Day One

Haha! There are so many awesome things about this place its hard to keep my jaw from dragging on the floor. I got settled into my great place (which is a lot bigger than I thought it would be so bonus), found out there is free wireless here courtesy of the old people surrounding me who can't be bothered to protect their signal, and then promptly went to bed because I was exhausted from being in airports and planes for 15 hours.

It was dark outside when I arrived in Tucson so when I woke up this morning around 7 to build my bike I got to watch the sun come out and expose all the mountains. My consensus: this place is the cat's pyjamas...or bees knees...or whatever the popular kids are calling it these days. My ride this morning was more of an exploratory one rather than training but got a good 3 hours in at a pretty relaxed pace with a few good climbs. Tomorrow will be much longer. I'm planning to hit Mt. Lemmon in a day or two to see what it's all about. Apparently I'm about 6 miles from what the locals would call the base. Mt. Lemmon is a 26-Mile climb at a pretty consistent 5-8% gradient. This is something I could barely fathom coming from Toronto where your biggest climb is at MAX 1-2km long.

Did some yoga this morning before my ride (something I realllllly want to improve in while I'm here) then had a sandwich with avocado, cucumber, red onion and salt and pepper followed by some delicious trail mix I picked up at LAX airport. I'm super low on supplies but would have been way worse off if my landlord (who is super great and rides as well) hadn't pulled into an Albertson's and let me grab a few necessities (yeah he picked me up from the airport too!).

After my ride i showered, changed and grabbed my reusable shopping bags and went across the street to a Walgreen's which seems to be the American equivalent of a new Shopper's Drug Mart. I found out that you can purchase microwaveable White Castle burgers that are pre-topped and bunned as well. One thing that I realized there however, is that I'm in Arizona....the HOME of a certain super tasty beverage that I drink non-stop in the summertime. It wouldn't have dawned on me except the store happened to have an entire Arizona tea isle with every flavour imaginable. As much as I would love to try them all, some of them are even worse than coke as far as sugar quantity goes so I'm going to have to limit myself. Current flavour is diet peach iced tea, it's everything I could have dreamed of.

My bike made it here all fine so big thanks to Zach and Taylor for helping get my bikes packed up on my totally unrealistic and crammed schedule leading up to this trip.

The riding here is just fantastic but obviously after only one short day out I haven't even scratched the surface of what's out there so stay tuned for some more updates.