My New Favorite Place...!

It seems like everytime we ride at a new place it becomes "my new favorite place" to ride. Last weekend was no exception. The Brothers Keller called and invited us riding at one of their favorite places to ride in phoenix. It is called 'hawes", though I don't really know why (it is not really near "hawes" road). It was described as technical in places, but not really too hard, even the youngest Keller brother was going (Ezra is only about 11). I figured why not?, and called Brandon and off we went.

It started out really poorly for me as I fell over, unable to unclip in time, right in the parking lot before we even started to ride. I decided it was just good warm up, even if a little embarassing. I am still getting used to riding in clip ins and don't have the left foot extraction down quite yet - right foot is great, but i fell to the left, oops.

You have to cross a potentially busy road to start the trail, so, carefully, we embarked. Zac, Eric and Brandon immediately outdistanced the rest of us and we didn't see them again for a while. Ezra was doing great riding along with his dad, and Eric's dad Chris and I rode together for a while.

Ezra Shows Great Potential!

The trail is a great single track through the desert. Some cactus made me nervous in places (Brandon had to extract some from his fingers at one point), but the area is beautiful. after climbing up a ways, the trail splits a couple of different directions. I was just following along for the ride and soon found myself a little nervous. Part of the trail (Ian called it the "switchbacks" were very rocky and steep. Visions of the youtube video of the guy careening down the mountainside came to mind, but slow careful going turned fear into fun. We made it and I fell in love with the area. I think more time in the saddle would really help my confidence and ability on the rocky technical stuff.

Here is some video of the trail....

Brandon finally got his new helmet and wore it. He likes the full face type since he likes to ride very fast. It also keeps his ears warm in the winter, but I think it will be hot in the summer. Anyway, he looks cool and safe as he speeds past me!

Hawes is definitely on my favorits list, and I hope to be back regularly. If only I didn't have to work all week!

Get out! Get on! and Get riding!
CycleFreak!

LIfe Goes On...

Havn't blogged in a while, but that doesn't mean we havn't been riding. We have been trying to find a good trail for Lonna to learn gears without having to worry about crashing, and we finally found what turned out to be th e best trail for that purpose in the state of Arizona! It is the Rim Vista trail off of sr260 on the Mogillon Rim above Payson.

We arranged a Friday off work and headed out Thurs. evening looking for a great ride. I don't know what steered us toward Payson... yes I do! The romantic "Majestic Mountain Inn" in Payson was our destination for the night, with a plan to ride on Friday somewhere. The inn has rooms, they call them "luxury rooms", that have a jaccuzzi right in the room! We reserved one and had a great evening.

Friday morning we had breakfast at a cool cafe and headed for the rim. Not exactly sure where we were going, we opened our minds to "explorer mode" and ended up at the rim trail. The area isn't heavily used during the winter since its 6k feet elevation or so, and we had the place to ourselves. It's not often that you really feel alone in a national forest, but we did that day. Entering the parking/lookout for the military sinkhole just off the rim road toward Woods Canyon Lake, we unloaded and started riding.

The first short part of the trail is not paved and was a bit of a challenge for us. You are litterally riding right on the edge of the rim and really could ride off if you lost control. Once the paved part started it was great. It's basically a paved bike path for several miles in the middle of the forest! (check out the short video above). We rode all the way to the lake and only saw 3 other people the whole time. The terrain offers great practice for gear selection and Lonna made great strides, and boosted her confidence. Whoo! Hoo!

Here are some more pix from the ride....Days like these make it all worthwhile!

ON the racing front, Zac raced in the "Dawn to Dusk" race at Mcdowell mtn park this weekend and did great. Placed 4th in his first attempt. I personnally think its an insane race - 15.5 mile loop, all day, whomever does the most/fastes laps wins. Zac rode in 2 man team and they each rode 4 laps (thats 62 miles cross country mtn bike in one day!). I really gotta hand it to them for there perserverance.

In other news, Devins school (Saguaro High) won the state 4a football championship saturday. WE rode the bikes down to ASU to watch the game (but really just to watch Devin march in the Band at halftime). We can ride all the way to ASU from our house (about 10 or 11 miles one way) and only have to negotiate 2 traffic lights! I do love the greenbelt idea. Devin looked great marching, and the band performed well. The final score was 38-0, but any astute observer could see from the first few plays that Saguaro was gonna win. They played great.

Will get out more this month while the weather is so great, and I hope you all do as well!

Get out, Get on, and Get Riding!

CycleFreak!