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Thursday, October 11, 2001 - Phoenix, Sun Screen City
Wickenburg AZ to Super 8 Motel, Tempe, AZ, 80 miles.
We got up early and left at dawn. It was cold
initially and my fingers were numb from the cold so I had switch from cycling to
full fingered gloves. It warmed up quickly as it was clear all day.
The first 10 miles were an easy cruise down U.S. 60
paralleling the Hassayampa River, dry of course, and then turning east on S.R.
74 through semi-desert occupied by a veritable army of Saguaro cacti of every
shape imaginable. 20 miles of riding, all of it BLM land without a single
building, brought us to a steep descent down to the Aqua Fria River, dammed
naturally, and we then turned south for ten miles through Peoria, AZ (pop.
50,618) without seeing a single building. Apparently Peoria and Phoenix
took all this land for water rights purposes.
We pedaled on into Phoenix past new construction past
the largest shopping mall I have ever seen to the bike path along the Arizona
Canal. This goes for 14 miles and becomes a corridor of concrete for the
runoff of rain, if it ever actually falls. This kept us away from the
omnipresent traffic as we bisected the Sun Screen City. Eventually the bike path
played out and we were cast into the streets of Phoenix.
It is a huge sprawling metropolis and one is always
amazed at the number of cars this country possesses. With Rush hour rising
we were at one time stranded in a center turn lane with two lanes of
continuous traffic front and rear. On a trip like this these situations
arise frequently and you adapt.
We moved on through older neighborhoods that actually
had shade, a precious commodity here. One area actually had a large number
of tall spreading palms that were casting a very useful amount of shade. Without
shade, resting even in the mid-October sun is impossible. More riding
brought us to the ASU campus in Tempe (pop. 141,865). We rode past the
home stadium of the Sun Devils. They play USC on Saturday. One thing
that struck me in a negative fashion was the amount of traffic in the Campus
area. There are streets four and six lanes wide and the amount of
vehicular traffic is colossal, in contrast to the modest number of cars
that can traverse the Campus in Ann Arbor. U of M has a far more comforting
environment. In addition the campus is very near the Jet flight path into
the Phoenix Airport.
For dinner we went out to a nearby local Mexican fast
food eatery. It was a hopping little place with a lot of drive in
customers, some of them sporting the low riding vehicles Hispanics are noted
for.
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