Teddy Bear Cholla, that is! Lots and lots of teddy bear cholla. They look so nice and fuzzy, but appearances can be deceiving and all that.
This trip has a lot of new bikes (and riders, of course) and those newbies keep looking at us strange when we say we’ve been coming down for many a year. But, you know, today is New Year’s Day to me — the year begins with the ride down Mission Road.
Mission Road leads out of Tucson down to Green Valley (where the bike lanes are wonderful because they’re built for golf carts — seriously). The ride is easy and because of the consistent gentle grade, slow. So you have plenty of time to enjoy the scenery and the birds. OK, we can only hear the birds, but happy birds they were.
But, dear reader, I must tell you an embarrassing story. Today, we took a wrong turn. Yep. We’ve done this route several times. The human had the cue sheet and even had the GPS running. Did we follow it? Nope. We just went the way we always have, ignorant that the route had changed. Oops. But the really embarrassing part was that the humans did the GPS tracks and both of them didn’t catch it when they re-checked the routes last December. Egads. I sure hope they get some better GPS skills between now and this summer or we’re going to be riding in circles all over Wisconsin…oh, wait, that’s idea. Get in shape down here in Arizona and then ride Wisconsin come spring. One day in. Keeping the rubber side down!
Travels With Edwina 