A brick surprised us on
the outskirts of Surprise just before Sun City in the dark…
Today I learned why this is called “Adventure Cycling”; you
never know what’s going to happen next. Also I learned for every Yin, there is a
Yang; for every action, a reaction; for every “1” there is a “4”….
We started out dark and early at 4:15 a.m. with lovely cool
air, downhill, and a tailwind. It
doesn’t get much better than that. We
were cruising along about 17.8 mph, the traffic was light, the shoulders
wide. We even saw a deer (buck) in the
bushes along the side of the road. (I’m
glad it didn’t run out into the road and hit us!)
And then, just before Happy Lane (!!) on the outskirts of
Surprise (a retirement suburb of the Phoenix area, as is Sun City) at 5:20 a.m. we encountered THE GREY BRICK. Yes, a brick, in the middle of the shoulder and just
about the same color as the road.
Neither of us saw it, but we felt it.
“What the hell was that?” I exclaimed.
A moment later, we pulled over to examine “the damage” while vile expletives
poured forth from Rick’s mouth not suitable for publication. Flat
front tire (not so bad), but then there’s that BENT REAR RIM. Very bad.
Especially on a specialty rim with carefully tensioned spokes. Fortunately, it was not so bad that we
couldn’t limp into civilization in Surprise, AZ, but bad enough that we can’t
continue our tour without replacing it.
So by 7:20 a.m. we rolled into McDonald’s in Surprise to
fire up the Internet to see what bike shops were in the area (probably not open
early Sunday morning nor carrying a heavy-duty 36 spoke rim). While there, we had a really nice conversation
with a couple of local cyclists, Kingsley and April who were out for a Sunday
morning cruise. They were very helpful,
told us where the nearest bike shop and rental car agency were.
We ended up calling Budget Car rentals which just happened
to be open this early Sunday morning, and only until 9 a.m. They came out and picked us up; we rented a Mazda CX7 SUV, stuffed the bike,
trailer, and bags into it and headed the 100 miles BACK TO BRENDA. (Buzz and Pam were surprised to see us again! Rick had another set of wheels in the truck
there; he switched them out this afternoon, we had a quick beer with Buzz and Pam (thanks again, guys!) then headed back to Surprise. Along the way back we stopped in at the “Horsepitality
RV Park” in Wickenburg and visited with the group with Adventure Cycling who are on the same
route about two days behind us. It was good to see Ed, John, Kathy, and Olaf again, and meet Buster, Neil, Greg, Arthur, Errol, Kelly, Berit, Joe, and others with the group.
Tonight we are safely tucked in at the Days Inn in
Surprise. We’ll head out tomorrow
morning, traverse our way through the Phoenix metro area, destination Apache
Junction for tomorrow night. Tuesday we’ll
push on past Globe to the Apache Gold Casino Resort. Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of triple-digit temperatures, the rest of the week only in the mid 90's in the Phoenix area - wahoo!
Our thanks to the people who were going to host us tonight
in Scottsdale – Steve and Jan; and Monday night in Superior – Charles & Mari.
Total miles today:
30.78
Time: 1:41
Avg mph: 18.29
Today’s rating: 2
(would’ve been a 1 without the bent rim)
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