Getting in shape for the STP at Usery Mountain

We had planned to spend a few days in Mesa visiting my parents and staying at Usery Mountain Regional Park. But the old Ford giving out changed all of that. Ended up spending 12 days there instead, waiting for parts to arrive and be installed that would improve the suspension and handling of our new pickup.

We made the best of it, visiting my parents almost every afternoon, and taking long bike rides in the morning. The rides went through a bit of the edge of Mesa, but mostly were through the country, allowing some beautiful sights. For the last two days we rode in town, on canals. I can't load photos of those rides yet, so will add another blog entry in a few days when we have a wifi signal to describe them.

We really enjoyed this time. We now have almost 300 miles of biking under our belts, a great start on getting in shape for the STP--the 200 mile ride in July from Seattle to Portland that Vicky, my son Jules, and I will do in July. My sort-of goal was to have done 500 miles by April first, the ending date of our road trip, so that the next thousand miles that will be needed to train for the STP would easier.

Because we couldn't plan ahead we had to move to a different campsite every night.

That's Vicky on my favorite part of the ride. It almost looks like a painting. It is so beautiful.

As mentioned, because we couldn't make plans in advance, we had to move where we camped each night. That was sort of a pain. Every night we had to learn a new route to the bathroom.

But the sites were nice.

I don't know how she does it, but Vicky can toodle along on her bike and still be very observant. One day she spotted an owl, asleep in a tree. I was doing more mundane things like watching for cars and stuff.

Sometimes we couldn't get a place in the campgrounds, so we had to stay in the overflow lot. This was not a lot of fun because of all of the generators that were running. Plus there were bright light posts so we felt like we were sleeping during the daytime. But it was cheap, and we had no real alternatives.

We learned after the first time we did this that the best spot was at the edge, so that's the spot we grabbed when we could. Don't we look sort of pitiful next to all of the RVZillas? It looks like we are hiding over at the edge hoping the big boys will ignore us and not pick on us.

A nice shot by Vicky out of our back window one morning.

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On one of evenings we went to a dance. It was fun to get back on the floor, although the music wasn't exactly our type (it was sort of Lawrence Welky--aren't we snobs?). I'm such a good dancer that I can do it with my eyes closed.