68.98 mi / 5:51:56 time / 11.7 mph avg. / 30.0 mph max. / 3838 ft. climbing
Staying at Lakeview National Forest Campground

I’m not really sure how the toilet needs were supposed to work at this gas station campground. There was a separate building with showers, that included sinks and toilets, but the posted signs said they closed at 7:30pm, and opened at 6:30am. I still really have no idea what time it is, because I think Cameron is within the Navajo Nation, and unlike the rest of Arizona, they do follow Daylight Savings (god, what a bunch of crazy mixed-up bastards populating this state!) However, the showers were closed and locked by what I thought was 7pm, so I used the very nice yet inexplicably mirror-less gas station bathroom to clean my contacts and brush my teeth (setting up on the pull-out baby-changing table). Take that, jerks!

Then, as you know, I wake up well before 6:30am, no matter what the time zone, and of course neither the showers nor the gas station were open by then. And, I have quite the post-breakfast morning rhythm going, which, given the volume of food I eat, is nearly impossible to suppress. Luckily, the other gas station just up the road was open, so I was able to avoid shitting in a plastic bag. Phew. I did however piss in a bottle, for the first (but probably not the last!) time. Luckily I kept it just under 16 oz.!

Ok, just in case that wasn’t Too Much Information, I might as well spill the other TMI story and get it all out of the way in one entry. If you really don’t want to hear about my unpleasant medical ailments, please skip the following paragraph!

For the past week I’ve been battling a case of, well, let’s call them “butt blisters”. Not on the fleshy part of the butt where it contacts my bike seat, but more towards the center. You know. Yeah, there. The pain and discomfort came on the strongest at Zion, where I even sought out pharmaceutical relief (and if you know me, you know how rare that is). Whether biking, hiking, crouching/bending to get stuff in and out of the tent, or simply sitting down, there was nary a moment where I wasn’t reminded there was something going on down there. Given the fact that I would be riding a bicycle 6 hours a day for the rest of the trip, I had resigned myself to simply dealing with the pain, because I didn’t figure there would be any chance for healing. But now, a week later, I think I’m completely healed. Through careful management, it’s been getting a little better each day, in yet another example of my very fortunate ability to heal myself while on tour. Although the biking surely wouldn’t be doctor-recommended (I was getting a searing pain climbing out from the North Rim that would make me scream at the trees, and that’s when things were actually getting better), my theory is that the problem was actually pooping-induced, and now that I’ve hit a solid morning rhythm in that domain, I’ve been able to get some relief. Which is fantastic, because having a constant pain in the butt can take a bit of enjoyment off the trip! At one point I even feared that it might make me cut it short or change plans.

Ok, back to the ride. Cameron sits at a low point (at the Little Colorado river), so today would start with a 35 mile climb of nearly 3000 ft., very much like yesterday. Those are the 35 miles I was thinking of tacking on to the end of yesterday’s ride, which would have been stupid. Especially when I reached that next motel 10 miles up the road and found that it was closed down. I guess that’s why no one answered the phone! Arizona’s 5000, 6000, and 7000 ft. signs were a little more accurate this time, but they could still be better. I guess it’s nice that they have them at all though, I’ve never seen them in any other state. Their mile posts are similarly haphazard though; I guess the highway department here isn’t big on precision (I’ve been in states where they have posts accurate to the hundredth of a mile). And according to the road signs, the position of Flagstaff moved by more than three miles as I approached it.

Once I crested the hill, I still had 15 miles of relatively flat riding before reaching Flagstaff. Due to a strong headwind, it seemed to be taking forever; even the early-lunch stop at Subway (first Subway dine-in of the trip!) didn’t help much. But then, I hit the outskirts of the city, and due to the sensory overload thrown at me by this teeming metropolis, the next 10 miles flew by. They have a freakin’ shopping mall here! With a damn Best Buy! Can you believe it?! I bet you could get anything you want in this city, including at least five or six different brands of automobile. There are cars everywhere, and roads with more than one lane, and I had to bring my instinctual Chicagoland bike-commuting skills back to the fore to enable me to survive while gawking at all the signs and color and hustle and bustle. Seriously, it’s the first place I’ve been the entire trip where the people are not either A) locals who know every other local in town, or B) tourists. Which makes it quite a culture-shock. And it has more motels than Moab!

