Inadvisable Bike Adventure!
Yesterday I handed in another draft of my master's thesis document. Around the same time, Preston finished studying for his very intimidating geology final. We chatted briefly, and I suggested I play hookey from work and we take a bike ride to take our respective minds of things.
This being Preston, things naturally turned into Indiana Jones-level urban exploration.
You can see a the route we took at GMap-pedometer, but you'll need to turn on satellite or hybrid view, because amazingly little time was spent on real roads!
This is going to be long, but
0: start on UA campus.
1: head to my old neighborhood to the south, Barrio San Antonio. Hop onto the Aviation bikeway (parallel to the Aviation highway/210, shown on map).
2, 3: follow Aviation waaaaay out towards the Air Force base.
4: Arrive at a fairly open patch of desert north of the Air Force base. If you scroll Southeast on the map, you can actually see the A-10s parked on the tarmac. We head across the open desert and arrive at a paved wash, running parallel to S. Palo Verde.
5: Getting into the wash was an adventure, since the walls are at roughly a 45 degree angle to the ground. I did OK with the Kona as it has disk brakes in the front, but Preston's bike was not so lucky. It hit the bottom of the wash so hard I seriously thought his front forks may shatter. We follow the wash, which is full of broken bottles, graffiti and hobo pee. We end up in South Tucson, where every building has a huge junkyard dog sitting behind the fence. We decide to haul our bikes back out of the wash again, Preston cursing his decision to wear sandals rather than boots. We take side roads through South Tucson, at this point realizing that Preston's bike has some serious maintenance issues, I'm missing exactly the tools needed, and I forgot to bring water.
6: We find a path running along "Sam Lena Park" which turns out to be a flood reservoir more than a park. We follow the reservoir, getting at least one confused "What you gringos doing here?" look along the way.
7: We find a way out of the reservoir and onto some side roads. We are now officially cursing the fact that I didn't bring a map.
8: We find Campbell! Salvation! I know this road. In this area it's fairly slow-moving so we bike North. Preston's bike is jumping chain so often that he ends up pushing it. We are now 20 blocks from home.
9: Fortunately, falling back on my experience with riding poorly-maintained bikes, I find I can ride Preston's cruiser without too much difficulty, so we switch bikes.
10: Hooray! Ice House Lofts neighborhood! I've been here. If you're bothering to follow on the map, give up - Google's satellite photos don't even show the bridges we use, nor could I explain my crazy system for getting around the highway and back to Barrio San Antonio.
11: BURRITOS AND HORCHATA!
This being Preston, things naturally turned into Indiana Jones-level urban exploration.
You can see a the route we took at GMap-pedometer, but you'll need to turn on satellite or hybrid view, because amazingly little time was spent on real roads!
This is going to be long, but
0: start on UA campus.
1: head to my old neighborhood to the south, Barrio San Antonio. Hop onto the Aviation bikeway (parallel to the Aviation highway/210, shown on map).
2, 3: follow Aviation waaaaay out towards the Air Force base.
4: Arrive at a fairly open patch of desert north of the Air Force base. If you scroll Southeast on the map, you can actually see the A-10s parked on the tarmac. We head across the open desert and arrive at a paved wash, running parallel to S. Palo Verde.
5: Getting into the wash was an adventure, since the walls are at roughly a 45 degree angle to the ground. I did OK with the Kona as it has disk brakes in the front, but Preston's bike was not so lucky. It hit the bottom of the wash so hard I seriously thought his front forks may shatter. We follow the wash, which is full of broken bottles, graffiti and hobo pee. We end up in South Tucson, where every building has a huge junkyard dog sitting behind the fence. We decide to haul our bikes back out of the wash again, Preston cursing his decision to wear sandals rather than boots. We take side roads through South Tucson, at this point realizing that Preston's bike has some serious maintenance issues, I'm missing exactly the tools needed, and I forgot to bring water.
6: We find a path running along "Sam Lena Park" which turns out to be a flood reservoir more than a park. We follow the reservoir, getting at least one confused "What you gringos doing here?" look along the way.
7: We find a way out of the reservoir and onto some side roads. We are now officially cursing the fact that I didn't bring a map.
8: We find Campbell! Salvation! I know this road. In this area it's fairly slow-moving so we bike North. Preston's bike is jumping chain so often that he ends up pushing it. We are now 20 blocks from home.
9: Fortunately, falling back on my experience with riding poorly-maintained bikes, I find I can ride Preston's cruiser without too much difficulty, so we switch bikes.
10: Hooray! Ice House Lofts neighborhood! I've been here. If you're bothering to follow on the map, give up - Google's satellite photos don't even show the bridges we use, nor could I explain my crazy system for getting around the highway and back to Barrio San Antonio.
11: BURRITOS AND HORCHATA!