Gil enjoyed his day off in Flagstaff on Sunday. Took a walk to and from a bike shop in old town Flagstaff. Purchased a cycling vest, energy bars and an innertube. Took pics of old buildings. Not sure what he did with the rest of his day. Was considering seeing a movie.Jane's comments from Gil about 2/3 of the way through today's ride:
Noon his time, currently in Winslow, AZ, after riding 60 miles today. 34 more miles to go to Holbrook AZ, expects to arrive around 4. Favorable tail winds, relatively easy ride. Bright, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. Still at about 5,000 - 6,000 ft. elevation, but more elevation lost than gained today. Open cattle range, no trees. Rolling country....long mild climbs and then long mild downhills.
Having a good day, will call again tonight.
Email from Dad (ie your cliff notes):
Tour is going great. 94 miles today from Flagstaff to Holbrook, AZ. Tail wind all the way. Averaged over 17 mph. Had lunch in Winslow, AZ. This is the town that Eagle's wrote song about "Standing on the Corner." There's a sign and plaque so everyone stopped and took pictures. It is clear that I'm getting stronger rather than breaking down. Butt much better but saddle still gets harder after 60 miles. Tomorrow cross into New Mexico and there is more climbing than today. Today's ride started off quite chilly and in mountain environment - pine trees, mountains. After 15 miles
we were in wide open range land where you could see for many miles in any direction. Got into Holbrook at 2:45 PM. It is on the edge of town - what constitutes town - and range land is across parking lot and by george you can see forever. Everyone hung their bike clothes they washed on he barbed wire fence. Kinda cool and colorful. I took pics.
A great group of people on the tour. [picture to the right is not from today] Much clowning around. Having a good time with the video camera. This morning Richard, my roommate, wore white gloves and pretended to be a bike inspector before departure at hotel. We targeted a couple of women's bikes for him to inspect and I video taped as he rubbed his white glove along their bikes and found fault. Richard, I learned yesterday, has sailed his sailboat single handedly 3000 miles across the ocean from Trinidad to Florida. Quite an amazing group of people on this tour.
Now onto what he gave me over the phone. (Why am I writing, you ask, if he emails about the day himself? That's an excellent question.)
They left Flagstaff at 7:20 this morning for the day's 94 mile haul. It was actually fairly cool (!) when they started - some people had on light jackets. The first 10-15 miles were rolling hills with pine trees and other such mountain-environment surroundings. Another surprise was that they started going down those rolling hills farther than they went up - they gradually lost elevation today. They also had a favorable tailwind, which made a huge difference. From mile 15 until the end of the day they were on an open range with wide open land and cattle; they could see rock outcroppings in the distance. They were on routes 40 and 66 virtually all day, and the Santa Fe railroad tracks ran parallel to them much of the time. They saw lots of trains; one was mostly or all military equipment: tanks, Humvees, tanker trucks, and other military-type vehicles. They speculated that they were on their way out to a base in California. (I want to say he guessed San Diego, but I really know nothing about west coast bases. Handwriting your notes sucks - you should see some of my abbreviations as he gives me the rundown - and I apparently decided to let that detail go. But you should know that they felt informed enough to take a stab at where the equipment was going, so that counts for something, right?)
Their first "SAG stop" (SAG = Service and Gear + food + water) was about 40 miles in, then they stopped in Winslow, AZ around mile 60. Took pictures and ate at "a local, nondescript restaurant" and had huge burgers that were very good. (Those details I wrote down, because I know that food is and always has been important to Gil.) Then there were just 34 miles left to Holbrook. With the tail wind they averaged over 17 mph for the day as a whole; at times they would go 20-25 mph with the tailwind, which was wonderful. Even with the tailwinds, 94 miles is still a long ride and he was happy to get to Holbrook at 2:45 (a bit earlier than he projected at lunch; go Gil!). Temp probably got to 86F today; was a beautiful sunny day, no clouds. Reports that the bike seat gets a bit harder after the first 60 miles. Butt still doing quite well. They're at an air-conditioned hotel tonight on the edge of town, where you can see for miles in all directions. When he called he was looking forward to dinner at Denny's. The computer at the hotel is "antiquated"; he gave up on sending pictures. Having a ball with his roommate, who has a great sense of humor.
Tomorrow they cross the New Mexico state line. There will be more climbing and heading north than there was today; if the favorable wind holds, it will be very good. An 86 mile day.
His first DVD of pictures (228 of them) came in the mail today, which is where two of the pictures in this post came from (joking around w/ bikes and the church in the desert below). Will have to think about whether to upload a majority to a photo-sharing site or whether to post more selected photos here. (Thoughts?) There's one great photo of some other gentleman with his presumably clean underwear laid out on a lawn chair. That one's a real keeper. Mom and I like to believe that it's clean underwear, just washed in the shower with shampoo. Because if there was a washing machine, surely there was a dryer better than a public lawn chair. There were also interesting revelations such as "his helmet has blue? I thought it was yellow!" The flags on their bikes have their names written on them, which is a nice touch. And there some shots of them biking or posing remarkably close to where the trucks are trying to drive by. (The shoulders on most of those shots are actually pretty wide (e
xcept where they're not, and riders are kind of sharing with the sane people using gasoline and motors to get themselves around), and where we assume they're riding until we find pictures of riders posing...with their feet in the truck's lane, and the truck looming a bit closer down the road with each shot. He has a handy review mirror with his helmet, so I'm sure he's being careful! When not posing, at least. Keep yourself on the good side of the rumble strips, Gil!) And there's quite a bit of nothing else in sight in those desert pictures. Like the poor church to the right, without so much as a parking lot to her name. (The bulk, of course, are great records of the first week of the tour, lots of people/activities/scenery shots. Kinda wish we had him home to label all the people in the pictures for us, though. They should just carry their bike flags with their names around with them all the time!)
