(Tues, 2/25/25; 58 miles, 1111 feet of climb)
Great day today! I’ve been planning for a long time the 62-mile ride from Gila Bend to Aunt Marjory’s house in Sun City Festival in the extreme northwest corner of the Phoenix metro area. The only question was whether to do it in one day or two (if I had to fight headwinds).
Well, the winds were very cooperative today. I did have some headwinds for the first half of the day, but they were very light, so it was okay. I also achieved my new trip PR for starting out: I was on the bike after having eaten breakfast by 7:30 am, only 25 minutes after sunrise.
Today was not the longest day at 58 miles, but it was the most time in the saddle of any day on this trip. But the hardest part is that there was only one stop the entire day. Fortunately, it happened to be at mile 30. The first half of the day was great, because it was still cool and I rode along a very smooth shoulder of Highway 85 from Gila Bend to Buckeye.
At the Shell station in Buckeye, the one stop of the day, I was happy to find a shaded side of the building. And to top it off: Stone tables to sit at! So I took my sweet time there, charging all my devices with my USB brick, and eating a gourmet lunch of Chex mix, trail mix, peanuts, and a Clif bar.
I was a little nervous leaving there, because now I had 30 miles of complete uninterrupted desert. And it was starting to get hot (peaking at 88° in the shade). Just in time, however, the wind shifted and I actually had a bit of a tailwind now!
I broke up the day by getting some drone shots of cactuses while I was riding by. I am finally starting to see the saguaro cactuses like you see in cartoons.
I was able to make it to aunt Marjory‘s house by 4:30 pm. I should explain that Marjory is actually my wife’s aunt (Beth’s mother sister), but since I’ve been married to Beth almost 42 years, Marjory seems like my aunt. And I’ve always loved spending time with her. She’s the one who first taught us how to make strawberry freezer jam back in the 1980s.
But it gets better. Years after Marjory‘s husband Arlen died, she remarried at the age of 80. In fact, I was the wedding photographer! The man she married, Chuck Hey, was the father of guy I sang with in men’s chorus at the University of Minnesota (before I met Beth) and who was a childhood friend of hers in Jasper, Minnesota.
But wait, there’s more! Chuck’s mother, Gladys Hey, was Beth’s fourth grade teacher in Jasper. She was a legendary teacher for decades. And Chuck’s brother Marvin was there tonight for dinner. I heard lots of great stories about the small town of Jasper. Maybe my favorite was that when Gladys was finally persuaded to go into assisted living — in the old converted school building — it was only because she was guaranteed to get her very own fourth grade classroom back to live in.
Maybe by the time I need assisted living, I can go back into my old office at Cray Research.
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TRANSLATIONS/BACKGROUND: “CANTBIRD” = CA-AZ-NM-TX Bike Ride, my own nickname for the 1000 miles on the western half of the Southern Tier Bicycle Route, using maps from ACA (Adventure Cycling Association). (I did the 1500-mile eastern half in March 2024, which I called GUMBIRD [Gulf of Mexico Bike Ride].)
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LINKS:
Old-fashioned BLOG if you have friends who don’t use Facebook:
“Old Scouter” Facebook page if you want to follow big adventures with more pictures and video clips (but not unrelated personal posts):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066334039590
“Old Scouter” YouTube page (when I get time to edit after the trip):