Mike Armstrong

We made it! The final mileage turned out to be 376 miles, apparently we saved a few miles by riding through the City of Tuscon and taking Highway 84 through Eloy. This morning went really smooth it was nice to hang out with Anthony “Sarge” Herriage who helped with logistics during the Arizona Trail Hike.

We made it out on the road by 8:30 am and had a really smooth day. No flat tires and nice road until we hit a huge mountain just outside of Yuma. It dropped us down to our slowest speed of 7 mph.  Our descent however brought us up to a whopping 35 mph.

Our final finish time was about 2:15 pm.

At the boarder we were meet by two news stations and a newspaper journalist from Yuma. The entire experience was incredible; the thing I really appreciated about this ride was the time I had in my own head. Self analyzation really helps you clarify what the important things in life are; for me first and foremost comes my family. I would never be able to experience these types of adventures without my families support.

I want to give a serious thank you to my team Scot “Scoob” Schmidt (El Capitan), Benjamin Cane (Logistical Engineer), & Gene Longwell (Support Rider/Traffic Cop). These guys were awesome; their positive and comical approach to life made the ride a blast.

Also a special thank you to the Foundation for Blind Children for changing my perspective on blindness and enriching the lives of so many visually impaired and blind in Arizona. Tobin Ernst was like a 5th member of the team, and I’ve got to give him a thumbs up for all his hard work.

I received incredible support from the following hotels and bike shops.

• Best Western in Yuma, Tuscon, & Benson
• Comfort Inn in Lordsburg, NM
• America’s Choice Inn in Gila Bend
• Sunday Cycles in Phoenix
• Bicycles of Phoenix

An extra special thanks goes out to Doug Bowden; Doug was supposed to be part of our team but due to an unfortunate injury while participating in a charity ride with Tour de France he was unable to join us. Doug was an incredible supporter and I truly appreciate his gift of the Cannondale Tandem that we used on the ride. Even through you weren’t able to enjoy the heat with us; you were with us in spirit.

On our ride we were able to pound out 99.6 miles on day 1, 98.5 miles on day 2, 103 miles on day 3 and 76 miles on the final day. During our ride our average speeds ranged from a low of 17 mph to a high of 23 mph with a total average of 20 mph. It was a great experience and I highly recommend it to anybody, regardless of what your passion is I highly recommend of stepping out and making it happen.

Ride on!

Had a lot of fun on the road today. We started off with an awesome 20 mile down hill because we climbed 100 miles to get to it the day before. We made it into Tucson by 9:15 am, but then we started having problems with flat tires.

Apparently we have been picking up left over tire pieces from other vehicles in the form of steal threads from blown out truck tires. Fortunately we had already planned to go to The Ordinary Bike Shop where they fixed my tire and Gene’s cable for his front derailer.

Then Steve from Channel 13 in Tucson interviewed Scoob and I about our ride for the news tonight. We worked our way through Tucson on several bike routes which worked out to be pretty fast since Steve from Channel 13 couldn’t keep up with us due to Tucson traffic and construction.

We ended up connecting up with a Frontage road next to I-10 at Ina and were able to take the it through the rest of town. After about 30 miles on the Frontage road we connected up with Highway 84, then about 6 miles short of Casa Grande we ended up getting another flat on that same tire (a tire that is guaranteed not to go flat).

We finished our day in Casa Grande with a total of 98.57 total miles, with an average of about 20 miles per hour. This puts us approximately 40 miles ahead of schedule. We hope to finish on Friday night.

We finished off our night with Dinner at La Parrillas with Gene’s uncle Dan. Dan’s wife Beverly was a student at the Foundation for Blind Children, this is how Gene first heard of the Blind Ride and became part of the team. Dan treated us to an awesome meal and regaled us with some awesome stories.

This finished off an awesome day, and it looks like I may have a new sailing buddy.