Return

Sweet(water) flowers. The Behemoth rides again.

There’s a prize for finding three crested Saguaros in the preserve. This is #1.

Damn wilderness boundaries.

At last, a return to technical riding.

Up Gnats, over to Milagrosa, up to the AZT, then turn around and float down Milagrosa.

The return was not ignominious. I cracked a serious piece of the climbing puzzle–the above (pic) section from switchback to switchback finally fell, after a cumulative 40+ attempts.

It might have been the shiny titanium 36 tooth cog. An honest-to-goodness granny gear the Behemoth now has. And the chain only slipped twice, both times under heavy load.

But new toys have a way of making you try harder, so I’d just as easily chalk it up to that. Or perhaps it was the starvation from “challenge” in my riding. One thing is certain–I needed the 36 tooth on the opening grunts of Gnats. Oxygen was not being delivered to my lungs, and I was seeing stars. I used my inhaler for the first time this year. Wildflowers come at a price–allergies.

Lotsa dreaming lately–GET and AZT, to be detailed in a forthcoming post. Tomorrow morning we’ll be doing battle with the evil whitethorn acacia on the AZT in the Rincon Valley.