January 14, 2025
Resetting the tour
Time for a reset - agreed? We’ve finally made it to Tucson, and we’re in a state far better than either of us dared hope for three weeks ago. It’s time to wrestle the journal away from a saga of loss and recovery and back to something more typical of what you expect to find in a journal on a bicycling website. For Team Anderson, that means you can expect a blend of bicycling, hiking, photography, birding, and more lame jokes from an offbeat sense of humor that even Rachael still struggles with after all this time. No alcohol though - no more IPA and wine shots as long as I’m on prednisone, which looks likely to be the case for a good long time. And less chaos, definitely. Let’s see if we can’t ratchet down our good story days to something like our historic average of one every month or so rather than almost every othe other day. We’re exhaused by them, and some of you likely are too.
And we’re beginning today because we’re lucky to have full sun in the day’s forecast, as is the expectation for the next two weeks straight. Every day looks clear, but with variations in temperature or wind speed and direction.
Take this morning for example, when we’re shocked to find that it’s a frigid 27F outside. That constrains the day because we’re definitely not going outside until considerable warming has occurred. While we wait though we form a plan for the day: in the morning I’ll get the bikes assembled and ready to ride, at least to the extent that we can ride them down to Fair Wheel Bikes so Rachael can get an assessment on her Bike Friday and get it in the queue for a complete overhaul. After that we plan to move on to a late lunch at Locale, the Italian restaurant we shared dinner at with Kelly and Jacinto last winter.
Bike reassembly is straightforward and I’m done by mid morning. By this time I has warmed to 45, enough so that I imagine the birds are stirring. I decide it’s a good time to grab the Canon and check out what’s on at our neighbor’s bird feeder. Twenty minutes later I’m back in the apartment and adding four new birds to our log for the year, including a lifer.
Some of you might remember that when I declared an early start to the 2025 bird count I was very discouraged and unsure birding would even be happening this year, discouraged enough that I set a low bar at fifty birds for the year. Well, I just hit that today and it’s only mid-January and I’m much more optimistic. With the new Canon, suddenly 350 species sounds like a pretty reasonable stretch goal.
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By noon we’re ready to head out. Rachael goes first, and I come along with my bike after putting our one key in the lockbox so either of us can get inside if we’ve split up and don’t return together. When I go out in the street though I find Rachael staring at a disturbed figure about two blocks to the west as it lurches side to side, ossasionally shouting to the wind. Fortunately he’s going further away and it’s fortunate when we leave that we’re traveling in the opposite direction.
Seeing this though reminds me that I forgot to lock the door, which seems unwise under the circumstances. Unfortunately I can’t open rhe lock so I ask Rachael to come and give it a try. She does, but without success either. So we call our host and explain our problem - we really can’t leave the place unattended if it’s unlocked. She tells us that sometimes it just gets stuck and needs a forceful shove - which I do successfully with a small screwdriver from the tool bag. about now though we realize we left both bikes outside on the sidewalk leaning against the fence with a big Take Me sign on them. Fortunately no one does, and by not long past noon we’re finally on the road to the bike shop.
(Note: the section below about the trip to the bike store is accurate but misplaced. It actually happened the next day, not this one. We were so late getting started that we decided the bike store wouldn’t fit and just biked straight to Locale for dinner, Oops. That’s the problem with getting behind by a few days.)
Its only a mile and a half to Fair Wheel, but it’s a slow ride getting there because I almost immediately realize I’ve got a problem with my break - squeak, squeak, squeak, it gets worse and louder as we go so by the end I’m traveling maybe seven or eight mph and making a public nuisance of myself. I assume it’s a bent rotor, something Rachael worried about when we carried the front wheels separately in a plastic bag. It’s not that though, it’s my rear one. So my rear brake gets added to the ask list when we get to Fair Wheel Bikes.
We get waved back to the service department when we roll out bikes in the door. I go first, in the hopes that mine can be repaired today in time for us to still ride to lunch when we leave here. A mechanic immediately grabs it away and returns five minutes later. The rotor is fine, the problem is that the rear rack is jammed up against the control knob and freezing it stuck. He threw a wider spacer in to give clearance, and I’m good to ride.
In the meantime, the lead mechanic is assessing Rachael’s bike. It’s obvious a complete new drive train - chain rings, sprocket and chain - is part of the deal, but there is also discussion about Rachael’s hand issue and a possible conversion to a flat ergo bar.
