The Big Freeze

Short Version:
Cold. An aborted ride, re-ridden after caffeine. We leave town in search of warm.

Long Version:
Before we could ride, we needed caffeine and foods. Before we could make caffeiny goodness, we had to turn ice into water, and before we could do that we needed to get the stuff out of the bottle it was frozen inside. It took a while, but we got there eventually, and before long we were on the bikes, blasting down the road to the trailhead. Both of us were complaining about the cold, albeit with reference to differing body parts: Nene's fingers were frozen, and I had serious toe discomfort afoot. On the bright side, we had one fully-functional set of digits between us.

We stopped at the trailhead to try to warm the extremities, but it wasn't working so we gave up pretty quickly and set off up the Schultz Pass Trail. It was pretty nice riding, but it was cold. Really cold. We made slow, heavy going of what should have been an easy ride, and gave up after half an hour when it became apparent that hands and feet weren't getting any warmer, and that their iciness was making what should have been an extremely pleasant jaunt in the forest into a really unpleasant ordeal.

One warming cup of Macy's caffeiney goodness and some eggy deliciousness later we returned for a second attempt, and found the valley up which the Schultz Pass Trail runs much less chilled than it had been in the early morning. It still wasn't tropical though, and we were soon riding past patches of snow and ice-rimmed puddles. One downhill corner was so completely icy that I looked at it and thought: I wonder, if one went too fast and one's wheels slid out from under one, whether it would hurt more than usual when one hit the frozen ground.

The answer, apparently, was yes.

At Schultz Pass we hooked onto the Secret Trail, and from there across to Upper Moto. We tried to ride Anthony's Slutty Sister, but gave up and went back to Upper Moto, where we found a boulder field with lots of tricky technical stuff. Lower Moto was more open and flowing, and we got fast before we got finished. Only two and a half hours out, but the cold made it feel like more. Discussing the ride later we agreed that the trails, like the town, had reminded us a lot of Bend; a nice mix of technical and not; fast and flowing sections contrasting with tight, tricky bits.

We left, with peanut butter sandwiches, and drove through the scenic Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona and Oak Creek Village and a scrubby patch of desert south of town where we parked ourselves for the night.