Pleasant surprises

Alligator junipers are the coolest trees ever!

PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz.—After spending the morning cooped up inside our temporary home because of dreary gray skies, cold wind and minefields of puddles all over the ground, we could no longer stand it. We got dressed and went for a bike ride. Damn the consequences!

We knew full well that the previous night's rains might have made the trails unrideable, but there's only so much television a person can stomach, and we'd already reached our weekly toxic allowance 24 hours earlier. So we set out for the Land of the Pioneers trailhead hoping for the best. The skies were still loaded with puffy gray rain clouds, and temperatures hovered at a chilly 45 degrees. It was a day for wool jerseys and knickers.

As we drove toward our destination, the skies dried out considerably and the sun beat down on us, leading us to believe that we were grossly overdressed for our ride. When we finally reached the trailhead about an hour later, however, the skies had once again grown dark and the air had grown even cooler. We quickly hopped on our bikes and made our way down the unfamiliar trail.

Show Low bike shop owner Todd Fernau had tipped us off to the rideability of the Land of the Pioneers trail the previous day when we happened to pop into Cycle Mania, Fernau's most excellent shop. With impending rain in the forecast, we wondered which of the White Mountain trails would dry out first in wet conditions.

The forest service map describes this as an "interesting box canyon." That's a total
understatement. It's an absolutely stunning box canyon!

A few years earlier during the annual Tour of the White Mountains ride/race, we had seen some of the trails turn into nightmarish mud bogs after a downpour. When exposed to rain, some of the soil in these parts transforms into a fearsome sticky-yet-slick clay that can totally gum up a bike, so we were anxious to avoid the trauma of becoming paralyzed in oobleck someplace way out on an unfamiliar trail in a community where nobody even knew who we were or that we were even out there riding.

When we inquired about the Land of the Pioneers—mostly because we had never ridden it—Fernau told us that the trail had been greatly improved during the past couple of years and that it was totally worth a ride. We needed to hear nothing more than that, so we made immediate plans to ride the trail a day later.

We enjoyed every minute of the trail! Despite its designation as "difficult," we navigated the rocky, winding path with ease. Maybe we rode well to ward off the chill, or maybe it was the simple fact that riding for five out of the past seven days had put us into great shape. Whatever it was, we enjoyed the ride more than we ever thought we would. Even better, the night of rains made the trails perfect and dustless.

If you wonder why they call this trail Land of the Pioneers, the ruins of an old home-
stead provide a quick answer.

In addition to enjoying the flow of the trail, we enjoyed the scenery as well. Giant alligator juniper trees loomed alongside us in many areas. Ancient oak trees stood guard over their piñon and juniper colleagues. As we climbed Eckes peak, we were able to look across vast expanses of Arizona wilderness. Newly re-routed sections melded perfectly with the landscape. Land of the Pioneers was much different from the grueling Hell Ride we'd heard it called when we first visited the White Mountains five years ago.

After our ride we returned home to clean up and get dressed for dinner. Hot water never felt so good! We dressed and visited the Sakura Buffet restaurant located in a strip mall in Pinetop. During our first visit here, we had dined at Sakura's predecessor—a delightful, four-star restaurant that served some of the finest sushi we had ever tasted.

The White Mountain Trail system is truly a mountain biking paradise.
The system has nearly 200 miles of well-marked, non-motorized
trails.

The new Sakura Buffet provided all-you-can-eat sushi and Asian food that was absolutely soulless and uninspiring. We had found the Furr's cafeteria of Japanese cuisine, except that I actually enjoy eating at Furr's sometimes. It seemed to us as though the Sakura 
Buffet food was simply created to reap a profit. There didn't seem to be any love or care put into the food. It was industrial, pedestrian...dead.

As a last thought on Sakura Buffet, I refer you all to one of the last scenes in the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster, Titanic. In that scene, actress Gloria Stuart as the Old Rose Dawson recalls her experience, so I'm summing mine up something like this:

"But now you know there was a restaurant named Sakura Buffet and that it was wretched...in every way that a restaurant can be wretched. I don't even have a picture of it. It exists now...only in my memory."

The good thing about a bad restaurant is that it makes the good ones seem even better!

See you on down the road.

Rain delay

Rains have made our bicycles a prisoner of the porch and have caused nearly every
single pine needle in this place to fall to the ground.

PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz.—A good friend of mine once told me that I need to learn how to relax. I guess he's right.

The rains have come to our little hideaway, banishing us from the trails for the past day. It's forced us inside, where the inescapable siren's song of television finally lured us away from the easy jabber amongst ourselves that we had been enjoying on this vacation.

If I've learned two things on this trip, it's this:

1.) Riding bikes is always much better than not riding bikes; and

2.) television sucks no matter where you are.

Here in Arizona, the political races are underway hot and heavy, and the airwaves are fetid with vicious political advertising made possible by faceless corporate-sponsored political action committees. Thanks to the stooges on the supreme court and the Citizens United ruling, anyone with money can now say pretty much anything they want about pretty much any political candidate. The result is a stinking haze of lies and innuendo plastered all over the airwaves in an attempt to support candidates who will gleefully serve their Corporate Overlords, and defeat any candidates who still have a shred of integrity.

Arizona political advertising in this neck of the woods has boiled down to a never-ending video character assassination of democrat Richard Carmona, who apparently could tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Another ad for some candidate around here accuses the other candidate of beating his wife in front of the other candidate's child. Or something like that. People make fun of the "Have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife" routine, but this is the first time I've actually seen it used. It screams of desperation.

The tiresome 24-hour parade of crap-vertising has prompted me to subconsciously tune out all political advertisements and substitute them in my own head with hilarious parodies of political advertising that go something like this:

"Baby-eating space alien Barack Obama is a presidential impostor who has a smelly butt that hides a business-destroying socialist agenda—This ad paid for by the Secret Handshake Club for Grotesquely Wealthy Fat Cats who Live Off of Corporate Welfare and Pretty Much Hate Anyone Else Who Doesn't Earn an Annual Income of More Than $16 Million."

But there was one upside about watching television because of the rain: We caught the Joe Biden/Paul Ryan debate last night. I guess that's good. I guess...

But now that we've grown sick of the never-ending squeal of the Glowing Box of Idiocy, and we are forced to remain indoors on this gray rainy day. We sit here inside our little hideaway, which is alive with the smell of bacon, hunched over our computers, waiting for the sun to dry out the ground so we can get another ride in.

I'm learning to deal with these circumstances, but I don't exactly call it relaxation.

See you on down the road.