Another Update --- Roswell, NM

Tempe (Day Off)
Tempe is our final day off before a 7 day stretch of straight riding, our longest such stretch so far. We woke up late as usual on our days off. We rode over that morning to TCU, a large center for people with disabilities and had a fantastic Ice Cream social-type event. In my opinion, TCU is the model for such a center as it is almost completely self sustaining. They have two businesses, one that sorts rags for distribution to restaurant kitchens and another that is one of the 3 largest shredding companies in all of Arizona. Both of these businesses are run almost exclusively by those with disabilities. These businesses offer great protection to TCU in the event that their government funding is reduced. After the friendship visit, we were free for the afternoon and night. After a trip to borders for internet and some books to read in the down-time, we headed to Tempe Lake for the fireworks. Despite the poor and laughable background song choices, the fireworks were fantastic and I plan to post some of my pictures very soon. We left the fireworks around 10:30 pm and were eager to get whatever sleep we could before the beginning of our week long break-less stretch of biking.

Tempe to Globe
Tempe to Globe offered a very hilly 75 miles, which by now, we are completely used to. What we are not used to is coming up to a sign of a truck going downhill with a 6% grade followed by about 10 miles of the steepest uphill of the route. I had even taken a ‘thumbs-up’ picture at that very sign thinking the worst lied behind us. Well, after navigating the bit of hills we came to the town of Globe. As has been the trend so far, lodging is almost always located on the top of a hill. This particular day involved climbing about 500 feet in elevation over ¼ to ½ of a mile. What a way to finish the day. On top of this finish, instead of staying in the high school down the road which resembled a roman-era palace, we stayed in the weight room of the middle school which was expectedly cramped. That night, we had a laid back dinner with the local Lions which was great. We also team meeting in which a man in plain sight across the football field was attempting to climb a jagged rock face instead of walking around to take the road. You see something new every day…

Globe to Lakeside, AZ
The journey from Globe to Lakeside was an epic one. It began with some moderately sized hills, nothing the team hadn’t seen before. The wind and road surface were a bit of a problem for the beginning (yes the road surface does affect riding in a huge way!). After about the 40 miles of this familiar ride, we began an about 10 mile switch backing decent into the middle of Salt River canyon. To our dismay, we had to ride out of the canyon on the other side. The descent of about 2500 feet in altitude took about 20 minutes, while the ascent took close to 3 hours. These 3 hours were traveled at a pace of about 5 miles per hour with frequent stops at overlooks for pictures. After a grueling day, we arrived at Lakeside Episcopal Church, our lodging for the night. Shortly after our arrival, people began to show up for our sponsored dinner. We also performed a KOB for the generally older crowd there (60+) for a reason that we are still lost on. Despite the generationally different audience, the KOB went extraordinarily well, being one of the funniest we have had so far. We got a chance then to talk with the individuals who cooked our dinner. The highlight of this interaction was an individual named ‘Purple’. Purple was a man in his 60’s with a beard that took him “at least 20 years” to grow. Imagine. After talking with him for a while, he began to enlighten us with his 5 Pillar hypothesis. Of course he never called it anything so formal, but I wanted to name these crazy ideas for clarification. The hypothesis was based upon 5 geographical safe-zones that during the end of the world would rise up 5 miles into the sky and form the base for the 1500 mile kingdom of god that was to be created. Of course, one of these 5 zones was located conveniently in the area of Lakeside, AZ. I really believe that there will never be a day on this trip where I don’t see something new…

Lakeside to Zuni, NM
Lakeside to Zuni was another one of those 100 mile days, but this one went by very fast due to favorable winds and rolling hills that were reasonably easy to conquer. Still, no 100 mile day is easy, you are covering a large amount of a distance (think of how long it takes to drive 100 miles in a car). The ride was interesting, but nothing is notable enough to make special mention of other than the crossing of the New Mexico border. Soon, we arrived in Zuni which is a small town on an Indian reservation which had 2 gas stations, a middle school and not much else. We unloaded our stuff and waited for dinner to arrive. We were being sponsored by an individual who we did not know and did not meet. Dinner was 9 pizzas, all fully loaded with veggie toppings…..logical. Being 30 fraternity guys with super-elevated metabolisms, our Project Manager quickly ordered 5 more pizzas. Upon arrival, he learned that the cheese pizzas were $15 each. It seems there is no other restaurant in the area so I guess that price has been working for them. No friendship visit or interaction with sponsors in Zuni, just a solid night’s sleep.

