Burial of the Magician

This may be Bicycle Touring

Gurnelle Jones, leader of the Pinnacle Peak Pedalers, watches as two coyotes trot across the road ahead of her. Nearby, bounding along through the dessert underbrush quite undisturbed by our bicycles, lopes a jackrabbit. "Look!" commands Gurnelle, and I look-at a Harris hawk gliding placidly on a thermal just above a statuesque saguaro. As we coast down the 9½-mile slope from Pinnacle Peak almost to the Verde River, I marvel at the quiet of this desert expanse northeast of Scottsdale and at its sudden greenness after a rain. Such sights and sensations are the special corollary of bicycling-more particularly, of bicycle touring. Go where you like, when you like, as fast or as slowly

With the variety of climate zones in Arizona, any time of year is cycling season somewhere—from cool springtime in scenic Oak Creek Canyon (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 4 AND 5) to warm winter in the desert (THESE PAGES). Bicycling is a sport for people of all ages.

as you like. Experience the exhilaration of moving under your own power. Drink in the scenery. Savor the wildlife, which seems almost indifferent to the proximity of such silent, unthreatening vehicles. Feel as one with the landscape—with the road on which you travel. Take time to see, time to enjoy, exploiting what one of my riding, writing colleagues aptly called, in this era of traffic gridlock and smog, “the only firstclass transportation left to humanity.” That's bicycle touring. And Arizona is surely one of the best of bicycle touring states—maybe the best. The reasons? A veritable kaleidoscope of scenery. Benign climate. Lots of uncongested highways, with good bicycling shoulders, well away from busy interstates.

Today more and more people are getting acquainted with bicycle touring. No one has exact numbers, but the Arizona Department of Transportation estimates there are about a million bikes in the state, with one-third to one-half of them ridden by adults. And the clubs sponsoring organized rides report ever increasing numbers of cyclists turning out. “We used to have five or six people on our tours,” says Suzanne Couvrette, touring director for the Tucson chapter of the Greater Arizona Bicycling Association. “Now we have 35 to 50. It's the beauty of the state that attracts them—the scenic beauty and, of course, the exceptional weather.” The annual Grand Canyon to Mexico Almost Across Arizona Bicycle Tour, staged every fall by GABA, began with 23 riders in 1981. Now registration is cut off at 150 each for two different routes, one of 500-plus miles, the other of about 600 miles (and a day longer). This year GABA is adding a third and shorter route for participants in a national conference at Tucson in October called Pro-Bike '88, sponsored biennially by the Bicycle Federation of America. (For a detailed account of the Almost Across Arizona ride, see the June 1985 Arizona Highways.) Richard Corbett of Tucson, one of the founders of the Grand Canyon to Nogales tour, says two-thirds to three-fourths of the cyclists come from outside the state, and there have been riders from at least seven foreign countries.

“I would nominate this as one of the best rides in Arizona,” says Corbett. “It gives you an almost complete cross section of the state in terms of the variety of attractions that Arizona has to offer. That's one of the things that the out-ofstate people talk about. They just marvel at our scenic diversity.” Gene Berlatsky of Phoenix reports that he, too, is seeing more and more out-ofstate cyclists heading for Arizona, bikes racked on top or on the backs of their cars.Berlatsky is board chairman of the Arizona Bicycle Club, which is affiliated with the Arizona Council of the American Youth Hostels. “I'm getting calls from all over the country—people wanting to ride through, wanting to know where to ride, how to get there,” he says.

ABC's Sunday morning breakfast rides, departing from Granada Park in northeast Phoenix, attract so many cyclists— upwards of 75—that restaurants are hard put to accommodate them.

Tucson's bicycle classic of the year—the 100-mile-plus Maxicare Tour de Tucson, around the city's perimeter—started in 1983 with 198 riders. Now it's forced to close registration at 3,000. And it normally attracts some 10,000 onlookers and participants from as many as 25 states.

