Thursday, September 14, 2000

Williams, AZ to Winslow, AZ via Grand Canyon - 211 miles

Williams is a small tourist town about 58 miles south of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Brian, my roommate, got a crazy idea to do an extra loop up to see this beautiful hole in the ground. I was reluctant to go at first, but Larry was willing to go for it. Now this loop was not just a few extra miles. This would turn our planned 105-mile day into a 211-mile ordeal.
We headed out with words of encouragement:
"You're what?"
"Did you write your obituary?"
"You are off sag so don't call us if you have a problem"

We left as the sun was rising, around 6am. We got a good pace going and before we knew it we were at the lip of a beautiful hole in the ground. Some cute Japanese girls wanted their picture taken with us, we obliged. After a few more photos, and answering a few dumb questions about our ride from others, we left. It is always a hoot to tell people we are doing 211 miles in a day and they say "That's nice". We stopped twice more for pictures and some water and Coke. After exiting the park we hit a 30-mile downhill with breathtaking views on our left of the Little Colorado River's carvings into red and yellow colored stone. We stopped again for lunch. Six hours and 114 miles down. The San Francisco Mountains loomed in the distance. They contained the highest point in AZ - 12,600 feet. We would need to climb over them, the high point on the road being 7250 feet. We stopped for Cokes before the last five-mile section of climbing. We told the fellow in this Indian trading post our destination was Winslow and he called it the "asshole of Arizona". He also told us where our next turn was - the second "electric stop sign". Interesting term for a stoplight.

After the climbing, we cruised up to the interstate for horrendous shoulder conditions - rumble strips, eight inch wide raised gaps in the road, tire casing, bolts, shards of metal, semis, 75mph speed limit, etc. Brian semi-bonked - Larry got some food into him and we pulled him home. We pulled into the motel at 6:45, just as the sun was disappearing. Our on-bike average was 19.2mph. We kicked ass! A crowd of fellow Pac Tour riders congratulated us. We set a PacTour first by being the only riders to go off the route to do a double century (200 mile).

As Larry (who is actually crewing and only rides every other day) said, it may not be this ride that gets us; the rest of Pactour may be what does us in. We will take it easy tomorrow.
I'm really tired. Signing off,