Good day to you, the rabid Team Seagal fan. It has come to this, having forgotten the password to Robort and I's amazing blog, and no longer satisfied with posting in the comments section, I have started the Team Seagal AZ blog. Although I am currently the only member of the AZ branch there is a lot to cover as I attempt to spread the general vibe of badassery that is Team Seagal. I am also considering marketing a Team Seagal fragrance, because badass dudes should smell badass. Right now it is hovering somewhere between napalm and chicken soup, with hints of vanilla. Delicious. So I guess in a way I am breaking up with Robort, but what we had was mediocre and horribly misspelled and no one can evar take that away.



So I have been in Arizona for a couple of weeks and I like it a lot. There are trails in every direction, several within a ten minute ride from my doorstep. The shop I work for is pretty cool, the bars have two for one beers, and my ride to work only takes about ten minutes. The service manager at the shop I work for is a singlespeeder with Team Seagal written all over him. He got 8th place in the Whiskey Offroad, which is a 50 mile mtb race leaving from downtown. He completed the race, which has over 7,000 feet of climbing, in 4hrs 08 min. Smoking fast. I will likely be carpooling to the D9 Bulldozer with his buddy Ed, who may also soon have Team Seagal written all over him. There is a singlespeed only race scheduled for 10-3, which as it happens, is sponsored by PBR. Things just keep falling into place.



As far as riding goes, I am still adapting. The altitude has taken some time to get used to, but I am getting there. I took an early off season, between working RAGBRAI, packing, moving, and adapting to the altitude I didn't do any regular riding for about 3 weeks other than riding to work, which is only 2.5 miles from my house. The first mountain bike ride I did was short and it totally kicked my ass. Wednesday I went for my second mountain bike ride with a guy from work. We climbed about two thirds of the way up Thumb Butte, which is the title picture for the blog right now. It is part of the Prescott National Forest and is absolutley covered in randomly intersecting trails and fireroads. It was a good ride, a little short, and very low intensity. There is a singletrack climb, leading to a fire road, leading to some downhill singletrack. The next day, being off work, I decided to head back that way for a longer ride. The fireroad leading to the singletrack that we took continues to the top of Thumb Butte and beyond to a few even higher points. Armed with a pretty basic map and a lot of spare time I decided to continue on this fire road to some even more distant single track that, according to the map, would eventually drop me out on the same downhill single track that we had taken the night before. I proceeded on the fire road, which turned out to be very reminicsient of Matson Hill, but it just kept going up. By the time I reached the highest point at about 7,400ft I had been climbing continuously for over an hour. I eventually turned on another fire road which dropped me about a thousand feet in about 5 minutes. I found the trail head I had been looking for and proceeded into the woods to climb back up to the top to connect with the downhill. This is where things started going wrong. At some point I made a wrong turn. As it turns out, some of the trails on the map were not marked, other trails were marked, but not included on the map. I ended up horribly lost, out of water, and my map began disentegrating in my hands from being damp with sweat. Things were not looking good. I had some idea which general direction to keep moving in, down being the most important. I finally ended up on an unmarked trail that got me back out onto the road and on my way to water. All in all I rode about 25 miles with at least 3,500 feet of climbing on only two water bottles, a peanut butter sandwich, and some cereal. I believe I will be using my camelback more often in the future.

That is about all I've got for now, I'm going to have another go at the 396 trail (my first mtb ride here) in the morning before work. In the meantime you guys should start training in altitude tents for the D9bulldozer, it's gonna kick ass. Jerks. Here's some pics to tide you over. Jerks.