Green up!

The northern Santa Cruz River Valley has been fortunate enough to have received some cold front-driven rain on a couple of occasions lately. Here at Free Baja Arizona HQ, there was a small event - a tenth of an inch max - last Wednesday. The suite of ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens Engelm.) in the front yard responded immediately and began leafing out within a day. Last year's leftover patches of Goodding verbena (Verbena gooddingii Briq.) perked up and their flowers were suddenly fragrant again. Some sort of poppy (Eschscholtzia sp.) appeared in a patch of soil in the backyard. It rained again this past Wednesday, so I expect a few more plant species to get in on the act.

I responded a bit more slowly to the rainfall and wintry weather - it took me almost an entire week to get sick.

I rode my bike to and from work on Tuesday. The ride home was remarkably free of headwinds, so I went pretty hard. I got home, cooled down, and threw in a hard shift with the weights. The next morning, I woke up feeling nauseous and then spent the whole day at work alternating between deep fatigue and the churning of my guts. Was I pushing my luck by driving 80mph on I-10 and having Vietnamese food in Sierra Vista? Perhaps. Once back at home, I took as long and as hot of a shower as I could stand and went to bed early. I was unconscious within minutes. I woke only once, and that was to find the bed soaked with sweat. A fever - hello nasty. I woke up to my alarm clock and unexpectedly found that I felt fine. In fact, I felt wunderbar. I rode to work once again. There were a few occasions where I thought my 24-hour bug was exercising an option to last an additional 12 hours, but I pulled through. Once again, I rode home, lifted weights, and got on with things.

So what brought this on? I'll never know for sure, but here's a note to self: never again eat a bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese when said dairy-based spread has been sitting out in the office breakroom for 8 hours, unrefrigerated. Lets also not forget that this Bruegger's Bagels place has been the source of factory-funky (i.e. spoiled prior to opening) cream chese in the past, as well.

Delayed coverage of the 24 Hours

This is the venue for each and every one of the seven runnings of the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. So many great memories for so many people have begun with the simple act of passing beneath the great big metal arch on Willow Springs Road north/northwest of Oracle. You can even see it from the easternmost reaches of the race course. Once the area gets developed, I predict that it will be removed to become a structural component of a manned security gate (aka vanity gate) separating the area's very important new residents from the great unwashed (bicyclists, hunters, equestrians, and other assorted desert rats). And as long as I'm on the subject of Heteromyids; if you, as I did, felt for all those pocket mice (Chaetodipus spp.) strewn about the race course, blinded by HIDs, struck down in their prime by whirling knobbies, imagine what's going to happen when the developer's bulldozers start running. "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" sayeth Edward Abbey. Down with pink fungus! Hell, down with cancer cells, too. Photo by ~Gila~.


Well lookie here, its none other than BeanSS wrapping up her first lap after just over 2 hours in (and out of) the saddle on Saturday afternoon. Flying from her Camelbak is the pink bandana given to Kona the Wondermutt by her veterinary oncologist following her last session of K9 chemotherapy. Photo by ~Gila~.


And now, its your host ~Gila~ wrapping up his and GnomeBrew's last lap. One beer down, eyes scanning intently for the next. Note the two unclipped guys lounging about on their top tubes and running out the clock. Also note the woman in the blue kit back around the bend. She might just still be racing. Photo by Cindy.


And lastly, this here is BeanSS and ~Gila~ just outside the finish chute. I did not know at this moment that BeanSS's Sonora Pack contained that second bottle of beer for which I'd been looking. I'd otherwise have been rifling away madly. Photo by Cindy.

Another shout out

He is a gentleman and a scholar. He has earned a master's degree in nursing and will be a full-on nurse practitioner by week's end. He is visible only as a blur of green and orange team kit when on a bicycle. He can install a lime in a longneck cerveza better than any east coaster I know. He's not the next Lance Armstrong, he's the first PooBah. The screed you need to read and heed is right here at Hills, Headwinds, and Happiness.

Finally!

It rained a bit in Tucson this afternoon and it was very, very nice.