This One's For Jerome: "I can't put into words how beautiful this is."

Catching up to where we are now. Thanks to the internet gods and comfortable beds, I've finally got a chance. Hopefully the ol' thinker has enough juice to recall.

Day 14:
The temperature was cool, the sun was shining, we were ready to get back on the road. Our location was on the southeast side of the Phoenix area, we thought we'd be out in the open in no time. Turns out it took us 30 more miles of riding to get to the border. But, we said goodbye to the palm trees in exchange for the saguaro cacti.

I don't know why everyone needs to have fancy palm trees, they look like way too much fuckin work.

We had to make a short detour to a bike shop to grab some chain lube. If you've ever had a dry chain, you know the pain that the squeaks drill through your eardrum into your brain. I wasn't going to ensure that for the next 200 miles. As we got to the outskirts of town, we were treated with, what would remain, some of the most beautiful scenery. It put every Michael bay overly gratuitous action scene to shame.

I tried to get some of the mountains in the background, but even looking at it now, the attempt was fruitless compared to the real thing.

We hopped back on the ol' misery highway, and I quickly found that I was going too fast, so I found some cool stuff too take pictures of.

How the fuck are you still alive?!

A lot of the highway had those signs where you can "adopt the highway" and put your own phrase on it. This one was a little disconcerting.

Annnnnd fuck camping in that area.

But, the amazing views really made up for it. This has to have been a dream.

I imagine trying to traverse this stuff in the 1800s was a nightmare. Oregon Trail, anyone?

The day drew to an end with a rather big climb. It's fairly taxing trying to climb big hills with all of your gear on your bike, but you don't really have any other options. I was really impressed with the old man, Jerome, getting over these hills. The guy's 65 years old, but acts like a 50 year old.

We finished the climb by entering Tonto National Forest. The stuff desert fantasies are made of (unless you're into the cold beer and strippers thing).

As we descended the final climb, we were treated to more phenomenal views.

Again, the limitation of cell phone technology hardly does it justice.

As we rolled closer to superior, I noticed a very polite sign. The first apology in over 500 miles!

Does said opportunity include making more roads out of all the shattered beer bottles on the side of the road?

When we finally stopped to figure out where we were going to stay, I noticed i had little red splotches all over my forearms. I thought I was sweating a lot that day, but I guess the mixture of heat and stress made my body decide to become the stuff of death metal music dreams. Blood sweat (note to self; name for death metal band I'll be starting).

Dr. Google informed me that I'm dying of cancer. I told him I'm too busy to die.

We found a small motel in Superior and layed our heads down for another night of quiet solitude and low water pressure.

Day 15:
Today was going to be a day of a lot of climbing, so we called early that we were only going to make it a 25 mile day. It was a good thing, because those hills were fuckin steep, tell you what.

Steep, yes. Ungodly beautiful, also yes.

Not far from the beginning of the ride we were confronted with a not very cool tunnel of death. We got really lucky because one of the lanes going up was closed to construction, so we sort of highjacked it so that cars behind us wouldn't have to crawl up the hill going -5mph.

Sweet, a cool ass tunnel! Fuck you semis, I've got my own lane.

Please oh please oh please let the cars behind me see me. Wait, fuck that, I'll just hop into this unused lane over here. Oh, look at that, it's covered in broken beer bottles, what else did I expect.

The ascent out of the tunnel was no less of a treat than before it. Breathtakingly beautiful.

"Watch for falling rocks" I don't really want to sit around waiting that long.

The long climb to the top was fun (to me, maybe not as much to Jerome). When we got to the top, we were greeted with a construction zone! It was probably a gift in some spots, and a curse in others. Some places we were able to jump into the construction lane and have an unobstructed path for a ways. Others would be very tight lane spacing due to cone placement. In the tight lane areas, I noticed a weird social tendency that I'm sure others have noticed in these hairy situations. Someone would make an unsafe (and probably illegal) pass, and the person behind them would assume since someone else did it, they can do it too. Is this just chalked up to herd mentality, or is there a name for this? Either way, I had a lot of people make some dangerous moves and nearly run me of the road. But all is well, I'm still able to type a blog.

Off in the distance, you can see the road pitch back up. This day was really fun (seriously).

I think the top of our climbing day was a little town called "Top of the World". There wasn't much there, but it was quaint. Towards the end of the plateau, I came across an interesting graveyard. At least I'd have a spot to be buried if I got run over.

"Mountain Breeze Memorial Garden," more like haunted breeze memorial garden. The place was spooky.

We had a long, beautiful descent into our final destination for the day:

Fucking finally, Miami, Florid... Wait... NOOOOOOOOO

Miami/Globe was a nice town. We started getting the 'wild west' vibe. Lots of trucks and cowboy hats. My new goal is to get someone to let me shoot their gun. Our hotel of the night was a comfort inn and the title did not disappoint.

Day sweet 16:
Finally, I'm catching up to yesterday. This day we were riding into Indian reservation land. I was excited to check out life on the reservation. You often hear about how rough it can be.

Quintessential casino right after the reservation border.

Another breathtaking sun rise

I couldn't help but think about how shitty the native Americans got it with the land they were given. The views were absolutely stunning, but the ability to build on or farm the land was nearly impossible. "Here's a plot a land for you guys, good luck actually living off it." But it seemed like they did the best with what they had. Everyone we talked to, as well, were amazingly nice. I never felt unwelcome on their land.

"Dripping spring holy ground welcome" hell no I ain't about to tread on holy ground and get shot.

Again I tried to selfishly capture some beauty, but cell phone pictures never do it justice.

Rodeo arena that hadn't been rodeoed in awhile. Check out the mountains in the background.

And now we come to the sad tale of the day. We stopped at a gas station in the town of Peridot to refuel and rewater. Upon sitting outside, we were greeted by a sweet new friend.

Emaciated and having trouble standing, but she couldn't stop wagging her tail.

The very sweet dog looked like she loved having some company. I gave her 3/4 of my cliff bar, which had little bits of chocolate in it, but I figured it wasn't going to be the chocolate that killed her. If I had had a trailer, I probably would have taken her along for the ride, but supplies were limited, and she showed signs of possibly being domesticated/having an owner. I had heard that dogs were an issue on reservation land, just never expected to be greeted by such a sweet one. We left her with a coffee cup full of water and continued down the road with our tails between our legs. OK, depressing moment over.

Again, we were greeted by amazing scenery and beauty everywhere.

These flowers littered the roadside. A refreshing exchange to the broken beer bottles.

We rolled through a small town called Geronimo, I think associating with the historical figure. The town was basically fucked.

Town consisted of basically broken down buildings or broken down trailers. Exactly what you'd expect out of a zombie apocalypse. Must. Ride. Faster.

I can't describe, again, how beautiful the landscape was. Always changing and never ceasing to surprise.

Imagine these mountains but being completely surrounded by them.

As we rode out of the reservation land, we were greeted by little bits of modern amenities here and there. We seem to be riding over lots of washes, I can only imagine seeing them with water running through.