Day 41 - Rest day Globe, Arizona

Given that all the amenities we required were within the confines of the Super8 Motel we did not venture far from here. The day was spent infront of the tv, bike maintenance, laundry and thats about it. Ben B and Dave did, however, have another crack at the Chinese buffet while Ben S didn't want a repeat of the previous day & has a bit more interest in variation so hit the local Mexican restaurant. Dave became another casualty of the buffet and had a rather uncomfortable waddle back to the Motel where he had to have a lie down for about an hour before tacking the 'wobble' problem with his bike.

Tomorrow we depart for the Grand Canyon which will be roughly 5 days. We will be passing though Camp Verde, Sedona, Flagstaff and finally the Grand Canyon Village.

Day 40 - 127km - Thatcher to Globe

Well we are now 40 days into the trip & looking forward to a rest day tomorrow after a hard 5 days. For those of you who are the at-home geographers you will see that Globe, Arizona is a good way across the States. From our perspective it is pretty exciting to that we are now heading up rather than across (Grand Canyon here we come) - if we wanted to head for the coast from here it would be less than a week of riding. As we move north over the next few days (towards Flagstaff and then the south rim/grand canyon village) we will climb a shelf which runs diagonally across Arizona - which effectively will drop the temps by roughly 20-30 degrees F, giving us a chance to use the thermals & winter woolies we have lugged approximately 4000 kms to date! Will be down around zero degrees C at nights.

As for day 40 itself, we made an early start to beat the winds & to extend the amount of rest time we get in before the next haul. The 5:30am start actually felt like 6:30am as we had only put the watches back the day before. Was a reasonalby challenging 5 days riding with a lot of climbing & hot/dry/windy weather which slowly wears us down day by day. With humidity hovering around 10% it is hard to imagine how much the airs dries your mouth out while you are riding and as a result we have had to increase out water intake a lot. Most of the ride was in light winds and so we were able to average around 30kph for the ride and make good pace up the long gradual climbs coming into Globe.

Globe got its name from the silver discovery days in the 1800's - a large ball of silver was discovered early on which had what looked like an outline of the continents on it, so the miners named the camp at that time Globe after it. The name stuck as the camp grew into a town - the silver ran out early on but large copper deposits were found & mining continues on today. Earlier in the trip we were fascinated by the cotton farming/plantation etc history and current situation in the south. We were finally able to gain insight into the true situation of cotton farming in the states. Cotton sells for about 55c a pound, costs about 75c a pound to produce. Government subsidies of ~3 billion top up the average price to somewhere around 90c a pound.

Today marked the first time we saw the saguaro cactus (and we ended up seeing a whole lot). this is the cactus which most of you will picture first - the one which looks like it has arms held out & up. Although we have seen tonnes of other cactus - this is the first time we have seen this iconic plant. They are massive.

Yesterday we were able to use a set of scales we found at the RV park to finally get a weigh in of our bags. Each of us is carrying a good 50 pounds on our racks - more than we initially estimated! (in metric is about 23kg and includes the weight of the bags themselves)

The rest day will be gladly taken by Dave who is currently experiencing 'load' problems on his bike - at all speeds he is currently experiencing the wobbles from time to time - a scary experience for those who are around him let alone be experiencing!

On the ride today we also met our aquintance Max again who bumped into us while we were taking a quick break early on. He latched onto the train, however once again as we hit the hills he dropped back - given that we had risen early & were intent on beating the winds the boys were not in charity mode today and the train continued on, leaving him to continue the rest of the day on his own.

On arriving in Globe checked into the Super8 Motel and made a quick line for the local chinese buffet for a late lunch. Very impressive buffet, the highlight being the creme freeze machine with 3 different flavours. Usual buffet result of lots of pre-meal trash talk about strategy, followed by deviating heaviliy from that strategy and a very quiet afternoon!

Day 39 - 132km - Buckhorn to Thatcher

Ended up pushing on a bit further than planned today in order to make Globe (rest day) a day ahead of schedule. Not that there is much of a schedule, but we originally thought that it would take us a day more to get to Globe. The last 1/3 of the ride was into some knarly headwinds, luckily a good chunk of it was on a slight downhill, balancing out the grind ever so slightly.

