For a very long time, I’ve scoffed, harrumphed, and otherwise looked down upon the idea of driving a bicycle-carrying vehicle to a bike ride starting/ending destination. Always better to start cycing from the front door and besides, driving is the cause of most of the world’s problems.

These days, I’m a little less scoff, a bit less harrumph.

Today I drove out to the East Mountains and parked at the community center next to East Mountain High School. This proved to be one of my rare excellent ideas. Reasons for doing so: It’s damn hot in town, riding all the way to the community center next to East Mountain HS and back is a major undertaking, and it’s hot.

Driving also allowed me to do this loop toward the top end of my athletic skill set on an acoustic bicycle:

That’s 2,700 feet of climbing done over approximately 947 little hills and dales with just about zero traffic through Paako and San Pedro whatever it’s called “communities” and a strange little gravel stretch that showed “ok” on Ridewith GPS but looked, in practice, very much like I was riding into and through this guy’s propety.

Oh well, no shots were fired, that I know of, and I’m back here typing this now. Those are my general standards for success/not success in terms of private property invasion: Success: No shots are fired. Speaking of which, signs at San Pedro whatever it’s called told me I was illegally riding the “communities” “private roads.” Oops.

You have to look close to the “Private Roads” sign above, and the photo really intends to primarily convey the rolling hill/dale nature of the route, as well as the fact I encountered fewer than 10 vehicles/drivers over 27 of my 28 miles of riding. The other mile, on NM-14 wasn’t that bad, either.

Here’s a photo looking from the far west end of Paako toward the Ski Area.

That’s about as green as it ever gets out here. Noticeably green.

The other thing I noticed is that a great many Paako “community” properties are for sale. I don’t know why. Still many unsold lots out there, too, many more than I thought I’d see. Oh well, that meant fewer drivers and that’s fine with me, anytime.

So as has been the case about 99.7% of the time riding a new bike route, this Paako La Madera route is my new favorite bike route ever. The La Madera part was fun, too, even if much of the climbing happened there, and I still have no idea where La Madera actually “is,” as the entire area appears to be just a set of disparate properties scattered in no real fashion. I must have missed the downtown La Madera area.

After a ride like today’s, I’m stuffing my scoff and swallowing my harrumph from this point forward. Or at least until the next foray, which will be….I dunno, I haven’t really thought much about driving the bike places round previously undiscovered parts of the area. This could become a habit.