Back to December

Many blogs are dead these days, but mine is not one of them. As of… right now.

I think it was mostly a case of over-sharing. The CDT was a long trip, and one we documented well. I took thousands of pictures and wrote tens of thousands of words. And I enjoyed just about every minute of the documentation, and would do it again. But four months is a long time to be sharing and sharing. In the effort to re-balance things, I haven’t felt much like sharing adventures, and have really enjoyed getting out and leaving the camera at home.

Still, this blog is something like 12 years old, and I always knew it would feel right to come back.

And I still can’t resist pulling the camera out in some places and in some instances. Like when J-bake gives Chad a run for his money in the grimace department.

I don’t know, I think Chad still wins.

J-bake nails a new drop.

All I could do is visualize. Come on brain, snap out of tour mode. My brain would tell me “no”, “no”, we don’t ride this kind of thing. YES, yes we do!

No grimace. We fell far short of our winterly quota of techy taco rides. Looking at these pictures now makes me want to get back out there for at least one more before leaving the desert for the summer.

Buckwheat chewin’ ridin’ fool.

Nailed it? I love it that it’s been so long that I can’t remember if he (or I?) made it up that one. Guess we’ll just have to go back…

I deeply trained my brain to match a pattern very similar to this… scanning trees and signposts for the pattern C^D (for CDT). I have no idea what these pavement markings mean, nor have I ever noticed them before. But they would fire a match and grab my attention before I could even process that it was a false positive. And that I’m no longer lost on the CDT.

I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising that a 4-month thru-hike would take months to process and learn from. I honestly still think I am processing it, some 7 months later. Re-adjusting attitudes towards it… how hard was it? What did it mean? Was it a completely good experience? Would I wholeheartedly recommend it to others (YES).

Chad leading Iditarod champs Jeff Oatley and Heather Best into the Tortolitas, to ride a little Ridgeline.

J-bake going for a boulder I look at every time I ride by, but have never made it successfully over.

Another sublime evening in the Tucson Mountains, with trails so rocky and ridiculous that few ever ride, or hike, them.

Freibert rolls a steep I haven’t seen anyone attempt before. What you can’t see is you have to make a hard left immediately on exit. There is no run-out.

We’d see this guy several times on the trails behind Pima, our “commuter” trails out to Starr Pass.

I’d see this cutie all over the trails. Even when we were doing our own rides, seems like we’d end up bumping into each other. Lucky me.

Ah, the ride we showed up for that turned out to be a race. It was a good crew of riders, led here by Schilling and JeffZ. We just didn’t know they were semi-time trialing it, leaving us off the back and scratching our heads with our cameras in our hands. Lesson: read the ride description before showing up for a ride.

Still, a beautiful day in one of my favorite places.

The Gila Canyons! I just wasn’t fast enough to get anyone in that shot.

Just like the previous December when the gypsies passed through Tucson and stayed with us, we had an off-road tourist on his own big trip — this one more than 4 months. I think Mr. Pauker is doing some processing while on the bike, and it was a pleasure to meet him and see him on his way through Starr Pass, heading for the Camino Diablo and Baja.

We spent the remainder of December with Eszter’s family in Colorado, then it was time to wrap up 2014 with a fatbike trip to Mexico with Chadly. More catchup to come. Thanks for checking in after a few months.