to race my own race whether I pass or get passed. If I was stuck behind big groups it would frustrate me and give me one more thing to worry about. It took a lap to get out into some clean air. My lungs were burning from the cold air.
I had gotten lucky. The general course I road a week before was almost right on. I let my mind go to auto pilot and just pedalled away. Every now and again I'd pick off another rider. After a short time I realized I was lapping folks. It was my third lap. That was a great moral boost.
The race is supposed to be 30 minutes plus a lap. I figured that meant about 4 laps total since each lap took me about 10 minutes in practice. Somewhere on my 5th lap I realized I was going to have to ride more than planned since I was riding faster. The pain was immense and I was coughing up stuff as my cold lodged itself in.
I longed for the sound of cow bell...
Why? Oh, because that signals the last lap. No white flag here folks, just the magical sound of a cow bell signaling the last lap and end of pain.


Brandt huffing along. He did great.

Thank goodness for cow bell. The last lap was great. I finally let myself stop racing my own race and decided I needed to make sure no mistakes were made this close to the phi... finish. I had no idea where I was except that I was up front somewhere. There were no other riders in sight or I would have made a hearty attempt to catch him.
Ahh that beautiful word: Phinnisch... Huh,

Mountain bikers are a strange strange group. I feel at home with them.
Brandt rounded the finish or phinnisch line at 4 laps.

Because of my self loathing torture I was able to squeeze in 6 mortifying laps. Okay, now I'm being dramatic. It was fun and I got 4th!! Woohoo!

The pain was intense, but as I sit here in bed about 5 hours after getting home coughing and taking every cold drug I can find I can only think; LIFE is good. What a day!

I'm going to bed now... At 6:40pm yes I am... :)

Gotta say, today was a good day!

Okay enough rap for one day. I just wanted you to know that I'm a thug and that I'm classy. The classy part comes from the pic below which is actually from a week ago, but classy none the less.

It was actually a great and very full weekend. I changed the front diff fluid, rear and the transfer case. The front and rear looked REALLY bad. I rotated the tires. Why is it that car maintanence makes me feel good. I need a dog...
On Friday Danica got home from Ohio. She had been up and on planes making layovers and transfers since 3AM. Since we were feeling chipper we loaded the car up with all of our camping gear and headed south to Tuk Sone or Too-son if you want to say it right, but where is the fun in that!
We took advantage of the warm bed and hot showers because it was cold in the old pueblo. Very cold. There was a sheet of what looked like ice on the pool. It couldn't be. This is the desert...
I had to touch it to believe it like a kid that sees Mickey Mouse for the first time in his 7 foot furry costume...
It was one solid sheet. Amazing. If you're not living or from Arizona you have already stopped reading, but this is an impressive site for us.
The only thing as crazy as this is snow in the desert. Here is a pic from last year at my parents house.

We were down south for something new, something a little different, a little less self indulgent than a normal exploring trip. We had come to learn about treading lightly. What? We've come down here to learn about how to utilize the outdoors in a way that will help to keep it unmolested (stop thinking bad thoughts, if only your family new that you were picturing a saguaro doing that), pristine, and possibly the most important to many people. OPEN.
Tread Lighty is an organization that serves to educate anyone willing to listen about how to take responsibility for what happens to the off highway areas. Those new to OHV (Off Highway Vehicle) us may want to look them up or shoot me an email. There are things like trail etiquitte to give guidance to what to do in some situations, but how do you handle the other decisions. The ones that affect the terrain you're on. Tread Lightly is a great place to look.
We headed out to a beautiful desert retreat of some great folks that I would now call friends.
If you've ever fealt like you just don't see eye to eye with some offroaders or clubs you may want to check out www.expeditionportal.com I am amazed by the percentages. I constantly think, there is no way I could meet that many good folks in a row! Its not logical. Well, the reason I mention this is because some of the other folks from this site were headed down for this traning as well.
We pulled up to this remote plot of land in the beautiful sonoran desert. I held back my urge to crawl over every vehicle on site checking out every inch of them. Each one had all sorts of personal modifications that I could view and contemplate the whole day. The voice in my head (lets be an adult and have some impulse control, damnit)

So many different ways to camp and methods to set up. It was nice to see them all in one place.

We spent some time talking about the techniques, ideas and priciples of Tread Lightly. It was enlightening as to how much of what I thought was right... actually WAS right. Okay comforting may be a better word. It also laid down some ideas that although logical are not something that would come to my head. All in all it really helped me to have some conviction about what we do while in the wild and that there ARE in fact others that think like us.

We took a hike around the property. Absolutely beautiful. If only I could capture the beauty with a better camera. This cactus was a great splash of colors in the desert, but its hard to make it come through.


We had a great night of BS'ing around that camp fire that was enjoyed by all. The next morning we all packed up and most were headed out for a trail run.


We had to get going because today looks like the only day I'll be able ride the mountainbike race course for next Saturdays race.

It was great out. Just a little bit cold which is how I like it when I'm about to be huffing and puffin.


It is odd being in nature and always seeing things like this


We checked out the hole in the rock, but it was just about as busy as the zoo so I turned and ran. I have flight instincts when I see things like crowds, tour buses, cruise ships and people with chainsaws on their arm where a hand had once been. Excluding lunmberjacks of course.

Pro Desert Race. Rocky Point December 8th 2007

We headed out of Phoenix after work on Friday. The traffic sucked. After a couple of hours we made it out of Phoenix. It poured the whole way down. The kind of pouring that makes you want to drive 20 and feel crazy going 60.
For this race the Pro Desert series run a morning race with half the field and the other half in an afternoon race. I love this because I get to spectate a race and enjoy relaxing before my race in the afternoon or vice versa.
Here are some pics from us pacing our friend down the highway and then waiting for him at the road crossing.

Hard on the brakes before jumping the road crossing and turning right at a 90 degree turn.


New limit for my 4runner. I went 105mph in the 4runner trying to keep up with Bucky's race truck along the highway.

MY FAVORITE SHOT OF THE RACE:


Kincaids nice truck.





The telephone pole was plastered with sand by the end of the race.

Herder blew all of the oil out of his motor and was done for the day. Too bad, he was killing it in first place by quite a bit.

The Greers kept losing belts and ended up calling it a day.


The Greers have one mean looking truck. How would you like to see this in your rear view coming at you doing 130MPH.

I hopped in our car and road with Brent for three laps. I had to relieve myself, but there was NO TIME so I slid over into the drivers seat and Danica got in the co-riders spot. It was her first time at a race and definately her first time in a race car. Brent and I raced the first couple laps with a flat right front. We had no idea it was flat. Its such a stiff tire it held up pretty good for a while! We had it changed at our driver change. The only other issue was the tranny. Brent switched it out the day before the race because it broke during prerunning. During the race we had to hold the shift lever in fourth or it would kick out. Danica helped by holding it in gear on the straits so I could give my arm a brake. Enough excuses. It was a great race and we were hauling. The other guy just had a faster car that day.
The only other... item was that we did kinda run over a photographer. He was in the course and thought we'd take the corner wider. We didn't...
We saw him at the award ceremony and I mentioned that we almost hit him. He reassured us that we had in fact hit his leg and he was just fine. No hard feelings!!
Always an adventure...




Sliding into the finish line. 2nd place!




Some shots from the campsite we stayed at.