Tequila in a Tree

Does your favorite descent have a bottle of tequila chained to a tree on it? Unless you live in Tucson, you may be out of luck. #followcamfriday on Tucson's finest.

La Milagrosa - the crown jewel of Mount Lemmon. This is picking up where we left off last week, beginning at the snow line on Bug Springs and ending in the city of Tucson with Alex and Randy. I would love to ride the upper sections of the infamous "Lemon Drop", but that will have to wait until the weather improves. Nice down here tho...  Down coats at the top, tee shirts at the bottom. 

Par for the course with Frenchie Alex - nose picks for days. You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose... Not sure where that came from but I think my dad used to tell me that when I was a growing up. This is proper switchback technique. Learn now for success. 

La Milagrosa has a tequila tree. I could end the blog right here because there isn't really anything else to say, but I will provide some context. While I never condone drinking and riding, there are just some situations where this sort of thing is encouraged or even expected. If the man showing you the trail asks you to drink, you say yes. It would be rude not to. I don't care about your training, or your "racer" paleo, gluten free, hella vegan diet (including my own). Drink fucker.  As it turns out,  a small sip puts you right where you want to be for success on the descent. Cheers Randy. Loose is fast. Living proof. 

It's easy to forget what you were doing when you drink too much tequila. At least this gives me time to appreciate my surroundings... Tucson has some of the best sunsets in the world. If you look closely, you can see Randy's house. Inside that house, there is more tequila. But I digress... Oh yeah, bikes are cool. What was I doing?

If you find yourself on Mt. Lemmon, make sure you don't miss this one. You won't find the tree with the booze chained to it, but that isn't really for everyone anyway. I don't want you to end up with two flat tires, upside down in the bushes because of me. Just ride and enjoy. If someone shows you the tree, then you have to drink.

After living on the road for a month and not riding the road bike I have been storing in my van, even once. I decided that it would be a crime not to do the classic Mount Lemmon climb. For this 5500' grunt, I packed 1 banana, 1 water bottle and a down coat. It was well below freezing at the top. Ever question whether it is better to go slow on the descent to stay warm or sprint with the brakes on to stay warm? Yeah, that was me. Nipples erect, slowly descending, burning on 100 calories. Fortunately, road biking is easy and I made it back to Safeway and strutted around the parking lot in my baggies, amongst the 50 shaved and kitted people who are really into fitness. I don't think they understand me, but that's okay. They probably don't like tequila anyway.