Nancy and I departed for the mountains Friday afternoon and got camp set up in a nice little spot that John recommended. The weather was perfect - especially compared to the heat down in the valley.
Enjoying the gorgeous weather
While we were unloading I noticed that my helmet was broken. The plastic piece that holds the adjuster had cracked so the helmet would not stay on my head. Fortunately, I had added superglue to my repair kit in the last month or so. A little glue and it was good as (or better than) new. Crisis averted.
John arrived an hour or so later and set up his stuff. All that was left was to cook the salmon, rice, and veggies that master chef Nancy had prepared. Dinner was great!
We sat around talking until about 10pm - an excellent way to spend a Friday night. Due to this being the week after Memorial day, almost no one else was up there camping - perfect.
Saturday morning came and was somewhat warmer than we expected, but still nice and cool. We started the day out right with scrambled eggs (mixed with leftover salmon and veggies from dinner) and blueberry banana pancakes. Once again, it was Nancy's idea and execution that made a superb breakfast.
There are definite advantages to car camping
Once breakfast was done we headed out for our ride - around 6:30. It turns out that Ray Hemmele came by, but missed us by about 5 minutes.
The first real business on this ride was the climb up Elden via the dirt road. A long slog that made us feel the elevation (7200-9000 feet) right away.
John doesn't appear to be suffering - but I'm pretty sure he was
Nancy took off on the climb (as usual) and quickly left John and I behind. He and I leapfrogged each other pretty much all the way to the top of Sunset. Nancy wasn't there, but I assumed she had just headed down the trail already. When I told her we were going to the top of the mountain, I meant the top where Sunset is. She thought I meant the top of the mountain. So, she had continued up the road toward the radio towers. At about a mile past Sunset she stopped and took some pictures and waited for us.
In the mean time John and I had headed down sunset and cruised through Hobbit Forest.
Ahhh, the aspen
A little bit of fun tech
At this point I noticed that my tire was soft. I had pumped it up once earlier, so figured it was a slow leak. I hadn't put Stan's in our tires since the azt300 - so they were dry. I took out my spare bottle of stans and put it all in the rear tire. I figured it was unlikely that I'd also have a problem with the front and need it for that too - that would just be too unlucky.
A bit further down the trail, we ran into Ray, who had come up the other way. Chatted for a minute, but I was beginning to wonder why we hadn't caught Nancy. Cell phone had a signal so I called her. Got the story of her overshooting Sunset. However, it turns out she had gone back down the road about a mile BELOW sunset and gotten a flat. She was fixing that when I called. I recommended going the rest of the way down, coming up Schultz and meeting us up at the top of Schultz.
Ray, John and I motored on. We were having fun blasting down off the mountain when I heard that awful sound of air spewing out of the front tire. Stopped, got stans to seal it (or so I thought) and started again. Pssssss. Stopped, Spun the tire around and sealed it again. After 4 of these attempts I figured it was time for a tube. Told John to head down and I'd meet them all at the top of Schultz. After pulling a bunch of large thorns out of the front tire and installing the old slime tube I pumped up the tire. Psssssssss. There were so many thorns in this tire, that I'm certain I missed some. Pumped it up in hopes the slime would seal (how old is that tube?), but no luck. Called Nancy. She had decided to climb back up Elden instead of going to Schultz and was headed down Sunset. I told her I was done for the day and was walking back. As a wise philosopher once said: "You got to know when to hold up and know when to fold up".
Called Ray and John and told them to go on without us.
Nancy and I eventually made it back to the car and packed everything up. On the way back south we found out that John had also abandoned his ride as well. Ray was just along for part of the ride so he headed back into Flagstaff to meet his wife and daughter.
So, the weekend was an unlikely confluence of issues (broken helmet and issues with 3 out of 4 of our tires). Not to mention that I was really in no shape to do a ride like that at elevation. So was it a fail? Not really. We had a great time camping and the ride was a lot of fun while it lasted. Also, the weather was fantastic - a great respite from the heat back home. I'm happy to have all my bad luck on a ride that wasn't really important for us to finish so that we could be problem free on bigger stuff like the azt300 and (hopefully) on the Flagstaff to Grand Canyon bikepacking trip in a couple of weeks.
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