The Adventures of Fric and Frac: Adventure 115: Valley of the Sun RV Park, Marana, AZ/Post D

This is the panorama in just about every direction.

Only a fool would put his faith in the fates: those fickle, feckless, fiendish females (So the Greek's personified). Catty might be a better word. There I was cruising along with a twenty point lead when I made the mistake of thinking I had the game in hand. I've decided that kind of thinking is just what Clothos, Lechesis, and Atropis love to dispel in us puny humans. And they use tools as well. Today, they used Judy to teach me a lesson. First, the wily cager pulled a never before seen mystery move: thirty one for three! She then started some babble about being so confused. The next thing I knew, she was spreading two eights and two sevens in front of the newly cut six. A veinte cuatro! Suddenly, my cushy lead turned into the exhaust vapor (We've been eating Mexican) of the wily cager who made chortling sounds as she counted twenty-four pegs (One by one). I'm not sure what happened, but I know I was distracted by the thirty-one for three. Could be there were some Wiebe Jeebie moves being made. No matter. I still lead 5-1, but rest assured no lead is safe against the wily cager. After a more leisurely start to the morning than usual, we hopped on the bike for an hour and a half. We rode another large twenty mile circle, but this time in a different direction. Low and behold, we discovered one of the riding treasures of Tucson. It's a paved trail that runs beside the Santa Cruz river. The Santa Cruz bisects Tucson east to west, so it's conceivable a rider could ride from one side of town to the other. We won't go that far tomorrow, but our ride will likely stretch into the early thirties due to the lack of traffic and such. On a mechanical note, we jumped our timing chain on the ride. It happened only once, but I knew the chains were wearing. We took "Papa" (Our tandem) to Performance Bicycles near University of Arizona. That's when my latest moron move happened. Why is it that I always suffer for my mistakes? Not once can I remember getting a do over for being stupid. I usually have the front wheel at the ready before I remove the tandem from the rack. In the parking lot of the bike shop, I left the front wheel near the back of the truck. I took the bike down, which means its wheel is on the ground and the fork is secured in a mechanical lock. I stepped around the bike to retrieve the wheel when suddenly the bike twisted like a petulant child wiggling free from a perturbed mother in a grocery store. The result was a couple of ugly scratches made by the pedals on the once shiny gray coat of Fric. If trucks could talk, Fric would have squealed like a stuck Javelina. Grrr. Other than that our day was fantastic. We took a car ride through the Saguaro National Park all the way around the mountains back through South Tucson. The brutally sheer mountains serve as a perfect canvas for the most magnificent cactus plants I've ever seen. Besides the Saguaros, the Barrel like cacti, and the varied sticky stick like ones, there are also these kind that look like an exploded bottle brush. From a distance they look soft and inviting, but since everything in the desert is stickery, I know that is just an illusion. Nonetheless, they are cool looking, and they are prolific. They carpet the desert landscape just as the Saguaros prickle it like living ribbed telephone poles with arms. To finish our day, we ate an almost Reuben at a very nice little sandwich shop near the bike shop. The mechanic (Daniel) recommended it, and since he showed himself to be a very competent bicycle man, I trusted his judgment. It was spot on. He also told us the name of the pro team we saw the day before. They are a Canadian sponsored group called Smart Stop Khaki. They race the pro circuit in North America. I didn't recognize any of their team members, but it was still fun to see their colorful peloton flashing through the cacti. Needless to say, (But I will anyway), life is good, especially today.