Operation Phoenix has begun!

Hi All,

Eric and I arrived in Phoenix on Friday morning and have been settling in over the past couple of days.  First thing first, we made our way to the grocery store to load up on our supplies.  Since we don’t have a car down here we had intentions of putting all the food in our backpacks and carrying the rest in bags.  However, when you buy the amount of food we bought that just isn’t possible.  Here was 1/2 the haul (my portion) –>

And here is the cart we “borrowed” to get the food home.  We took it back today, don’t worry!  Many thanks to Safeway for the cart though, it really saved the day.

We took a quick spin around the area on Friday afternoon along with a short run in the shadows of South Mountain.

On Saturday the plan was to ride ~32 mi to the AZ State Crit Championships and Eric was going to race and most likely dominate.  However, right after we set out to make the trip my rear wheel broke when the rim snapped, thus rendering my bike useless.  After a quick cab ride back to the house and wheel change I rode back to where Eric was only to find out that since my departure he had succumbed to two flat tires.  Luckily I had snagged an extra tube.  After his final tube change we were on our way to the Crit.  After riding harder than we planned in order to still make the start time we were disheartened to find out that we reached our “destination” only to discover it was 10mi the opposite way of where the race was.  With the start time coming and going the chance to race for Eric was lost.  We sill made our way to the race site so that we would know where it was since Eric was going to race again on Sunday (today).

After we stopped at the race for a while we headed back home, had a fantastic lunch in Scottsdale and stopped by Tribe Multisports since I forgot to pack my swimsuit.  We finally arrived home a little after 3pm and got settled in.

That brings us to today.  We are currently hanging out at a nearby McDonalds utilizing the free wifi to check up on our emails, post blogs, upload ride/runs and book flights.  Yeah, living the dream!

We are going to set out for the trip to the Crit in a little while.  Now that we know where it is we can hopefully make the to and from ride a lot easier, mostly a recovery of sorts…and at the race Eric better win because money is on the line.  $100 to the winner I believe!  That would buy us some nice food for a few days!

Pictures and updates to come tomorrow, so stay tuned!