Day 5 (Sat, 16 Feb)

Day 5 (Sat, 16 Feb)

Today I rode from Salome, AZ to Buckeye, AZ – 77 miles and primarily flat.  The ride started out on Salome Rd for about 30 miles down to I-10.  This road was fantastic – newly paved with a slight -1% grade over the 30 miles (see the first picture - its like heaven for a cyclist to wake up and see that in front of you).  I even had a bit of a tailwind so I was able to crank up the speed just a bit and still enjoy the scenery.  Most of the roads today were very lightly traveled by cars - avg a car every 10 or 15 minutes, which was also nice.

One of these days I’ll not be able to write this (looking like perhaps next Wed) but again, today was fantastic weather.  The morning started off in the mid 40s and warmed up to the low 70s.  Sunny all day.  We all know that it is dry in AZ, but I’ve been amazed at just how much water seems to be literally sucked out of you here.  I’m not sweating much but still go through over 125 ounces of liquid on the rides.  That’s 8 lbs of water.   Also, I’ll look around in Phoenix tomorrow as I’m assuming some clever inventor has come up with the “Chapstick for the back of one’s throat” for use in AZ – my throat was dry – and its not really even hot here (by Phoenix standards).

I had to ride into some Easterly winds for the last 20 miles, which made for another tough slog to end the day.  But – I’m almost to Phoenix!  I’ll be riding to Mesa tomorrow morning on a short ride and then looking forward to seeing my uncle and aunt who live in Scottsdale tomorrow afternoon.

In the pictures below, mainly you’ll see desert landscape (this is about 100 miles west of downtown Phoenix) and then some of the farmland that is 60-70 miles west of Phoenix.  I took a picture of this aqueduct (which I had also crossed yesterday) appears to be a primary one feeding water to Phoenix from the Colorado River area.  Panorama pictures can end up being a bit funky - the second one below is from the middle of an intersection - kind of interesting.  Given the hotel I’m staying at tonight and the sun rays in the background, I included my hotel picture today…