I have gotten an official ride!!!

Sounds like a plan.  I should know by Saturday/Sunday and I will have to check to see if I can get my money back from the van ride people.

I paid for the van ride last night, but they might let me out of that obligations.  I've had a few other people inquire, so it might be worth it.  How many people can you accommodate?

Hi,

Looking for a place to stay in Sierra Vista?  Well, I'm looking to drop my car off at the AZT 300 finish on Thursday the 14th and need a ride back to Sierra Vista?

I have an extra room with a privet bath. The bed is only a twin, but it will sleep two.  I think, this would work really well for someone that was going to get dropped of at the start, but didn't want have to camp out the night before. My house is about an hour from the start of the AZT 700 & AZT 300.  I can find my own ride to the start if your doing the AZT 700.

There is 400 sq of floor space and I have one queen size air mattress, if there were mutable people that wanted to stay.  I ignorantly posted this in the wrong forum; the first time.

Don S.

I think, I may have posted this in the wrong place.  I wanted to post in the AZT planning forum, but messed up.  Tried to delete, but couldn't.  Forgiveness please

Hi,

Looking for a place to stay in Sierra Vista?  Well, I'm looking to drop my car off at the AZT 300 finish on Thursday the 14th and need a ride back to Sierra Vista? 

I have an extra room with a privet bath.  I think, this would work really well for someone that was going to get dropped of at the start, but didn't want to camp out the night before. My house is about an hour from the start of the AZT 700 & AZT 300.  I can find my own ride to the start if your doing the AZT 700.

There is 400 sq of floor space and I have one queen size air mattress, if there were mutable people that wanted to stay.

Don S.

My first AZT 300 training ride:

I started from my car in Canelo around 11am and got back to my car at around 9:30pm thankfully alive.  Lots of lesions learn on my first training ride. 
I thought that it would take me about 3 hours to complete the 16 mile Canelo Hills East section of the Arizona Trail.  Five and half hours later I was relieved to reach the Canelo Pass Trailhead and the muddy dirt road back to my car.

I’m not sure how anyone can do this trail in 2 hours on a Mountain Bike because it felt like I spent more than 2 hours mounting and dismounting my bike.  The seeming endless hike-a-bike finally ended at what I thought was the jeep road leading down to Stock Tank.  About an hour later I found out that I took the wrong jeep trail (on the strava map you can see my back track).  After passing Stock Tank, darkness fell on me very quickly and because I thought that this would be a much easier ride I wasn’t worried about charging my lights (which were dead) or bringing any back-up lights.  In the end this was a life threatening mistake that added hours to my overall trek.

It was pitch black by the time I reached Middle Canyon and the end of the lovely jeep trail that I could actually ride.  If not for my GPS I would have had to wait until morning to continue on.  In hindsight, I should have taken Canelo Road back when it was day light, but I wanted to reach my goal of finishing this section of the trail because I only have four months left until the AZT 300.
Granted I did a third of the trail in just about total darkness only having a GPS to lead my way and there was lots of snow, so maybe my time wasn’t that bad given my stupidity and weather conditions.  There was no moon, but the clouds cleared a little letting some stars finally come out which relieved my fear getting too lost in the darkness.

Not joking in the least, there was a point on the trail while wringing out the water in my wet, but luckily wool wigwam socks (that were free from the Summit Hut outdoor sale), that I said out loud, “This is f-ing crazy”.  It was still daylight then and little did I know things would just get more difficult after the sun went down. 

Links to part of the ride on Strava:
https://www.strava.com/activities/449212850
https://www.strava.com/activities/449019150

I would be happy to do Parker Canyon to Sonoita just about any Saturday (not January 9,10 or Feb 13,14 because of other races).  I live in Sierra Vista so I can provide a place to crash the night before. 2016 AZT300 will be my first bike-pack, so I really want to load up my bike and get a feel for how it handles.  I have a GPS, so I'm really planning on doing this first leg of the race this Saturday.

See, you April 15th, if you can't make down here sooner.

~Don