Back in T-town

It’s good to be back in Tucson. For all my wandering, I miss the place, I miss being home.

(Easy to say now that the mercury is done topping 100 degrees.)

I miss the fiery sunsets and all the rides from home. The Corsica is tired and needs to rest.

Whaaaaaa? They paved lower Redington Road? I don’t think they consulted the AZT 300 race director…

Matthew Lee spent a number of days at our house, on both ends of his trip to Silver City for the Ride the Divide showing. It was the first time we’ve been in the same room together… ever. We’ve met on trail, during bikepacking races, but despite thousands of emails and hundreds of phone calls over the years, we’ve never sat down together.

It was good timing, because we were getting ready to track our biggest race yet — the Harvest Moon Regatta where we had 125 SPOTs in action. Yep, SPOT event tracking is taking off, and we may soon be able claim that our work pays more than sub-poverty level wages. (We’ve always been able to claim that it’s fun stuff, which is more important).

Of course we sampled some Tucson singletrack, despite both of us being worn down from the Coconino Loop. Matt requested we ride some of the AZT 300/750 route (his priorities are straight) and I was happy to oblige with a Redington-Chiva-AZT-Milagrosa loop. Though I’ve been in and out of Tucson for the last six months, I’ve almost always been in recovery mode whenever I’m here. So I feel like there are so many trails, trails that I love, that I haven’t ridden in ages.

Poor little guy, reaching for his/her last step, which happened to be along the AZT.

Matt is most well known for his undying enthusiasm for and domination of divide racing. So much so that people often ask me if he’s just a dirt roadie. Does the divide’s poet laureate have any mountain bike skill?

Answer: yes.

He may not have cleaned the waterfall, but he did nail just about everything else — on a 20 pound hard tail racer. Probably the best first run on Milagrosa I’ve seen anyone roll.

We added a new “bike” to our stable — a used trike I picked up at Ajo bikes. I managed to rig up one of our junker bikes to trail behind it so I could ‘surprise’ her at practice with it and still be able to ride home myself. She was more than a little excited to be able to ride home instead of taking yet another car ride. It is great to see her really on the move again. She will still be on crutches a while yet, but is definitely making progress on the recovery road.