The weather will not change till the end of our trip. It started raining last night almost as soon as we reached our hotel in Phoenix and it hasn't stopped since. The forecast shows constant rain, thunderstorms and even flooding with more that 1" of rain per hour at times. We spent a night at a really nasty and dirty hotel that seem to have no renovations since the 80s. They sure have hired a great photographer to advertise themselves as three star hotel. In reality "Sahara" is a run-down place with conference/breakfast room flooded.
But back to our ride. As we eat breakfast we try to drag it out as long as possible. 85% of rain make us hope for the remaining 15% to prevail. Two things have changed for the better so far: it is going to be 55F all day and the wind has slowed down to bearable 10mph yet nobody wants to get soaked for the next ten hours. But we have no choice and we roll out towards Tucson.
Temperature climbed to 55F in the outskirts of Phoenix but then quickly dropped to 50F. Tom and Cesar are out of warm clothes and moving becomes impossible in a heavy rain and 48F. We decided to skip to Florence AZ and continue from there. Florence did not bring any relief. Same rain, fog and 52F. But a promise is a promise and guys took off from there. we made today the shortest day because this misery is hard to take. We reached Tucson in 5 hours cold wet and completely covered in dirt. We plan on doing a lot of riding around Tucson but the weather is going to take much fun out of it.
After we cleaned ourselves up at the hotel we went out and met up with Jame Carney, Erica Allar and Dulcy (long time Stradalli customer) We had a great night at the restaurant joking, talking about local cycling, Tour de Tucson and peculiarities of weather. One of the worst days finished with wonderful night.
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