IN TALL COTTON

Today's Ride (Friday)

30.3 miles

Bryce O&B

1 hour 47 minutes

70° with little wind

It's actually not tall yet, in fact, it's not even planted, but the local cotton farmers are beginning to stir after their winter fallow season.

With one exception, no matter which direction I ride away from my home in Thatcher, I ride through cotton fields.

Our seasons here in the Gila Valley are marked off by the cycles of planting, cultivating and harvesting cotton. Our "brown" season, winter, is coming to a close as the farmers prepare their fields for planting. A couple of weeks after the spring planting, the cotton plants will emerge and transform our brown valley floor into a patchwork quilt of green cotton plants that stay with us until the fall harvest.

Living among the green cotton fields makes the desert summer heat much more bearable -- even enjoyable. The color is soft and cool on the eyes and when the fields are under irrigation the air temperature drops by five to 10 degrees. It's a pleasure to ride the farm roads flanked by fields of cotton.

Come fall, after the cotton blossoms have transformed themselves into bulging balls of white, the fields turn mostly white. It's the closest we usually come to snow-covered ground.

The Gila Valley is one of the most productive cotton-growing regions in the nation.

Ride on.

Sweater Weather

Today's Ride:

32.0 miles

Bryce-Pima Loop

1 hour 53 minutes

68° of beautiful air

My wife tells me I stink. She's right, I do. At least I do after my rides.

And sometimes before my rides.

I don't wash my bike clothes as often as I probably should so when I put them on before a ride and she is nearby she sometimes reminds me of my stinkiness. I love her anyway.

Fortunately, most of my rides are solo. And because one rides through the wind, one's odor, like the tail of a comet, stays behind one's nose and it isn't something one notices or even thinks about (except when one is looking for a topic for one's bike blog).

When I know I will be riding with others, I try to be more circumspect in my jersey and shorts selection.

My body produces a rather extraordinary amount of coolant which doesn't help with this issue. With warmer weather approaching, I will need to get back in the habit of daily washings.

Ride on (in clean clothes).

Marvelous Machines

Last Wednesday's Ride:

28.8 miles

Bryce - out & back

1 hour 52 minutes

Cold weather

Today's Ride:

21.1 miles

Solomonville - out & back

1 hour 15 minutes

63 degrees, no wind

Bicycles are extraordinary machines. What is considered the forerunner of the modern bicycle, the "laufmaschine," or "running machine" was invented by the German, Baron Karl von Drais, in 1817. Here's a picture:

It was called the "running machine" because the rider simply straddled the machine and used his feet to push the bike along either slowly (walking) if he had a load of wood or bread strapped on the back or faster (running) if he, or maybe even she, was out on a pleasure cruise. The Baron learned quickly what all cyclists know: uphill, hard; downhill, easy.

From the looks of things, the Baron's feet served as both the energy source to go forward and the way to bring it all to a stop.

The ol' Baron took his running machine to Paris in 1818 and it became a hit with the French. A few years later, a couple of Frenchmen added cranks to the front wheel and, voilá, pedaling was invented.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A couple of interesting bicycle facts:

A bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation ever invented in terms of energy expended to travel a given distance. Over a relatively flat terrain, one can travel on a bicycle at about 15 miles per hour while expending the same energy it takes to walk about two miles per hour.

And talk about going green... the carbon dioxide generated in the production and transportation of the food required by the bicyclist, per mile traveled, is less than 1/10th that generated by energy efficient cars.

The bicycle also played a significant role in the emancipation of women giving women unprecedented mobility at a time when their traveling options were severely limited. Susan B. Anthony described a woman on a bicycle as "...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."

It makes me proud to ride my bike.

Ride on.