If God is trying to make me even happier about the thought of spending a week cycling through southern Arizona, He’s certainly on the right track. The weather here in Bibleburg is deteriorating rapidly — blowing, spritzing, shivery, even snowing up in Black Forest — which is to say it’s a fairly typical March day in Colorado.

As a consequence, I didn’t bother to ride. I figure I have plenty of that sort of thing coming up soon, and in a more hospitable climate, too. Instead, I visited my chiropractor, started packing and scored the fixings for a big pot of chicken noodle soup, which is simmering as we speak.

Soup sounded good, and more important, there will be leftovers, which will come in handy during my absence. Herself will cook an egg, or a holiday feast, but leaves the shopping and three-squares-a-day stuff to me. If you like to eat, you want a great fat bastard running the kitchen, not some 95-pound sprite whose capacity is about equal to that of a baby robin. I’ll cook up a couple more items tomorrow and freeze ’em so she’ll have heat-it-and-eat-its while I’m pushing envelopes down in cactus country.

The fun part of all this is the packing. Ordinarily when vacationing in Arizona I park myself in McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, so any forgetfulness on my part is easily remedied. But bike shops, REIs and other dispensaries will be few and far between south of Tucson, so I have to try to transcend my brain damage and take everything I might possibly need, including a bigger vehicle to carry it all.

George Washington Hayduke got along fine with his own two legs, plus 60 pounds of gear in a backpack, but I’m going to need something with more carrying capacity. Maybe a Peterbilt, or a CH-47F Chinook helicopter.