Dasyatidae

So there I was enjoying my short Memorial Day vacation in Puerto Penasco (thats Rocky Point you gringo). It was remarkably cool and we didn't get in the water as much as we normally would have but it was still a nice time. Tuesday was the last day of the trip and during the last beach session I waded out into the ankle deep low tide to play with the kids when WHAM I felt like I stepped on a nail. I hobbled out and found my foot covered with blood from a small spot on the underside of my right foot. I think its called the pad of my foot a couple inches below my 2nd toe. It started hurting and didn't quit, like a really bad bee sting but that just didn't abate. I tried to gut it out sitting on the beach with my NYT crossword but just couldn't focus. 30 minutes later the other Dad travelling with us got hit also. We had a silent tough guy contest neither willing to admit he was in agony for another 30 minutes while we waited for everyone to get ready to go. Finally admitting that we were hurting we went online and found that an hour in near boiling water (as hot as you can stand apparently denatures the poison) pretty well fixed the problem but left me swollen and purple. Turns out the other guy still was hurting pretty badly several days later. About 8 days later I did some minor surgery and removed a peice of stinger. Its still sort of black and slightly raised but not longer any pain.

I write all this because I had to puss* out of a bike ride a couple days after it happened and I wanted to document my alibi. I played basketball the day after and didn't have any problem other than some swelling after I got home. The bike however nearly had me in tears. The attach point from the shoe to the pedal was just driving right into the stinger and felt like someone driving that same serrated nail in there again. I gave up at the Rincon market and went home. Like 12 miles round trip but I think we made good time.

Top of the Hill

The days are getting long. The kids are out of school. Its time for crazy ideas.

Plan #1
This year I am riding to the top of Mt. Lemmon on my birthday Sunday 7/27. I don't have a lot of time to get ready in fact many of my weekends are spoken for so I need to find a way to get some rides in during the weeks. I'm looking at shipping my bike to Philly for the 3 weeks we are back there.

In 2008 I think I've been on the bike twice and despite being in decent shape from playing basketball 3 nights a week for the last few months I think this is an appropriately ridiculous goal.

Below is alot of ridiculous data. Enjoy

5/25/2008	Mexico
6/1/2008
6/8/2008
6/15/2008	Vegas
6/22/2008	Travel to E. Coast
6/29/2008
7/6/2008
7/13/2008	Travel from E. Coast
7/20/2008
7/27/2008

Check out the mile marker data I made in Google Earth (link)

Mt. Lemmon Data

Segment	Elevation (m)	Elevation (ft)	Interval Climb (ft)	Grade
0	878.5	2,882	-	-
1	961.5	3,155	272	5%
2	1043.2	3,423	268	5%
3	1107.6	3,634	211	4%
4	1190.2	3,905	271	5%
5	1273.4	4,178	273	5%
6	1346.9	4,419	241	5%
7	1437.8	4,717	298	6%
8	1529.1	5,017	300	6%
9	1592.6	5,225	208	4%
10	1649.8	5,413	188	4%
11	1743.5	5,720	307	6%
12	1800.2	5,906	186	4%
13	1898.7	6,229	323	6%
14	1989.6	6,528	298	6%
15	2047.7	6,718	191	4%
16	2108.8	6,919	200	4%
17	2185.7	7,171	252	5%
18	2268.8	7,444	273	5%
19	2357.8	7,736	292	6%
20	2434.2	7,986	251	5%
21	2491.4	8,174	188	4%
22	2445.3	8,023	(151)	-3%
23	2369.3	7,773	(249)	-5%
24	2424.6	7,955	181	3%
25	2411.1	7,910	(44)	-1%
26	2409.7	7,906	(5)	0%
27	2515.9	8,254	348	7%
Top	2543.3	8,344	90	2%