March 20, 2014
Day 75: Tucson: It's come to This
Somehow we have managed to transport ourselves and our mountain of gear over 4000 km from Key West, Florida to cousin Ronni's floor in Tucson, Arizona. It's not the longest distance we have done, by far. But certainly it has been the toughest. We ask ourselves why that might be. On the one hand, this is acknowledged through the South as having been one of the toughest winters in a long time.So that added some rain and a lot of cold to the mix. But rain and cold are not really what made this tough for us. The main factors (not really in order and not in every section of the ride) were:
No shoulder roads, traffic, and dominance of the car over everything
Long distances between services
Hills and wind
Lack of organized campgrounds for tents
Lack of spots for wild camps
Poor food
Aggressive uncontrolled dogs
Lack of bike shops or real camping/outdoor shops
Counterbalancing these seven factors were some positive, related things:
A good number of large roads with good shoulders
Many churches in the East, which are good prospects for a camping spot or a chance to be inside at night.
Many motels, which offer indoor accommodation if you have the budget for it
Picnic spots, shown on map of Texas, where wild camping is possible
Mexican restaurants
Quite aside from how tough it was to cover the distance, or not, is the interest and attractiveness of the route.
On the negative side, you have:
Long distances with nothing much to see
Industrial, slum, or degraded landscapes
American standard McDonalds, Walmart, Home Depot type areas
However, there also was:
Beautiful ocean and beach areas
Palm trees, pine trees, mesquite trees, and more
Desert plants, mountains, geology
New Orleans
Mississippi River
Florida cycle paths
And finally, chance to lose weight and gain strength through pain!
So what does it boil down to. Would we go again? No. Was it worth it to go once? Steve says yes. Dodie says no.
We wonder what others who have done the route would say. We think that most are younger and stronger than us, so they would probably just have enjoyed the challenge. Maybe some of our age are also less wimpy. Certainly 70+ year old Henk, from Friesland, who we met the other day, is in that category. But for others, this would be somewhere between no fun and a downright danger from exhaustion or exposure.
A Short Outing in Tucson
Dodie's main interest in Tucson was to go find more and more little things for grandkids, preferably typical of the area. So we launched a quick circuit of likely tourist trap places that might have such things.
One stop was a fairly extensive and sort of authentic Old West development, called Trail Dust Town. In the sort of authentic category were these wagons. We have all heard about them, but actually the big one was bigger than I had imagined.
Probably influenced by Jim from the Pecan House, we see that Steve was interested in becoming a cowboy. However, he did not figure that he would quickly become a wanted man!
We left Trail Dust Town and headed toward the Catalina Mountains in search of the next crazy stores. We did find some, but more notable (to me, anyway!) was a bakery - claiming to be a Danish Bakery! The people in the car were a little surprised that I insisted on checking it out. However, as readers of our blogs, they realized that it was inevitable. The bakery only had a few items that might be called Danish, but certainly the Kringle rings qualified. The prices were rather fabulous but still cheaper than a tickets to Copenhagen! Just for research purposes (now that we are not cycling daily, the purpose has to be research rather than cycling power!) I came out with the cheese danish. Not at all bad! (Say I - Dodie and Sophie both panned it).
Our next steps are firstly to remember how to get the bikes into their suitcases, so faithfully brought here for us from Key West by Fedex. Once we get them home, they will need to be totally stripped down, cleaned, have lots of parts replaced, and gotten ready for the plane ride to Montreal and then Paris.
The story of what parts got replaced, and the beginning of the coming 5000 km odyssey in France, Belgium, Germany, and Austria will be told in our next blog, called Grampies Go By the Books.
There has been really unprecedented interest in this current blog, and we hope you will continue to follow and encourage us for the next one. CLICK HERE to go to that blog, just to get in the habit. There is not much there right now, but there will be!
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