Having a good day, will call again tonight.
Email from Dad (ie your cliff notes):
Tour is going great. 94 miles today from Flagstaff to Holbrook, AZ. Tail wind all the way. Averaged over 17 mph. Had lunch in Winslow, AZ. This is the town that Eagle's wrote song about "Standing on the Corner." There's a sign and plaque so everyone stopped and took pictures. It is clear that I'm getting stronger rather than breaking down. Butt much better but saddle still gets harder after 60 miles. Tomorrow cross into New Mexico and there is more climbing than today. Today's ride started off quite chilly and in mountain environment - pine trees, mountains. After 15 miles
we were in wide open range land where you could see for many miles in any direction. Got into Holbrook at 2:45 PM. It is on the edge of town - what constitutes town - and range land is across parking lot and by george you can see forever. Everyone hung their bike clothes they washed on he barbed wire fence. Kinda cool and colorful. I took pics.A great group of people on the tour. [picture to the right is not from today] Much clowning around. Having a good time with the video camera. This morning Richard, my roommate, wore white gloves and pretended to be a bike inspector before departure at hotel. We targeted a couple of women's bikes for him to inspect and I video taped as he rubbed his white glove along their bikes and found fault. Richard, I learned yesterday, has sailed his sailboat single handedly 3000 miles across the ocean from Trinidad to Florida. Quite an amazing group of people on this tour.
Now onto what he gave me over the phone. (Why am I writing, you ask, if he emails about the day himself? That's an excellent question.)
They left Flagstaff at 7:20 this morning for the day's 94 mile haul. It was actually fairly cool (!) when they started - some people had on light jackets. The first 10-15 miles were rolling hills with pine trees and other such mountain-environment surroundings. Another surprise was that they started going down those rolling hills farther than they went up - they gradually lost elevation today. They also had a favorable tailwind, which made a huge difference. From mile 15 until the end of the day they were on an open range with wide open land and cattle; they could see rock outcroppings in the distance. They were on routes 40 and 66 virtually all day, and the Santa Fe railroad tracks ran parallel to them much of the time. They saw lots of trains; one was mostly or all military equipment: tanks, Humvees, tanker trucks, and other military-type vehicles. They speculated that they were on their way out to a base in California. (I want to say he guessed San Diego, but I really know nothing about west coast bases. Handwriting your notes sucks - you should see some of my abbreviations as he gives me the rundown - and I apparently decided to let that detail go. But you should know that they felt informed enough to take a stab at where the equipment was going, so that counts for something, right?)
Their first "SAG stop" (SAG = Service and Gear + food + water) was about 40 miles in, then they stopped in Winslow, AZ around mile 60. Took pictures and ate at "a local, nondescript restaurant" and had huge burgers that were very good. (Those details I wrote down, because I know that food is and always has been important to Gil.) Then there were just 34 miles left to Holbrook. With the tail wind they averaged over 17 mph for the day as a whole; at times they would go 20-25 mph with the tailwind, which was wonderful. Even with the tailwinds, 94 miles is still a long ride and he was happy to get to Holbrook at 2:45 (a bit earlier than he projected at lunch; go Gil!). Temp probably got to 86F today; was a beautiful sunny day, no clouds. Reports that the bike seat gets a bit harder after the first 60 miles. Butt still doing quite well. They're at an air-conditioned hotel tonight on the edge of town, where you can see for miles in all directions. When he called he was looking forward to dinner at Denny's. The computer at the hotel is "antiquated"; he gave up on sending pictures. Having a ball with his roommate, who has a great sense of humor.Tomorrow they cross the New Mexico state line. There will be more climbing and heading north than there was today; if the favorable wind holds, it will be very good. An 86 mile day.
His first DVD of pictures (228 of them) came in the mail today, which is where two of the pictures in this post came from (joking around w/ bikes and the church in the desert below). Will have to think about whether to upload a majority to a photo-sharing site or whether to post more selected photos here. (Thoughts?) There's one great photo of some other gentleman with his presumably clean underwear laid out on a lawn chair. That one's a real keeper. Mom and I like to believe that it's clean underwear, just washed in the shower with shampoo. Because if there was a washing machine, surely there was a dryer better than a public lawn chair. There were also interesting revelations such as "his helmet has blue? I thought it was yellow!" The flags on their bikes have their names written on them, which is a nice touch. And there some shots of them biking or posing remarkably close to where the trucks are trying to drive by. (The shoulders on most of those shots are actually pretty wide (e
xcept where they're not, and riders are kind of sharing with the sane people using gasoline and motors to get themselves around), and where we assume they're riding until we find pictures of riders posing...with their feet in the truck's lane, and the truck looming a bit closer down the road with each shot. He has a handy review mirror with his helmet, so I'm sure he's being careful! When not posing, at least. Keep yourself on the good side of the rumble strips, Gil!) And there's quite a bit of nothing else in sight in those desert pictures. Like the poor church to the right, without so much as a parking lot to her name. (The bulk, of course, are great records of the first week of the tour, lots of people/activities/scenery shots. Kinda wish we had him home to label all the people in the pictures for us, though. They should just carry their bike flags with their names around with them all the time!)
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