Road Trippin'

My Tucson adventure has finally come to a close, I packed up Friday, said good-byes to our friends at the Kestrel Kafe and the mongrel dogs on the porch and shipped off for another epic drive across America.

Jaime and I 'riding dirty' in the nice end of El Paso.

I stayed Friday and Saturday with Jaime, my team mate who lives in El Paso, and did a few final rides of a big training cycle in the mountains around there. I had planned to ride big through Sunday but realized pretty early on the ride Saturday that I was physically deep in the hole and was not going to gain anything other than the flu by training again the next day. So after a nice authentic Mexican meal and some good laughs hanging out with Jaime’s brothers and wife I continued on Sunday to Houston.

Climbing the distinctly Mediterranean looking climb on the edge of El Paso, you can see the Mexican border as a scar of fence accross the land, the only thing that makes it to the states with ease is their AWESOME techno stations.

There I stayed with a friend of my Tucson room mate, Ty, and had a good sleep in before cruising the rest of the way to Birmingham where I am writing from now. Now that the drive is over it doesn’t seem so bad, but coming through Texas on highway ten is something to be avoided at all costs from now on. There is nothing there… just desert, a few trailers at intersections of what few roads there are, and plenty of wind. No trees. No mountains. No radio stations – the ‘seek’ button just rolls right through from 88-107 FM and makes no stops.

Climbing with Jaime's friend Chacho on my last ride in the southwest.

Now that we are in Birmingham Ty’s friends and family are rolling out the red carpet and treating us to a BBQ. We just finished up a group ride that just grew and grew as folks heard Ty was back in town, it was really fun meeting all his riding buddies and having them try to test their metal against the Tucson boys after our hard winter of training. You could see it on their faces, or just listen to their remarks about how tan we were or how skinny to know that they wanted to throw down… so we ended up throttling pretty much every sign, every hill, every overpass, telephone poll, really anything you could hope to sprint for was fair game!

A lot of folks have asked if we miss the southwest already, and honestly not really. We timed it well enough that here in Alabama spring is starting to show its head and its quite temperate, and seeing lush green grass, rivers, and rolling hills again is somehow so refreshing after so much time in the high and dry region we were in that although I cherish the time we spent out there the excitement about the next adventure eclipse any thoughts I have of missing the place.

We leave tomorrow for the final bit of driving to Greenville where the season starts for real with the Kenda p/b Spinergy training camp, and I’m super pumped. I’ll be sure to update with photos of the homies, our new gear and the inevitable shenanigans of 25 dudes descending on a city with that wild feeling of excitement that all bike riders get in early march.