So... someone had this brilliant idea to head out to Sedona this morning and do the Sedona to Jerome (and back) road bike ride. After looking, I found out that this was pretty close to the exact same weekend that Tim and I did this ride back in 2007, but I can assure you that this ride was WAY hotter than that one. We baked out there in a big way. Like two pies in the oven. Like ants on a hot sidewalk. Like chocolate chip cookies!! We should have known when we loaded up in the parking lot to head out (where it was already warm!), but after driving up there, whaddya gonna do?
Happy camper on his way out of Sedona! Headed into the great unknown with a smile on his face and a song in his heart! What could be better than this?
Most of the run from Sedona to the small town of Cottonwood is on a slight downhill grade. There are a few places where you do some short climbs, but by and large... mostly not working that hard. Bad news for later in the day!
Cruising the wide open road between Cottonwood and Clarkdale, where the road rises into the sky and the legs will have holes punched in them!
The party's over!!! Headed up the hill from Clarkdale to Jerome. Still not too hefty yet.
Making progress... only four miles to Jerome! All uphill, of course.
Welcome to Jerome! Still WAY below town. You can see it up there above and right of the sign. Climb, climb, climb!
Gettin' a little elevation now. Oh boy! I was surprised how much traffic there was on a Sunday up there. We were getting buzzed pretty regularly, but mostly people weren't too bad.
UP! Keep on truckin'!
Curves? Mountain grades? Ya don't say... there's town up there above the sign. Ouch.
At the top of the two big switchbacks leading up to town. A little casual spinning, then we start climbing some more!
Lots of air there off the side of the road. Always thought that wall was pretty impressive.
As if the legs weren't already in the can... the slope goes nasty all the way up into town. Jerome is built on the mountainside, and the roads are steep and windy. Kind of a cool little town, actually.
Damn glad that's over with! Halfway there!
Some cool old buildings in Jerome. Some have been renovated into shops, galleries, wine stores, and other neveau-stylish purveyors of yuppie finery!
Pete sitting in the center of town working on his social media-ing. (posting pics to somewhere or other).
Like to visit this museum one of these days... looks kind of cool from the outside. This is a giant wheel from some sort of mining machinery.
Prescott... yeah.... maybe if it wasn't hottern than the back porch of Hades out here!!! Not today!
Break's over... time to head on back. You can see the road we climbed up into town in the right side of the pic below the road Pete is on here.
On the road again...I can't wait to get on the road again... headed back to Sedona. Lots more uphill, but the angle isn't so serious now.
Do I have helmet-hair in this picture?
The pearly gates! Sedona ho!
It was a good ride. All tolled, we put in around 52 miles with around 4000 feet of climbing. Not bad for a day's work. After a quick rehydration stop at the McDonald's next to where we parked, we headed off for pizza and then back to Phoenix!
Next time, we'll shoot for a cooler day... much cooler.
We headed west again this weekend, fresh and ready to get some more stuff done on the JT house! We'd originally planned to head out on Thursday afternoon, but that didn't work out, so we left early Friday morning instead. We picked up a used stove in Phoenix last weekend, so we took it out with us to get it into place. That was our first order of business on Friday.
Russ showed up to help get the stove off the truck and into place, then we spent the rest of the afternoon b.s.ing and drinking beer. That did not really augment the workout program the next morning. Susan came over later, freshly arrived from Phoenix, and we had a nice dinner made using the new stove! Success! (the drawer is missing in order to sample and match some paint at Home Depot).
Saturday morning, Felicia got up and headed off to walk the mutts. I dragged myself out of bed to get going before it got too hot. I took my old road bike out so I could get a weekend ride in. This is a shot from the front porch looking out at the road. You can just barely make out Felicia and the dogs coming back. I headed up the road into the park on my bike.
The ride has a bit of climbing as you head up into the park. Here's a shot passing Monument Manor.
And a shot looking back down from about the same place. Already gained some altitude...the house is down there somewhere.
And I arrived at the entrance station. I had to show my National Parks Pass to get in without being charged. I think they get a buck or so for walk-ins and bikes.
The signs were taunting me as I slowly ground uphill.
Nice scenery, but Ugh...
After the rather abrupt climbing, it sort of seems to level out, only it's still climbing slightly (as empirically observed on the way back out). This is a nice stretch through a forest of Joshua Trees.
Further on, I started passing climbing areas... this is one called Left Hand of Darkness, and a climb Felicia likes called Granny Goose.
Arriving at Hidden Valley Campground. The formation straight ahead is called the Old Woman. The last weekend we were out, we did a couple of climbs on there while it was still in the shade. One good thing about summer... there's no lines on these easily accessible routes!
They say if you don't have pics, it didn't happen. So I had to take the "Captain America shot" in front of Intersection Rock!
Hmmmm... left or right? One of these weekends, Pete and I are going to go left! This weekend, I headed back to Joshua Tree.
While I was taking some photos, this rider passed me. Thinking it would be cool to ride and chat with him on the way out, I took off after him. He saw me and speeded up. So I speeded up. And he got out of the saddle and tried to sprint away. I was slowly catching up to him when I decided if he didn't want company that bad, I wasn't going to be his carrot for the day, so I let him go for good. Out in the middle of nowhere, and working like a dog to keep from having to interact with someone. Kind of scary.
