Phoenix/Tempe Arizona: The Graduation Party, days 6-7

I'll never forget the ride to Phoenix (70 miles), full of angry motorists, oranges, and, what seemed an endless metro area sprawling to Tempe, on the other side.  Tempe is a neat town, and Phoenix has that fiery rock beauty, with the blessing of a luscious canal and healthy green throughout, but I spent half my day passing strip malls and stopped in traffic, getting smelted with exhaust plus black asphalt conveying mid-day temps into the hundreds.  By the time I rolled into Phoenix proper, the heat was definitely getting to me and the people looked like cactus.  But I was going to make it in time to celebrate!

It took me another THREE hours to get across Phoenix, navigating a detour through a rather beautiful neighborhood and golf course in the hills and getting across the river.  Like I said, thirty miles on no lunch and major dehydration, weird backroads under construction, and slowly-moving inhabitants, later, I turned onto a little residential street and re-entered civilization.

I arrived at friends of my cousins in San Diego, where one of their girlfriends and all her family were celebrating her graduation.  They were a few hours into it, all well clad, except for the kids in the pool, and I really felt like a crazy, beat-up lunatic stumbling out of the desert.  But they were as kind as could be (though they did think I was a little confused, let's say), telling me to "Eat!  Eat!," and, "Hey, did you hear, she just rode from San Diego!"  They were  family had all come out from San Diego, Rachel was the first of the family to graduate, and it was a grand affair with a few poignant speeches, bountiful summer barbeque, and lots of jabbing, teasing, good-natured humor.  I cracked open a Coors Light and sat down to enjoy it.

Later that night, they dragged me to this rad, huge New Country bar, Toby Keith's, where all types, and I do mean diversity here, were square dancing, swing dancing, and of course, hitting the booze.
36 hours, a couple nights rest on a futon amid several bags of golf-clubs, an ironing board, behind the darkest set of blinds I've ever seen, I headed back out into the sun to keep pedalling.



Old Hwy 60 East, of Apache Junction, AZ



Next stop: Albuquerque and the artists, deserts, forests and remaining wildness of New Mexico.