Christmas treats

December 17, 2023

Santa visited Team Anderson early this year, leaving us with a stocking stuffed with treats. The first one out of the sock was this beautiful blue, windless day.

The ride we’ve picked out is the one we planned yesterday until the weather turned unfavorable - a run out to the end of Tanque Verde Wash to see if there’s still any water rushing down in it from Mount Lemmon. Were taking a route I’ve been talking up to Rachael for awhile - east through the university and out the other on 3rd Avenue to Treat Street, and then north on Treat until it ends at Rillito Wash. Bike boulevards, light traffic and reasonably smooth road surfaces the whole way.

And just like you’d expect, Treat Street is a real treat. It’s particularly special today as we pass through Winterhaven, all dolled up for its Festival of Lights. We’d never heard of this event but it’s a big holiday season tradition here, now in its 74th year. We really should have taken more time biking through here and stopped for some photos.

Next out of the sock is the bright megamural lining about a hundred yards of Rillito Wash. We saw this last winter when it was still a work in progress and a work crew was developing the next section, so this is the first time we’ve seen the completed work. It’s a real delight, filled with colorful, cheerful desert critters - rabbits, rattlers, and rats, oh my!

The mesquites are shedding. Tucson is losing its autumn colors fast.

It’s been an excellent ride so far, but it turns epic when Rachael calls me from behind, so softly I’m surprised I heard her. She’s staring into a mesquite thicket, beckoning me her way and shushing me at the same time. Bobcats! A pair of them are slinking their way through the trees, too camouflaged to get a real shot of, but I anticipate them and hope for the best by moving ahead a few yards to a clearing and hoping they’ll keep coming and cross it. And they do, shuffling across the clearing almost too quickly for me to get a shot off.

So wonderful! I’ve seen bobcats here in Tucson twice before - once at Sweetwater and once at the side-channel into Rillito Wash at the end of Mountain Avenue - but they were well obscured and in the shadows both times, so this is the first really good look I’ve gotten. And it’s the first ever for Rachael. It makes the day, makes the week really.

That’s way more than we expected to pull out of our stocking this year, but there’s one last treat stuffed down so deep in the toe that we nearly overlooked it - Kelly! Rachael and I are standing by the railing at the end of Tanque Verde Wash wondering why there’s no water running through it and just planning to separate and go our own ways for the rest of our rides when I casually tell Rachael that maybe we should wait around until Kelly shows up. Assuming I’m joking as usual, she says no - she’s antsy to start riding again. No, I really think we should wait for Kelly, I say - and Rocky figures it out when she sees I’m aiming the camera up the path.

Colorful Kelly. Between her wardrobe choices and her ride she’s pretty easy to spot from a long ways off.

So that really is the end of it. We shake out the sock and invert it to make sure we haven’t missed something else, but this is really the last of the goodies. Pretty great haul though - Team Anderson must have been really good this year. Thanks, Santa!

The three of us chat for awhile until I finally take my leave. Eventually those two leave also, Rachael following Kelly for a ways to get a clip of her for the day’s video. By the time we both make it home Rachael’s gotten her 45 miles in and I’m at 33 after deliberately taking it easy today because I’m saving it up for tomorrow’s big ride when I’ll try to bike my age in miles again.

And we have our Christmas feast early too, since we’ll just be eating in tomorrow. There aren’t many restaurants that interest us open on Christmas Eve but Rachael finds a new one, an Italian place north of the wash up against the base of the mountains. The meal is excellent but the drive is too. The moon is nearly full and the Tucson Mountains are dramatic, sharply defined by the last colors of the sunset as we drop back down to the city after our meal.

Our Christmas feast: salmon for her, roasted chicken and polenta for me, Brussels sprouts for both.

Video sound track: All of My Life, by Classic Dream Orchestra

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