We’ve borrowed a couple of bikes from our friends Dave and Angela. They’re so generous, Dave builds custom made bicycles for a living
www.bohemianbicycles.com and Angela teaches business classes via the internet. They ride tandem so Sadie has Angela’s 24 speed mountain bike (although she only uses 4 of them) and I have a cool bike that looks like a child’s toy with a 7 speed hub gear, like the old Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs of my youth; so I feel like an 11 year old. Tucson is full of cycle routes, cycle lanes and cycle paths but not cyclists. The few that there are keep to the downtown and university area and to the foothills of the mountains on the edge of town. Serious cyclists take the 26 mile trek to the top of Mount Lemon, a gain of 6,000 feet. Not so serious ones build their own bikes out of trash like Brian who we met cycling up Pima today (see pic from behind); his bike was twice as high as the usual and painted bright orange to hide the wealth of welding. 
Everyone is thanking us here for bringing the British weather with us. Tucsonians love the rain. My students used to beg me to let them out of class when it rained just so they could stand in it. But they’re also very fearful; some are brave enough to watch it from the safety of the front porches of their ‘ranch’ houses. Some take a big gulp and chance driving taking extra care breaking, cornering and negotiating puddles. It soon dries though and today like 2 days ago is again sunny; a piercing, high contrast sunshine which removes any subtlety and saturation from the colour spectrum. 
We’ve borrowed a couple of bikes from our friends Dave and Angela. They’re so generous, Dave builds custom made bicycles for a living www.bohemianbicycles.com and Angela teaches business classes via the internet. They ride tandem so Sadie has Angela’s 24 speed mountain bike (although she only uses 4 of them) and I have a cool bike that looks like a child’s toy with a 7 speed hub gear, like the old Sturmey Archer 3 speed hubs of my youth; so I feel like an 11 year old. Tucson is full of cycle routes, cycle lanes and cycle paths but not cyclists. The few that there are keep to the downtown and university area and to the foothills of the mountains on the edge of town. Serious cyclists take the 26 mile trek to the top of Mount Lemon, a gain of 6,000 feet. Not so serious ones build their own bikes out of trash like Brian who we met cycling up Pima today (see pic from behind); his bike was twice as high as the usual and painted bright orange to hide the wealth of welding. 
We cycled the 5 miles to downtown this morning, in the sunshine, and here we are just off 4th Avenue outside the Army Surplus Store.
1 comment:
Glad to see you settling in - and joining the blogosphere. Check out another Tucson blog here: http://kdotdammit.livejournal.com/
You might have taken some of the English weather with you but there's still enough left for us back here with rain and snow on the way.
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