While that goes on I canvass the shop looking for items on my list: a pedal spanner, to replace the one presumably left behind in Barcelona; A cable lock, because that probably got left behind too; a new multitool, because mine definitely got left behind when I forgot I had it with me and security confiscated it because it included a small knife blade; a mirror, so I can put one on my blind side; a pair of bike socks, because those have all gone missing in a laundry or packing accident so I’ve been wearing one pair of socks everywhere for nearly a month - something our friends here in Tucson might sniff their noses at when we meet up with them; and finally a replacement for the tiny bolt that’s needed to attach the mount for my Varia light so I can track overtaking traffic coming from behind.
While this is going on, Rachael takes the opportunity to take a flat-barred bike for a spin in the parking lot, returning with the conclusion that she likes neither the flat bars nor the integrated brake and shifters. So the handlebar decision gets dropped from today’s plan and her bike goes on the list for an appointment once the chainrings they’ll have to order arrive. Two to three weeks is their estimate.
I’ve done well and found four out of my six items. There’s no mirror that works for me and they don’t have a bucket of tiny screws, which I didn’t expect anyway. That will wait for a trip to REI, which sells Garmin mounts. At the counter though there’s a moment of panic when I find I’m missing my wallet. I’m certain I pulled it out of my pannier here in the store, but ten minutes of searching and researching every place where I might have absentmindedly set it down or dropped it from my pocket turns up empty. Terrible. The staff take our name and number so they can call if it shows up, but the fear is that somehow someone entered the store, saw it, and slipped out again in the twenty minutes we’ve been here.
So obviously lunch at Locale is out because once Rachael purchases our items we’re heading home immediately in the hope that I’m wrong and I never brought it with me, or to call the bank and start cancelling another batch of cards.
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I see it on the table the instant I enter the door, and immediately call Fair Wheel to let them know the good news. And then I remembered what happened. It was here I pulled the wallet out of my pannier, not at the bike store. And it wasn’t pulled out in readiness for paying for my purchases, but at home when I was rummaging for my multitool, which I’d forgotten had gotten confiscated in Barcelona.
So lunch is still in the cards and we immediately leave again, biking east through the University campus and continuing east on the University Bike Boulevsrd until we come to Alvernon Way.
Navigation is easy up until now, because it’s a straight shot. From here though we turn south on Alvernon for about a mile until coming to the turnoff to Locale. And here there’s a problem because we’re riding the route we loaded in reverse, and the Garmin is pretty much useless in this situation because it keeps trying to navigate you back to the route that’s been loaded.
We stop several times while Rachael tries to figure out where the turn is but can’t. Each time we stop I reach back for her to hand me her device so I can study it, because I haven’t mounted my own device yet and I’m more adept with maps than she is.
But we get there and enjoy an excellent lunch sitting outside in the sun with three eyes on the bikes parked nearby, enjoying a split arugula salad, their great bread, and grilled salmon. I’m sure we’ll be back more than once before we head north in March.
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It’s nearing sundown when we leave - next time we’ll need to allow more time, because suddenly it’s starting to cool down quickly and as usual I didn’t bring another layer. As we’re packing up though there’s a problem - I can’t find my glasses. Five or ten minutes of the remaining daylight gets wasted in a fruitless search before we finally give up. They must have gotten set down or fallen off my head in one of those Garmin checks in that last mile. it’s no big loss though because those glasses were crap anyway - scarred when I stepped on them in California, and inappropriate to my new needs. .
The sun is just setting when we cross Campbell and enter the university campus. I immediately pull off through a curb cut onto the sidewalk so I can stop for a photo of the Tucson Mountains and the sunset, but get hard-stopped instantly when I ram into a curb I didn’t see because of the vision thing. My chest rams hard into the protruding stem of my handlebars, bruising and potentially cracking a rib in my lower right rib cage. It hurts like hell, but the good news is that I hit the curb straight on, stop immediately, but don’t fall.
As long as the damage is done and I’m stopped here anyway I may as well shoot through the tears and take the shot I came here for and one of the artwork ahead too, in the process taking an accidental selfie.
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But that’s it for the drama and trauma. There’s one more photo stop, but other than that we make it home before dark and I start in with the ibuprofen diet that’s the recommended treatment whether I’ve broken a rib or not.
Later in the evening our host Yasmin stops by to introduce herself and drop off a second set of keys so we won’t need to rely on the lockbox. She’s very agreeable, and after we have a nice chat she offers to hold our suitcases for the next seven weeks so they don’t tie up space here.
Today's ride: 10 miles (16 km)
Total: 31 miles (50 km)
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1 day ago
One thing I haven’t brought up is the role of the prednisone in all this. I’m suddenly prone to distraction and losing the thread. I think that what I’ve views as euphoria might partly be the prednisone talking. There some learning about the new me going on here, but we’re doing better than all this seems.
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Okay..enough of the “story-no-bike” stories! I WILL be riding in the Netherlands for 4 weeks in May!
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