The Tour de Tucson was created and is still directed by Richard DeBernardis, a former college instructor. He calls it America's “largest perimeter bicycle event.” He got the idea from actually cycling the perimeter of the United States. Total distance: 12,092 miles. Elapsed time: six months. Having done that, DeBernardis took his bike across the Pacific to ride the 6,235-mile perimeters of the four main islands of Japan. The two feats got him into the Guinness Book of Records.“I like perimeters rather than straightacross courses,” says DeBernardis. “First, because you stop and end at the same place, it's easier for pickup and drop-off. The other thing is that you learn much more by encircling something than just going across something. I felt that if I'd biked across the U. S., I would have missed half the culture of America: the Swedish and Norwegians in Minnesota and Michigan, the French in Maine and Louisiana, and so forth."

Bicycle Touring

Every year the two main Arizona cycling clubs, ABC and GABA, add new rides to their touring schedules. ABC has its Litchfield Park to Gila Bend ride (130 miles, round-trip) and its late March "Desert Classic," 25-, 50-, and 100-mile increments across the desert between Tempe and the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument at Coolidge. GABA cycles from Tucson to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and from Sonoita to Bisbee. In midsummer the director of the American Youth Hostels in Arizona, Jim Metcalf of Tempe, helps cyclists from the desertbound cities of the south cool off on two trips through the White Mountains of eastern Arizona. In June there's also an ABC high-country ride through the Lake Mary-Mormon Lake region southeast of Flagstaff. And midway through the winter season, there's the popular "cancer ride" from Tucson to Phoenix, with an overnight stay in Casa Grande. You put the arm on your relatives and friends for pledges to the American Cancer Society, and you're off and riding.

Notice of all these goings-on has been taken officially by the State of Arizona. Something called the Governor's Arizona Bicycle Task Force has been created, to be administered by the Department of Transportation and financed with a courtordered restitution of monies to the state by the Exxon Corporation. The task force (which, incidentally, is the official host for Pro-Bike '88) promotes bicycle commuting, bicycle touring, bicycle facilities and, of course, bicycle safety. One of its projects, still somewhat in the think stage, is a linear park, complete with bike paths, along much of the route of the Central Arizona Project aqueduct, which stretches from the Colorado River to Phoenix and on to Tucson.

One very tangible achievement of the task force is the production of the state's first bicycle map or, as it's formally called, the Arizona Bicycle Suitability Map. It's so titled because it shows roads more suitable for bike touring as well as those less suitable (the interstates, for instance), along with enlarged maps of cycling routes in the Phoenix-Tempe-Mesa area, Tucson, Casa Grande, Yuma, and Flagstaff. The state task force also is working on two intriguing possibilities: (1) a river-front bike path in the proposed Rio Salado development, hooking up with the path through Scottsdale's Greenbelt, probably the best cycling route in the Valley; (2) adaptation of abandoned railroad and power-line rights-of-way for new trails.

A major reason for the proliferation of bicycle touring in Arizona and elsewhere is the development of the modern touring bike itself. It's an efficient, lightweight piece of machinery with anywhere from 10 to 18 gears to make pedaling easier. Another of my riding-writing colleagues has called it a machine of "glamour, grace, and poetry."

And there are useful variations. Increas-ing numbers of couples, along with parent-and-child teams, are taking to tandems-bicycles built for two. Rudy Rudy and Kay Van Renterghem of Tucson (he's a Belgian-born mail carrier) have been riding tandem for more than a dozen years. He's 55; she's 52. When they still lived in Michigan, he recalls, "I surprised my wife on our wedding anniversary by bringing home a tandem bike. She said, 'What are you trying to do-kill me?'"

Another variation, a newer one, is the recumbent bicycle. It sits low to the ground, and the rider leans back comfortably in a little bucket seat, in contrast to the rider of a conventional "diamond-frame" bike who hunches forward over

Bicycle Touring

Bicyclists ride a variety of machines across the state. (LEFT) High-wheelers-picturesque cycles from the past.

