Leaving Tempe, we set out through seemingly endless Phoenix sprawl before crawling back out into the open desert. The mountains loomed closer and closer, and legions of tall Saguaro cacti burst out of each rolling foothill like the spotty aftermath of one of those Biore pore strips. Naturally, I resumed my quest to find the perfect candidate to anthropomorphize with a helmet and sunglasses, but most specimens resisted the hilarious photographic opportunity through unreachable height or arm-lessness. Aside from that small frustration, riding through the desert in the springtime is an unexpectedly thrilling experience–the perfect time to see it all in bloom.

The Queen Creek Tunnel up to Signal Pass is legendary for its narrow, shoulder-less lanes and heart-pounding treachery. Just like the tunnels on the Pacific Coastal highway, this dreaded corridor of doom exists on a steady uphill climb, making it the longest, loudest mile of your life, as eighteen wheelers and mastodon-sized RV’s thunder past, missing the opportunity to graze panniers by mere inches. For a moment, the dark threat of mutiny over safety concerns loomed heavy on the horizon, but the roads gradually became quieter and wider as we rolled down through small town Arizona mining towns into the Apache reservation.

30-mile an hour headwinds. 30-mile an hour tailwinds. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, and there’s very little you can do to predict or control any of it. The day we crossed the beautiful, expansive Apache reservation, we sailed through 80 miles of perfect rolling terrain like it was one long downhill. The next day, half of the team woke up with a collective headache and flu symptoms, as if we’d all spent the last 24 hours licking the same filthy payphone. Those days when everything goes wrong and herding 15 cyclists across the country feels like the hardest, least-appreciated job in the universe, I just have to take a look around me to remember how good I have it. “I wish I had the time or money to do something like that. I can’t even imagine feeling that free,” says the man at the convenience store wistfully, conducting a lingering investigation into the gear ratio and set-up of my Surly Cross-check. I want to align myself with his working-man frustrations, to tell him that I’m getting PAID to work really hard for this bike tour and that I know how soul-crushing it is to try to make the most of life with very little. It would be a lot of defensive posturing, though–I know that I move through these communities with a lot of privilege, education, and unearned advantage at a time when the outlook in our nation’s economy could not be more bleak. The main industry out here is copper mining, and with the price of copper currently plummeting, down-sizing and lay-offs are the headline news in nearly every town we pass through. Stores, restaurants, and campsites are starting to dry up as workers migrate north in search of jobs, while we glide through in a seemingly unaffected parade of flashy spandex and expensive bicycles. But hey, at least we’re supporting the local economy, or what little economy there is left. It feels frustrating and hopeless, but it’s a good wake-up call. Sometimes you have a headwind, sometimes you have a tailwind, and there’s very little you can do to control any of it.

One prevalent theme among our riders (besides the obsessive interest in relative fiber content) is the journey to overcome grief and loss. As a group, we have survived cancer, brain injuries, replacement surgeries, the loss of spouses, siblings, parents, and jobs, and everything else that life can throw at us without grinding our progress to a halt. Down, but not out, we keep moving, out-running the crush of emotion and uncertainty, ready to prove that we can overcome the mountains, the desert, the flat tires, the scarcity of vegan muffins–whatever it’s gonna take to keep going.

It’s easy to feel disconnected from the outside world on a trip like this. Crawling through dusty, desert towns where front page news has been of the “96-Year-Old Local Man Keeps on Truckin’” caliber of fair and balanced reporting, I had no idea that Iowa had legalized gay marriage, let alone what the Obama administration has been up to lately. It’s actually a relief to get away from it all, although I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder kicks in every time we burst back into cellphone range after a 3-day backwoods drought. Today is our layover day in Silver City, NM, and we’re off to investigate the Gila Cliff Dwellings built by the Mogollon people over 700 years ago. Two states down, six more to go!