Today marked the crossing into Arizona - our second to last state and our last time zone (as Arizona observe Pacific time during daylight savings rather than mountain time). The crossing of borders also allowed us to finally get a photo with the New Mexico welcome sign after the notable absence of one leaving Texas. It would have been disapointing if we had missed one after nailing some great poses at every other state we had crossed into! As if to make up for it, they had two big signs (100m apart) on this border crossing... After the border we had a really awesome descent out of the Apache Forest, steep switchback roads & breathtaking desert scenery. Dave is desending a lot more comfortably on his new conti' gatorskins! On the descent we could see 25kms across the valley floor was a long and steep road winding up almost as high as the pass we were currently descending. We all hoped that we wouldn't have to climb that sucker after lunch (but we did)!

At lunch today we met a lone touring cyclist by the name of Max. An interesting punter, he was in between degrees at uni/college and one of the things he was doing was cycling from New Orleans to Pheonix. Doing a trip like this is not our cup of tea, but as the saying goes - different floats for different boats. Most interesting about max was his bike - an old school mountain bike with road wheels, a flipped over 80's tri bar set up (difficult to explain), a straw hat & a yukelele sticking out the back. He rode with us the rest of the ride, and then continued on a bit further as he was a bit of a fan of dusk/night riding. In terms of the ride, there was a really solid uphill coming out of lunch & Ben B made the mistake of saying that we usually wait up the top for the last person. Being men of our word, we reached the top of the climb and waited over 15 minutes (yes, 15!) for Max to arrive - this also marked the first time Dave dropped anyone of a climb on the trip to date... Luckily it was only downhill and flat for the rest of the ride. We also discovered that he hasn't ridden much in groups as he was all over the show - enough for me to give away a great draft into the hedwind in order to stay 5-10 metres clear of him! However, he is a really nice guy.

Day 38 - 142km - Kingston (over Emory Pass) to Buckhorn

Got up in the morning and had a great breakfast (full credit to the Black Range Lodge) of homemade granola, fruits, yogurt (when in America spell like an American...) and Pete's freshly cooked orange bread which was magificent. Catherine gave us a good chunk to tuck into once we made it to the top of Emory Pass (the climb started right outside the door). For the record Dave awoke to one flat tire...

The big climb we were dreading turned out to be pretty good with a consistent gradient complemented by perfect riding conditions (clear, cool and calm). After conquering the summit we posed for some photos, took in the view and geared up for the cold descent.

Was a slow descent as Dave's thorn riddled back tyre was slowly deflating (not what you want on a high speed downhill). After a couple of stops to reinflate it was decided that it was time to pull out the spare tire in order to allow a bit of pace over the 30 miles left to Silver City where new tyres could be purchased. Once there the local bike shops did not have the Specialized Armadillos, but they had the Conti' gatorskins - which provide a more compliant ride but are not quite so extreme on the punture protection scale. Dave pretty much cried tears of happiness as he threw the two old tryes into the bin! Following this Dave downed a grand total of 6 pecan pinwheels following lunch - a good effort from the man who was quoted the day before as saying "I think I have lost my sweet tooth on this trip"...

Around the pass we saw the most touring cyclists we have seen on the whole trip. One lot we saw at the bottom of the Emory Pass descent - we asked them what the terrain was like from there to Silver City (they said, wrongly, flat/downhill with one climb), they asked us what the climb was like up to the top, to which I answered easy and gradual (totally wrong as we had been biffing down it at over 50kph) - never ever trust another persons read on the lie of the land, especially if they are in a car or moving in the opposite direction!

We got to Buckhorn at approx 7pm - after over ten hours on the road after flat tyres, tyre changes and so on (a great day for the development of the classic "farmer tan"). After dodging numerous tumbleweeds and battling along in the dry heat and head/side wind we were pretty toasted & rocked up to find the local store closed... luckily there was another one past the RV park - where we ordered two 14 inch pizzas & downed them in record time. While talking to the locals inbetween mouthfuls of pizza they said that they are currently in a drought and are not expecting any rain this year!!!

