The Great Cowtown Campout 2016 p/b Ordinary Bikes of Tucson
This event looked pretty swiggity sweet when I saw it pop up on Facebook a couple months ago. Ride bikes out to a weird old ranch west of Tucson. Sag support and camp cookout. A chance to try out my new pool toy, I mean, AirCore sleeping pad. Hob knobbing with cool folks in the Tucson bike community. All good stuff. My friend Nathan would even be able to join at the campsite for his first night back from the Bay Area.
Started the morning early by packing my bike up and high-tailing it down in my car to Tucson. I had my mom drop me off in the general vicinity, but not too close, so it still looked like I rode in. There was plenty of preride “socializing” going on, and I scoped out everyone’s camping rigs, while making some final adjustments to my own (#mugontheoutside). I didn’t know most of the people there, but I saw Ben Elias and Bryan Harding, two stalwarts of the Tucson and Tempe bike community, and then I knew with some certainty this trip would be RAD.
Perhaps we spent a little bit too long sitting in the sun waiting for the 3pm roll time to arrive. Looking back, I definitely wouldn’t have minded an earlier start, but I’ll get to that later. Though once we rolled out, the excitement in the air was palpable! There’s always something special about a posse of mismatched bikes loaded down with camping equipment and whiskey.
The funky train of touring bicycles and 26" hardtails snaked away through Downtown Tucson and onto the Santa Cruz River Path (part of an extensive network of bike paths called the Loop).
The ride leaders designated 4 stops along the way for regrouping. At each stop every rider was dealt a playing card; upon reaching our destination the best 5-card hand won a bottle of whiskey. Sick! However after the first two stops, the novelty of stopping and handing out cards to 40 people and recording them on a sheet wore out quickly.
The first stop was at the beginning of the bike path. After we departed the urban confines of Tucson, we rode along Ajo road for some distance before stop number 2, a Circle K.
Circle K served, as it often does for cyclists on a long journey, as a watering hole and refueling station of a different sort. Here, tall boys of PBR and peach Os (guilty) and Doritos and gatorades are enjoyed in equal measure by grungy men and women with legs both shaved and not.
Speaking of legs, the next 20 or so miles took us along Ajo and along an old side road parallel to it. Unfortunately this road was plagued with construction, but traffic was not too bad and we were granted strength in numbers.
Luck would have it, as we approached Ryan Airfield (where my dad has worked on and off for the past 16 years), my dad himself pulled up to the street in his Yukon and said hi as I rode past!
At some point along this stretch, though I had been pulling pretty hard with the A Group, my legs were starting to feel it, and I got dropped. Apparently I was still far ahead of the chase group; my suspicion was that Stop 3 took place somewhere behind me and I had missed it.
Instead of slog along at my own pace, I took this opportunity to water the desert flora and wait for someone to catch up. The first riders to reach me were none other than Ben (@eltucsonense) and Bryan (@bhrd). What a pleasant surprise. We even performed a roadie paceline to the sound of jazz for some miles.
Soon we reached Stop number 4 at the general store in a “town” called Three Points. Though the store itself was nothing spectacular, what was spectacular was the vendor of fresh hot tamales out front (not the candy mind you). They came in varieties verde y rojo and were a dollar each. Naturally I bought tres verdes for myself.
The sun was setting and it was time to eat up some more miles before we hit camp. We still had quite a bit to go. Two or so miles put us past the border checkpoint and our route took us off the asphalt and onto the dirt. 8 miles of this was the only thing keeping us from a crazy ranch party.
Great! Many of our bikes were made for this! This is the exciting part of the ride! Except that mired among these 8 miles of mostly hardpack there were traps of soft sand. I would be cruising along at a decent clip only to choose the wrong line and find myself fish tailing around with no warning.
The last few miles were especially sandy and made it increasingly difficult to stay vertical. With only half a mile left to go, I was blessed with a nail in my rear tire. Rather than change my tube there in the moonlit night, I figured I was close enough to hoof it the rest of the way.
I was pretty confused when I made it to Cowtown Keeylocko. There didn’t seem to be any organized reception for our band of cyclists. So, barring that, I headed straight to the nearest food/beer, which happened to be the venerable Blue Dog Saloon. $5 for a burger grilled up before your eyes and a side of chips. $2 for a can of beer, which come in one flavor: domestic. I grabbed a burger and a Banquet, and met up with my buddy Nathan who had already been exploring the premises.
I mozeyed around chatting with random locals. I saw Lando Chill and Crocco Joel, who were apparently gracing us with their tunes. There was a dog. I smoked a pipe, or attempted to. I consumed a coke, and then another beer! I saw some Tecate cans floating around, but when I asked the barkeep, she assured me, again, only domestics.
I was starting to get tired, and was waiting for the local talent to perform. But before that could happen, some local-er talent had to perform. And by that I mean Karaoke. And Ed Keeylocko himself, legend and cowboy mayor of Cowtown Keeylocko, sang and regaled us with his stories.
Finally, the first band was ready to play. At 11:30. Normally I’m up for late night soirees, but I hadn’t slept much the night before, and had just happened to ride 40 miles on a loaded touring bike. So my eyelids were having trouble keeping themselves open. I listened to the first band, dread cat and the transitional wave, which was certainly entertaining. When they promised another session of karaoke for the locals, I knew Lando Chill was not in the cards for me tonight.
I had set up my camp next to Ben and some other rides in a sort of corral towards the far entrance of the ranch. Hammock was the prevailing sleep system, thanks in part to the appropriately spaced walls of the corral. I personally opted for open air sleeping bag on my Big Agnes Pool Toy on top of my tent footprint so I would avoid abrading several microscopic holes in my mattress like the last one.
Unfortunately, the trend with camping for me seems to be real crummy sleep the first night of a trip as I attempt and fail to get used to such a severe departure from the luxurious confines of modern bedroom technology. For bike touring, this is usually works out okay: at the end of a day of 60+ miles of pedaling up and down the hills along the West Coast, I’m usually toasted enough to collapse in any position. This time, though I was pretty fatigued from this ride in the Tucson sun, something about the rambunctious 4am partiers at the bonfire just outside our corral, combined with a squeaky mattress and sweaty legs made sleep a bit of a pipe dream.
I “woke” “up” around 6AM to Ben Elias packing his bike and “headin right out of this here town, no looking back” (this isn’t a real quote).
I “slept” for a couple more hours. Went out for a pee in the woods, and then packed up the bike. The Facebook event had promised breakfast at the Blue Dog Saloon. I was skeptical, and rightly. There were a few party stragglers doing whatever people do in the morning after a good time. Because: a. I was hungry. b. my tire had a big freakin nail in it. and c. it was available, I took Nathan up on a ride back into town on his Love-Powered Suburaro Outback, Australian Outback edition Outback granolo-wagon. (I’m about haffa beer in as I write this).
(Sorry phone was dead, no more pictures)
Nate parked in the hip-as-all-hell Tucson Warehouse District (now with fab mural) and I fixed my tube, so that we could ride our bike .16 miles down to 4th avenue for breakfast at Caffe Passé (highly recommend, not for the coffee, but for the downtown-Tucson-in-a-nutshell ambience). We both got chopped up pancakes with abundant strawberries and whipped cream. Flippin awesome. A satisfying, but maybe protein-deficient end to a weird, exhausting, fun weekend.