This afternoon would be much better than the previous couple, because there was actually stuff to do in this town. Actually, since it was in the comfortable 70s at this elevation all day (and still partly cloudy), it would have been fine even if there was nothing. First I went to the library, where I spent a long time catching up on Internet stuff and preparing for the final leg of the journey. Strangely, the library had no WiFi that I could find, but they had power, and Flagstaff has T-Mobile service, so that means I could use my hacked G1 phone to wirelessly give Internet access to my laptop. That’s a pretty sweet trick, and it ironically gives a better connection than any WiFi access I’ve had the whole trip.

I even spent time checking which of the two downtown brewpubs I should hit for early-dinner. I decided on the Beaver Street Brewery, even though the beer ratings for neither were outstanding. But I guess those guys didn’t write their reviews in the middle of a bike tour, because the beer was fantastic. It also highlighted how weak that 4.0% stuff in Utah was, because two pints was enough to get me half-sozzled. As I was finishing up my burger, the brewmaster came over and said he noticed my yellow-panniered bike in the lot (hmm, and how did he deduce I was its rider?) He’d seen me down at Lees Ferry a couple days before, and wondered how I’d survived what he referred to as “the dust storm” in Cameron. He said it was nearly impossible out there in a car, and would have been unthinkable on a bike. Yet more confirmation that my Cameron stop was a blessing in disguise.

I then rode half-tipsy over to the Safeway to stock up on real groceries at cheaper-than-gas-station-or-National-Park prices. It’s the first full-size grocery store I’ve been to since Moab. I really have no idea where people get their food in between those two places. Do they subsist solely on Doritos, Pepsi, and beef jerky?

And then it was a final 15 miles southeast out of Flagstaff to a National Forest campground on Lake Mary. Lake Mary Road, which seems like a quiet forest road, was undergoing some fairly major construction (until 2010), partly to improve the bike lanes. Given the width of the construction, they must be putting in an 8-line bicycle superhighway. Ironically, there was a sign at the start of the construction that said “No Bikes”, which I ignored. Heck, I’m not a bike, I’m a friggin’ RV! Didn’t run into any problems, so I’m not sure why they had the sign. My only guess is that normally the road has 8-foot shoulders dedicated and signed as bike lanes, so they figure people wouldn’t know how to deal with a downgrade to anything less. Ah, the hazards of overly-generous biking facilities.

I finally had a tailwind, so I was comfortably cruising at 20mph. Given the number of turnouts, picnic areas, boat launches, campgrounds, and the proximity to Flagstaff, I bet that the area turns into an absolute zoo on weekends. But on this weekday evening, it was pretty quiet. I thought of free-camping, but instead settled on Lakeview Campground, which in fact does not have a view of the lake. $16 seemed a bit pricey for a campground with only vault toilets, but I guess that fee is inspired by the weekend mobs. And, it was a pretty nice campground, with mighty tables, flat tent areas, and toilets with motion-detecting lights inside! Also, I figured I’d almost surely be camping for free tomorrow, so I can give this Forest some of my money tonight.

Overall it was one of the nicest riding days of the whole trip. The method of an early dinner in town and then a short early-evening ride to the campground is something I’ve often enjoyed on previous tours, but that’s been nearly impossible out here given the lack of towns. When I got into camp my 22oz. Stone IPA was still fairly cold, and I paired it with half a loaf of raisin bread and a couple of handfuls of Oreo cookies. Mmm, good stuff!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under 2009 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.