Day 37 - 121km - Radium Springs to Kingston

This day could be dubbed attack of the thorns... little buggers called goathead thorns... While Ben B & Ben S are now riding on armidillo tyres (kevlar layer) - Dave is still on his original 'punture resistant' tyres. These are beginning to wear down and show signs of perishing. Today Dave got 5 punctures. Yes, 5. This included waking up in the morning and the back tyre was flat. Changed this. 2 miles into the ride and another flat on the back. Changed this, put wheel back on. Pump up the new tube & hear hissing. Hmm there is also a flat on the front. Hold on the back is going down... yes - the front and back (this is after just being changed) flat at the same time! On careful examination later it was found that one tube had 5 holes in it. Nasty suckers those thorns. We (Dave on our behalf) are now beginning to learn the basic lesson that if you need to get off the road then the bike doesn't go with you as as you will have a flat before you have time to curse those thorns! While we were changing numerous tubes a cop pulled over and the first thing he said was that he had got a call on the radio about some cyclists trespassing next to someone's fence. We all looked at each other and all thought you must be joking and luckily he was! Nice chap and gave us an insight into the climbs that we would be facing over the coming days.

Today we were also dog magnets. We are getting used to having these things run alongside us and barking (we learned pretty early on that trying to outrun them just makes them more aggressive!), but these ones today were big, vicous and quite possibly rabid.

Puntures, pump stops etc etc made for a very long day. The icing on the cakes was as we stopped to fill bottles before the 25ish mile climb to Kingston, Dave got another flat while taking his bike off the road to read a historical marker. At least the wind appeared to have turned and become a tail wind we thought... but not so - once we turned the corner we found that we were into a stiff headwind the whole way up; during this time I went out the back door - had enough for the day - Dave only noticed when he was preparing to drop himself and noticed there was a lot of space behind him...

Once at the Black Range Lodge (the Black Range was the final stronghold of the Apache Indians & includes our highest pt of the trip (~8500ft) which we will pass tomorrow; Kingston was once a booming town of 7000 miners & is now regarded as a ghost town...) we met Catherine & Pete the owners. Into strawbale house building, Catherine has even written a book on the subject. Pete is a bit of a frisbee legend, being a disc golf course designer (has a degree in landscape architecture & a 20 hole course at the lodge!) and makes a mean chilli popcorn & fresh orange bread.

Another random cycle tourer rocked up - he was travelling about a 600 miles jouney at about 100 miles a day & taught us all a lesson in light packing - he had a bike and a tiny bag with a bivvy sack to sleep in and that was pretty much it! The next morning he did, however, tell us that a sleeping bag may have come in handy given that he was sleeping at 6200ft it was a little chilly...

Day 36 - 102km - El Paso to Radium Springs

A pretty easy day out. The route was in the main dead flat. Most of the afternoon was spent travelling along the Rio Grande valley - an area of remarkable greenery in a dry region, as water from the Rio Grande is used to irragate chilli and pecan crops. The area is known for its chillis (some of which we would savour tomorrow thanks to Pete). The whole afternoon was pretty much spent riding among huge areas of pecan trees - they water them though flooding the fields in which they lay. It was quite nice and refreshing for a change from the dry regions we have been travelling through. The Pecan groves also sheltered us from any winds so a good pace was enjoyed by all. Dave got one flat today from a staple. No flats for Ben B since switching tyres (touch wood...).

We had a fine lunch of cheese, turkey, tomato and avacado sandwiches (care of the Walmart Food Centre) in the town of Las Cruches which is surrounded by rugged peaks that looked alot like the Remarkables in Queenstown after a very dry summer!

Today we crossed into New Mexico - well at least we think we did... there was no sign at the border, a bitter disapointment after having taken photos at each border to date! We will try to find a sign on exiting the state and make it look like we are actually entering New Mexico (and not leaving it!).

Day 35 - Rest Day in El Paso

Nice and easy rest day in sunny El Paso. The two Bens went and did laundry at a local laundromat and met an interesting local man who proceeded to tell us that he travelled the world when he was younger - "yes, I went to Houston, Los Angeles..." You get the point.

Except for the $5.50 Pizza Hutt lunch buffet the day was fairly uneventful. No crossing over into Mexico, as today was the day of the immigrant rally in support of immigrants in the States and a protest march had been organised to block the border crossings.