We are now in Wickenburg, AZ a small town of about 5,000 people 50 or so miles northwest of Phoenix. Today’s ride was a good one and I’m happy to report that after my two flats yesterday the tires held up fine today! The morning began like any other morning with peanut butter and jelly for breakfast, Sehee then presented the daily Mosher before we picked our groups and were on the road by 5:20 am!
My group today consisted of Allison, Jon and Andrew. About 10 miles into the ride Allison and Brandt (who was in the group right in front of us) both got flats simultaneously at a stop light. After Allison changed her flat our group headed onward to Prescott, our first water stop of the day. In Prescott some groups stopped for coffee however with a climb right ahead my group opted to continue on and get the climb out of the way before the temperatures rose to high. We climbed some very curvy roads for awhile before descending down some very similar roads. Apparently we were making good time because we pulled into Yarnell, our lunch stop, at 9:45 a.m. and stopped at Cornerstone Bakery to wait for the van and get a little bite to eat. By this time we had gone 30+ miles since our last stop in Prescott and I was rather hungry so I had a small maple frosted doughnut from the Bakery and then made myself a peanut butter-oatmeal cookie-apple butter sandwich when the van showed up.
From lunch we climbed a small hill before beginning our decent down into a small town called Congress. The view at the top of the hill before the decent was rather amazing as everything below looked extremely miniaturized. The rest of the ride was mostly flat and we were able to reach Wickenburg by noon.Once in town our first stop was at the Wickenburg library where we stopped to check our email and take care of a few things before heading over to the church. Our host in Wickenburg was St. Albans Church and they opened their fellowship hall for us to use while also letting us use a couple of rooms down stairs that had extremely soft carpeting which made for comfortable sleeping! When we arrived at the church we took turns taking showers with the hose in the small courtyard and rested as we waited for all of our teammates to arrive.
Late afternoon a woman named Marcia stopped by to share her experience with Leukemia with us as part of the Portrait Project. Marcia is an artist and also shared some of her work with us. She also gave us each two postcards which she had made. If you get a chance you can check out some of her work on her website at YellowMoon Rising. As we were talking with Marcia the pastor’s wife stopped by with pizza for dinner. While we were eating dinner she left and went to the grocery store where she bought us apples, oranges and bananas along with pretzels and chips to go with the cookies Marcia had brought us for dessert! A special thank you to both women for their generosity in making sure we were fed properly! After dinner we spent a little more time talking with Marcia about how cancer has impacted her life before she headed home for the night. We will be back in Wickenburg in three days and hope to be able to visit her home and see her peace poll then. It’s getting late and we have a long ride to Chandler tomorrow so I’m heading to bed. Goodnight!
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