January 16, 2022
Colossal Cave / Product Review
Today’s ride
With just a week left of our stay in Tucson we open lying Weather.com to see what the future brings. It looks grim, as my father was fond of saying.
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No rest for the wicked today, that’s for sure. The wind has died down, it’s warm and sunny, so of course we’ll ride. The Rodriguez is still loaded into the back of the Raven from the drive down to Sahuarita yesterday, so I convince Rachael to throw her bike in too and drive somewhere to give us a break from just another day on the Loop.
It’s a short drive to Thomas Jay Regional Park, where we leave the car and start biking east up Julian Wash. The first seven miles are on the Loop again, but after that we leave it and continue east to Colossal Cave, the destination we were thwarted from reaching on Christmas Day because the gate to the top was barricaded for the holiday. Leaving the Loop we climb up Houghton to Mary Ann Cleveland Way and continue east, eventually coming to the turnoff to Colossal Cave Road, the quiet back door to the park we discovered on the previous ride.
Other than the final climb to the parking area when we reach Colossal Cave it’s all familiar terrain, but there are a few surprises today. The first one hits as soon as we leave the car - it’s windy! With the complex topography that surrounds Tucson it’s to be expected that conditions can vary significantly from one part of the basin to another, but this doesn’t really fit with the plan for the day. For the first several miles I’m wondering if Rachael will have enough difficulty breathing that she’ll decide to turn back. She’ll later acknowledge that the thought crossed her mind but she sticks with it and after about ten miles conditions improve somewhat.
The second surprise of the day comes when we turn off onto Colossal Cave Road. It’s been paved since we were here just three weeks ago! On Christmas it looked like this:
Today though we find it transformed, the patched and rutted broken asphalt replaced by a fresh, glassy-smooth surface that is a delight to ride. It continues all the way to the gate at the park boundary, which is still closed and prevents cars from entering the park from this direction so it’s as quiet a cycling experience as last time, but smoother.
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The gate to the parking lot is open today so we’re able to complete the ride this time, both of us pleasantly surprised to find that the 10% final switchback to the top isn’t as difficult as we remembered. We’ve remembered the views from the top pretty accurately though - they’re remarkable, well worth the work to get out here.
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Last winter when we were up here we were surprised to look up on the steep descent from the parking lot and see a crested saguaro on the ridge we’re facing. Actually, Rachael spotted it and hollered at me to stop. Today, knowing it’s out there we’re both carefully watching - or as carefully as you can watch when dropping down a 10% switchback with cars behind us.
Today though, neither of us can spot it. We pull off on the shoulder, stare for a few minutes, and finally I locate it - far off, right at the top of the ridge. Looking at it today, it’s incomprehensible that Rachael spotted it last time in the middle of biking down this steep, twisting road. The eye/brain combo is such a miraculous mystery.
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The ride back is nothing new, except in this direction we ride Pistol Hill Road that skirts the north side of the Pistol Hill. After that it’s downhill nearly all the way back to the car. The day holds one more surprise though - the wind has shifted, and we have headwinds again! Maybe this is a common pattern here, with winds from the west in the morning shifting to the east in the afternoon. It’s what happened on my birthday ride also, which was along much of this same course.
On the way back to the car Rachael speeds ahead, trying to get in some extra distance to up her count for the day. I take it slower, scouring the desert for anything interesting. I find it when I come across four or five cactus wrens just off the trail. I’m excited when one of them drops down onto the bike path not far from me, giving me a clear shot without any brush in the way - but before I can focus on it four bikers come through and scare him off.
As compensation for my disappointment at least I pick off one of a flock of sparrows that flits through.
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Ride stats today: 40 miles, 1,700’
A product review
We’ve both had a few days of experience now riding with our new Garmin Varia RTL515 Rearview Radar Taillights - enough to have formed our opinions. It’s a keeper, definitely.
There have been several times in my life where a technical advance was so significant that it transformed the way I ride the bike. My first 10-speed, the classic Peugot U-08, enabled me to start climbing the steep streets of Seattle without weaving back and forth between one curbline and the other. Then, back in the early 80’s I got my first triple chainring, and suddenly I was able to bike my stepson Keith home from daycare in south Salem up super-steep Hillview Road without dismounting and pushing up the top half.
