85 Miles, 12 Hours, 4 Bars
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
A few weeks ago, a few of us who work at Cosmic Cycles, a mountain bike shop here in Flagstaff, AZ, wanted to spend a nice, full-day out riding bikes. After only a few short minutes of theorizing routes, we made the plan to do a rural saloon tour of northern Arizona.
Our loose route was as follows: Meet at Cosmic Cycles in downtown Flagstaff before riding the AZT south, where we then hopped over to a few forest roads on our way down to Mormon Mountain. After climbing the rocky jeep road to the top, we descended the singletrack on the mountains south end, shooting us down to a short road ride to our first saloon, Mormon Lake Lodge.
We stopped for one beer and a quick game of pool, but we still had a long way to pedal that day. After departing, we cruised westward on a handful of fast double-track forest roads for a couple ours. By this time, we were all plenty hungry and ready for a real meal after pedaling hard for the last 6ish hours, so pulling up to the Borracho Saloon in Munds Park was much needed.
We had high hopes for Borracho Saloon, and it certainly provided. We all ordered too much food, and too many drinks, and before we knew it we had to hop back on the bikes and pedal onward to our next stop at the Mountainaire Tavern.
The Tavern is right down the street from my house, but I had never been. It’s the kind of bar that’s open early and the parking lot is always full. We rolled up just after the sun had set, as the full moon began to poke over the hillside to the east. After a quick chat about the rather ambitious ride, we were on outside with what seemed like a couple of the bar’s regular patrons, we had the first couple rounds of drinks coming.
It wasn’t until around 8 PM that we finally made our way out of Mountainaire and up Old Munds Highway. Our final stop was well across Flagstaff on the east side of town. We rode Flagstaff’s Urban Trail System and finally made it to the Museum Club just after 9 PM.
Our 12 hour, 85 mile, ride was over after making it to all four bars. We had no mechanical issues and had incredible weather.
