Stabling our Ponies

We resume our story post Great Divide, post Cal’s wedding, having cast aside our pagan willow wreaths and once again donning our sticky, sticky salt encrusted helmets, with a 5000 ft paved climb up Mt. Lemmon outside of Tuscon. We got up at 4:30am and set off from the heart of Tuscon, to avoid the 102 degree heat and city traffic. Our bodies and rumpuses seemed to have lost all fitness in the 5 days we had been merrymaking, and the hot mega climb was a bit of a rude awakening. We persevered and found ourselves high in the lovely forest of Mt. Lemmon, eating plate sized cookies in the town of Summerhaven. Then we descended off the backside down the brain pulpifying Control Road and again into the blazing hot desert. We had another wedding to make it to, this time for Zoey’s cousin Tanner and partner Rachel. As opposed to the 1800 miles in 30 days we did to get to Cal’s wedding, we had a leisurely 10 days to ride 450 miles. We biked up and over a number of sky islands, tall mountains in the middle of the Arizona desert with dense forests, running water and lots of elk. We met up with our conservation corps friend Ben, who is now on a hotshot fire crew in Globe, Arizona. He took very good care of us, feeding us nutritious home cooked meals and Coors Light and then riding with us and showing us deep, cold swimming holes in the Sierra Ancha mountains. The terrain in Arizona is rough and steep, with the most elevation gain per mile of our whole trip (120 feet of elevation gain per mile including the downhill ones). We spent a lot of time pushing our bikes up and down hill. Here are some photos of the desert.

We climbed up onto the Mogollon Rim and rolled into Flagstaff, where we met Zoeys parents and extended family. They executed a surprise birthday party for me, which was so effectively kept secret that I was bereft leading up to it, assured that no one knew it was my birthday. A collection of family members came together to gift me a digital camera that I had been obsessing over and subsequently lost me for days as I took thousands of poor photos and watched YouTube videos about very basic photography tenets. Then we went to Rachel and Tanner’s lovely wedding. It was fun and heartwarming. Then we started biking again with the parent team from episode Canada, Tom and Lynn. They provided a sag wagon with bountiful food and drinks and we really leaned into the luxury of a supported bike trip. Most days we road between 20-40 miles, having unloaded most of our gear into the truck.

We took a 4wd 24/7 side trip into the White Pocket, an incredible geological moment off of House Rock Road near the Arizona/Utah border. Zoey and I had been there before in my slightly lifted and off-road modified Astro Van (emphasis on slightly modified). The road to White Pocket had been a little spicy in the van, because it’s primarily made of sand, with some holes of very deep sand that require a good goosing to get through. But importantly, we had made it out there in a mini van. I enthusiastically ensured Tom and Lynn that it would be a very mellow ride in their brand new Ford Ranger. We ended up on an alternate route, and it turned into a very rowdy rock crawlin’, sand boggin’, bush scrapin’ 4wd fest. I imagine the road we ended up on was made for a small side-by-side and not a full size truck, but under my questionable captainship we made it to our destination and geologist parents Tom and Lynn geeked hard on the bizarre rock formations. Then we drove back on the intended and comparatively smooth route to our camp at Stateline. Earlier that day, we had biked just over the line into Utah. 4 months and over 4000 miles had gone by since we last set foot in Utah. It felt damn good and in light of recent snow storms and cold weather in the mountains of Utah, bittersweet, because we knew our trip was coming to an end.

In light of impending weather and the waning of fall, we decided that we would detour off the route and end our trip at Grosvenor Arch. We had ended here on our second ever bikepacking trip, and it was our first real bikepacking spanking. The video found somewhere on this blog of Zoey eating Cheetos while I am in gastric distress and we are pushing our bikes through sand dunes was taken on this trip. With a firm ending point in our minds, we decided to celebrate with one last mega ride. We rode 91 miles through the Navajo Nation to Rocky Point, a very remote campsite along the Grand Canyon. It was a miserable 91 miles. We pushed our bikes for hours through the sand to avoid the highway. It was very rocky and washboarded. There was a headwind all day. Zoey and I were on each others nerves. The perfect homage to our trip. We biked 13 hours to meet Zoeys parents at 10pm, where they had an enchilada casserole ready in the dutch oven. They assured us that the view in the morning would make all our hard work worth it.

In the morning we were greeted by an incredible view of the Grand Canyon, with not a single other human in sight. We drank coffee on the rim of the canyon and then I proposed to Zoey with a desert flower bouquet wrapped with dental floss. I had been trying to sort out a time and place and the logistics of finding a ring for a while and been stumped, but the sheer majesty of the place, along with the huge effort of the day before and the upcoming conclusion of our trip, compelled me to make the spontaneous gesture. Because I had decided on the proposal moments before, I didn’t forewarn anyone and gathered the bouquet on my way back from going to the bathroom in the desert, as that was the only time I had alone to secretly enact my plan. I asked Lynn to take a photo of us, and then got down on one knee, to which Zoey asked twice if I was joking and burst into tears when I assured her I wasn’t. Lynn exclaimed, “holy fuck!” and Tom had a comically stunned look on his face. Zoey said no, threw the bouquet off the cliff and then me shortly after. After I climbed back up to show I was really serious, she said yes. Then we all went and looked at fossils embedded in the canyon walls.

We rode our bikes to Grosvenor Arch, touched the sign and it was all over! We then drove three days back to my parents house in California, where we have been eating my Dad’s delicious food, playing with my nephew Miles and generally enjoying the good life. I also acquired a real ring (with a lot of help searching from my Mom, thanks Mom) and gave it to zoey at the top of Mt. Tam on a crippling run. Turns out biking 4500 miles doesn’t make you good at running.

Now we wait for Nat Geo to contact us about a feature article and eat chocolate cake. After that happens, we are moving to Winthrop, WA to live out our dreams of being small town yokels. To end, here is a real film photo sent to us recently by our trail compatriot, Collin.