A few years later I got my first integrated shifters and no longer needed to reach down to the frame to switch gears. Overnight my riding style changed and I began shifting much more frequently, keeping a more uniform cadence. It was especially transformative in climbing hills or when racing to the next intersection before the light changed.
Our handlebar mounted Garmins were transformative too. We got them in 2007 before our tour of Japan, certain that we would get hopelessly lost without them. Gone were the days of carrying a map in my back pocket or on the back rack and stopping every few miles to consult it when we came to an intersection we were unsure of. Even better, with a detailed map under my nose we could afford to spontainiously deviate onto smaller and quieter roads with the confidence that we wouldn’t end up on a lengthy dead end.
Rachael was sold immediately when she first rode with the new radar taillight. I carried it for the first time on the ride into Madera Canyon, and had the same reaction. At the time it felt like this was another of those transformative advances that would change how I bike.
If you’re unfamiliar with the device, it’s a combination rear taillight and radar sensor that detects objects approaching from the rear - cars, trucks, peletons, lone bikers, trains, and probably dogs and low-flying aircraft too although I can’t verify that from experience yet.
The device pairs with our Garmin Edge GPS devices, so that you can see that traffic is approaching from behind. It appears as an overlay on both margins of the display:
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First, a few factual observations. It’s totally reliable, in that it never fails to detect approaching objects. On a straight, level road it looks like it starts picking them up when they’re about an eighth of a mile away - sooner than I can hear them if there’s much background noise or I’m biking into a headwind. It picks up bicycles too, as long as they’re actually closing in on me. When we’re riding together I’ll see that Rachael is approaching - but once she catches up and we start maintaining the same distance it fades out.
Also, the device gives audio warnings - it beeps when it detects a new object approaching. Unfortunately most of the time I can’t detect it though because my hearing is gradually worsening. One of these years before too long I’m going to have my hearing checked and probably get a hearing aid, but I’m not there yet. Rachael can hear it just fine though, and I can under the right conditions so it’s within the frequency range I can still pick up. Unfortunately there’s no volume control on it.
And, the taillight is very effective. Here’s Rachael, over half a mile away on Park Link Road (and a sneak preview from tomorrow’s ride):
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So that’s pretty impressive, and an obvious safety plus. We virtually never ride with lights, but I imagine we’ll always have them on now. I can still pick up the light when she’s 3/4 of a mile away, but after that I lose it. Good enough, I’d say.
It really does change how I bike. I do much less looking over my shoulder and less use of my mirror other than as confirmation of what I already know from what I can see under my nose. I can’t think of any negatives about the device at all, other than that it’s fairly expensive and that I normally can’t hear it. The safety benefits are immediately obvious, and many situations come to mind when it will be especially valuable:
- It is really nice to be able to see at a quick glance down that more than one vehicle is approaching. Gone is the need to listen closely or take a quick glance back to see if there’s a second vehicle behind the one just passing me. I’m not sure how many objects the device will detect and display approaching, but it’s at least five.
- We do a lot of riding on lightly traveled roads with rough shoulders, where we’d like to take the lane and ride a smoother surface when the coast is clear. This is much easier when you can just glance down regularly and see if anyone is coming.
- It is especially helpful biking into a strong headwind when you can’t hear cars approaching until they’re almost on you; and it’s also great to have when you’re speeding down a hill and need to keep your concentration on possible road hazards ahead - potholes, rough seams in the road, critters scampering in from the side.
And Rachael agrees. It definitely feels safer, especially with the addition of a taillight to help drivers to give us room. Our combined review/rating: 👍👍👍👍
[An addendum: I can hear my device now! We realized that I can hear Rachael’s, but not mine, so Rachael started researching it to see what’s different. There are no volume controls on the Edge either, but there is one important difference. We maintain different display settings from each other, and so we can tell them apart I placed a layer of tape over the back of mine - across the four tiny holes for the speaker. We removed the tape, and it’s much louder now.]
Today's ride: 40 miles (64 km)
Total: 1,710 miles (2,752 km)
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