Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2020

Today's ride was from Patagonia north toward Sonoita. Lots of nice scenery here! A decent shoulder, but pretty rough and full of debris.

Even the ranches were getting into the holiday spirit.

As you can see, the bike isn't moving in this shot since it had a flat tire. I got to admire the mountain views as we waited for Don to return with the van.

This art gallery near Patagonia had some of the weirdest sculptures highlighting the Day of the Dead. We did like this vintage VW bus even if it was decorated with skulls!

In driving around Patagonia, we came across this historic school.

Here's a better view showing the entire school.

Merry Christmas to one and all, but this sure isn't the Christmas we had envisioned a year ago! At least Don and I are still healthy, and other than my mom, haven't lost any additional family members or friends to Covid. Even though the weather here in Southern Arizona sure hasn't been ideal, we are thankful we've been able to travel down here and enjoy some time on our bike.

There were some clouds and even some light sprinkles early this morning but the rain didn't amount to much. By noon, some sun and blue skies appeared and by 1 pm we decided it had warmed up enough for a ride.

Don saw that it was warmer in Patagonia, so we decided to drive there and then bike north on Highway 82 toward Sonoita. We'd noticed on our drive to Patagonia Lake State Park, that there appeared to be a wide shoulder.

We parked at the town park in Patagonia and then biked north on the highway. While there was a good shoulder, it was rough and full of debris.

There was very little traffic on this holiday and we actually had temps in the 60's with sun! The road climbed gradually uphill in a pretty valley that was between 2 mountain ranges.

We were following an old rail line - the Arizona and New Mexico railroad. It was started in the 1880's that connected to another railroad that ran south out of Benson. The AZ and NM line went to Nogales and serviced the mines in this region. Originally they mined lead, copper, zinc and molybdenum.

Most all of the mines had closed by 1957 but I read that an Australian company was reopening a zinc mine. When in production, it is expected to be one of the top 5 producers of zinc in the world.

This was definately ranching country, although we did go by one section that had expensive custom estate homes.

We should have been having a nice time, but Don's congestion was bad today (he's been having a lot of allergy symptoms on this trip) and he found it hard to breathe on the mild climb.

We hadn't gone far when we heard the familiar thump, thump, thump coming from our back wheel. Crap! Another flat! We're sure getting awfully tired of this.

We stopped and Don decided to just try pumping it up rather than fully repair the tube, but he had a problem getting our pump to blow the tube back up so he tried our CO2 cartridges. That worked for a while as we limped back toward town. We ended up going through all of our cartridges so resorted to walking.

A couple of miles later we reached the outskirts of town where there was a school. Don parked me there with the bike and walked the rest of the way to the van since my feet were sore.

Finally back in the van, we headed to camp, very disappointed with our day.

It was after 5 pm by the time we reached the park. Dinner time and a movie. Several of the campers were playing loud Xmas music but we weren't in the mood to listen to cheery music. Don said he'll deal with the tire tomorrow and we hope to still have time for a ride as it's supposed to be really nice.

Today's ride: 14 miles (23 km)
Total: 254 miles (409 km)

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