Memorial Day Weekend rides

[missjean]

It sounds like everybody had a good weekend.
I went up to Maine, where it rained hard on Sat & most of Sun, but Mon was beautiful. We got a short, muddy ride in on Sun afternoon and a longer, muddy ride in on Mon morning.

We stuck to ATV trails - friend going though one of the many mud puddles

Me.

It was a dirty ride, but fun. :-)

[azfiddle]

My husband and I were camping on Mt. Lemmon, about 7500, above Tucson. We rode from our campsite to the ski lift area, about 14 miles round trip. The main ridge gets a little over 8000 feet, drops back down and then climbs up again to the ski lift. The last mile or so is definitely steeper (and above 8000 feet) so I saw the speed drop to about 4 miles an hour at one point. It's possible to go another mile or so the summit, over 9000 feet but that's just too much of a challenge for me.

The next day, after packing up our campsite, my husband took the car and i rode the bike down the mountain. That went fine, an hour of descending takes a lot of concentration, with all the weekend traffic coming up, but it went fine. However, I must have used up all my concentration because on the last leg of the ride home, I had an unpleasant and unexpected encounter with an object in the road, leading my first ever bike crash. I let my attention waver ever so briefly. I'm basically okay, just suffering a pretty banged up knee, but I'll put up a separate account.

I was recovered enough to be able to take a gentle spin Monday to a sales event at the Kia car dealership that sponsors my women's bike group, where we did some promotional photos with the "Hamstar" mascot, and a bright red Kia Soul. (Our team is called Team Soul, after the car). I guess Saturday they had a much bigger crowd and they didn't really need us to help out on Monday, so we just did photos, hung around and chatted and went home.