Phoenix, AZ — Heather and I set out to ride to Florence today. The day was more overcast than yesterday and my legs felt even worse! I think the lack of quality sleep is the factor affecting me here. Since we’ve been sleeping on a hide-a-bed in the garage, I haven’t been able to sleep too well. But I wanted to get more saddle time while we’re still in Phoenix so we headed out thinking we’d get 5-6 hours. We headed east towards Apache Junction. The temps were fairly cool, around 45° and there was a slight wind. We found Goldfield Rd. We headed south towards Hwy 60 where we stopped at the Chevron for a bathroom break. We were told we’d have to ride the freeway for a mile before it turned into a two lane divided road.

That section of the highway was actually the best part! Once the freeway ended, the shoulder became a mess of debris, the rumble strip and large cracks every 10 feet or so. In addition, they had paved the two lanes of traffic with smooth asphalt, but left the shoulder alone so there was a 2-3 inch drop-off just to the right of the white line. In other words, unless you wanted to ride in the lane of traffic (going 65 MPH) you had to ride in the shoulder. We rode for another mile, hoping things would get better, but it didn’t look promising. Not wanting to ride the 10 miles to Florence Junction on this road, we decided to turn around. We did take a side trip north through Gold Canyon, but we couldn’t figure out how to head west through the residential section. So we turned around and took US-60 west back to Apache Junction.

Once we got on some normal roads, things were better, but my legs were still heavy and I was struggling to keep the ride in zone 1-2. We headed west towards Ellsworth and headed up Usery Pass. We turned left on Bush Hwy and headed back to Mesa. Total ride was just under four hours. Not what we had planned, but with the way my legs felt, I was glad it was over.