A Very Interesting Day

We left a little after 7:00 to begin our 84-mile ride.  The first 25 miles we climbed along the East Rim of the Grand Canyon.  Just as I forgot it was there, I'd pass a break in the trees and Wow! there it was again.  The GC in morning sunshine was spectacular.  It was very windy this morning, but the forest blocked most of it for 25 miles.  Then, boom, we had about 30 miles of downhill with maybe a 30-mph winds out of the south (our right).  My bike was Jimmied and Buffetted as changes in latitudes and changes in attitudes convinced me that nothing remains quite the same.  The final 20 or so miles were straight down wind and much easier to control the bike.  Today saw dramatic geographic variations, from tall Ponderosa pines to scrub pines.  We then rode past plains with large canyons and through red stone mesas right out of John Wayne cowboys and Indians movies.  Finally, the land just played out and got awful, dusty and barren looking as we pulled into Tuba City.  

Eric has a Go-Pro camera that he mounts on the the front or rear of bike, which snaps a picture every 6 seconds.  Yesterday, he loaned it to Kevin, who played with it in his room last night to make sure he understood how it worked.  Anyways, he forgot to turn it off and ended up with thousands of images of his hotel room ceiling.

For the past few months I've been training in the Texas heat.  As a result, I did well in the CA desert.  Now we've climbed to about 5,000 feet and I'm working on altitude acclimation.  According to Drew, my running buddy and coach, who is given to analysis, heat and altitude acclimation are different things:  plasma expansion vs. plasma contraction.  Right now my blood is a little confused.

Many of you know I have stage IV Follicular non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and my darling wife has been seriously handicapped  by MS.  Here's our game plan- John 6:63.  "The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.  The words I have spoken to you- they are full of the Spirit and Life."  Then in verse 65, Jesus said, "...no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."  Here's my prayer:  Father, Enable me to understand verse 63...the Spirit gives Life, the cancer and MS count for nothing.

Below are some photos from today's ride.  As you can see Paul The Elder, 70, and I stopped at Sonic after our ride for a cheese burger and choclate shakes.

Dang it!  I somehow inserted that 'don't harass the buross sign again; oh well.