(ABOVE) The tandem-twin-sprocket togetherness.

(FAR RIGHT) The recumbent bicycle-reportedly efficient and easier on the back.

(RIGHT) Author and inveterate cyclist Joseph Stocker.

"drop" handlebars. Michael Shearer, a Phoenix electronic-systems technician, rides a recumbent model and not long ago pedaled it from Phoenix to Parker Dam on the Colorado River-a distance of about 170 miles. There's much less wind resistance than on a conventional bike, he says, and while it's not so nice going uphill, it passes just about everything on the road going down. A third variation is a throwback in time: the high-front-wheel bicycle. There's a club of high-wheelers in Phoenix. One of the members is Jack Castor, a 50-year-old engineer, who crossed the U.S. on a highwheeler in 1984 and has ridden it in the Tucson-Phoenix cancer ride several times. Why a high-wheeler? "Once you start riding 'em," Castor says, "you just fall in love with 'em. I guess there's something romantic about the old-fashioned design, and it's a pleasure to master the technique. It's just a great feeling. It takes you away from reality a little bit, and you're up there above the road and the dust."

But the great preponderance of Arizona's traveling cyclists are content to tool around the state on conventional bicycles. We feel good about what we're doing. We're not polluting the air. We're helping our bodies-our hearts and lungs and muscles and generally prolonging our lives. (Some of my best cycling friends are in their 70s and 80s.) We can stop to smell the flowers or chat with the locals or catch 40 winks in a grassy meadow beside the highway. We watch the voluptuous Arizona landscape passing in slow motion and, as one rider expressed it, "look at a scene long enough to get some feel for the life in it." And we come home from a 50or 100or 500mile trip with a warm, suffusive sense of achievement.

I like what a writer and cyclist named Daniel Behrman said about it all in his book The Man Who Loved Bicycles: "The bicycle is a vehicle for revolution. It can destroy the tyranny of the automobile as effectively as the printing press brought down despots of flesh and blood. The revolution will be spontaneous, the sum total of individual revolts like my own. It may have already begun."

Author's note: For a copy of the Arizona Bicycle Suitability Map, send an addressed, stamped return envelope (8 by 10 inches) and 60 cents in postage with your request to Arizona Department of Transportation, 1739 W. Jackson St., 108 P, Phoenix, AZ 85007.

For good bicycle trip suggestions, contact any or all of the following: Gene Berlatsky, Chairman of the Board, Arizona Bicycle Club, 6738 N. 19th St., Phoenix, AZ 85016; telephone (602) 2645478.

Jim Metcalf, Executive Director, Arizona State Council, American Youth Hostels (AYH), c/o Valley of the Sun Hostel, 1026 N. 9th St., Phoenix, AZ 85006; telephone (602) 254-9803 or 262-9439.

Richard Corbett, Pima Association of Governments, Transportation Planning Division, 100 N. Stone Ave., Tucson, AZ 85701; telephone (602) 628-5313.

Suzanne Couvrette, Touring Director, Tucson Chapter, Greater Arizona Bicycling Association, Box 43273, Tucson, AZ 85733; telephone (602) 325-8114 or 885-8807.

By joining either or both organizations (ABC and GABA), you receive monthly newsletters containing schedules of crosscountry rides in Arizona.

GABA dues are $11 per year for an individual, $16 for a family. Write to GABA/ Tucson, Box 43273, Tucson, AZ 85733, or to GABA/Phoenix Metro, Box 3132, Tempe, AZ 85281.

American Youth Hostels dues (which include membership in ABC) are $10 junior (under 18), $20 senior (18 or older), $50 senior three-year, $30 family, $10 senior citizen (60 or older), $200 individual life membership, $12 associate membership. Send to AYH, c/o Valley of the Sun Hostel, 1026 N. 9th St., Phoenix, AZ 85006.