My big job for the weekend was to fix this leak... so after a trip to Home Depot for some parts and pieces, I installed a PVC ball valve in the uphill (the direction the water comes in from the main) line to cut off the leaking part until we could decide what to do with it later. It was a beautiful fix. Then I turned the water back on and... it was coming from the downhill side. That made no sense, but that didn't help much. I would have to start over Sunday morning... it was time to go climbing.
Felicia had some other projects she wanted to work on, so when Susan came over, we headed off to do some climbing and Felicia stayed behind. I didn't get any shots of her projects (my bad) so you can't see those.
Susan climbing...
Susan rappelling...
More climbing...
More climbing...
Sunday morning, and another trip to Home Depot (8 miles away in Yucca Valley), I had all the parts to get the job done. I completely took out the leaky section and put a new one in place. Let the glue dry, then turned the main back on. The main is about a quarter of a mile to the south, up the hill, in the front yard of the 94 year old guy who lives there. By the time I got back down, it looked like I had no leaks, but when I turned the faucet on, I got some rushing air, then a coupler that was still underground on the edge of the driveway blew and started dousing the place with water. Lots of frustration ensued, but eventually this is what I ended up with... this is four couplers in the line (the fifth is out of sight to the bottom of the picture). Crazy! But when I turned the main back on, it held!!! For now. Still, just to be safe, we turned the main off before we left for the weekend. All these crazy pipes running around the yard need some serious inspection!
We had a full round scheduled for this weekend to get stuff done on the new place. We did a quick exit from Phoenix Thursday night so we would have all of Friday to get crankin' on the list. First up we had to go shopping for a refrigerator and stove. We found both after breakfast over in Yucca Valley on Friday morning. Set them up to be delivered that afternoon, and then off to other stuff. Some other shopping, a visit to the local propane joint to get our account set up, and then back to eagerly anticipate the arrival of our new appliances.
Thought we might have some issues getting the refrigerator into the kitchen. It was seemingly too big to fit through the opening between the counters and apparently, you can ruin a refrigerator by tilting it too much (like if we lifted it sideways up and over). Uh-oh! Then we had the brilliant idea to take the doors off and voila! We were in business! It fit in our oddly shaped fridge hole great, looked great and purred like a kitten!!! Excellent!! Put one up in the "W" column!
Russ and Susan had loaned us this spare "drink fridge", which worked pretty well in the short term, but we were happy to be working with a full sized unit now!
The fun and games crashed to the earth when it came time to put in the stove. Current "standard" stoves are apparently too high to fit under the granite shelf we have above the countertop. Sonofa... the stove went in and sat there overnight for the options to be considered. Felicia was extremely NOT happy.
There was only one thing left to do. Drink. Thank God blenders and tequila fit just about anywhere!!!
Saturday morning, we took the mutts out for an early hike to burn off some steam before we shut them up to go take care of our appliance debacle.
It was a gorgeous morning. We hiked up the road past one of the nearby houses that has appeared in Architectural Digest. This one is built out of straw bales, and corrugated metal. Interesting looking place.
We made sort of a loop over to the north to check out the other Architectural Digest entry in the neighborhood. This is kind of a wacky place. I think the open building on the right is sort of a free-standing artsy-fartsy carport deal.
On the way back, Riley staged a sit-down strike when he decided he was warm enough for one day.
We killed most of Saturday trying to solve our stove dilemma. Suffice to say, I made a few laps up and down the main drag of Yucca Valley with various units in the back of the truck, and after no suitable solution, we decided to retreat and regroup. We have a better plan now and we're hoping for the best. One thing we did get done was the guy finally showed up to put in the hot water heater!! He showed up at 4:50pm and it took him 2.5 hours, but he did some nice work and we got another one in the "W" column for the day! After the stove failure, we needed it!
After hot water heater guy finished up, we could finally head into town for dinner (no stove, remember). Can't recall the name of the place, but they had pretty good food, margaritas and even this two piece mariachi duo!
Sunday morning, we finally got around to some climbing! You can see the parking lot in front of Intersection Rock was JAMMED!!! We found a spot, though!
There's Felicia down there coming up Double Cross, on the shady side of the Old Woman formation.
During the regular climbing season, this thing draws crowds like flies at a picnic. Today, we walked up and had no problem getting right on it. Of course, shortly after we rapped off, a group of four guys showed up and got on it. A line, even in August!!
Felicia rapping off Double Cross. A guy to the right of her on the Sexy Grandma route.
We climbed Dogleg, to the left of Double Cross as well. I hadn't done this one in probably over 15 years, but it was as fun an interesting as I remembered. Felicia liked it better as well (it fit her hands better!).
Felicia up high on Dogleg.
Felicia rapping off the other side of the Old Woman after climbing Dogleg.
Happy camper on his way out of Sedona! Headed into the great unknown with a smile on his face and a song in his heart! What could be better than this?
Cruising the wide open road between Cottonwood and Clarkdale, where the road rises into the sky and the legs will have holes punched in them!
