Thanks for the Horsepitality!

Guess who's leg belongs to who? They're aren't too manish yet, are they?

Day 12: We left Phoenix early morning heading north. That morning I crashed my bike into the spoiler of a shitty car, and it cracked one of my brakes. The driver didn't even stop to see if I was ok. What a jerk!!!!! Anyway, Phoenix is not too biker friendly. The cars don't know how to share the road, and drivers kept honking their horns at us.

We stopped at a bike shop, called Surprise Bicycles to get our brakes checked and a new lock. Justin hooked us up with some new gear. He had stitches on his lip, and we thought it was from a biking accident, but turns out a puppy bit his mouth the night before. Lucky we checked, because Debbie's brakes had been worn down to nothing! Thanks for the new brake pads and for putting our sticker up in your store! Stay in touch.

We made the mistake of trying to get on the road after lunch. The heat was scorching. Five miles felt like forever. There was no shade anywhere, not one single tree in sight.



I threw my sarong over my head to sheild myself from the sun.



We came across this building with no windows that we decided to stop at. We were worried it might be a titty bar, but at that point we would hang out ANYWHERE with A/C. It turned out to be a sportsbar, the Trackside Bar & Grill in Wittman. We decided to hang out there and have a couple of beers to wait for the sun to go down a bit before we hit the road.



We made a few friends while hanging out at the bar. This is Andrew. When he approached us we were both reading, and he said, "what, you guys don't like each other?" He thought we were crazy, but was kind enough to give us his phone number in case we got into any trouble.



Here's the friendly staff and owner of the Trackside. Everyone there was super nice to us. I think we sat there for almost four hours chilling out and reading. We got lots of good tips and travel advice.




This is Bobbie, she's a trucker and runs a horse rescue organization where they save horses and finds them good homes.











Beautiful Arizona sunset.



Sunset clouds.



Finally at the end of a 65 mile ride, we arrived in Wickenberg, a quaint little cowboy town. We camped at a really awesomely decorated RV park called Horsepitality.



Everything there was cowboy and wild west motif. Debbie and I had the entire rec room all to ourselves. So we made a wild west gun duel movie, but instead of using guns we used pepper spray.







I lost my hand at poker and had to entertain the cowboys to stay alive. The cowboys also fired their guns at Debbie's feet and told her to tap dance. At the end of the night, we all became good friends. Kind of like when Pee Wee goes to the biker bar.

Debbie found a book that changed her life.




Day 13: We decided to spend an extra day in Wickenberg because we woke up too late for our morning ride. It ended up being a nice day off. We walked around town, visited some cowboy stores, and wrote postcards to our friends and family.





Sunset.







Later that evening, we discovered a really cool horse stable in the back of the RV park we were staying at. Delia was the owner of the horses. One of her horses came all the way from Southern France. She went to college in NYC like us, and told us some stories about her partying days. It made me miss the city a little when she described crossing a snow covered Central Park on New Year's Eve.





Debbie made a new friend, Dani.




She got to ride bareback. Yee-Haw!


Delia was so sweet, she gave us her phone number and told us to call her if we needed people to stay with once we got out to the mid-west.



We love sunsets!



Day 14: we climbed 30 miles uphill to Yarnell











It was tough, but we made it!!
"Where the desert breeze meets the mountain air"


We stopped to get some DELICIOUS sweet corn, and met Gloria Bacon who made a donation. Thanks, Gloria!!

That's all for now!

We love and miss you!