Blythe to Wickenburg - Back to Riding

Wow, it feels good to be back riding again.  I actually was very tired yesterday from being a staff member.  They really work hard.  And I found some muscles that I didn't know I had from climbing in and out of the truck and schlepping duffel bags out of the truck.

The ride today was 116 miles.  I decided that trying to complete that amount of miles in the heat would be too much.  So I took a bump to mile 40 and started from there.  That still gave me 76 miles for the day.  I rode with Janel, Karen, and Jeanne and we had a blast.  Our goal was to have fun.  Janel and I rode the 76 miles and the other two hopped on and off the train.  As you can see we passed into Arizona today.  Now the country is changing and becoming far more interesting.  I promise that tomorrow I will start to take pictures of the scenery so you can see what we are riding through.  The heat dropped about 10 degrees today.  The max I saw on my Garmin was 104.  That was tolerable. 

We had some great sightings today.  Quite a few lizard-like creatures running down the road.  And we actually saw a road runner run across the road in front of us.  That was cool.  And oh yes, for Chris from XC10, a smooched snake sighting.

Today Janel and I got to demonstrate our tire changing skills.  I took the tube out and she put the new one back in.  We did not time ourselves, but we did pretty well.  Later on down the road we saw two of the male members of our group having their tire changed by a staff member!  They luckily got a flat right where the van was parked.  We told them we would ride behind them the rest of the way into town to provide assistance should they get another flat. 

Tomorrow starts the big climbing.  We ride to Prescott and have 7K feet of climbing.  This will also be the day of the false flats and the false summits.  Those freaked me out in 2010.  So I really hope that I do better on them this year.  Wish me luck.