Zuni, NM to Grants
I decided to rest my knee for the ride from Zuni to Grants, NM due to a tightening feeling in the muscle directly over my kneecap. The ride seemed like a relatively average day, despite the crossing of the continental divide (all water flows west to the left and east to the right). We stayed at the Grants community center that night. We had dinner with the Kiwanis Club of Grants which provided another fantastic recuperative meal for us. The community center was great to stay at, but we are looking forward to staying at the Albuquerque Marriot tomorrow.

Grants to Albuquerque, NM
The bike ride from Grants to Albuquerque was just about as good as it gets: short, relatively flat, and interesting. We woke up at a rather late 6am (as you can tell by now, we usually wake up before sunrise) and departed around 7. We traveled the very lightly trafficked, but scenic Route 66 for most of the ride. As we approached the mid-way point for the ride, we had a great downhill that took us into a beautiful canyon. It was here that my pace line took advantage of the opportunity to take pictures lying in the middle of the road by the ‘Route 66’ markers (again, almost no cars). At about mile 40, we had to rack up the bikes to travel about 20 miles on the freeway due to the lack of alternate routes into the city. We unracked the bikes about 15 miles from our destination, the Albuquerque Marriot. The team was wholly ecstatic to be saying at a hotel once again (our last was in Napa). Free Internet, comfortable beds, a jacuzzi, and a city to explore: What more could we hope for? The 15 miles through the city went by at a blistering pace as we were anxious for some free time. After arriving, we had a crew chief lunch (2 slices of lunch meat, 1 slice of cheese, and some tortilla chips) and then were free for about 2 hours. Most people used this time to go online, but some checked out the local mall while others just napped. At about 4 we departed for a local park for our friendship visit. Upon arrival, we had the opportunity to rock climb, which both the friends and team members loved. The highlight of this part of the visit was seeing team members help Ivan and Christie, two friends, participate in the rock climbing despite their disabilities that many would assume prevented them from participating in this activity. Ivan was a talkative boy who was confined to a wheelchair after a surgery. He absolutely loved talking about weapons and definitely kept us entertained. Christie is currently attending the University of Alabama on a partial scholarship to play on their wheelchair basketball team. We then had a fantastic BBQ dinner and some time to interact more closely with those we had come to visit. The second part of the visit took us to a local fishing pond, where we stayed until sunset feeding ducks and fishing with a smaller segment of the friends. This was definitely the perfect JOH day: a fun bike ride with great scenery, fantastic lodging for the night, and a top-notch friendship visit.

Albuquerque to Socorro, NM
Leaving Albuquerque for Socorro was rough as we knew there was no hotel for us, most likely no internet, and far far fewer signs of civilization. We biked a remarkably fast 55 miles (tailwind and flat roads) but then were racked due to the lack of a secondary highway and the threat of thunderstorms looming in our path. We racked up to a friendship visit that we were looking forward to for at least a week. At our last team meeting, our project manager Ezra noted that in Socorro, the organizer had commented that in the previous year of JOH she did not see much involvement and that she really wanted to see more enthusiasm from us. So we pregamed the visit with energy drinks and definitely got psyched up for the visit. This was one of our best visits so far; we had a great dinner, held a KOB puppet show, had a bike decorating contest, and met a lot of fantastic friends. For my bike decorating, Gabriel and I rocked the USA theme and I’ll try to upload some pictures soon. I was even able to ride my bike the next day until the morning rain peeled off the streamer that we had wrapped the bike in. This was a fantastic day, despite the second straight day of prematurely ending the bike ride.